Subject: Re: Blog IO9 "The History of Early Computing Machines"

On 24 June 2013 23:50, Murray McCullough <c.murray.mccullough at gmail.com> wrote: I happen to be interested in the pre-Apple 1 and pre-IBM PC era of machines; and I'm a computer user of today, relatively (born 1991, so I'm not one of the little morons born in this century). Then again, personal machines are... less of an interest to me, I'm more interested in the minis and mainframes. (I like the DEC machines most; and I'd give an arm and a leg for a working PDP-11/70; and probably my spleen for a PDP-8/e with a TD8E and a TU56.) In my age group (20 somethings in university and college), I mostly see interest in three fields: 1. Ultra-modern PC "stuff". (I ashamedly fall into this group, currently building up my funds for both PDP-11 gear and a modern gaming PC.) 2. "Retro" PC gear, not so much 8086 and 286 era as 486 and Pentium 1 era, where many of us got our introductions to PCs and PC gaming. 3. "Oddball" machines (my friends' terminology, not mine), like Commodore 64s, and Amiga 500s. The IBM PC, the Apple 1, the Altair, et cetera are less so "let's see them working" and more so "let's put them in a museum" for the people I know. Minicomputers don't even register. Looking at present day teenagers and kids... well all I can see there is interest in the newest and shiniest phones and console gaming platforms. They don't even realize there was an Apple Computers before the iMac, and they haven't even heard of IBM, nevermind know the company once made PCs. Most of them that I've encountered don't even realize that computers once had a command line interface, I can say that from the experience of demoing a PDP-11 to a group of high school technology students (!) about two years ago. Cheers, Christian