Corrections to trivia

On Wed, 7 Oct 1998, Doug Yowza wrote: Oh please. You're saying that none of those machines would have happened without the Altair? What do you define as the "first wave of cheap computers"? The week that the Altair came out? All the computers I mentioned were within a year of the first production model of the Altair. Altair or not, they would have still been created. Are you also implying none of those processors would have happened without the Intel 4004? That's an incredibly narrow review of the history of the development of microprocessors. As I've stated before, the Intel 4004 was nothing amazing. Efforts were already under way (concurrently) by other companies to develop a "microprocessor". TI and AMI were just a couple. Intel just happened to be one of the first that coupled their technology with good marketing. Your sense of "history" seems to be narrowly focused on only what you've read, and does not at all reflect a comprehensive study of what actually took place. I'm not claiming to be all-knowing about what happened back in the early 70s with regard to microprocessor technology and microcomputer development, but I can tell that I have a greater understanding of what was really going on back then. I take my knowledge If you pay attention, you'll notice some of those first-hand sources sharing this first-hand information on the list occasionally. Oh, I get it! Intel's version of the events constitutes the WHOLE story, and all those "other guys" were silly and insignificant operations that made NO IMPACT WHATSOEVER on the progress of personal computing. Give me a break. That's how YOU are interpreting my actions. I'm simply trying to explain to you why the F14 CADC is significant on its own merits, and you're trying to (unsuccessfully) convince me its not terribly worthy of note. Intel did a good enough job entrenching their version of history in the public record, and no manner of arguing on my part will change that, and in fact, that is not my goal. I'm simply trying to promote the notion that there is more to this story than just "Intel creates the 4004", which is what you seem to be stuck on. The next time we get together I'll have to bring all the notes, articles and documentation I've collected from the 1971-1974 timeframe that demonstrates that there was much more going on than just Intel and their 4004, and that these other efforts had a far greater collective influence on the evolution of microprocessors than just the 4004 alone. Not at all. They were both LSI processors. A comparison is appropriate. Yes they had different requirements and applications, but my point was to refute your argument that the CADC was insignificant in the history of the development of microprocessors simply because it was not subsequently commercialized. As I proffered above, the CADC demonstrates that the possibilities were far greater than what the 4004 presented. The intent is not to diminish the importance of the 4004 at all, but to simply bring to awareness that the state of the art had not been pushed to its outer bounds with the 4004. I believe this is important to note, especially in a historical context in which one is arguing that an advancement in the state of the art occurred, which it clearly did not with the 4004. Your argument seems to be centered on commercial success, in which case you are giving the 4004 too much credit, since that did not occur until much later on with the 8080, the 6800 and the 6502. Well, you're not paying attention to what I'm saying, and are instead trying to characterize my discourse on this subject in your own highly inflexible presuppositions. It's somewhat insulting. You've ignored all the references I've made to Ray's accomplishments at AMI, which is the company he went on to after the F14 project to create two more microprocessors (AMI7200 and AMI7300), and these creations, based in part upon his successful CADC design, certainly had an impact on the state of the art, not to mention the many other efforts going on at the same time by at least three other companies. These efforts were the early formation of what was to eventually become the microcomputer industry. Assigning Intel all the credit for virtually creating the industry is absurd. It certainly was not obvious back then that Intel would be grossing $21billion in 1998 and have a virtual monopoly on personal computing electronics. It was anyone's game. But perhaps I'm assuming you've studied the history, which doesn't seem to be the case. And in your defense, I have not offered much in the way of Holt's later work that included developing the training course for the Intel 4004, publication of the first microcomputer journal (_The Microcomputer Digest_), his JOLT, his VIM-1 (later SYM-1) and the prototype computer he provided to Radio Shack that quite possibly became the TRS-80, all of which would bolster my argument that the CADC carries tremendous significance, being his first work and therefore certainly providing some amount of influence on the designs of his subsequent work. Since when is promoting the facts of the past "spin"? Unless you mean anything that doesn't fit into your narrow historical view is spin? Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ever onward. Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0 See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details! [Last web site update: 09/21/98]