24 Apr
2002
24 Apr
'02
1:50 p.m.
see below, plz.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Hellige" <jhellige(a)earthlink.net>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 10:34 AM
Subject: Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)
>Computers of the '80's had mass storage.
Video toys did not. That's why I
>refer to things that didn't/couldn't have internal mass storage interfaces
as
>toys and allow that things that did/could have
them as computers. Later
on,
>that was no longer a valid basis for classifying
them, since it simply
became
>cheaper to put the mass storage interface inside
the box. In the '80's,
toy
>vendors wanted you to buy small, at an inflated
price, and then buy small
>again, also at an inflated price. Computer makers had to compete with one
>another, while game/toy vendors didn't have to compete with computer
makers.
Plenty of people couldn't afford what you consider a computer
and had their first experience with computers using what you deem as
'toys'.
I make the distinction thus:
In the early days, 1980 and earlier, people got their low-end computers, e.g.
Commodore Pet, TRS-80, minimally equipped APPLE, etc, into the house under the
guise of being able to do useful works with respect to the household ...
generically referred to as "balancing the checkbook" but not limited to that.
They were seldom used for that. They were tools for self-amusement/abuse,
often leading to increased drinking, smoking, cursing, and profuse consumption
of potato chips, coffee, cola, or whatever. These things were, functionally,
computers, though they really were toys for the technically inclined, and
those who wished they were. If they ended up as computers, they consisted of
various boxes on the table, often taking up the entire surface of a door from
the lumber yard, on two saw-horses.
Later on, a wide range of video toys became available. These enabled the
kids, equipped with an old TV set and an RF modulator, to play various
on-screen games which amused the kids for a few days or even a week. They
were smuggled into the household under the guise of providing
amusement/education for the kids. With the expenditure of vast sums of money,
one ended up with pretty much what one would end up with following the path
above, spending probably about the same amount of money, overall, yet they
still really were toys. For whom? Well, that's going to depend on who's
asking. If they ended up as computers, they consisted of various boxes on the
table, often taking up the entire surface of a door from the lumber yard, on
two saw-horses.
If one wanted a computer, and didn't have to fool anyone about what it was, or
why it was being acquired, one bought a computer. It cost about the same
amount as the stuff in the two paragraps above, but it was integrated such
that it would function from day 1 as a computer. Often it was an S-100 box,
in which case one had to spend an hour or two with the BIOS configuration,
and, if one had a lot of I/O, that could grow into a few weeks of evenings and
weekends. Normally, one bought a controller and CPU board from the same
vendor, and the CPU board often had the console port on it. These were
intended for use with a serial terminal, however, and not with memory-mapped
video. In some cases, you bought a video board, e.g. the SD Systems VDB8024
or whatever it was called (I've got one, but I've never used it.) together
with the SD systems CPU (SBC100, SBC200, or whatever) and the SD Versafloppy
I, II, III or whatever. This was accompanied with a BIOS capable of running
the hardware on those boards, together with a fresh, clean copy of CP/M 2.2.
If you had additional hardware, you had to write a BIOS extension that would
do the work, which could be tricky but generally wasn't unless you had TPA
size problems. For me, the progression was as follows.
Open the box. Open the S-100 mainframe. Open the individual card boxes,
extract the cards and plug them into the mainframe. Open the carton the in
which the FDD enclosure traveled. Extract the enclosure, insert the 8" floppy
drives. Attach the cables to their respective sockets, at each end, attach
power cables, power on the Terminal, power up the S-100 box, Power up the
FDD's, insert the boot disk, watch the lights bling, ... WHAT? no display?
... oh yeah... attach the serial cable to the terminal. repeat the process...
and 64k CP/M 2.2 is booted. Total elapsed time, 4 weeks of shopping, 1 week
for shipping, 1.5 hours fiddling with boxes, cables, enclosures, etc. 45
seconds to boot the 1st time. ... done... Cost? well, the two Mistubishi 8"
DSDD drives cost $479 each, the terminal cost $753, shipped the CCS hardware,
including CPU, FDD, 64KB DRAM, 4-additional serial port card, 4 parallel in +
4 parallel out card, mainframe, FD box (the one I sent you) $1479, I think. I
don't remember what the shipping cost was, but that was in '79. Later the
next year I attached an ST-506 drive.
Until the hard disk became a project, the only code I had to write was a
printer handler for a daisywheel, which meant writing an x-on/x-off handler
for one of the serial ports. That might have taken an hour or two. I later
got a dot-matrix parallel printer, so that needed a simple driver to manage
the strobe an busy lines. Also not very challenging.
I doubt that early users of the Atari, Commodore,
TRS-80 or
Sinclair machines would appreciate that label though. Nor did
everyone have either the ability or desire to write major portions of
the OS to get into the S-100 bus boxes, even if they could afford
them.
It's not a pejorative, it's just a distinction.