10 Jan
1999
10 Jan
'99
6:59 p.m.
At 10:57 PM 1/10/99 -0600, you wrote:
OK, next time somebody tells you that the Altair was
the first personal or
home computer, give them this URL:
http://www.yowza.com/classiccmp/berkeley/report.html
<snip>
-- Doug
Very interesting document, Doug, and fun to read. But I think that in 1956,
a $4000 computer (Simon) could hardly be considered a home or personal
computer. Wouldn't that have been more than most people's annual salary?
I think on the price/performance scale, the Altair is the winner and still
champion; it's price was probably in reach of more hobbyists.
Cheers,
Mark.
10 Jan
10 Jan
8 p.m.
On Sun, 10 Jan 1999, Mark Gregory wrote:
Very interesting document, Doug, and fun to read. But
I think that in 1956,
a $4000 computer (Simon) could hardly be considered a home or personal
computer. Wouldn't that have been more than most people's annual salary?
I think on the price/performance scale, the Altair is the winner and still
champion; it's price was probably in reach of more hobbyists.
$4000 was Berkeley's development cost. I've read that the plans for Simon
were published and that the estimated cost of parts was around $300. I
still haven't found those plans, however. If you wanted a lower cost (and
lower performance) personal computer, you simply need to read a little
further down the list about the Geniac ($17.95) and Tyniac ($9.95) kits.
Simon is the first personal computer I'm aware of, but it's certainly not
the only pre-Altair personal computer. Slowly but surely, I'll put up web
pages for about a dozen others from the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's.
-- Doug
8:29 p.m.
Here's a memo from Berkeley to his "employees" about six months after the
report I posted earlier:
http://www.yowza.com/classiccmp/berkeley/memo.html
("Employees" are in quotes, because this work was done mostly by *very*
smart high school kids.)
Note the plans for Simplac, a transistorized computer, and plans to
interface Magdum, the magnetic storage drum, to Simon.
I have the plans for Magdum, and it's about 30 pages of hand-drawn
schematics. Does anybody know of a way to convert a raster scan of this
kind of stuff to some sort of vectorized format (maybe EPS)?
-- Doug
11 Jan
11 Jan
3:42 p.m.
Doug Yowza <yowza(a)yowza.com> wrote:
I have the plans for Magdum, and it's about 30
pages of hand-drawn
schematics. Does anybody know of a way to convert a raster scan of this
kind of stuff to some sort of vectorized format (maybe EPS)?
Adobe Streamline is a raster-to-vector program. I've got it, but I haven't
ever tried it on schematics.
6 a.m.
Mark Gregory said...
|
|Very interesting document, Doug, and fun to read. But I think that in 1956,
|a $4000 computer (Simon) could hardly be considered a home or personal
|computer. Wouldn't that have been more than most people's annual salary?
It would have bought a decent new house in many parts
of the country.
6:08 a.m.
Miles O'Neal said...
|
|It would have bought a decent new house in many parts
|of the country.
Which country? Texas.
And probably a good bit of the USA.
8^)
-Miles, a bit under the weather, so even less clear than usual
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