When I was at my parents' house, I also went to visit my old-timer neighbor. My parents told me he wanted to talk to me about getting a new computer. He has one of the first 1000 HeathKit H89 systems to come off the assembly line. I remember going to his house back in 1988 a couple times to trade programming tips with him and playing with it. He built it himself. It's in cherry condition, with the original Heathkit covers for both the computer and the heathkit printer. I gave him advice on buying a new system and offered to buy his Heathkit from him, but I don't think he's ready to sell it yet. Before I left I emphasized that when he's ready to part with it to call me. I'm looking through this old issue of Popular Computing (I also found a good run of this magazine). This issue is September 1983. These things are awesome. Let's take a look at this one... The cover story is "Demystifying Computer Languages" and has a column each for APL, BASIC, C, COBOL, FORTH, FORTRAN, LISP, Modula-2, Pascal, PROLOG and Smalltalk. You see, that's another thing that was great about the 80s...not only did you have diversity of systems, but you had a viable diversity of languages. Sure you could argue that today, but let's face it, this is a C dominated world. Hmm, cool, there's a hacking article, "Profile of a Computer Abuser". And some way cool Do-itYourself article on how to build a $4 printer stand. Let's see, there's the standard Elephant Memory Systems disk ad (remember those? Always with a yellow backdrop, a lot of times on the back of the mag). Anyway, here's an ad for a Percom Data disk drive for the T-99/4a for $499. So whoever found that TI-99/4a disk in the thrift shop, keep looking for the Percom Data disk drive. Here's the basic IBM ad with the lame Charlie Chaplan impersonator. Ok cool, a big price page for a company called computer mail order (how generic). Timex Sinclair 1000, $39.95; Commodore 64, $239; Pet 64, $569; Sanyo MBC-555, $795; Eagle IIE-1, $1,369; and on the CMO top 100, we have Choplifter at #1 for the Apple, WordPro64 for the C64 and Donkey Kong for the Atari. Moving on, we have an add for Fontrix (a cool Apple ][ page designing program), an ad for Commodore 64 that compares its under $600 price to the $1395 Apple, the $999 TRS-80 III and the $1355 IBM PC. Wow. A 2-page ad spread for the Apple ///. Dum de dum, hey an ad for the HP-86 personal computer. I don't think I've ever seen one of these...its like an Apple in design, with the keyboard and CPU all one unit. I never knew HP made such a beast. I'll have to find me one of those. (are we bored yet?) Oh, here's a good one: an ad for a C64 that says "More power than Apple ][ at half the price" (what a joke) and for the VIC-20 that says "a real computer at the price of a toy" (they got the toy part right). I betray my thinly veiled Apple ][ bias. Moving on, here's a funky user definable keyboard called the keywiz VIP (and in parenthesis it says Very Intelligent Peripheral) made by a company called Creative Computer Peripherals. I guess you can assign a keyword to each key and it was compatible with the Apple and TRS-80. Then an ad for the TI Compact Computer. It shows a typically preppy 80s type dude sitting at a desk (presumably in a library) with a typically preppy 80s type chick sitting on the other side and the ad copy says "20 pages of notes, a thesis, algebraic forumlas. Can you make a date at eight?" The guy in the ad has one finger on a key on the computer which has a disk drive attached, and one holding a pen as he writes down notes on a yellow legal pad. Brilliant. I'll take two. Ok, here's an add from Wisconsin Discount Sales, showing a Panasonic 32K for $249, an Atari 800XL with, instead of a price, the word "NEW" in a blast bubble. Here's something funny. In caption from the article on Prolog, it says "Japanese researchers have chosen PROLOG as the standard language for their fifth-generation computer project. If the project succeeds, it's very likely that we'll all be programming in PROLOG by 1995!" I guess we all know the outcome of that particular project. Anyway, then there's a review of the Radio Shack PC-4 "programmable calculator" and the Casio FX-700P pocket computer. Hey, a ComputerLand ad. They are now back in business as Vanguard by the way. Blah, blah, blah. More ads. Blah. And that's pretty much it. I hope you enjoyed this tour of the September 1983 issue of Popular Computing. Sam ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass