At 06:51 AM 1/11/98 -0600, you wrote: appearance. Wow, those questions should stir up a hornet's nest! I'll in my two cents worth. Personal Computer: IBM called the 5100 a personal computer and also a portable computer. I think they called it a personal computer since it did not normally support any remote terminals and only supported one user at a time. the 5100 was IBM's first "personal computer" but I don't know if it came before or after PCs from other manufacturers. Portable Computer: IBM also called the 5100 a "portable computer". I guess they considered it a portable computer because everything was in one unit. It was certainly NOT portable in the sense that one person could pick it up and move it around. It's huge and it's heavy and there aren't even any handles on it. Not to mention the fact that it has an unprotected glass screen and there was no protective case for it, the keyboard or the rear connectors. Even the early KayPros and Compaqs were much more portable than a 5100! To me at least, it's very questionable wheather or not the 5100 should be considered a "Portable Computer". The HP 85 was built similarly but at least HP provided a case as an option. Joe

On Sun, 11 Jan 1998, Francois Auradon wrote: No debates necessary on some of these as there were definite firsts. For instance: "Computer Space" which was Atari's first video game. I think someone may correct me and tell me it wasn't "Atari" yet, but it was created by Nolan Bushnell. The Odyssey. Came out in 1972. It used wafer carthridges for games that weren't actually ROMs but actually just "patches" to re-configure the console to throw different sprites onto the screen. This is harder to define. The question really is, who's definition of "personal" are we referring to? Everyone's got their own. Some people consider certain mainframes to have been "personal computers" because you could actually sit down at the main console and have the computer all to yourself. If the definition of "personal" is "integrated CPU, keyboard and video output" then that would be the Sol-20 from 1976. This was first proposed at the First Annual Vintage Computer Festival, and once you've done your own research you will tend to agree. Some will argue that the Apple ][ was the first (by this definition). But the Sol-20 beat it by a few months. Again, same problem. Define "portable". Allison carted, what was it, a PDP-8 across a bridge some years ago. She got funny looks, but she "ported" her computer elsewhere. However, I believe this one goes to the IBM 5100. However, did I hear grumblings of something portable pre-dating even the 5100? Like something from HP in the early 70s? Unless you had a huge lap, the only computer that could comfortably fit there was, I believe, the Epson HX-20. It had a keyboard, display and storage integrated into one unit which is the same size and weight as some notebook computers today. Correct my details if I'm wrong but I believe the OS was dubbed "Smalltalk" and was developed by Xerox at the Palo Alto Research Center in 1972. Steve Jobs got his Lisa inspiration from his visit to PARC in, I believe, 1979? Now this is another tough one. First you need to define "operating system". But I won't even speculate a guess here because there are people far more knowledgeable than I of the time period when the first "OS" would have been created. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass Coming Soon...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!