'Home' computer: Definition - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

3 Jul 1997

...
  In fact, the TI community is shrinking, and as the
members of the
 community observe it shrinking, some are inclined to bail out ("rats
 abandoning a sinking ship").  Given that trend, the community will 
The attrition may be due to limited software or simple the machines
failing.  Likely the users have found other platforms (older cheaper PCs)
or even new ones.  Also it may be more difficult to use older machine 
...
 from the point and click mindset. 
Don't forget peer pressure "Your still using that?".

...
  Of course, while my main loyalties are to the
TI-99/4A, I recognize al
 the other "home computers" suffer from the same conditions, and I was
 hoping to create a dialog for HOW to do this, particularly strategies t 
True but some suffer deeper.  The more useful and more common software is 
the more likely it is to be still in use.  Hence the commodors/trs80s/cpm
machines.  A quick survey of archive sites will show the common machines
based on software available.

...
  So what I was fishing for was the thoughts of those
people who read thi
 List and understand the dilemma.  In a Wintel-dominated world, is it
 even FEASIBLE to try to attract other people to choose from the
 abundance of small computer systems, otherwise destined for the landfil
 or recyclers? 
Depends on their needs and how important compatability is to them.  I 
have a PC becuase I have to not because it's all that great.  Some or a
lot of the world is PC based and I have to be compatable with them.

...
  My previous remarks about mainframes, which were
interpreted as saying
 that they are not "home computers", were made from the point of view
 (and perhaps in ignorance) that, while C64s, Atari 8-bitters, TIs,
 CoCos, and other "home computers" that were sold FOR THAT PURPOSE in
 K-Mart and other department stores DO (or at least did) have a user
 community, sharing programs, encouraging other users, forming User
 Groups, publishing Newsletters, etc., 
...
  other machines (such as the
 PDP class of mains, minis, etc. and maybe Altairs and S-100 bus
 computers) do NOT have this aspect to their existence.  
Excuse me?  not so!  Many of the s100 systems had very active user groupd 
though they were more often segmented by OS rather than bus.

...
  I guess I
 do know about DECUS; don't know if something like that existed for
 PDP-11 owners or not, or even if professionally-oriented thing like
 DECUS would be applicable here.  I certainly did not mean to imply tha 
There are several groups for the PDP-8/10/11/vax other than decus but 
decus goes back to day one.

What you forget is the intersil 6100 chip (pdp8! and the desktop version 
the DECMATE) and closed PDP-11 systems (PDT11/150 and PRO350) were sold 
in the same space and had very seperate communities outside of DECUS.

It's not as cut and dried as your words picture it.  Personal computing
as adjunct to commercial computing was and is largely driven by cost, 
capability and software.  Many amazingly poor machines did well not for 
the hardware but an abundance of software.

Food for thought, The ti9900 chip is nearly as old as the 8080 and it was 
a 16bit design based on the TI990 minicomputer.  Wouldn't you want that 
machine?  FYI it was not that large (comparable to a PDP-11/20.).  Yet
the ti99/4a was year later...why?  No support from TI, they figured you 
get the mini and devlope applications using the chip so support was 
limited.  FYI, the ti9900 chip is a fairly high performance CCPU compared 
to the 8080!

Allison