On Sat, 28 Apr 2012, Murray McCullough wrote: Now I'm wodering, could the conveniently non-attributed "came across some interesting reading" question may not have been disingenuous, and somewhat rhetorical? I have never considered the Coleco Adam to have ANY historical significance, and tend to assume that any mention of it is an attempt at comprehensive completeness, or personal fondness. Yet, it turns out that C. Murray McCullough is the author of a history about microcomputers. On the cover of it, he gives Adam a position of greater importance than the others that he mentions: ADAM (in ORANGE, the others are in white) APPLE II TRS-80 MODEL I ZENITH HEATHKIT In the index (I could not get Amazon's "Look Inside" to show me any of the text past the Preamble, which doesn't get to the time of microcomputers),He has 25 entries for "Adam", enormously disproportionate (12 for "Commodore" PLUS 6 for "COMMODORE", 2 for TRS-80, . . . ) Dare I guess what Murray's first computer was? (Baby duck syndrome?) Nevertheless, the writing style looks intersting, and I may seek out a copy. "JPL (Job Control Language)"??!? ************************************************************************************ With unlimited stars in the universe so there seems to be an unlimited opinion on when things started & where & by whom in the microcomputer universe. (There is no consensus on what a microcomputer is!) Corporations, individuals protect valuable information and certain knowledge that is never made public. We can only hope that inaccurate information from these sources doesn?t occur. I came across the book in the Toronto Reference Library and I seldom get there because of the distance from my farm. I did not copy the name of the book or authour down and this is a serious error on my part. There was no disingenuosity on my part and in no way was it my intention to denigrate the book or authour. A reasoned argument around mustered facts, as was present in this book as far as this reader was concerned, cannot easily be dismissed nor ignored. I did write a book on the history of microcomputers ? A Historical Research Guide to the Microcomputer. ( Many thanks for mentioning it. ) It was on the early years of micro-computing up to the arrival of the IBM PC. I?ve been a member of the (Coleco)ADAM computer convention organization since 1989 and this was why I highlighted the computer in my book. I do indeed have a personal fondness for a computer Coleco abandoned and was taken up by die-hard followers. [ BTW my first computer was the Heathkit which I spent many an hour assembling, debugging and trying like the devil to get working! And what an expensive computer to buy in Canada. ] As Grumpy Ol? Fred wrote -> Because we have an interest in the computers that existed before y'all cared and/or we REALIZE that we came in late, and we're INTERESTED in what had already been happening. OR we're just a bunch of old farts who wish that we could go back half a century. <- To be involved in the early years of micro-computing I consider myself privileged but possibly cognition and memory are getting fuzzy. It?s not a reason to justify what I?ve written, errors committed, but may explain it as an excuse! Murray--