25th Anniversary of personal computing !

[K B Ng]

25 years ago, the first personal computer was introduced. It was called the IBM PC, and it was beige. Hard disks did not exist, or at the very least was an expensive option. It had two 5 1/4" floppy disk drives, a green monochrome monitor and 64K of RAM. The processor was an Intel 8088, capable of a whopping 4.77 MHz. There was also a "turbo" button on the case, which you could push to increase the processor speed to a hair-raising 8 MHz. I can't remember what the date is, but I think it was "1/01/1981" I saw that date every day for a whole lot of years because that thing didn't have a real-time clock, so you had to enter the date every time you switched it on. So every time you switched it on, you typed "date" and there you'd see the date, "1/01/81" or whatever. And it was
always the same date. Always the same date. I'm sure one day, one day soon, I'm going to wake up, and there's going to be this huge green monitor, and it's going to say "date ?" and above it.. "1/01/81". And then I'll know I'm gone.

[Chai]

LMAO! I have that exact same configuration on my first ever PC! About 18 years ago!

[fyire]

Just a suggestion, but seeing that this post is in the News Forum, which will also appear on the website's main page, won't it be a better idea to do up a more complete article which gives a more complete walkthrough on personal computing rather than something that short?

[CompactNinja]

I wish there was a turbo button on newer computers... screw overlocking when you can press the TURBO BUTTON!

[K B Ng]

Originally Posted by fyire

Just a suggestion, but seeing that this post is in the News Forum, which will also appear on the website's main page, won't it be a better idea to do up a more complete article which gives a more complete walkthrough on personal computing rather than something that short?

Good idea. Later today I'll probably get it done.

[K B Ng]

Originally Posted by CompactNinja

I wish there was a turbo button on newer computers... screw overlocking when you can press the TURBO BUTTON!

You know, there really should be. A turbo button that switches between overclocked and non-overclocked. I wonder what the hardware guys can come up with

[Chai]

Oh yeah! Overclock when I need the speed, and downclock when I need to cheat by slowing down the game!

[belikethat]

25th Anniversary of personal computing!

[jamotto]

Originally Posted by K B Ng

25 years ago, the first personal computer was introduced. It was called the IBM PC, and it was beige.

...and it was not even close to being the first PC.

first lets define what I think a PC is.

• It must be a digital computer.
• It must be largely automatic.
• It must be programmable by the end-user.
• It must be accessible, either as a commercially manufactured product, as a commercially available kit, or as widely published kit plans.
• It must be small enough to be transportable by an average person.
• It must be inexpensive enough to be affordable by the average professional.
• It must be simple enough to use that it requires no special training beyond an instruction manual.

So yes, the IBM meets these requirements, but is it the first to do so? No

So what does? Take a trip back in time decades earlier to the... Simon! Created by Edmund Berkeley in 1950 the plans for it where sold by Berkeley Enterprises. What could it do? Addition, negation, greater than, and selection. Ok I hear you all yelling out now, but Jamotto you have to build it from plans, and it doesn't even play games!

ok, ok so the first PC that you didn't have to build and you could play games on was the IBM, err nope.

1955, Berkeley Enterprises strikes again with the GENIAC. Dead silence from the audience...

Gee, Jamotto what exciting games could the GENIAC play

... oh I thought you would never ask!

• Tic-Tac-Toe
• Nim
• Monopoly!

Hey! why are all you guys doing this?

Ok, well I'll skip several machines to get to the first mass-produced PC, which is the Apple ][, yes that's no typo, introduced in 1977.

Then in 1981 IBM seeing that they where making a huge mistake ignoring the PC market and considering it just a fad, produces the IBM PC and the rest is history.

One interesting computer you might not know of is the Honeywell Kitchen Computer, Honeywell's try at entering the home computer market (1966) it even came with a cutting board , it failed terribly, but as a side note it was used by BBN to build the IMP's that powered ARPANET sans the cutting board of course.