Article

2010-04-02 Science & Technology

Microsoft founders lead tributes to 'father of the PC'

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Posted by tipper 2010-04-02 12:10|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 Sure, because it glorifies Microsoft. The Altair was a toy. The first real PC, and the first commercial PC, was the IBM 5100., shipped in 1975. It ran both APL and Basic, and it was an amazing engineering job. I spent many hours hunched over one in the '70s, computing the reflectivity of dielectric coatings on semiconductor photosensors.

Image removed due to size.

The printer and the dual 10" floppy drive on the left aren't needed. We used the 1/4 inch tape drive - the woman is holding a cartridge.

Please excuse the rather large image.

Posted by KBK 2010-04-02 13:56|| 2010-04-02 13:56|| Front Page Top

#2 The box under the printer is the floppy drive?

Posted by john frum 2010-04-02 14:06|| 2010-04-02 14:06|| Front Page Top

#3 Yes looks like it was a pair of 8" disk drives. Here is the Vintage Computers entry on it.

While the 5110 was good - it was the Altair, SOL-20, IMSAI (and the S-100 bus), and others (including the ~~Trash~~TRS-80) that made micros popular with hobbyist (and small business) for both software and hardware leading to the later-day Apple II, IBM-PC, etc...

Posted by CrazyFool 2010-04-02 14:36|| 2010-04-02 14:36|| Front Page Top

#4 Sorry - link correction on that Vintage computer entry

Posted by CrazyFool 2010-04-02 14:38|| 2010-04-02 14:38|| Front Page Top

#5 After my TRS-80 was my Zenith/Heathkit dual processor Z100 with Intel 8085 and 8086 CPUs so it could run CPM and CPM-86 as well as MSDOS and the first version of Microsoft Windows, which was really bad and slow. And I added an 8 inch disk that could hold all of 256K of data I think.
Oh, the memories.

Posted by Goober Goobelopolous 2010-04-02 14:57|| 2010-04-02 14:57|| Front Page Top

#6 The TRS-80, Apple, and Commodore came out in '77, two years after the 5100 and the Altair.

The IBM PC was strongly influenced by the 5100, but Don Estridge convinced IBM management to open the system. I still have the IBM PC technical manual with a full schematic and BIOS listing. We are just now getting back to that degree of openness - see qi-hardware.com. The TRS-80 and the Commodore were closed and died off, while Apple and IBM went on to establish an industry. The S-100 bus was good, but too large physically, and was eventually overtaken by the more compact IBM PC.

At the time, I was running an Apple II with a Z-80 card running MSDOS. Yep, good times....

Posted by KBK 2010-04-02 16:05|| 2010-04-02 16:05|| Front Page Top

#7 Ahh... at the time I was a pimple-faced teen, couldn't afford a fancy micro... so I used to play around on an Interdata-70 mini up at the university. Keying in the boot sequence from the front panel switches... booting from a card reader... Textronix 4014 storage tube terminal... thermal printer...

Posted by CrazyFool 2010-04-02 17:55|| 2010-04-02 17:55|| Front Page Top

#8 Thats right, don't give any nosy chubby early 1970's elementary kid from Guam any credit, or hoagies or jello, for pointing out the vital product or technical, etc. defects in their little schemas.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2010-04-02 19:13|| 2010-04-02 19:13|| Front Page Top

#9 Joe, you're out of your mind. Or this world. There are no sausages.

Posted by KBK 2010-04-02 19:25|| 2010-04-02 19:25|| Front Page Top

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