Tomorrow - 30 years ago- The first the first personal computer went on sale

[IChing]

Since DU will have computer downtime tomorrow, I thought this was appropriate.



Thirty years ago, on June 5, 1977, what is generally considered the first
successfully commercial personal computer (PC), the Apple II, went on sale.
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs invented it.

It contained a MOS (metal oxide semiconductor) technology 6502 microprocessor, innovative plastic case, high-resolution and low-resolution (Hi-res and Lo-res) color graphics, integrated keyboard, sound capabilities, joystick input, eight expansion slots, two built-in BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) programming languages (Applesoft and Integer), and cassette tape input/output (I/O) device.

Its bus speed was 1 MHz (megahertz, or one million cycles per second) and a memory size of 64 kilobytes (kB)--combined RAM and ROM .

In its first year of sales, its main competitors were the Tandy Corporation’s TRS-80 and the Commodore Pet
The Apple II series of personal computers changed the world technologically, both at home and in the office. Its popularity soared because it was reasonably priced and it provided various computer activities including computer games, educational software, word processing, and VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet.




Apple II June 5, 1977


August 3, 1977, the Tandy TRS-80 Model

[slackmaster]

1. I may be the first to say "Man, I'm getting old."

:argh:

I had just taken my first programming class at UCSD that spring. On a DEC PDP-11.

[Cerridwen]

3. I learned BASIC on the PDP-11

then they upgraded to the VAX 11-750 and I learned COBOL and RPG II.

The first micro-computers I worked with were Osborne and Kaypro luggables.

I am sooooooo old.

[Lisa]

31. Fortran here!

My lab partner dropped a 300-card program when he was coming down the stairs ... good thing he'd numbered them on the comment line!

[Cerridwen]

34. Your post made me

:rofl:

I became obsessive about saving files the first time I lost 600 lines of COBOL code. Fortunately, though I had to learn how to read punch cards, I never had to program with them.

LOL

[ddeclue]

48. 600 lines of COBOL code = "Hello World Program"....

:rofl:

COBOl is the only language that requires more lines of code to code something than it would take to write the assembly code.

:rofl:

By the way I write in a really cool language called "LabVIEW"... check it out...

Doug D.

[Cerridwen]

50. .

:rofl:

I so wish you were kidding.

:rofl:

LabVIEW - thanks, I will.

[Canuckistanian]

58. Another LABView developer here...

I keep having to explain to people "yes, it's a REAL programing language".

[Poiuyt]

59. I learned fortran on an IBM 1130

It filled an entire room

[IChing]

4. Me too, but I even used punch cards if that tells you anything

at that time for my undergraduate work in order to get a spreadsheet
done on political statistics paper, I was working on at the time it came out.

My older brother bought the tandy computer from Radio Shack that December.
I was so envious.

[slackmaster]

6. I used punch cards on my job at the time

That was on a Burroughs B7800, "The Beast".

[Warren Stupidity]

7. Ooops I dropped the deck!

My undergrad work started out on punch cards on either an IBM 360 or a Univac 1100 - by the end we moved up to crts or decwriters and thought we were dancing on air. My first PC was the infamous Atari 800.

[IChing]

13. Yes I remember that and I had to go back and reorganize it again

Man, that term was a flash back.

[kestrel91316]

21. Gotta remember to NUMBER THOSE CARDS, lol! I remember the

shrill screams of those who had the misfortune to drop their decks without numbering them........

I, of course, had the common sense to major in microbiology instead of computer science, like my college BF.

He tried to teach me to program in BASIC, and I couldn't understand, for the life of me, why the hell I needed to know anything about computers since I wasn't a math or CS major, lol. I got my first PC in 2000.

[ddeclue]

35. Don't you miss the good old days?

1) When you turned on a computer - and it was on immediately? (ROM based O/S's)
2) When computers didn't die mysteriously at a "Blue Screen of Death"?
3) When it still took a Ph.D. in computer science to write a computer virus?
4) When email was spam-free?
5) When it still took brains to operate a computer and you didn't have to deal with a bunch of yahoos on the internet who have the motor skills to click a mouse but not much else going for them?
6) When your credit card numbers couldn't be stolen on-line?
7) When you could type the programs in yourself from COMPUTE magazine and submit your own software to be published?
8) When Microsoft just sold ROM basic and didn't try to run the world and ruin the free market competition?
9) When you didn't have and didn't need a 500 GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM to install the operating system?
10) When a new ribbon for your dot matrix printer cost $7.00 instead of a $100.00 toner cartridge?
11) When you could use your TV for a monitor?
12) When you didn't have to know all about MFC, ATL, ADO, and a million other frameworks to write a useful program?

Hee hee..

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[Cerridwen]

41. And sneaker net and floppy swap?

And it took 8 fingers to use the control key command for highlighting a word in Wordstar?

Okay, that last was a bit of an exaggeration - it was only 3 fingers and a couplea toes.

:D

[ddeclue]

43. Sneaker net is back! It's called "jump drive"...

:)

[Cerridwen]

46. Good point!

:D

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

54. And when department stores sold PCs

and you could do stuff like this to their floor models:

10 print "Help, I'm trapped in a program loop!"
20 goto 10
run

[liberaldemocrat7]

5. I used a Dec PDP 9 in 1969.

I used a DEC PDP 9 in 1969 in a physics lab. I owned an APPLE II in 1977 with one disk drive and 48k memory and the applesoft BASIC card. I also worked with a TRS 80 computer as well.

I had fun with those computers.




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[TahitiNut]

55. I'd been programming (for pay) for 10 years by then.

IBM 360, RCA 301/501, IBM 1401, etc. Fortran, Autocoder, Cobol, PL/I, various assemblers including BAL, etc. I wrote my first "Hello world" program in 1964, iirc.

I went nuts on my first Z-80 "big board" system.

Yes ... I knew Captain Grace, Ken Iverson, Edsgar Dijkstra, Metcalf and Boggs, and James Martin, among others.

[POAS]

2. My first computer came in 1978

and I have had my hands on a keyboard everyday since!

[uppityperson]

8. KayproII- Aren't you glad you waited? Anyone want to buy my Kaypro2?

http://www.computercloset.org/Kaypro2.htm
Key Dates: Announced 1981?
Original Price: $1595 in 1982
CPU: Zilog Z-80A
Memory: 64K RAM
Operating System: CP/M
Display: 80 characters by 24 lines, text only
Input/Output: Dual internal 5 1/4" 191K floppy disk drives; serial port; detachable keyboard; built-in 9" green monochrome monitor
Bus: None
Other Items in Collection: Documentation; CP/M system disks
Items Needed: Bundled software

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. This badboy?

[uppityperson]

12. Yes, the outside of keyboard is blue, comes with games too!

Ladders (first donkey kong?), eat-um (pacman), aliens (aliens), and a set of software that includes word processing! Coolest thing is the screen is black with green letters. ooooooooooooooooo

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. MITS Altair 8800, 1975

http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~csclub/museum/items/mits_altair_8800.html

[IChing]

11. What about it? n/t

[BlooInBloo]

14. We had a WAY HAWT trs-80 - it had **4** 7" floppy drives!! lol!

[kestrel91316]

22. Didn't some folks call that the TRASH-80???

[BlooInBloo]

25. yup!

[Greyskye]

87. i didn't even realize that I still think of it as that...

...until I looked at what was buried inside my post #20. Yep. We still do. :rofl:

[NYCGirl]

15. And while I was reading this, I saw the commercial linked below:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad3/

Culture Shock, indeed!

[IChing]

17. The iPhone is revolutionary

in so many ways since it runs on OSX, touch screen, widescreen iPod, real internet etc.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/

But just like the apple II, I can't afford that either.:rofl:
I am typing on an apple powerbook though.

[BlooInBloo]

26. Only to those not familiar with the marketplace.

[KoKo]

16. NOOOOOOOO! It seems like "only yesterday." It DOES!

GACK!

[Pavulon]

18. Visi-calc and Lotus 123 were on my fathers machine

I remember him getting pissed when I broke his machine from work.

I use autoCAD and it is amazing what has changed, Current desktop has 2 dual core cpus, 8 gig ram, and more ram than my first machine had just in video memory. Stupid card costs more than the machine I am posting from, thousands more. But it chews up a wireframe drawing. Terabytes of space cost next to nothing now...

The PC is a great invention.

[MyNameGoesHere]

19. But Mac is not a PC

According to Apples own TV propaganda, you know the PC and MAC guy.


Anyway you are both are wrong

Berkeley Enterprises Simon 1950 about $300 relay desktop

[Greyskye]

20. Set the Wayback machine Mr. Peabody!

Wow. My first computer class in high school was right about then. We had 2 Radio Shack computers, the TRS-80 Model I and Model II. The Model I is what's pictured at the bottom of the OP. Notice anything missing? NO data storage capabilities! Well, it did have that (as an option). What's not pictured in the tape recorder that would sit on the side, to record the binary 'beeps' of your programs. Make sure that volume control dial is set to the right spot on the side of the tape deck! :rofl:

The Model I also had only 4K of onboard memory! (The Model II had 16K!) I had to gut my final project (a graphical space game) and take out all of the interesting stuff and replace it with pseudo random number generators because the Trash 80 didn't have enough memory to hold it!

My other favorite memory is that the first model's keyboard didn't have any kind of a key de-bouncing mechanism. Which meant that you could simply tap a key once, and get a whole bunch of repeats. I think the classroom record was something like 14 "k's" for a single keyboard tap. :rofl:

And then when I went to college, I upgraded! Bought myself an Apple IIe at a public auction. Even modified the single 5"1/4 floppy with a 3 way switch to bypass the floppy disk write protection, so that I could put a disk in upside down and have it use the back side as well.

Damn I'm old! :hippie:

[IChing]

28. Mr. Peabody was my favorite character..I should have titled this thead

It was 30 years ago today apple taught the band to play.

BTW 40 years ago two days ago today is when Sgt. Peppers came out.
talk about "yesterday"..LOL

[all.of.me]

57. oh my god....

i remember sgt pepper's debut crystal clear. i was in middle school, and we had a party, and that was the music. wow. 40 years. wow.

[IChing]

61. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the US on

June 3, 1967 in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgt._Pepper's_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band

I just started High School and it was as Revolutionary as the first PC.

[all.of.me]

63. it WAS revolutionary!

so were the clothes we were wearing. nothing is quite so radical anymore....

[elocs]

23. Yes, when I was in college back in the early 70s I thought those computer science students

walking around with their punch cards were going nowhere. Stupid me. If I knew then what I know now. Oh well.

[RC]

24. That looks like my first Apple ][

But I only could afford one disk drive.

I still have my Apple 2e

[Greyskye]

51. I sold my ][e to an ex-college ex-buddy

sometime around 1984'ish. Bastard still owes me $200.00!





ps. If you're reading thi$, PM me. All i$ forgiven.

[RC]

85. I reset my memory

I modified my Apple ]< so the shift key would work.[br />
My Apple IIe has 2 megs of memory and I replaced the cpu chip with a 4 mz version. I could run Apple Works from memory. It was fast!

[bobbolink]

27. And DU will be closed down tomorrow so we can't even celebrate!

Aaaarrrrgggghhh!

:rofl:

"Some say" this is when our society started crumbling.... :hi:

[ddeclue]

29. Not really.. there were machines before that. such as Altair 880

Also apparently missing from the list below is the Commodore PET (a predecessor of the VIC-20 and C64).

I started on a PDP-8 with donut core memory and two teletypes with paper tape for program loading back in 1978 when I was 12. Now I write software for a living.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[IChing]

36. I put the pet in the OP. There were machines but none

that were commercially successful that integrated the things that really launch the age of a personal computer.

Apple I is not counted either. Listen I really don't want to argue about a historical fact.
You don't want to give apple it's due then fine, ignore all major historians.

[ddeclue]

39. Dude who needs historians???

I was alive then and playing with the computers of the day...I pre-date all of these machines...

I guess that makes an old fart...

Doug D.

[ddeclue]

40. Don't you miss the good old days?

1) When you turned on a computer - and it was on immediately? (ROM based O/S's)
2) When computers didn't die mysteriously at a "Blue Screen of Death"?
3) When it still took a Ph.D. in computer science to write a computer virus?
4) When email was spam-free?
5) When it still took brains to operate a computer and you didn't have to deal with a bunch of yahoos on the internet who have the motor skills to click a mouse but not much else going for them?
6) When your credit card numbers couldn't be stolen on-line?
7) When you could type the programs in yourself from COMPUTE magazine and submit your own software to be published?
8) When Microsoft just sold ROM basic and didn't try to run the world and ruin the free market competition?
9) When you didn't have and didn't need a 500 GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM to install the operating system?
10) When a new ribbon for your dot matrix printer cost $7.00 instead of a $100.00 toner cartridge?
11) When you could use your TV for a monitor?
12) When you didn't have to know all about MFC, ATL, ADO, and a million other frameworks to write a useful program?

Hee hee..

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

As for the "first" computers -these things came in waves. One could say ALTAIR 8800 but then its success was supplanted by Apple II which in turn was supplanted by the Trash-80 and ATARI400 and ATARI800 which in turn was supplanted by VIC-20 and C-64 which in turm was supplanted by ATARI ST and Amiga and then we had the IBM PC which took it to a whole new level after that and then the Macs came along and the 386 machines..

[Old and In the Way]

30. The 1st machine for the masses

<http://oldcomputers.net.nyud.net:8090/pics/vic20.jpg>

# 1981: January - Commodore announces the VIC-20, for US$299. During its life, production peaks at 9,000 units per day.
The VIC-20 is also the first computer ever to sell over 1 million units, just a few months ahead of the Apple II 1 million mark, and production of the VIC-20 was up to 9000 units a day, with sales reaching $305 million. The price of a VIC-20 eventually dropped to less than $100, the first color computer to do so.

Who can forget the 'mass storage device"?

<http://oldcomputers.net.nyud.net:8090/pics/vic20-cass.jpg>

[Dukkha]

32. I still have the first Macintosh from 1984

and it still runs like it was new! I got it for free when someone dropped it off at our store when they didn't want it anymore. it came from Mills College labs. so I gave it a nice home.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

64. I still have my 1987 Mac Plus.

Not sure if it still works, though...

[Marrah_G]

33. I had both of those growing up

My dad brought computers into his high school (Westwood MA) in the late 60's early 70's. He was convinced they were the future. The first were the big wall ones with punch cards. Then Tandy'd with tape recorders, I learned basic on those when I was 6 and saw my first graphics (backgammon)game. Then he cut a deal with Apple and they had every version of apple as it came out. My friends has Atari. I had space invaders on the apple II. And then Castle Wolfenstien that TALKED!

Anyone remember LOGO?

Every once in a while I meet someone who is still in the computer field that he taught and they said he changed their life. It is really cool to hear that about your dad :)

Thanks for posting that, you brought some happy memories back!

[Bluebear]

37. They grow up so fast, don't they? >>>>>>>>

[WillyT]

38. I Have One Of These Staring At Me From My Closet Right Now !!!

The first laptop... sorta...





Compaq Portable II
Announced: February 1986
Price: US$3499 - $4999
Weight: 26 pounds
CPU: Intel 80286 @ 6 or 8MHz
RAM: 256K - 640K
Storage: One 360K 5.25-inch disk drive
10Meg or 20Meg hard drive
Display: internal 9-inch monitor
monochrome, 80 X 25 text
Ports: 1 parallel, 1 serial, 1 CGA.
OS: MS-DOS 3.2

Link: http://oldcomputers.net/compaqii.html

Check Out This Site: http://oldcomputers.net/index.html

:hi:

[bobbolink]

42. Yeah, but you could store a lotta graphics on that 20meg...

:rofl:

[WillyT]

44. Yeah... It Was Almost A Pound Per Meg Back Then, LOL !!!

In more ways than one!

:evilgrin:

[IDemo]

45. Radio Electronics project from 1973

Thought I had read somewhere where Wozniak and Jobs were at least partly inspired
by Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter, maybe I'm mistaken -

[Bozita]

47. I bought single sided no-name 5.25" floppies and used a paper punch to make them DS

When the price dropped to just over a buck each in the late '70s, I bought a lifetime supply for the Apple II.

Some of them are still around here ... somewhere.

[Greyskye]

53. i was even more of a cheapskate

I got tired of dealing with the paperpunch, and once in a great while taking a knick out of the disk. So I rigged a 3 way switch on the copy notch reader, so that it would either 1) act normal 2) Act copy protected 3) Act unprotected. Then I could do put in the generic single sided in both ways. :evilgrin:

[Bozita]

65. Still have a IIe ... also with a switch on the back.

Flip it up, it's an Apple IIe. Down, it's a II+

Had a part-time job in '86 reviewing educational software. Owned a lle. One of the young techies I met at the jobsite bought an EPROM burner and performed the surgery.

The Mac was just introduced. Reagan was President and still selling military stuff to Iran. Saddam was an ally. GW Bush was still in the early stages of growing up.

Memories.

[mikehiggins]

49. Timex/SInclair

My first pc was a Timex/Sinclair with a membrane keyboard and plug-in memory and a thermal printer.

Then I bought a C64 and realised the world really had changed. Got a modem--one of them high falutin 300 baud jobbies--went on line and never looked back. I even wrote an article about on-line stuff for an anime fan club that might have been the first "fan" acknowledgment of the net phenomena to see print. Decades later, at an SF convention at Stony Brook, I dropped in on an anime talk room and lo and behold, someone was talking about my article.

Ironically, those of us old enough to have our "sense of wonder" nerves tweaked by stuff like that have kids who don't see anything remarkable about a 500gig hard drive and a cable modem at all. Just like furniture to a lot of them young whippersnappers.

People like us, writing our first programs that WORKED was just about the equivalent of sex.

Those were the days, my friend, I thought they'd never end (now THAT really does age me)

[Canuckistanian]

60. OOO, you had the PRINTER?

I used to lie awake at night DREAMING of a printer for my Timex/Sinclair.

I hated the "cassette storage". Half the time it didn't work properly.

But it was magic. When you become proficient at writing programs you realize that you can do almost ANYTHING you can dream up.

I played backgammon with it for hours and even used it to keep a database of customers for my work. My boss was impressed, but he wouldn't cough up any money yo buy me a real computer.

Everyone thought it was computers were "toys" back then.

[A HERETIC I AM]

67. "We used to compute in a paper bag in a septic tank"

"and every morning, we would have to program fourteen lines of code and then have a load of rottin' fish dumped all over us"


Sorry...couldnt resist.

This thread is kind of funny. All you old nerds reminiscing. Warms the cockles an' all, yanno?

When i was a kid back in the late 60's i had a buddy whose dad worked for IBM. He actually had one of those old, huge ass mainframes in his basement. It took up the whole basement. How he got it i have no idea. Maybe cause he helped design it and it was a 2 year old model. He had an IBM Selectric typewriter that he had rigged as a printer. No shit.

To look at my friends pop, you would think it was Einstein brought back to life. This was outside DC in Maryland in 1969 or so.

[Canuckistanian]

74. hahaha, you're right

I remember new Year's Eve, 1984 or so, in my parent's basement. My friend came over and we planned to work on a program all night.

We were so engrossed in our labors that when the TV announced that it was the New Year, we just grunted and went back to the program.

What a waste of time for two males in their early 20's. Unbelievably pathetic geeks, we were.

Probably on par with that guy who made the original DOS operating system, Bill Gates.

I wonder whatever happened to him?

:rofl:

[JCMach1]

84. Sinclair ZX80... That's where I learned basic on a 4k memory computer

You could use any old cassette player to record programs... you had to use the analog counter to remember where it began and ended...

[MadHound]

52. Ah, something that I have to do tomorrow, bake my Apple II a cake

Yes it still works. Unlike some of its competitors, Apples and Macs are designed to last and last. Might just have to drag the guy out of storage tomorrow and fire it up for old times sake.

[Swamp Rat]

56. I had an Apple IIe

:D

Now I have an iMac and a PC I recently built... 16 gigs of RAM, dual processors, NVIDIA GeForce Graphics, FireWire etc. for less than half the price of the Apple IIe.

Amazing how far we've come. :)

[donco6]

66. I had a IIc.

The one with the handle. I really liked it.

[Elwood P Dowd]

68. 16 gigs of RAM?

You must be rich.

[Swamp Rat]

72. Rich?

I am unemployed and in debt to SallieMae.

You can buy one gig sticks for under 50 bucks from Crucial. My Apple cannot take very much RAM, but the PC I recently built is a memory monster. :evilgrin:

[JeffR]

70. Still have a functional though seldom-used IIe and a Plus in the basement

Use them now and then to program sounds on an old FM synth module. Plug 'em in, turn 'em on, they do just what you ask them to, and pretty neatly.

And they're so goddamn' cute...

[Swamp Rat]

73. I gave mine away.

It probably drowned from Katrina flood waters anyway.

Now, when I get the cash to buy another hard drive, I want to try to put OSX on the new PC I built. Photoshop and Final Cut Pro will work blazingly fast running off a fast SATA drive with 16 gigs of RAM and a fast graphics card. :)

[calteacherguy]

62. I remember using Apple II's in high school.

This was in the mid-80s. Were there ever Apple I's? Remember Atari?

[blogslut]

69. I arrived late to the game

I never was a programmer. Just an artist. But in 1985, I fell in love with this little lady:

[Canuckistanian]

76. A friend of mine was an Amiga fanatic

It was an amazing machine at the time.

Cool graphics, mouse driven, SOUND and an amazing video option called "Video Toaster" which could make video animations, capture real time TV signals do amazing effects.

But my friend cursed IBM and Apple for killing off the Amiga format.

[blogslut]

77. It was sweet

The leader of the band owned it. He programmed all the instruments through it and even created animations that would sync up with the music. Me, I mostly made flyers with it. There were nice flyers though.

[mwb970]

83. The Amiga games were the best!

Nothing topped them till the PS2 came out.

[ObamaNationYes]

71. BABIES, All of You

I used a Mag Card Machine, and thought it was a computer!

[lpbk2713]

75. My first was a TI-99/4A

Some time in the early 80's. I still have out in the garage.

[Hardrada]

78. We have our TRS-80 to this day. It's in the garage but I suppose

it would still function. We put the tape recorder to other uses years ago since it did not seem to store all that much. I enjoyed programming games into the TRS but that was about all I did with it since it was superseded so quickly.

[BuyingThyme]

79. We had these at my junior high school.

[Odin2005]

86. We had those at my little rural school district as late as 1997!!!

I remember as a kid back in the early 90s begging the teacher to let us play Oregon Trail. :rofl:

[muriel_volestrangler]

80. OK, we'll continue the nostalgia-fest on this side of the Atlantic

My first computer:

Sinclair ZX-81 - 8K ROM, 1K RAM - with a grand total of 4 chips inside it.




A Compukit - self-assembly. We had one of these at school, but without the red cover - so the case was a good, reassuring wooden one.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos.asp?t=1&c=802&st=1

And then the biggy: The BBC Micro: http://retrothing.typepad.com.nyud.net:8080/photos/uncategorized/bbcmicro.jpg

Into its 32K RAM, and 32K ROM (plus a bit, by switching different chips into the same addressing range - eg BASIC and disk control), they fitted games like Elite:



Proper 3D graphics (admittedly wire graphics) in real time, on a 2Mhz 6502 processor. And it has an analogue joystick, so the sensation of flying was better than other computers or games systems. Now that was programming.

[Solon]

81. My first computer...

Ahh, the Good ole days...



I then upgraded to one of these:



Then one of these:



Now I have a modern PC, damn times change.

[ikojo]

82. How much did that pc cost?

I suspect approximately $10k in today's dollars.