4 ms·

This is very well presented! However, I was hoping to see minis too. Micros were just a side-light during the 70s.

ghaff 11y ago
This isn't so much a "history of computers" as it is a history of desktop computers/consoles/etc with something of a hobbyist slant. And even in that respect it's incomplete in that I don't see much in the way of workstations. It's nicely presented but it's not really a representative slice of computing during that era generally.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  It's not even a hobbyist slant - it's domestic nostalgia. These were all machines that were easily portable and you could - in theory - have them at home. A lot of people did. The UK got a huge start with computing because there was a rash of cheap home machines in the early 80s. It even had its own early startup scene, with kids writing games in machine code and selling the tapes from print magazine ads. The US had a more complicated scene with an early peak of S100 hardware losing against Apple and IBM's marketing talents, followed by a round of new innovations from Tandy, Atari, and Amiga. Mainframes, minis, and workstations were a lot more advanced technically, but you couldn't build a business around one without huge capital investment. So most of the population never used one personally.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    That's probably a better way of putting it even if some of the machines pictured were primarily business systems. The CP/M / S100 bus systems are an interesting historical footnote in that they don't really have the nostalgia factor that the likes of the TRS-80 do. Yet, when I was shopping for my first computer circa 1982, it was by no means obvious whether to go with an S100-based system or one of those newfangled IBM-PC clone things.
cgriswald 11y ago
It's very poorly presented. White text (with shadow) on white background and text covering the things we are trying to see both make for a painful experience. On at least one of the pages, the text is unreadable because it is covered by the image of another device.
- KaiserPro 11y ago
  plus, what does the page transition effect bring? its not like its sophisticated (like any bending, or modelling of a flexible plane required to make it look paper like) what was the point?

ghaff 11y ago

This isn't so much a "history of computers" as it is a history of desktop computers/consoles/etc with something of a hobbyist slant. And even in that respect it's incomplete in that I don't see much in the way of workstations. It's nicely presented but it's not really a representative slice of computing during that era generally.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
It's not even a hobbyist slant - it's domestic nostalgia. These were all machines that were easily portable and you could - in theory - have them at home. A lot of people did. The UK got a huge start with computing because there was a rash of cheap home machines in the early 80s. It even had its own early startup scene, with kids writing games in machine code and selling the tapes from print magazine ads. The US had a more complicated scene with an early peak of S100 hardware losing against Apple and IBM's marketing talents, followed by a round of new innovations from Tandy, Atari, and Amiga. Mainframes, minis, and workstations were a lot more advanced technically, but you couldn't build a business around one without huge capital investment. So most of the population never used one personally.
- ghaff 11y ago
  That's probably a better way of putting it even if some of the machines pictured were primarily business systems. The CP/M / S100 bus systems are an interesting historical footnote in that they don't really have the nostalgia factor that the likes of the TRS-80 do. Yet, when I was shopping for my first computer circa 1982, it was by no means obvious whether to go with an S100-based system or one of those newfangled IBM-PC clone things.

cgriswald 11y ago

It's very poorly presented. White text (with shadow) on white background and text covering the things we are trying to see both make for a painful experience. On at least one of the pages, the text is unreadable because it is covered by the image of another device.

KaiserPro 11y ago
plus, what does the page transition effect bring? its not like its sophisticated (like any bending, or modelling of a flexible plane required to make it look paper like) what was the point?