3 ms·
I was actually a bit confused about why anyone would design something like this, until I read the following: > there is no firmware (at least in the basic mode
by rob74 3y ago
I was actually a bit confused about why anyone would design something like this, until I read the following:
> there is no firmware (at least in the basic model). All basic functionality of the computer is done in hardware. The user interface? Done in hardware. The light pen management? Done in hardware (...). The microprocessor is not so much an enabler in this computer, it is the “system-under-test”, or, more correctly, it is, together with the RAM, the model of a computer system the device exposes so the user can learns its ways.
So probably the intended audience was people who wanted to learn programming in machine code, e.g. university students? For short programs, the clunky interface would have been more or less Ok. Then it also makes sense that they planned to offer it with different CPUs included.
- MarcusE1W 3y agoI think it is about access. I would guess that not every university in Germany at that time had computers for their students. If you were a student or engineer, heard about this new thing computer and wanted to use it, I don’t think you had many options. I had my time with computers in Germany as a teenager in the 80th and still, to get to a computer I had to take the bus to the neighbour town to go to the department store which had a computer department and they let you fiddle with it. You had to prepare the BASIC program on paper and had now one afternoon to key it in and make it run. Later I got a home computer from my parents:-) So this machine in the 70th is probably about access. Either this or nothing.