Thanks for update on things that going on NEW Propeller version.
Not that I can buy this FPGA board - But nice to know it is in progress.
Had problems with my eyes that ported me from all Internet possibility's
But now after surgery now I can see perfectly again
Thanks for update on things that going on NEW Propeller version.
Not that I can buy this FPGA board - But nice to know it is in progress.
Had problems with my eyes that ported me from all Internet possibility's
But now after surgery now I can see perfectly again
Sapieha,
It's wonderful to see you back on the forums. We missed you.
Thanks for update on things that going on NEW Propeller version.
Not that I can buy this FPGA board - But nice to know it is in progress.
Had problems with my eyes that ported me from all Internet possibility's
But now after surgery now I can see perfectly again
I was wondering where you were a few weeks ago. I can understand that having bad eyes prevented you from reading the forum but what stopped you from writing ? LOL
re:But now after surgery now I can see perfectly again
Great!! good luck
Re: personal computer" was definitely in use before the IBM 5150
History of personal computers: (there is a long list of personal computers before the IBM 5150)
1981: The IBM Personal Computer 5150 debuts, a landmark in the transition of computing from the province of the military and big government to everyday people.
1985: IBM clones permeate the market. Without really trying to, IBM-compatible comes to mean "every personal computer not produced by Apple." Though the company was losing marketshare in desktop computing, it was still setting the agenda including the use of Microsoft's operating system, MS-DOS.
We agree that it's time to publish an update and plan on doing so shortly. I've got a presentation this evening and expect to be able to work with Chip to write an update over the next week.
Was an update on the P2 posted? I don't recall seeing one.
Our own Baggers submitted Speccy demo stuff to a recent party.
It was a ZX81 demo ( Dragon's Lair FMV demo*) with all the game scenes even had to write a video encoder as I wasn't happy with the results I was getting from pre-existing conversion software, but then getting 24bit colour down to 2 shades of B&W isn't the easiest thing in the world, especially if you are wanting decent results.
Sapieha, glad your operation went well, and you're making a good recovery good to see you back also!
Thanks for update on things that going on NEW Propeller version.
Not that I can buy this FPGA board - But nice to know it is in progress.
Had problems with my eyes that ported me from all Internet possibility's
But now after surgery now I can see perfectly again
1985: IBM clones permeate the market. Without really trying to, IBM-compatible comes to mean "every personal computer not produced by Apple." Though the company was losing marketshare in desktop computing, it was still setting the agenda including the use of Microsoft's operating system, MS-DOS.
Just Apple?! There was a very wide variety of microcomputers on the market in 1985! Junk comments like that makes me laugh at how wrong the press nearly always is.
And how exactly was IBM setting any agenda by that stage? The PS/2 was about to be a failure because it wasn't clonable and M$ did their own thing all along.
"1981: The IBM Personal Computer 5150 debuts, a landmark in the transition of computing from the province of the military and big government to everyday people"
Totally ignoring all the huge progress, uptake and variety of 8 bit machines that were around for years before that. Also ignoring the fact that "everyday" people thought the PC was an expensive, slow, ugly, heavy, limited, clunky piece of Smile and most normal folks were taking home 8 bit machines for years afterwards.
Actual "personal computers" were anything but PC's for ages, think Commodore C64, Sinclair, Amiga, Atari, and a huge lot of CP/M running machines.
People did not start taking IBM and clones home until about a decade later with the arrival of Windows 3.1.
Which sadly killed off all the variety and competition I mentioned and stagnated development of the personal computer for ten years. Heck Intel went 32 bit in 1985 with the 386 but people were stuck in 16 bit land until Windows 95!
It's amazing how quickly history can be rewritten!
"1981: The IBM Personal Computer 5150 debuts, a landmark in the transition of computing from the province of the military and big government to everyday people"
Totally ignoring all the huge progress, uptake and variety of 8 bit machines that were around for years before that. Also ignoring the fact that "everyday" people thought the PC was an expensive, slow, ugly, heavy, limited, clunky piece of Smile and most normal folks were taking home 8 bit machines for years afterwards.
Actual "personal computers" were anything but PC's for ages, think Commodore C64, Sinclair, Amiga, Atari, and a huge lot of CP/M running machines.
People did not start taking IBM and clones home until about a decade later with the arrival of Windows 3.1.
Which sadly killed off all the variety and competition I mentioned and stagnated development of the personal computer for ten years. Heck Intel went 32 bit in 1985 with the 386 but people were stuck in 16 bit land until Windows 95!
It's amazing how quickly history can be rewritten!
Hi.
In time You talking on I have worked in one Sales/service for Commodore and sales was 100 C64 and only one Commodore IBM clone
Hi.
In time You talking on I have worked in one Sales/service for Commodore and sales was 100 C64 and only one Commodore IBM clone
To be fair, the Commodore PC wasn't a clone and therefore didn't sell like a clone either. Commodore's PC efforts were in the "compatibles" category, which meant it wasn't from the same stock as the clones. Making a PC compatible was a bit of death sentence for any company.
The clone makers of old have morphed into the modern contract manufacturers. A brand is now just a collection of designs in a corporate office. The rest is farmed out.
To be fair, the Commodore PC wasn't a clone and therefore didn't sell like a clone either. Commodore's PC efforts were in the "compatibles" category, which meant it wasn't from the same stock as the clones. Making a PC compatible was a bit of death sentence for any company.
The clone makers of old have morphed into the modern contract manufacturers. A brand is now just a collection of designs in a corporate office. The rest is farmed out.
The compatibles were not a functional copy, they all were original functional designs. Hell, even the IBM PS/2 could be classed as a compatible. They had USA import protection, which made them unprofitable to also clone.
BUT it was much better that original IBM-PC
As you say, it was not the same as the original PC. The clones were a full functional copy - except for the BASIC interpreter apparently. Later on they used actual reference designs based on 386/486 CPUs. Then Intel took control with the Pentium reference designs ... and on it went ...
That makes the XT/AT an accidental, or maybe not accidental, early reference design.
All those clones were really horrible machines. They all ended up using the incredibly brain damaged Intel 286 16-bit processor and ran MS-DOS.
The first nice PC clone was the Compaq Deskpro 386 in 1986 or so. I would not say it was a clone though, with it's 32 bit processor it was a very different animal. Sadly it was another 10 years before people could make much use of it when Windows 95 came out.
I did not know about PS/2 import protection. I always understood they were not cloned because they were awful. Nobody wanted than MCA bus.
The first nice PC clone was the Compaq Deskpro 386 in 1986 or so. I would not say it was a clone though, with it's 32 bit processor it was a very different animal. Sadly it was another 10 years before people could make much use of it when Windows 95 came out.
I never actually saw a real Compaq for many years but I strongly suspect it to be a leading example of the transition to contract manufacturing and possibly the functional reference for 386/486 clones.
I did not know about PS/2 import protection. I always understood they were not cloned because they were awful. Nobody wanted than MCA bus.
Yeah, that was the standard press obfuscation of the time. I never believed a word of it. The argument obviously falls flat when comparing with PCI. Intel suddenly totally dominated the functional designs with a new and fully incompatible expansion bus.
PS: I don't claim to know the details of patent/trademark/whatever protections, but I do know there was some early press questions raised as to why IBM never tried to stop the clones. As in that would have been a normal business response, especially for one with IBM's pockets.
Back when the PS/2's were all the rage and MCA was then "next big thing", we started getting PS/2 "clones" from HP. Back then, HP still made really nice stuff and these were some of the most beautiful PCs I've ever seen. They were very modular so it was easy to swap parts in and out. They were built like tanks inside and out. It was fun just to take them apart and marvel at the engineering and workmanship that went into them. Yeah, those days are gone, too!
Back when the PS/2's were all the rage and MCA was then "next big thing", we started getting PS/2 "clones" from HP. Back then, HP still made really nice stuff and these were some of the most beautiful PCs I've ever seen. They were very modular so it was easy to swap parts in and out. They were built like tanks inside and out. It was fun just to take them apart and marvel at the engineering and workmanship that went into them. Yeah, those days are gone, too!
Most people might think those computers are hideous, but then again, those people don't appreciate the beauty of beige and grey.
I do know there was some early press questions raised as to why IBM never tried to stop the clones. As in that would have been a normal business response, especially for one with IBM's pockets.
It's not clear to me that IBM had any legs to stand on.
Those clones ran MS-DOS which MS was free to sell them. They used clean room recreations of the BIOS code. And finally as far as I can tell the PC was basically built to the reference schematics for x86.
My impression is that IBM, being so huge, did not take seriously the arrival of these little "toy" computers. The PC was just a little side project.
It's not clear to me that IBM had any legs to stand on.
Nobody but IBM is likely to have known the answer.
They used clean room recreations of the BIOS code.
Compaq and co. would have gone to that effort for the 386/486 designs, and the birth of Award and co., but I doubt the clone makers had any interest themselves. The question here becomes: Who would have sold such a product to the clone makers when it was just XT/AT clones?
And finally as far as I can tell the PC was basically built to the reference schematics for x86.
Most early micros looked like that. Very few had fancy bits. It doesn't mean there wasn't anything specific.
My impression is that IBM, being so huge, did not take seriously the arrival of these little "toy" computers. The PC was just a little side project.
A clone is as much of a toy as what it is copying.
My impression is that IBM, being so huge, did not take seriously the arrival of these little "toy" computers. The PC was just a little side project.
That was certainly the impression I got at trade shows prior to and a couple of years after the PC was introduced. Not just from IBM either, the sales people from all the major mini and mainframe computer makers I talked to considered them toys. Hard to believe anyone could see IC's go from a few transistors to thousands on a chip and not realize microprocessors would continue on that path.
The way to interpret such attitudes is from the market investment and applications. All the big R&D was in much more expensive equipment. And the software to run on the bigger stuff was totally out of the PC's league both in terms requirements and price.
Of course those commentators didn't foresee, nor wanted to look for, such a massive, and required, evolution of the PC platform to what would make it a viable "workstation" and "server" solution. After all, it did take mind bogglingly huge amounts of money to get there. Intel pretty much wiped the deck clear in the process. AMD will be maintained only to prevent anti-competitive charges.
It's the nature of the free market to form monopolies.
The way to interpret such attitudes is from the market investment and applications. All the big R&D was in much more expensive equipment. And the software to run on the bigger stuff was totally out of the PC's league both in terms requirements and price.
Of course those commentators didn't foresee, nor wanted to look for, such a massive, and required, evolution of the PC platform to what would make it a viable "workstation" and "server" solution.
Interesting you say this. While the IBM PC was in its infancy I was a young engineer working at an IBM facility that still produced "boat anchor technology" (my term at the time for it). Every time I walked through huge buildings full of that stuff I wondered how many months it would be before most of the company collapsed. It actually took many years - I failed to appreciate the inertia involved. Meanwhile, corporate management failed to appreciate the ultimate size of the monster a few employees were nurturing down in Florida.
Comments
-Tor
Thanks for update on things that going on NEW Propeller version.
Not that I can buy this FPGA board - But nice to know it is in progress.
Had problems with my eyes that ported me from all Internet possibility's
But now after surgery now I can see perfectly again
Sapieha,
It's wonderful to see you back on the forums. We missed you.
Hei, great news! Good to have you back!
I was wondering where you were a few weeks ago. I can understand that having bad eyes prevented you from reading the forum but what stopped you from writing ? LOL
re:But now after surgery now I can see perfectly again
Great!! good luck
Re: personal computer" was definitely in use before the IBM 5150
History of personal computers: (there is a long list of personal computers before the IBM 5150)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers#Simon
1981: The IBM Personal Computer 5150 debuts, a landmark in the transition of computing from the province of the military and big government to everyday people.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/06/ibms-first-100-years-a-heavily-illustrated-timeline/240502/
1985: IBM clones permeate the market. Without really trying to, IBM-compatible comes to mean "every personal computer not produced by Apple." Though the company was losing marketshare in desktop computing, it was still setting the agenda including the use of Microsoft's operating system, MS-DOS.
Very much THANKS
It was a ZX81 demo ( Dragon's Lair FMV demo*) with all the game scenes
Sapieha, glad your operation went well, and you're making a good recovery
No, no updates have been posted. We're working towards that soon.
Ken Gracey
Just Apple?! There was a very wide variety of microcomputers on the market in 1985! Junk comments like that makes me laugh at how wrong the press nearly always is.
And how exactly was IBM setting any agenda by that stage? The PS/2 was about to be a failure because it wasn't clonable and M$ did their own thing all along.
From one of your links:
"1981: The IBM Personal Computer 5150 debuts, a landmark in the transition of computing from the province of the military and big government to everyday people"
Totally ignoring all the huge progress, uptake and variety of 8 bit machines that were around for years before that. Also ignoring the fact that "everyday" people thought the PC was an expensive, slow, ugly, heavy, limited, clunky piece of Smile and most normal folks were taking home 8 bit machines for years afterwards.
Actual "personal computers" were anything but PC's for ages, think Commodore C64, Sinclair, Amiga, Atari, and a huge lot of CP/M running machines.
People did not start taking IBM and clones home until about a decade later with the arrival of Windows 3.1.
Which sadly killed off all the variety and competition I mentioned and stagnated development of the personal computer for ten years. Heck Intel went 32 bit in 1985 with the 386 but people were stuck in 16 bit land until Windows 95!
It's amazing how quickly history can be rewritten!
Hi.
In time You talking on I have worked in one Sales/service for Commodore and sales was 100 C64 and only one Commodore IBM clone
To be fair, the Commodore PC wasn't a clone and therefore didn't sell like a clone either. Commodore's PC efforts were in the "compatibles" category, which meant it wasn't from the same stock as the clones. Making a PC compatible was a bit of death sentence for any company.
The clone makers of old have morphed into the modern contract manufacturers. A brand is now just a collection of designs in a corporate office. The rest is farmed out.
Hi evanh.
In that time we call all NOT IBM for clone's.
BUT it was much better that original IBM-PC
The compatibles were not a functional copy, they all were original functional designs. Hell, even the IBM PS/2 could be classed as a compatible. They had USA import protection, which made them unprofitable to also clone.
As you say, it was not the same as the original PC. The clones were a full functional copy - except for the BASIC interpreter apparently. Later on they used actual reference designs based on 386/486 CPUs. Then Intel took control with the Pentium reference designs ... and on it went ...
That makes the XT/AT an accidental, or maybe not accidental, early reference design.
The first nice PC clone was the Compaq Deskpro 386 in 1986 or so. I would not say it was a clone though, with it's 32 bit processor it was a very different animal. Sadly it was another 10 years before people could make much use of it when Windows 95 came out.
I did not know about PS/2 import protection. I always understood they were not cloned because they were awful. Nobody wanted than MCA bus.
I never actually saw a real Compaq for many years but I strongly suspect it to be a leading example of the transition to contract manufacturing and possibly the functional reference for 386/486 clones.
Yeah, that was the standard press obfuscation of the time. I never believed a word of it. The argument obviously falls flat when comparing with PCI. Intel suddenly totally dominated the functional designs with a new and fully incompatible expansion bus.
PS: I don't claim to know the details of patent/trademark/whatever protections, but I do know there was some early press questions raised as to why IBM never tried to stop the clones. As in that would have been a normal business response, especially for one with IBM's pockets.
Most people might think those computers are hideous, but then again, those people don't appreciate the beauty of beige and grey.
I miss the noisy keyboards and rainbow ribbons.
+1
I'm sure we would all love to be discussing the P2. :^
April May June Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa -- 2 3 4 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 26 27 28 29 30 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 -- -- -- 31Those clones ran MS-DOS which MS was free to sell them. They used clean room recreations of the BIOS code. And finally as far as I can tell the PC was basically built to the reference schematics for x86.
My impression is that IBM, being so huge, did not take seriously the arrival of these little "toy" computers. The PC was just a little side project.
Compaq and co. would have gone to that effort for the 386/486 designs, and the birth of Award and co., but I doubt the clone makers had any interest themselves. The question here becomes: Who would have sold such a product to the clone makers when it was just XT/AT clones?
Most early micros looked like that. Very few had fancy bits. It doesn't mean there wasn't anything specific.
A clone is as much of a toy as what it is copying.
That was certainly the impression I got at trade shows prior to and a couple of years after the PC was introduced. Not just from IBM either, the sales people from all the major mini and mainframe computer makers I talked to considered them toys. Hard to believe anyone could see IC's go from a few transistors to thousands on a chip and not realize microprocessors would continue on that path.
Of course those commentators didn't foresee, nor wanted to look for, such a massive, and required, evolution of the PC platform to what would make it a viable "workstation" and "server" solution. After all, it did take mind bogglingly huge amounts of money to get there. Intel pretty much wiped the deck clear in the process. AMD will be maintained only to prevent anti-competitive charges.
It's the nature of the free market to form monopolies.
Interesting you say this. While the IBM PC was in its infancy I was a young engineer working at an IBM facility that still produced "boat anchor technology" (my term at the time for it). Every time I walked through huge buildings full of that stuff I wondered how many months it would be before most of the company collapsed. It actually took many years - I failed to appreciate the inertia involved. Meanwhile, corporate management failed to appreciate the ultimate size of the monster a few employees were nurturing down in Florida.