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August 12, 2006
Fire Up The 'Way Back Machine, Sherman!
According to THIS, today is the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the first IBM personal computer, the Model 5150. Yep, 'way back in 1981.
What makes that a significant date is the name of the company: IBM.
Prior to that date, there was the Apple II, the Commodore PET, the Radio Shack TRS80.
By that date, I had personal, hands-on experience with:
Making an Apple II run an automatic chip tester at a Major SemiConductor Company in Sunnyvale, California. It was programmed in interpreted BASIC, and was a bear to debug. Once debugged, it worked well enough to have a service life of four years - which is an eternity in a chip fab.
Persuading a Commodore PET use it's built-in HPIB (an instrumentation bus designed by Hewlett-Packard) to talk to, and control a fairly large telescope for an astronomer at the University of California. In 6502 Assembler.
And.... 'way back in 1978, my Mom got the very first computer owned by a member of my family. She used it to run astrology software, and to write letters. When she actually took delivery of the little beast, she called me down to LA to make it work. It still works. I haul it down from the attic every so often, just to remind myself of the way the world was, 'way back when. And to remember the way Mom's eyes lit up when the power came on and that old Model I said ">>READY".
Posted by ward at August 12, 2006 07:57 PM