No shite, eh? How old is it… and how do you keep it running? I see the kids that are all over that kind of stuff on OyToob. They can rebuild everything from old computers to old cell phones and even make interesting toys and gadgets fro the guts of old tech…
I think that was the first "successful" luggable. To drive home *when* that was, I believe that thing ran CP/M.
Far more "successful" were the "IBM Compatibles" running PC-DOS, which was quite nearly a clone of CP/M. While it could not run CP/M binaries, if you had the source, it was trivial to recompile a CP/M application to run on PC-DOS, as the CPU had a one-to-one mapping of registers and opcodes (8080/Z80 to 8088), and the OS had a one-to-one mapping of system/BIOS calls.
I have a "Compaq" I inherited from my father.
Most people don't understand how quickly the computer world shifted when IBM entered the field:
Before IBM, Apple was making the Apple ][, and the ][e. The Apple II shipped with all chips in sockets, a complete electrical schematic, and full documentation for the BIOS interface and Woz's "sweet 16" compiler in ROM. This was a truely open platform.
Meanwhile, IBM was selling huge mainframe "black boxes". You want to write your own applications? Hire an IBM programmer, from IBM.
Then, in the space of only a couple years, Apple released the Macitosh. It was completely closed source. Want to write code for it? Spend thousands of dollars to take a four week course, sign a non-disclosure agreement, and you're in.... and IBM released the IBM-PC: With complete schematics, and all chips in sockets, and complete documentation for the BIOS and all system calls (basically CP/M).
It’s all voodoo to me Fido. I was around for the old Apple days and had little interest in computers until the internet came along.
I could wrap my head around BASIC but when C++ came out… it destroyed me. I passed the tests on it and got good marks but after the course I did a big memory dump and swore I’d never program anything again…
I've always been fascinated by them... just another puzzle, like the Rubics Cube. Seemed to be an arena where I could compete well, but you had to work in an office, and I couldn't do that, So I went hitchhiking for years instead. But the tech crunch saw my family drag me back, when they couldn't get anyone else to do what they knew I could. I've always known I was on borrowed time in a city though. Manual labor is far better though, for both the mind and body. I just don't compete well there.
I was working on an assembly line for a company making 8 inch floppy disk drives.. in a warehouse without windows and full of trichlorethane in a city... when I wrote my first assembly language program from the front panel of a Cromemco, on lunch break, because the "programmer" had left the Z80 cheat book next to it... just another puzzle...
That was the job that convinced me to live out of a backpack for the next few years.
I worked at a computer store that "sold" this Osborne. We couldn't get rid of them and the boss told the company they could take them back when we were billed for them
Yeah, in the circles I was in at the time, (very early 80's) *everyone* wanted one. Don't know anyone who actually bought one though. Very expensive, and by the time they had them in production, everyone knew IBM was the future.
I you had the money to do that, you would have installed a card to run PC-DOS too... but it was a hack... and expensive.
I never got over my lust for "portable" though, likely a result of living out of a backpack in the preceeding years, and I actually bought a DataGeneral/One, and hacked it to run at 8MHz with a v20 cpu. Still have that beast.
I did the calculations for my 10th grade science project on one of those. I'm not sure why because we had 3 other computers in the house at the time...an MITS Altair, a CompuColor 2, and an Amiga 1000. Ah, i remember... because the moving graphs I had from the sensors in my wind tunnel displayed in real time on the luggable, which I could take to the science fair(s). I made it from school, to district, to state, but didn't win at state level.
I’m still using my Commodore 64. ( -M from GAB )
ReplyDeleteNo shite, eh? How old is it… and how do you keep it running? I see the kids that are all over that kind of stuff on OyToob. They can rebuild everything from old computers to old cell phones and even make interesting toys and gadgets fro the guts of old tech…
DeleteAh, the old luggable.
ReplyDeleteI think that was the first "successful" luggable. To drive home *when* that was, I believe that thing ran CP/M.
ReplyDeleteFar more "successful" were the "IBM Compatibles" running PC-DOS, which was quite nearly a clone of CP/M. While it could not run CP/M binaries, if you had the source, it was trivial to recompile a CP/M application to run on PC-DOS, as the CPU had a one-to-one mapping of registers and opcodes (8080/Z80 to 8088), and the OS had a one-to-one mapping of system/BIOS calls.
I have a "Compaq" I inherited from my father.
Most people don't understand how quickly the computer world shifted when IBM entered the field:
Before IBM, Apple was making the Apple ][, and the ][e. The Apple II shipped with all chips in sockets, a complete electrical schematic, and full documentation for the BIOS interface and Woz's "sweet 16" compiler in ROM. This was a truely open platform.
Meanwhile, IBM was selling huge mainframe "black boxes". You want to write your own applications? Hire an IBM programmer, from IBM.
Then, in the space of only a couple years, Apple released the Macitosh. It was completely closed source. Want to write code for it? Spend thousands of dollars to take a four week course, sign a non-disclosure agreement, and you're in.... and IBM released the IBM-PC: With complete schematics, and all chips in sockets, and complete documentation for the BIOS and all system calls (basically CP/M).
It’s all voodoo to me Fido. I was around for the old Apple days and had little interest in computers until the internet came along.
DeleteI could wrap my head around BASIC but when C++ came out… it destroyed me. I passed the tests on it and got good marks but after the course I did a big memory dump and swore I’d never program anything again…
I've always been fascinated by them... just another puzzle, like the Rubics Cube. Seemed to be an arena where I could compete well, but you had to work in an office, and I couldn't do that, So I went hitchhiking for years instead. But the tech crunch saw my family drag me back, when they couldn't get anyone else to do what they knew I could. I've always known I was on borrowed time in a city though. Manual labor is far better though, for both the mind and body. I just don't compete well there.
DeleteI was working on an assembly line for a company making 8 inch floppy disk drives.. in a warehouse without windows and full of trichlorethane in a city... when I wrote my first assembly language program from the front panel of a Cromemco, on lunch break, because the "programmer" had left the Z80 cheat book next to it... just another puzzle...
That was the job that convinced me to live out of a backpack for the next few years.
I worked at a computer store that "sold" this Osborne. We couldn't get rid of them and the boss told the company they could take them back when we were billed for them
ReplyDeleteYeah, in the circles I was in at the time, (very early 80's) *everyone* wanted one. Don't know anyone who actually bought one though. Very expensive, and by the time they had them in production, everyone knew IBM was the future.
DeleteI you had the money to do that, you would have installed a card to run PC-DOS too... but it was a hack... and expensive.
I never got over my lust for "portable" though, likely a result of living out of a backpack in the preceeding years, and I actually bought a DataGeneral/One, and hacked it to run at 8MHz with a v20 cpu. Still have that beast.
I did the calculations for my 10th grade science project on one of those. I'm not sure why because we had 3 other computers in the house at the time...an MITS Altair, a CompuColor 2, and an Amiga 1000. Ah, i remember... because the moving graphs I had from the sensors in my wind tunnel displayed in real time on the luggable, which I could take to the science fair(s). I made it from school, to district, to state, but didn't win at state level.
ReplyDelete