31–40 of 63 posts
Some more close-ups of the Q1 etc in this video and pics they've posted (all I could find): https://twitter.com/KingstonUni/status/1757444509577662951 https://twitter.com/KingstonUni/status/1757404905176695186
That this 8008 computer from 1972 should have 16KB of RAM sounds unlikely. I haven't been able to find any real info stating this - still, the headline on tomshardware says "16KB". That's very hard to believe. Static RAM of that size would have been extremely expensive at the time, the much much later Altair 8800 didn't get past 4KB without a dynamic RAM board (which was also very unreliable). The Q1/Lite, a Z80-base…
> They use the Intel 8008 CPU, an 8-bit CPU capable of processing a whopping sixteen kilobytes of memory
Which is correct. As you say, highly unlikely that the computers had that much, though.
I'm not sure how Tom's Hardware does things, but it's well-known in the _newspaper_ industry that the headlines aren't written by the person who writes the article, and misinterpretation happens from time to time. I suspect whoever wrote the headline just got confused, here.
Of course, because of the plague of LLMs which now lies over the land, anyone trying to find out how much RAM such a machine had in 2050 will be confidently, incorrectly told 16kB by GPT47, even though it's obviously wrong, due to this headline...
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https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/q1.html Looks like it is plasma but with characters, not a pure bitmap display.
Yes, it is pretty certain that no bitmap plasma displays existed at that time, because the drivers for them would have been more expensive than an entire desktop computer (due to the high number of rows and columns). It is said that the display was an unusual plasma display and not a vacuum fluorescent display, which were much more frequent in the desktop calculators of that time, but it must have been an alphanumeri…
These were monochrome orange vector displays. They didn't use segments.
..
"They are now on display at Kingston University in Surrey, England, but only for the rest of February 17th."
Are they saying that the machines are available on one day only? February 17th, The day the article was published? If so, that's a very strange way to say that.
..
"As far as what to expect, don't expect too much— these are the first desktop PCs created with a fully integrated single-chip microprocessor, including the CPU."
I am just guessing what they mean here. Do they mean... "the first desktop PCs created with a fully integrated single-chip microprocessor, which includes the CPU" ??
..
ps. I was using Miro recently and a popup appeared asking should the AI rewrite the text I wrote "for clarity" .. I just laughed, clarity is certainly not an LLM's strong suit.
But I reckon these tools are everywhere and they are being used everywhere.
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As someone who collects and restores old computers, I can tell you this is how they are preserved. Museums are only the final resting place of these machines, but, in the meantime, they are preserved by ordinary people in their own collections.
Until they are inherited by a confused youngster who puts dad's weird old trash on the kerb :(
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Yes, it is pretty certain that no bitmap plasma displays existed at that time, because the drivers for them would have been more expensive than an entire desktop computer (due to the high number of rows and columns). It is said that the display was an unusual plasma display and not a vacuum fluorescent display, which were much more frequent in the desktop calculators of that time, but it must have been an alphanumeri…
What we think of as "plasma screens" were invented at UIUC for the PLATO project in (checks) 1964, by Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and Robert Willson. They had a resolution of 512x512. They started cranking them out in bulk in 1972. These were monochrome orange vector displays. They didn't use segments.
Moreover, I doubt that the cost includes the one thousand high voltage transistors that would have been needed to drive the display.
As I have already written, such a display would have been too expensive for a desktop computer with an 8-bit CPU.
In the early seventies, as an alternative to the red LED displays and green or blue vacuum fluorescent displays, there were the orange Panaplex plasma displays with segments for numeric (7 segments) or alphanumeric (14 or 16 segments) characters.
I believe that the Q1 computer must have had such a Panaplex display, which was cheap enough.
Vector displays are possible only where there is a drawing spot that can be moved in any programmable direction, i.e. only on CRTs or mechanical plotters. They are not possible with plasma displays.
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Probably not a plasma screen in the 70s. It looks like a bunch of individual characters. They are probably vacuum fluorescent like what was on calculators and the Speak & Spell educational toy from that period.
https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/q1.html Looks like it is plasma but with characters, not a pure bitmap display.
In the shot of the display frame by itself without the tinted plastic in front of it, it almost looks like a miniature arrival/departure board at a train station.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What we think of as "plasma screens" were invented at UIUC for the PLATO project in (checks) 1964, by Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and Robert Willson. They had a resolution of 512x512. They started cranking them out in bulk in 1972. These were monochrome orange vector displays. They didn't use segments.
Wikipedia says that the 512x512 PLATO plasma display had a cost of $2500 at a time when that was a much greater value than today. Moreover, I doubt that the cost includes the one thousand high voltage transistors that would have been needed to drive the display. As I have already written, such a display would have been too expensive for a desktop computer with an 8-bit CPU. In the early seventies, as an alternative t…
I used PLATO at UIUC in the late 80s briefly, because they were still around, but everything had been WYSE-50 or Sun already (or contemporaries) and the PLATO terminals weren't some monstrosities....just looked 20 years old.
That this 8008 computer from 1972 should have 16KB of RAM sounds unlikely. I haven't been able to find any real info stating this - still, the headline on tomshardware says "16KB". That's very hard to believe. Static RAM of that size would have been extremely expensive at the time, the much much later Altair 8800 didn't get past 4KB without a dynamic RAM board (which was also very unreliable). The Q1/Lite, a Z80-base…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200
The 2200 type 2 (1972) was indeed expandable to 16k. Yes it cost $14,000, but you could buy it. Remember: this was an expensive piece of business equipment, the Altair was a cheap (for the time) kit for hobbyists. Companies buying these machines were choosing between them and a minicomputer like the PDP/11 which cost $20,000.