11–20 of 88 posts
Wonderful article. I've often wondered if it was possible to have computer culture without a massive industry to support it.
Did the Zilog Z80 require a massive industry to support it? That chip came out of engineers who left Intel.
Wonderful article. I've often wondered if it was possible to have computer culture without a massive industry to support it.
This is a great story, but most of the anecdotes are very familiar to someone who has studied (or was there for) the early era of home computing in the West. The Altair, the Heathkit, etc. Bill Gates' infamous Open Letter To Hobbyists was written in that era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists The article treats a lot of this stuff as more unique (and, it seems, ideologically inspired) than it was…
A demoparty should take upon itself to setup a Galaksija demo competition...
[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20191226063832/http://oldcompute...
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20191220081815/http://www.spetsi...
This is a great story, but most of the anecdotes are very familiar to someone who has studied (or was there for) the early era of home computing in the West. The Altair, the Heathkit, etc. Bill Gates' infamous Open Letter To Hobbyists was written in that era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists The article treats a lot of this stuff as more unique (and, it seems, ideologically inspired) than it was…
This computer was designed the better part of a decade after Bill Gates's letter. The environment is really completely different - the personal computer revolution has already happened, these people are aware of it, etc. In fact, such computers were available but well outside the budget of many. So it's the story of making a PC from available parts, without hard currency and as cheap as possible - radically cheaper t…
There were a lot of DYI computer schemes in USSR in my childhood. Mostly because getting your hands onto a ready-made one outside workplaces and some very advanced schools was nearly impossible, but there were a bunch of schemes published in popular technical journals. From those, with luck, some access to electronic components (also not always easy but easier than getting the whole computer) and decent skills with a…
Do you remember if it was true that milspec had in general better tolerances than commercially sold components?
Often enough there wasn't any kind of a tape or disk device, so you had to type your program from a magazine, a printout, or handwritten notes. It took forever, and there were typos and glitches to resolve.
Once, I watched a guy painstakingly type a 200 line basic program. He stepped away for a minute to use the WC, and the joker who sat in his stead bird-pecked "new" and hit enter. That was the end of that evening.