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Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market

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Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market

#21

Post by cmrdporcupine »

K0balt wrote: post #4

It’s truly remarkable to me that in the late 70s/early 80s it was considered that programming your own computer in basic was not something that required special skills or technical ability. It just goes to show how far out expectations have dropped, with basic human ingenuity and capability for expression having been crippled by reliance on increasingly advanced automation with increasingly simple interfaces. Humanit…

I grew up in this era, owned a VIC-20, and it's simply not true that many people were doing anything useful with the rather awful BASIC dialects that shipped in microcomputers. They were just a pain to work with -- no real editor, etc and often missing the ability to even use the graphics etc functions of the computer they shipped on (esp on Commodore devices). Professional developers mostly wrote to assembly.

We did BASIC (& Logo) programming in my elementary school, on Apple IIs. It's rare anybody got past basic "hunt the wumpus" programs.

There were program listings for simple games in the back of computer magazines of the era. Invariably the better ones were full of DATA statements at the end that were bits of 6502 or Z80 machine code to do the "real" work. Woe befell you if you typed them in slightly wrong.

Later, mostly in the "16-bit" era, we got structured BASIC varieties with better/real editors, and that definitely changed things. I got a lot done in GFA Basic on my Atari ST. But it's debatable if GW-BASIC, GFA Basic, (and later Visual Basic) etc were "really" BASICs... they were more like ... permissive and weird Pascal.

Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market

#22

Post by andrehacker »

jnaina wrote: post #14

Surprised the Atari 8-bit series was left out. It was arguably one of the first home computers designed with an appliance-like philosophy, rather than the typical open, hobbyist-oriented design of its time. Features like ROM cartridges, the Atari SIO serial bus (which even influenced the design of USB), multiple joystick ports that doubled as input for external switches or sensors, and support for smart peripherals l…

The Atari 800 came a bit later (1979), the 3 discussed all were introduced in 1977. 1979 was also when the TI-99/4 came out which eventually became popular when the price was dropped below cost.

Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market

#23

Post by cmrdporcupine »

dspillett wrote: post #13
iberator wrote: post #10

I never used or even seen those computers, yet from pure curiosity I picked up 6502 CPU(Apple 2, Commodore 64, NES) assembly as a hobby project. Its surprisingly easy, even for dumb person like me. Great learning tool if you dream of building your own CPU architecture:) Try it!

> yet from pure curiosity I picked up 6502 CPU(Apple 2, Commodore 64, NES) assembly as a hobby project. I cut my programming teeth on an Acorn Electron (a somewhat cut-down BBC Micro) then later a Master128. The fact that the BASIC ROM included a decent multi-pass assembler was great for learning the deeper workings of the machine and such things in general. Being able to easily mix BASIC and assembly provided good l…

This was the most annoying thing about the Commodore machines, frankly. Lack of out of the box tooling for working in 6502 assembly. I had a VIC-20 and quickly hit the limits of its BASIC and started having to POKE 6502 machine code to RAM to do useful things, by reading opcode tables for the processor -- because growing up my parents simply could not afford to go buy me an assembler cartridge for the machine.

Was always jealous of people who had that available to them, and that it was built into the BASIC of the BBC machines is pretty cool. Even the monitor program built into the Apple II was superior.

Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market

#24

Post by dspillett »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #23
dspillett wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet from pure curiosity I picked up 6502 CPU(Apple 2, Commodore 64, NES) assembly as a hobby project. I cut my programming teeth on an Acorn Electron (a somewhat cut-down BBC Micro) then later a Master128. The fact that the BASIC ROM included a decent multi-pass assembler was great for learning the deeper workings of the machine and such things in general. Being able to easily mix BASIC and assembly provided good l…

This was the most annoying thing about the Commodore machines, frankly. Lack of out of the box tooling for working in 6502 assembly. I had a VIC-20 and quickly hit the limits of its BASIC and started having to POKE 6502 machine code to RAM to do useful things, by reading opcode tables for the processor -- because growing up my parents simply could not afford to go buy me an assembler cartridge for the machine. Was al…

> because growing up my parents simply could not afford to go buy me an assembler cartridge for the machine

I was lucky in that my elder bother did the research and my parents (who paid for the things at the time) saw the wisdom and spent the extra on the Acorn machines, that were best educationally (while falling behind considerably wrt the availability of games, despite being more than capable enough alongside other popular machines on the market), despite the extra cost (which for my parents at the time, though I didn't realise it back then, was a very significant issue).

That sort of “investment” in us kids, and general encouragement of our interests, by our parents did a lot for us, me in particular (by luck rather than favouritism: I was just the most techie minded of me and my brothers, they invested in my younger brothers interest in music too), long term. They didn't have much, but they made every effort to make the most of it for us.

Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market

#25

Post by HankStallone »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #23
dspillett wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet from pure curiosity I picked up 6502 CPU(Apple 2, Commodore 64, NES) assembly as a hobby project. I cut my programming teeth on an Acorn Electron (a somewhat cut-down BBC Micro) then later a Master128. The fact that the BASIC ROM included a decent multi-pass assembler was great for learning the deeper workings of the machine and such things in general. Being able to easily mix BASIC and assembly provided good l…

This was the most annoying thing about the Commodore machines, frankly. Lack of out of the box tooling for working in 6502 assembly. I had a VIC-20 and quickly hit the limits of its BASIC and started having to POKE 6502 machine code to RAM to do useful things, by reading opcode tables for the processor -- because growing up my parents simply could not afford to go buy me an assembler cartridge for the machine. Was al…

The monitor built into the C128 was a big step up. Not as good as an assembler since it didn't have labels, but you could do a lot with it.

Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market

#26

Post by HankStallone »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #15

There is a .. "new Wave" (?) .. happening around microcomputers associated with that era .. in the modern context. I think the reason this article has impact, is that this 'new Wave' of microcomputers is tangible, visible, and not just on the horizon but happening every single day, in a kind of quiet revolution/resurgence of platforms once considered 'outdated', suddenly becoming relevant again. You can still use the…

It'd cost me about $10k to replace the stack of Commodore equipment I gave away to a scrap dealer 20-ish years ago, if I bought it all used now. But I'm still tempted to start, maybe with just one or two pieces.

Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market

#27

Post by HankStallone »

Jtsummers wrote: post #7
K0balt wrote: post #4

It’s truly remarkable to me that in the late 70s/early 80s it was considered that programming your own computer in basic was not something that required special skills or technical ability. It just goes to show how far out expectations have dropped, with basic human ingenuity and capability for expression having been crippled by reliance on increasingly advanced automation with increasingly simple interfaces. Humanit…

> It just goes to show how far out expectations have dropped Those computers were vastly simpler, and many weren't connected to any kind of external network (or the networks were, again, vastly simpler). It's like the difference between a Model T era car (many people possess the technical ability to maintain them, even today) versus a modern car. It's not that we expect less of people today, we've just produced somet…

Also, as programming languages have gotten more powerful, I think they've gotten so they require a particular kind of mind to work with. I could teach anyone with a little interest and aptitude to program in BASIC 2.0, because there aren't any hard concepts. Variables are global, there's no recursion, no objects, not really even functions, just subroutines. So you've got looping and variables, just enough to let you do some calculations and put things on a screen. Pretty simple. Also, my Commodore 128 came with a System Guide in which over 100 pages were a pretty solid BASIC instruction and explanation of every command. So if you bought one of those machines, there was a good chance you'd at least tinker with BASIC. You had to learn a couple commands just to use the thing, after all.

Moving to something modern, even a language that's considered easy to learn like python, you very quickly get into more complicated concepts. That seems to have created a situation where the easier and more powerful we make programming for programmers, the more it gets out of reach of anyone else. Though there are still languages specifically for learning (like BASIC), so that doesn't have to be a problem.

Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market

#29

Post by cfmcdonald »

gabrielsroka wrote: post #28

> the original Apple Computer (later called the Apple I) All the original manuals/ads/etc (that I can find online) called it the Apple-1 (Arabic, not Roman). I think Woz was already working on the Apple II by the time the Apple I was released.

Author here. Yes I could be more accurate here. It was called just "Apple Computer" in some contexts, e.g. this ad [0]. This manual calls it "Apple-1" on the cover [1], but "Apple Computer" in the contents. But you are definitely right that it was often called the Apple-1 in 1976 and into 1977.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I#/media/File:Apple_1_Ad... [1]: https://s3data.computerhistory.org/brochures/apple.applei.19...

Re: Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market

#30

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

K0balt wrote: post #4

It’s truly remarkable to me that in the late 70s/early 80s it was considered that programming your own computer in basic was not something that required special skills or technical ability. It just goes to show how far out expectations have dropped, with basic human ingenuity and capability for expression having been crippled by reliance on increasingly advanced automation with increasingly simple interfaces. Humanit…

No, it's that those expectations were wrong in the first place.

I spent a fair amount of time in the early-mid 80's tutoring engineering students in Computer Science (basically a CS101 for non-CS students). A fair number of otherwise very smart people simply couldn't grasp the concepts beyond the very basics.

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