The Computer History thread

[Kaido]

Share your computer history lore! Memories, finds, collector's items, etc. @IBMJunkman this means YOU!!

I'm not much of a collector, but from time to time, I'll snag a unique piece of computer history for my very small hardware collection & recently came across a good-quality Osborne 1, which is considered to be the first "laptop" aka "luggables" haha. A brief history: (4 pages)

Osborne!

Notebooks. Netbooks. Smartphones. Tablets. In 2011, the default state of personal computing is mobile--traditional desktop PCs are still with us, but they've become the outliers. It wasn't always so. In their earliest days, in fact, PCs weren't primarily deskbound; they were entirely deskbound. The

www.technologizer.com

I had a chance to get a bootable one from a thrift store about 25 years ago for FIVE DOLLARS, but didn't have the room for it at the time & have regretted it ever since! There was no battery & it basically folded up into a metal suitcase, sort of like a sewing machine:



These days we have tri-fold phones lol:



You boot up the CP/M OS on one 5.25" floppy & then load the program on the second floppy:



Launch price was $1,795 USD, which is about $5,500 in today's money, or like buying a new car back then! They sold 10,000 units a month at peak!



They are also famous for the "Osbourne Effect", where they announced the next generation of products too early, so people stopped buying the current-gen version. In reality, they had separate issues with inventory, cashflow, and competitors, but the early announcement was definitely a contributing factor! This is why tech companies now:

1. Keep a lid on new product announcements & details and then ship new products within a month
2. Sell tiered products (good, better, best) & stagger the releases (ex. laptops separate from phones etc.)
3. Do controlled marketing leaks to keep the hype going (without disclosing performance details, while keeping upgrades largely incremental)

That way, customers have options, but the old stuff doesn't immediately become "obsolete"!

1. Budget model (the current generation turns into this)
2. Flagship model (this is the new stuff!)
3. Pro or "Ultra" tiers (for people with money to burn)

Watch it get roasted lol:

I had ChatGPT write me a Matrix screensaver in Z80 assembly source! Now I just have to get a Greaseweazle floppy adapter, haha!

; ============================================; OSBORNE 1 MATRIX STREAMS v4 FI - Pastebin.com

Pastebin.com is the number one paste tool since 2002. Pastebin is a website where you can store text online for a set period of time.

pastebin.com

Generated screenshot:



Next is to decide if I want to mod it, or keep it stock (it's 45 years old at this point, older than me LOL). They make a floppy adapter that can talk to a USB stick, which is hilariously amazing!

GitHub - WayneVisser/Osborne1FloppyAdapter

Contribute to WayneVisser/Osborne1FloppyAdapter development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

However! The Osbourne had a serial port, which used a modem to talk to mainframes by using a comm program like Kermit on CP/M. So in this case, what I'm thinking is to use a Raspberry Pi as the "mainframe" using a USB-to-serial adapter & converters. So I split that into 3 parts:

1. Pi Zero 2 W (tiny chip) as the AI coprocessor (I should 3D-print a tiny mainframe case for it lol)
2. Live ChatGPT terminal
3. Local LLM (SmolLM 135M + TinyClaw shell)

I call the last one "FloppyClaw" lol. Mockup:



Some interesting projects:

* Osbourne 1 for MAME
* CP/M browser emulator
* Osbourne 1 replica Cyberdeck

Also, I found this picture:

The Osborne 1 at 1981's West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco, where it was the hit of the show.

Then did a quick upscale, restore, and colorize pass on it:



Anyway, share your tidbits!

 

[IBMJunkman]

No working hardware but I did have these from a Sage. Look it up, you youngins.

 

[Paperdoc]

In the mid-1980's I was working in a Canadian fine paper mill in their tech department supplying process monitoring and and optimization services. We produced a large range of printing papers, almost all with coatings and most also supercalendered for glossy finish. Paper coatings are similar to white latex paint in many ways, containing adhesives, clays and other pigments in water. The base paper sheet under the coating also contains non-fibrous fillers like clay and other pigments to enhance opacity and smoothness. So clean unused waste coatings can be used as fillers in the base sheet production.

We designed a system to reduce disposal of waste coatings for environmental impact reduction and to save money by using these materials to supplement the purchase of filler clays. It required a system to collect such waste slurries in tanks and add to that normal virgin filler clay, measure the solids content of the resulting slurry, then calculate and add appropriate amounts to fibre mixtures as they were prepared for the paper machines.

To control this subsystem we chose a microcomputer system supplied by a small firm in Montreal based on a Commodore SuperPET microcomputer system. The SuperPET was Commodore's most advanced desktop micro system. It contained both a Motorola 6502 8-bit CPU and a 6809 8-bit CPU with several enhanced 16-bit capabilities, 48KB of ROM containing a Kernal and Commodore Basic interpreter, and 96 KB of RAM (32 KB in normal use plus 64KB bank-switched by the 6809's added addressing bits). That computer ran normally using the BASIC interpreter and OS, but came with floppies containing several other interpreters for FORTRAN, COBOL and Pascal you could load in instead. For this process control appplicatiom the supplier company had modified the SuperPET by customizing its BASIC interpreter and adding a new custom parallel port interface to a distant custom I/O rack system they manufactured, placed in the operating area to interface with sensor and actuator devices in the process. Thus this system located in an office could be custom-programmed in the modifed BASIC to control the process in the field.

At that time Commoore's PET line included an IEEE488 port (almost identical to a instrument interface bus sytem used by Hewlett Packard) for connecting peripheral devices. For our system we installed two such modified SuperPET's plus a third not so modified. Then we added a Commodore MuPET unit that connected all three in a local network of peripherals to two dual-floppy Commodore 8050 disk drives, and one 9-pin dot matrix printer. Each disk drive contained 2 floppy drives, each of them capable of storing 1 MB on a double-sided double-density 5¼" floppy disk. So this system located in our department's main lab had three high-performance microcomputers sharing access to 4 MB of storage on 4 floppies and to one printer. Of the three SuperPETS, two (for backup) were customized and connected to a field I/O rack for process control, and one was for general office and adminitrative uses. Although Commodore had introduced two models of hard drives (capcities 6.4 and 9.6 MB), they were new and VERY expensive so we did not inlcude one of them in our system.

 

[Kaido]

No working hardware but I did have these from a Sage. Look it up, you youngins.
View attachment 142398

WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME

 

[Red Squirrel]

I don't have too much experience with vintage computers myself, but at work we do work a lot with DMS10, DMS100 etc, which is pretty vintage, from the late 70's. They keep coming up with these grand plans to decommission them all by X date, they end up doing like one and then the whole project stalls. I'm fine with that, my job security depends on these lol.

DMS-100 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's getting harder and harder to find experts to work on these though. Also getting harder to find parts. Gendband was producing aftermarket parts for a bit but don't think they are anymore. Some of the older senior techs will actually fix parts and solder on new components and such.

 

[IBMJunkman]

That was THUMPER. Sage was real. 😊