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I keep hearing this garbage that the europeans or the muslims invented the computer claiming they invented the Abacus, can someone explain to me about how this device qualifies as the first computer?
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Boulier1.JPG)
That's equivalent to me saying a carriage and horse qualify as the first car.
While there are designs of digital computers from the US,
However Israels design was considered the first stored memory digital computer known as the WEIZAC
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Weizac_%281954-1964%29_Front.jpg)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/WEIZAC_construction.jpg)
The WEIZAC (Weizmann Automatic Computer) was the first computer in Israel, and one of the first large-scale, stored-program, electronic computers in the world.[1]
It was built at the Weizmann Institute during 1954-1955, based on the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) architecture developed by John von Neumann. The WEIZAC was operational until December 29, 1963, and has been superseded by the GOLEM.
As with all computers of its era, it was a one of a kind machine that could not exchange programs with other computers (even other IAS machines).
Contents
The WEIZAC project was initiated by Prof. Chaim L. Pekeris, who worked at the IAS at the time von Neumann's IAS machine was being designed. Chaim Weizmann, Israel's future first president, asked Pekeris to establish the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute, and Pekeris wanted to have a similar computer available there. Pekeris wanted it as means to solve Laplace’s tidal equations for the Earth's oceans, and also for the benefit of the entire scientific community of Israel, including the Defense Ministry.
In July 1947, an advisory committee for the Applied Mathematics Department discussed the plan to build the computer. Among the committee's members were Albert Einstein, who did not find the idea reasonable, and John von Neumann, who supported it. In one conversation, von Neumann was asked; "What will that tiny country do with an electric computer?" He responded, "Don’t worry about that problem. If nobody else uses the computer, Pekeris will use it full time!"
In the end, a decision was made to proceed with the plan. Chaim Weizmann assigned $50,000 for the project – 20% of the Weizmann Institute total budget.
In 1952, Gerald Estrin, a research engineer from the von Neumann project, was chosen to lead the project. He came to Israel along with his wife, Thelma, who was an electrical engineer and also involved in the project. They brought with them schematics, but no parts. Estrin later commented: "As I look back now, if we had systematically laid out a detailed plan of execution we would probably have aborted the project." After arriving, Estrin's impression was that besides Pekeris, other Israeli scientists thought it is ridiculous to build a computer in Israel.
To recruit skilled staff for the project, a newspaper advertisement was posted. Most of the applicants had no records of prior education because those were lost in the Holocaust or during immigration, but in Israel's budding technical community everyone knew or knew about everybody else. The WEIZAC project also provided an opportunity for mathematicians and engineers to move to Israel without sacrificing their professional careers.[2]
[edit] Specifications
WEIZAC was an asynchronous computer operating on 40-bit words. Instructions consisted of 20-bits; an 8-bit instruction code and 12-bits for addressing. Punched paper tape was used for I/O, and later, in 1958, magnetic tape. The memory was initially a magnetic drum containing 1,024 words, and was later replaced with a faster 4,096 word memory. In 1961 the memory was further expanded with two additional 4,096 word modules.
[edit] Usage
In late 1955, WEIZAC performed its first calculation. Subsequently it was used to study problems like worldwide changes in tide, earthquakes, atomic spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, random walk methods, numerical analysis and more. The computer found out that there was an amphidromic point in the South Atlantic at which the tide doesn't change. It also calculated the relationship between a helium nucleus and its two electrons[3] and yielded results that were later experimentally confirmed by the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
WEIZAC was kept constantly busy, and users (especially from other institutions) became increasingly frustrated with not being able to get computing time, and demanded more computers to become available. WEIZAC's success led to the recognition of the need for computers and digital technology in Israel, and ultimately, provided the foundation for Israel's computer and technology industries.[2]
[edit] Recognition
On December 5, 2006, WEIZAC was recognized by the IEEE as a milestone in the history of electrical engineering and computing, and the team who built it were awarded the "WEIZAC Medal".[4]
However, the first Electronic Digital computer was built in the United States was the IAS machine built in the 1940's, and it was based off Von Neumanns architecture (a Hungarian Jew) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture
Go figure that the enemy wants to steal one of our creations.
it was considered one of the first in the world
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Von_Neumann_architecture.svg)
He could be considered the founder of the modern computer and the first that wrote instructions and saved them in memory.
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The abacus was a nice invention but in no way is it related to the Digital Computer. Digital computers are based on boolean logic operations {and/or/not} and store numbers in binary notation. Abacuses do not use boolean logic nor binary number representations. Abacuses also are incapable of logical instructions such as comparison, branching, and arithmetic...
Abacuses are great if you need to add 2+2 or something simple... Forget about it when it comes to complex logic equations or algorithms...
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True, i hear a lot of Neo Nazis claim that Konrad Zuse invented the first computer who was a German but the machine relied on "punch cards" to read the program. Neumann revolutionized digital computers with his concept of a processor with his design and the first computer to save the data into the memory. I think people are mislead, it's like saying Martin Cooper invented the telephone, he invented the cell phone from something that existed but never the less it was a creation.
The majority of machines today are based off Neumanns design, I guess if the neo nazis and muslims want to go back to mechanical machines with punch cards, they can be my guest.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Von_Neumann_architecture.svg/420px-Von_Neumann_architecture.svg.png)
For a computing machine to be a practical general-purpose computer, there must be some convenient read-write mechanism, punched tape, for example. With a knowledge of Alan Turing's theoretical 'universal computing machine' John von Neumann defined an architecture which uses the same memory both to store programs and data: virtually all contemporary computers use this architecture (or some variant). While it is theoretically possible to implement a full computer entirely mechanically (as Babbage's design showed), electronics made possible the speed and later the miniaturization that characterize modern computers.
I think the neo nazis and muslims try to take credit away from us by claiming that Neumanns design was irrelevant and that stored memory was not that big of a deal.
For anyone unfamiliar with punch cards, the first computers used them to read programs and would write to them but they were not capable of storing data or information digitally, think of a analog camera and a digital camera.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Blue-punch-card-front.png/269px-Blue-punch-card-front.png)
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I think another thing people forget about is transistors which are used in modern computers invented also by a Jew Julius Edgar Lilienfeld
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Edgar_Lilienfeld
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/Julius_Edgar_Lilienfeld_%281881-1963%29.jpg)
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals. It is made of a solid piece of semiconductor material, with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current flowing through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be much more than the controlling (input) power, the transistor provides amplification of a signal. Today, some transistors are packaged individually, but many more are found embedded in integrated circuits.
The transistor is the fundamental building block of modern electronic devices, and its presence is ubiquitous in modern electronic systems. Following its release in the early 1950s the transistor revolutionised the field of electronics, and paved the way for smaller and cheaper radios, calculators, and computers, amongst other things.
but once again they will pretend it never happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_computer
A transistor computer was a computer which used transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The "first generation" of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, were bulky, and were unreliable. A "second generation" of computers, through the late 1950s and 1960s featured boards filled with individual transistors and magnetic memory cores. These machines remained the mainstream design into the late 1960s, when integrated circuits started appearing and led to the "fourth generation" machines.
he University of Manchester's experimental Transistor Computer was first operational in November 1953 and it is widely believed to be the first transistor computer to come into operation anywhere in the world. There were two versions of the Transistor Computer, the prototype, operational in 1953, and the full-size version, commissioned in April 1955. The 1953 machine had 92 point-contact transistors and 550 diodes, manufactured by STC. It had a 48-bit machine word.[1] The 1955 machine had a total of 200 point-contact transistors and 1300 point diodes,[1] which resulted in a power consumption of 150 watts. There were considerable reliability problems with the early batches of transistors and the average error free run in 1955 was only 1.5 hours. The Computer also used a small number of tubes in its clock generator, so it was not the first fully transistorized machine.[2]
The design of a full-size Transistor Computer was subsequently adopted by the Manchester firm of Metropolitan-Vickers, who changed all the circuits to more reliable types of junction transistors.[1] The production version was known as the Metrovick 950 and was built from 1956 to the extent of six[1] or seven machines,[3] which were "used commercially within the company"[3] or "mainly for internal use".[1]
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True, i hear a lot of Neo Nazis claim that Konrad Zuse invented the first computer who was a German but the machine relied on "punch cards" to read the program. Neumann revolutionized digital computers with his concept of a processor with his design and the first computer to save the data into the memory. I think people are mislead, it's like saying Martin Cooper invented the telephone, he invented the cell phone from something that existed but never the less it was a creation.
The majority of machines today are based off Neumanns design, I guess if the neo nazis and muslims want to go back to mechanical machines with punch cards, they can be my guest.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Von_Neumann_architecture.svg/420px-Von_Neumann_architecture.svg.png)
For a computing machine to be a practical general-purpose computer, there must be some convenient read-write mechanism, punched tape, for example. With a knowledge of Alan Turing's theoretical 'universal computing machine' John von Neumann defined an architecture which uses the same memory both to store programs and data: virtually all contemporary computers use this architecture (or some variant). While it is theoretically possible to implement a full computer entirely mechanically (as Babbage's design showed), electronics made possible the speed and later the miniaturization that characterize modern computers.
I think the neo nazis and muslims try to take credit away from us by claiming that Neumanns design was irrelevant and that stored memory was not that big of a deal.
For anyone unfamiliar with punch cards, the first computers used them to read programs and would write to them but they were not capable of storing data or information digitally, think of a analog camera and a digital camera.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Blue-punch-card-front.png/269px-Blue-punch-card-front.png)
The old punch cards were quite a marvel back in the 50's and early 60's but the information they could contain was nothing compared to even the most basic storage format we have today....Systems like that were only stepping stones.... I don't think designers back then could envision what we have today in their wildest dreams.
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I now have 16Gigabytes on my keychain...
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Thankfully, obama has made the top priority of NASA to outreach to Muslims, so now we have to hear over and over how Muslims invented mathematics, rocketry, and pretty much everything else that NAZA (not misspelled) uses.
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The Arabs don't even know that toilet paper was invented!
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BTW, my uncle who works at NASA says that they never ever had a black scientist working there, but once they had one apply, they IMMEDIATELY promoted him to the highest position available. I heard he is a complete idiot, but again, it doesnt seem to matter; as its more about community outreach, than it is about designing and launching rockets.
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Lets not forget a lot of the modern contributions with todays computer world.
ICQ the first messenger which was replicated and used by AOL, VOIP (voice over internet protocol) technology which was first introduced by VocalTec (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VocalTec) founded by Alon Cohen and Lior Haramaty in Israel, MPATH which was later bought by HearMe introduced it into the US back in 1997 (I remember using voice online for the first time, it was amazing), the memory stick was invented in Israel, most of IBM and Intels R&D (research labs) are in Israel now with the Pentium chips and if I recall the XEON chips being designed in Israel.
And one that most people forget about is PHP and Zend, PHP being a programming web language, the majority of sites you see online today that use a forum or any interactivity use PHP including StørmFrønt (LOL!).
Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski wrote what is modern PHP programming language in 1997. Ironic that StørmFrønt would use a forum that was coded with a Israeli programming language. Basically the majority of blogs, forums (JTF is also using a forum that was programmed in PHP), etc. use PHP today.
A Jewish man also played a role in the development and creation of TCP/IP and esentially what we know as the internet.
The co-invention of the Internet by Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, and Robert Kahn. Together with Kleinrock, Baran, and Kahn, Donald Davies+, Vinton Cerf+, and Lawrence Roberts+ are the six individuals most frequently cited as principal inventors of the Internet. Kleinrock, Kahn, Roberts+, and Cerf+ were awarded the US National Academy of Engineering's half-million dollar Draper Prize9 in 2001 "for the development of the Internet." Baran, Kleinrock, Davies+, and Roberts+ received the first IEEE Internet Award in 2000 for "their early, preeminent contributions in conceiving, analyzing and demonstrating packet-switching networks, the foundation technology of the Internet." Kahn and Baran received US National Medals of Technology in 1997 and 2007, respectively. Kleinrock was awarded the US National Medal of Science in 2007. Kahn and Cerf+ co-invented the TCP/IP protocol for integration of heterogeneous networks, which is the basis of the Internet's "inter-networking" architecture. They shared the 2004 ACM Turing Award for this work, and in 2005 each received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In 1972, Robert E. Kahn joined the DARPA Information Processing Technology Office, where he worked on both satellite packet networks and ground-based radio packet networks, and recognized the value of being able to communicate across both. In the spring of 1973, Vinton Cerf, the developer of the existing ARPANET Network Control Program (NCP) protocol, joined Kahn to work on open-architecture interconnection models with the goal of designing the next protocol generation for the ARPANET.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Kahn.jpg)
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I work with just about all the above mentioned technologies!
I wrote my web pages in PHP, I prefer Intel CPUs, I write a lot of TCP/IP code in C/C++....
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Re: "The Arabs don't even know that toilet paper was invented! "
First, they have to discover trees ! :laugh:
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Here is my flashback of memory technology:
Back on minicomputers we used Data General Disc Packages like these:
(http://www.wps.com/NOVA4/images/6070-open2.jpg)
(http://www.wps.com/NOVA4/small/6070-open3.jpg)
And computer centers used to look like this:
(http://www.wps.com/NOVA4/small/nova4-system1.jpg)
In the 1980s we started to use floppy drives like these:
(http://oldcomputers.net/pics/floppy8.gif)
The 8-Inch Floppy Disc {Capacity 100K}
(http://oldcomputers.net/pics/floppy5.gif)
The 5 1/4" Floppy Disc {Capacity 144K-1.2M
(http://oldcomputers.net/pics/floppy3.gif)
The 3 1/2" 'Floppy' {Capacity 400K-1.4M}
(http://www.vintagecomputing.com/wp-content/images/retroscan/corvus_apple_large.jpg)
The 1st Apple Hard Disc by Corvus systems {Capacity 10MB for $5350.00}
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what about that cool reel to reel storage?
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Back in the 'Homebrew' computing days I built my own machine similar to this picture:
(http://www.lesbird.com/sebhc/pics/1H8-2-17-19_640.jpg)
(http://www.lesbird.com/sebhc/pics/1H89-1_640.jpg)
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I remember using a Commodore 64 at school in 5th grade. That was pretty fun. They had us type up our spelling tests on it and play games like the meteor game so we could be "computer literate" :::D
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We used to play that for hours. Castle Wolfenstien- shooting up Nazis. Remember that one?
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We used to play that for hours. Castle Wolfenstien- shooting up Nazis. Remember that one?
Heck yes... There was Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple ][...
(http://www.retrocpu.com/apple-ii/images/games/c/castle_wolfenstein.png)
(http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2009/02/Sneaky%20History%20of%20Stealth%20Games/Screens/castle%20wolfenstein--article_image.jpg)
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I remember using a Commodore 64 at school in 5th grade. That was pretty fun. They had us type up our spelling tests on it and play games like the meteor game so we could be "computer literate" :::D
Rubystars,
I still have 2 working Commodore 64s in my storage room, along with a Commodore 128 and a Commodore Amiga 2000....
Commodore 64 :
(http://www.larwe.com/museum/img/c64system.jpg)
Commodore 128 :
(http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/commodore-128.jpg)
Commodore Amiga 2000 :
(http://amigamuseum.emu-france.com/Fichiers/articles/commodore_histoire/a2000.jpg)
I have quite a computer collection in my storage room...
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(http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~tlosborne/Osborne/Osbornehistory/Adamosborne/osbornecomputerspecsheet.jpg)
My Dad has had many computers over the years. I know this was not his first one, but this is the first one I remember well because he used to take it to-and-fro from his office. His monitor screen was yellow.
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http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Reviews/CastleAdventure/CA-Screens.html
(http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Reviews/CastleAdventure/Images/1.gif)
(http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Reviews/CastleAdventure/Images/2.gif)
(http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Reviews/CastleAdventure/Images/4.gif)
(http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Reviews/CastleAdventure/Images/5.gif)
(http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Reviews/CastleAdventure/Images/6.gif)
(http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Reviews/CastleAdventure/Images/7.gif)
I do not remember which computer my Dad let me play this video game on, but this is one of the greatest video games ever! I eventually beat the game after several weekends of going to my Dad's office.
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What?
I thought this was the first computer:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Quipu.png)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu)
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What?
I thought this was the first computer:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Quipu.png)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu)
Is that a cat-o-nine tails? I have heard it is an awesome torture implement...
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ZORK I, II, & III
(http://www5.stuttgart.de/stadtbuecherei/druck/oc/suter/bilder/zork.jpg)
(http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Images/zork2l.jpg)
(http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Images/zork3l.jpg)
(http://www.nostalgix.org/pictures/Zork1_Ende.png)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language. All four were members of the MIT Dynamic Modelling Group.
"Zork" was originally MIT hacker slang for an unfinished program. The implementors briefly named the completed game Dungeon, but changed it back to Zork after receiving a trademark violation notice from the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons. Zork has also been adapted to a widely panned book series.
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Zork was awesome!! :dance:
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This is my first computer IBM AT 5170 PC custom my dad built in 1988. (you can't see my face so the pictures fine)
(http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs023.ash2/34520_412439189802_500419802_4362209_4042108_n.jpg)
I used to play all kinds of games on there and had internet and everything. Machine sold for about $5,000 dollars (that would be about $10,000 in todays world)
It had DOS 3.0
Intel 80286 8 mhz processor (that was fast for it's time)
10 MB harddrive (huge harddrive at the time)
and 16 MB of RAM (most machines had about 256 kb of RAM in the 80's)
i had DOS installed but I also had Windows 2.1 which could be accessed from the DOS menu, I never used it though, Windows was really crappy at the time
(http://www.selectric.org/winhist/1win21.jpg)
this is what windows 2.1 looked like for those of you curious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuaGY13sNDA
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I really enjoyed a lot of Sierra games. :)
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this is a great thread with great info as well
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That's cool you have those old computers Muman, and also cool they still work! How would you ever get replacement parts for a computer that old though if it stopped working?
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That's cool you have those old computers Muman, and also cool they still work! How would you ever get replacement parts for a computer that old though if it stopped working?
This is why I have several of each model... I have 4 Apple ][s, 3 C-128, 2 C-64, 1 Amiga, 1 486 machine...
The other nice thing about old computers is that most of them used ICs which were commonly available. Back in the 80s I used to build my own machines from scratch. This was called Homebrew computing...
(http://www.xtlic.com/images/ic7400.jpg) (http://media.digikey.com/photos/Zilog%20Photos/269-40-DIP.jpg)
In those days the best magazine was BYTE magazine which had many interesting projects for Homebrew computer enthusiasts...
(http://www.gadgetspage.com/wp-content/uploads/Byte-Magazine.jpg) (http://www.vintagecomputing.com/wp-content/images/tinney/tinney_first_large.jpg)
(http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/mmint/h/bsep85c.jpg) (http://www.vintagecomputing.com/wp-content/images/tinney/tinney_byte_1_large.jpg)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_magazine
Byte magazine was an influential microcomputer magazine in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage. Whereas many magazines from the mid-1980s had been dedicated to the MS-DOS (PC) platform or the Mac, mostly from a business user's perspective, Byte covered developments in the entire field of "small computers and software", and sometimes included in-depth features on other computing fields as well, such as supercomputers and high-reliability computing.
Byte started in 1975, shortly after the first personal computers appeared as kits advertised in the back of electronics magazines. Byte was published monthly, with a yearly subscription price of $10.
...
The early years
Byte was able to attract advertising and articles from many well-knowns, soon-to-be-well-knowns, and ultimately-to-be-forgottens in the growing microcomputer hobby. Articles in the first issue (September, 1975) included Which Microprocessor For You? by Hal Chamberlin, Write Your Own Assembler by Dan Fylstra and Serial Interface by Don Lancaster. Advertisements from Godbout, MITS, Processor Technology, SCELBI, and Sphere appear, among others.
Early articles in Byte were do-it-yourself electronic or software projects to improve small computers. A continuing feature was Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar, a column in which electronic engineer Steve Ciarcia described small projects to modify or attach to a computer (later spun off to become the magazine Circuit Cellar, focusing on embedded computer applications). Significant articles in this period included the Kansas City standard for data storage on audio tape, insertion of disk drives into S-100 computers, publication of source code for various computer languages (Tiny C, BASIC, assemblers), and breathless coverage of the first microcomputer operating system, CP/M. Byte ran Microsoft's first advertisement, as "Micro-Soft", to sell a BASIC interpreter for 8080-based computers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_Computer_Club
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I used to subscribe to Byte.
I remember trying to build a z80 when I was 17.
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Wow, this thread is bringing back memories.
Some of my favorite games from way back:
(http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n380/hiwarp/kingsQuest.jpg)
King's Quest
(http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n380/hiwarp/MSFS100_1_0009.png)
MS Flight Simulator
(http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n380/hiwarp/hardball.gif)
Hardball
(http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n380/hiwarp/wizardry-2.gif)
Wizardry
And then there was the text-based Star Trek game that I wrote. Wish I still had a copy of it. Come to think of it, if I look hard enough I can probably find a 5 1/4" floppy disk in the bottom of a buried box somewhere in my house that has a copy.
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Those games were fun now you show them to youngesters they just laugh