[geeks] FW: RE: How the Computer Became Personal (Markoff article)

[Ken Hansen]

-----Original Message-----
From: Gordon Bell
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 3:13 AM
To: XXXXXXXXX Discussion List
Subject: [killer-apps] RE: How the Computer Became Personal (Markoff
article)


Success has many fathers.  

We'll see a pile of articles from Mitch Waldrop's book, The Dream
Machine that just came out.  It provides a wealth of ideas about the
origin of the PC, networks, and everything else in what is an biography
of JCR Licklider.

Attached is a timeline from Computer Engineering, A DEC View that
several of us wrote in 1977 on DEC's 30th anniversary.

The supposed path of the LINC c62-6, was invisible within Digital that
made and sold the LINC-8. 
Another slight problem is that the LINC failed to mention the CDC 160
from Seymour Cray that preceded it by 2 years. Mostly within DEC, the
LINC was regarded as primitive, lacking software and for Doctors to be
able to relive the evolution of systems.  E.g. in the mid 60s, at the
time of the LINC, 8's were running Fortran c1965, Focal (an interpreter
based on JOSS and superior to BASIC introduced in 69), and then BASIC.
In the mid-60s DECtape was used on the various 18-bit family members,
but the operating systems were more like components.

Tom Stockebrand who built the LINCtape, came to Digital and designed
DECtape in 1964... with 256 KByte and supporting a file system because
it was block addressable. This was the key to the LINC and DEC's early
personal computing operating systems because you had a personal file
system, just as floppies were the key for the Apple II and IBM PC. Six
years ago The Computer Museum did an exhibit on the 25th anniversary of
the microprocessor and Intel was surprised to find a big part of it was
on the disk technology that they regarded as an inessential ingredient
of the PC.

On the software side, the path was clear to me: MIT's CTSS influenced
DEC's timesharing system for the PDP-6/10, and two brilliant DEC
programmers from Brooklyn Poly produced OS/8 for PDP-8 c1970, followed
by RT-11 c1973 for the PDP-11. They wanted the same facility they had on
PDP-10.  This was one of the basis, along with Unix, of CP/M of Digital
Research and the operating system that Billg bought that morphed into
DOS.  RSX was a separate path at DEC and the progenitor more than
anything of VMS that went to NT via Dave Cutler.  

One thing about history is the more you hear the path, the more you
realize how little of the story is being told... in part only by those
who really feel they need to tell it again and again.  The other folks,
like Cutler are still working.

An interesting story still needs to be told about how making the
decision to use Intel with its limited addressing, was key to impeding
the development of O/Ss... perhaps as long as a decade.

I tried to cover this in Computer Engineering that CMU encoded and is
referenced on my web site...  Wes and the CDC are credited, including
the notion of the tape (file system) and CRT as critical parts of the
PC.

g


-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Hansen [mailto:Ken.Hansen at ICTI-USA.com]
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 9:42 AM
To: Killer Apps Discussion List
Subject: [killer-apps] RE: How the Computer Became Personal


Chunka,

A very interesting post - Thanks!

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: Chunka Mui [mailto:chunka at killerplatforms.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2001 2:45 PM
To: Killer Apps Discussion List
Subject: [killer-apps] How the Computer Became Personal


http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/19/technology/19SCOM.html?searchpv=nytTod
ay&pagewanted=print
Folks, I got this email from Gordon Bell (yes, that one!) describing the history of some early DEC/others machines, thought folks here might be interested...

There was an attachment, which I will send to Bill seperately, as I didn't want to waste bandwidth here, and thought he might want to see it/post it on his server.

Ken
(BTW, the maillist I am on is *not* a computer hardware/history list - it is something entirely different)

AUG 19, 2001

How the Computer Became Personal

By JOHN MARKOFF

<snip>

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