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Loved johns hair.
Cranky YOUNG Geek
J/P=?
I think we’re all a little glad he’s not wearing his collar up.
Ah, the enthusiasm about new machines that existed in the early to mid 80’s. Good old days!
LOL! John just popped everything out, I wonder how hard it was to put back together!
And man once that OS/2 comes out! Things will really change 🙂
archive.org has a whole slew of computer chronicle episodes available to watch as well.
The fellow with the beard was Gary Kildall, the father of personal computing.
John kinda looks like bubbles from ‘trailor park boys’
One funny anecdote: I attended IBM’s introduction of the PS/2 in San Jose, and during the presentation an audience member asked the IBM guys on stage whether the PS/2s supported TCP/IP. The IBMers were baffled and turned to each other, saying “TCP what?”
“Do we need clones [of the PS/2]?” someone asks. You could say the lack of clones was the single biggest reason the PS/2 failed, and this is pretty ironic because locking out clones was the main purpose for IBM making the PS/2. (Apple should probably learn a lesson here, but of course they won’t.)
The PS/2’s MicroChannel bus had some innovations and was superior to the ISA bus, but the main purpose of MicroChannel and the Advanced BIOS (ABIOS) was to make it impossible to clone without licensing technology from IBM. I can’t remember whether IBM was making these available for license (on any reasonable terms), but I don’t remember anyone licensing MicroChannel (as a backplane for a system).
It’s a bit of a stretch to call Gary Kildall the father of personal computing, though of course CP/M was very important. You might call him the deadbeat dad of personal computing — he was there at the conception but didn’t follow through. That left an opening for the jerks at Microsoft to take over.
The one thing I remember from the PS/2s, and where I was working had a TON of these things, was that they only supported Token-Ring for network connectivity and that, if you were transferring files from another computer to the PS/2, you needed to use a funky cable that would let you run software from IBM to send the files from the old machine to the PS/2. What a pain in the butt.
“So you sound pretty negative about it…”
Well, some things never change 🙂
(Kidding!)
#8: I think there was one other company making microchannel architecture PCs, it might have been Olivetti, but I’m not sure about that.
Anyway, it started Compaq to lead the way with EISA which was a good thing (hmm… now thinking of it, how often did I sit in front of some early proliant server cursing the fact that I had no EISA support disk for this or that piece of HW…)
pj
I would say Ed Roberts is more the father of the personal computing than anyone else. He designed and sold the Altair back in 1974. As the story goes, when Paul Allen picked up the the Jan ’75 issue of Popular Electronics with a cover story about it, he ran across campus to show roommate Bill Gates which led them to write BASIC for the machine, which resulted in the formation of Microsoft.
I had doubts about the strange 16 bit color space that was available on the PS/2. I don’t think many graphics apps ever really used that format.
I wonder if those chuckleheads look over everybody’s shoulder when they are working and chuckle. It doesn’t seem like a path to success.
George Morrow was comming up. I would like to see that also.
NCR used microchannel. Actually, long after IBM gave up the ghost on it. So I worked for the last company to sell microchannel machines!
Eesh.
Video was worth it just to see John’s hair.
I love the comment… the ps/2 will break the 640k limit!!! then we can use faster processors and then get multitasking operating systems!
and of course the amiga was already out and was multitasking on 128k… :))
Always interesting to look back at the good old days. 🙂
I just set mine out for the trash last fall. The hard drive had no docking system, so a power failure while writing the drive meant $750 for a new 20 meg micro-channel unit. In continuous opperation the supplied monitors had a 12 month expected lifetime.
john looks like a chubbier Bill Gates.
Ahh.. The PS/2…. don’t have any of the computers anymore, but I do still have a couple of those keyboards somewhere!
I always loved how the key caps came off of them…. One could really have fun with the computer lab keyboards!
-A
I just remembered I have 2 PS/2 model 30’s, a model 55, and two portables. All but one 30 and a portable are working! The portable’s keyboard is still the best I’ve ever found on any portable PC! To this day! It’s the one where I can type fastest. And I still have a ton of old PS/2 keyboards, they’re still my favorites, except for the huge size, and color… You see, everything in my PC is black…
I may sell a few on Ebay. How much do you figure one would be worth?
IBM, HAD a good infrstructure.
But didnt backup the system, and FIGHT for the archtecture…
If they lowered the price they could have taken about 1/2 the market.
LOVED the power switch…CLICK…Not hidden, and big enough for LARGE fingers.
Anyone know why The Computer Chronicles got cancelled ? That was like the best show on PBS. it was shows like that, that made me want to buy a computer in the first place. I really miss it.
This old vid gets dredged up every so often. I do recall the event though, especially how they all started looking freaked out as I continued to aimlessly disassemble the computer in front of them. It went right back together, by the way.
28. “Anyone know why The Computer Chronicles got cancelled?”
I used to work at PBS back in the 80s early 90s. Computer Chronicles started off as a really cool show about computers. But towards the end it turned into a show where vendors would come on and hype their crap. It lost all impartiality and was just about marketing.
heh-heh …
“clones”
I had not thought for a long time about the day when PCs were considered IBM “clones”
I’m glad this got posted. I’ve been meaning to get it put up here since the blog began. For those interested all of the Computer Chronicles videos are available at the Internet Archive (where Stuart Cheifet, the former host, now works).
31,
ya…
It was cool at the beginning when it was Info on the up and coming, and what was happening…
Sometime After the Amiga it went Advert..