Re: If you could design a $300 homecomputer today, what would you choose?

[Bob Retelle <bobr1@provide.net>]

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:29:06 GMT, David Ogg <davidogg@nc.rr.com>
wrote:


> What was so magical about our first 8bit computers that made virtually
>everyone who owned them learn to program them, as opposed to today, 
>where people are so cynical about their machines? We used to "Love" our 
>computers in a way that won't happen again, it seems. Gosh, did I say 
>that? I sound like an old fart ;)
>

The simple answer is that there was nothing else available and very
little was available for what WAS available.

There was nothing that would run a competent word processor or
spreadsheet, or play a photorealistic game, or render in 16 million
colors, or typeset a page layout, or sort and relate a million entry
database.

If you wanted something other than what you could buy from the back of
Compute's Gazette, you had to learn to program and write it yourself.

There weren't stores like CompUSA where you could just buy the program
and get on with whatever it was you wanted to do.

You HAD to figure out how to POKE graphics to the screen, or VARPRT to
find out where your string variables were stored.

When I bought my first computer (an even older fart), an OSI C1P, I
wanted to play games on it.   I bought game programs and ended up
HAVING to learn to program to fix the bugs in the "commercial"
programs.   I had to learn the "guts" of the computer to figure out
how to add sound to the games since the manufacturer had designed
sound into the system but not implemented it.

Sure it was fun, and sure I learned a lot, and actually made some
money with it, and yes indeed, I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

But it wasn't what I'd originally wanted to DO with "a computer".


Now, you don't need a soldering iron or disassembler to do what you
want a computer to DO.   In most cases, you just get the software and
DO it.

Not everyone wanted to "tinker" with a computer.  Computers didn't
really "take off" until they became capable enough that you DIDN'T
have to tinker with them to get them to do something.

That doesn't help the "tinkerers" very much, I know, but that's the
main reason things are different today than they were when 8-bit
computers were the only thing available.


That's actually what the original intent of this huge message thread
was, to provide a "new" version of the machines we used to tinker
with.




BobR