Re: Posting questions on Woz's website...

[blackm00@cam.org (Michael Black)]

Exegete <millers@noneofyourbusiness.com> wrote in message news:<3DACF1E9.9080402@noneofyourbusiness.com>...
> Jeff Blakeney wrote:
> > On Tue, 15 Oct 2002 08:33:55 +0200, Ruud Dingemans <rtech@home.nl>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Um... Yes there was, Jeff; ever heard of the Micral? And the PET came
> >>out on the exact same time that the AII was introduced (not to mention
> >>that that was the first *real* ready-to-go-computer, since it had a
> >>monitor built-in and started into BASIC. Turn it on, and go. Turn the
> >>Apple on, and um.. no picture due to missing CRT, and when it did, you
> >>only saw a monitor dump anyway   ;) ).
> >>
> >>(Note: I have them both, like them both, and am not taking sides here)
> >
> >
> > No, I've never heard of the Micral and I was always under the
> > impression that the PET didn't come out until after the Apple II.  I
> > used PETs in high school starting in 1981 and didn't think they had
> > been around very long and I know that the Apple II came out in 1977.
> > I guess it just never occurred to me that my school would be using
> > four year old computers.
> >
> > However, I never really looked into which computer came first,
> > personally.  It is just that for almost as long as I've been using
> > Apple IIs I've been led to believe that the Apple II was the first
> > personal computer you could buy pre-assembled and not in kit form.
>
> Actually, one could buy the MITS machine (in theory) fully assembled. I
> can't remember what the price was though. More than likely, since they
> had trouble getting even the parts out, the company might have gone
> belly up before they shipped any already assembled machines.
>
> Roy
>
Well MITS survived long enough to be bought out by another company,
was it Pertec?  I don't know what year, but it was late enough that
I remember thinking they weren't going to gain much from buying
the company, because the focus by that time was on the all in one
type systems.

MITS wasn't the only one that offered an assembled version of a kit,
though since there wasn't much before the Altair 8800, and it pretty
much broke the floodgate, I doubt there was an earlier example.

As others have mentioned 1977 was the year of the pre-builts;
Heathkit (I think you could get them pre-assembled but besides
they were a name known outside of hobby computer circles), Commodore,
the Apple II, the original TRS-80 and I suspect I'm missing some.
I think the issue wasn't that they were pre-assembled, but they
were in some way aimed at a market for people who didn't want
to know about what was inside, they simply wanted to use a computer.

They all had decent memory, they (well not the Heathkit) had video
out for a monitor or TV set, and were useable to some extent out
of the box.

The previous computers were either incomplete or limited in function,
requiring one to muck about to get it all going, or nobody had heard
of them unless they were reading the computer magazines.  The 1977 wave
was much more advertising intensive, trying to reach a whole new
type of buyer.

You wouldn't see "101 Things To Do With Your Home Computer" type
books (I saw one of those for the first time in years just this
morning) before the 1977-wave, but after that you did start to
see them.  The computers may not have been better, or particularly
different from the pre-1977 computers, but their very tone started
changing the whole small computer field.

    Michael