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

[Exegete <millers@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

> Even if the Micral and PET did beat the Apple II to market, I can
> probably just amend my statement to be that up until the Apple II came
> out, there was no personal computer you could buy that came
> preassembled and ready to go that had colour graphics.  :-)