Today the Dr. Dobbs website, sequel of the august publication of the same name, announced that it was going out of business.
It is an announcement that causes me some sadness. Dr. Dobbs was the last of the "originals", the publications of the Elder Days before the web, before the internet, before Windows, and even before the IBM PC.
It was a very different time. Computers were slow, low-powered, expensive, and rare. The personal computers at the time used processors that ran at 1 MHz or 2 MHz, had (perhaps) 64KB of RAM, and often stored data on cassette tapes. A typical computer system cost anywhere from $1000 to $4000 (in 1980 dollars!).
Magazines like Dr. Dobbs were the lifeblood of the industry. They provided news, product announcements, reviews, and articles on theory and on practice. In a world without the internet and web sites, magazines were the way to learn about these strange new devices called computers.
Today, computers are fast, powerful, cheap, and common. So common and so cheap that people leave working computers in the trash. So fast and powerful that we no longer care (much) about the processor speed or memory size.
Not only are computers plentiful, but information about computers is plentiful. Various web sites provide news, opinion, and technical information. We don't need a single "go to" site for all of that information; Google can find it for us.
So, goodbye to Dr Dobbs. You served us well. You helped us through a difficult time, and shared information with many. You were one of the factors in the success of those early days, and therefore the success of the PC industry today. You will be missed.
Showing posts with label microcomputers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label microcomputers. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Thursday, November 21, 2013
The excitement of new tech
GreenArrays has introduced the GA144 chip, which contains 144 F18 processors. They also have a prototyping circuit board for the GA144. These two offerings intrigue me.
The F18 is a processor that uses Forth as its instruction set. That in itself is interesting. Forth is a small, stack-oriented language, initially developed in the 1960s (Wikipedia asserts the origin at 1958) and created to run on diverse architectures. Like C, it is close to hardware and has a small set of native operations. The Forth language lets the user define new "words" and build their own language.
The GA144 has 144 of these processors.
The F18 and the GA144 remind me of the early days of microcomputers, when systems like the Mark-8 and the Altair were available. These "homebrew" systems existed prior to the "commercial" offerings of the Apple II and the Radio Shack TRS-80. They were new things in the world, unlike anything we had seen before.
We were excited by these new microcomputers. We were also ignorant of their capabilities. We knew that they could do things; we didn't know how powerful they would become. Eventually, the commercial systems adopted the IBM PC architecture and the MS-DOS operating system (later, Windows) and became ubiquitous.
I'm excited by the GA144. It's new, it's different, and it's potent. It is a new approach to computing. I don't know where it will take us (or that it will succeed at taking us anywhere) -- but I like that it offers us new options.
The F18 is a processor that uses Forth as its instruction set. That in itself is interesting. Forth is a small, stack-oriented language, initially developed in the 1960s (Wikipedia asserts the origin at 1958) and created to run on diverse architectures. Like C, it is close to hardware and has a small set of native operations. The Forth language lets the user define new "words" and build their own language.
The GA144 has 144 of these processors.
The F18 and the GA144 remind me of the early days of microcomputers, when systems like the Mark-8 and the Altair were available. These "homebrew" systems existed prior to the "commercial" offerings of the Apple II and the Radio Shack TRS-80. They were new things in the world, unlike anything we had seen before.
We were excited by these new microcomputers. We were also ignorant of their capabilities. We knew that they could do things; we didn't know how powerful they would become. Eventually, the commercial systems adopted the IBM PC architecture and the MS-DOS operating system (later, Windows) and became ubiquitous.
I'm excited by the GA144. It's new, it's different, and it's potent. It is a new approach to computing. I don't know where it will take us (or that it will succeed at taking us anywhere) -- but I like that it offers us new options.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
The microcomputers of today
The microcomputer revolution was started with the MITS Altair 8800, the IMSAI 8080, and smaller computers such as the COSMAC ELF. They were machines made for tinkerers, less polished than the Apple II or Radio Shack TRS-80. They included the bare elements needed for a computer, often omitting the case and power supply. (Tinkerers were expected to supply their own cases and power supplies.)
While less polished, they showed that there was a market for microcomputers, and inspired Apple and Radio Shack (and lots of other vendors) to made and sold microcomputers.
Today sees a resurgence of small, "unpolished" computers that are designed for tinkerers. They include the Arduino, the Raspberry Pi, the Beaglebone, and Intel's Minnowboard system. Like the early, pre-Apple microcomputers, these small systems are the bare essentials. (Including omitting the power supply and case.)
And like the earlier microcomputer craze, they are popular.
What's interesting is that there are no major players in this space. There are no big software vendors supplying software for these new microcomputers.
There were no major software vendors in the early microcomputer space. These systems were offered for sale with minimal (or perhaps zero) software. The CP/M operating system was adopted by users and adapted to their systems. CP/M's appeal was that it could be (relatively, for tinkerers) easily modified for specific systems.
The second generation of microcomputers, the Apple II and TRS-80 and their contemporaries, had a number of differences from the first generation. They were polished: they were complete systems with cases, power supplies, and software.
The second generation of microcomputers had a significant market for software. There were lots of vendors, the largest being Digital Research and Microsoft. Microsoft made its fortune by supplying its BASIC interpreter to just about every hardware vendor.
That market did not include the major players from the mainframe or minicomputer markets. Perhaps they thought that the market dynamics was not profitable -- they had been selling software for thousands of dollars (or tens of thousands) and packages in the microcomputer market sold for hundreds (or sometimes tens).
It strikes me that Microsoft is not supplying software to these new microcomputers.
Perhaps they think that the market dynamics are not profitable.
But these are the first generation of new microcomputers, the "unpolished" systems, made for tinkerers. Perhaps Microsoft will make another fortune in the second generation, as they did with the first microcomputer revolution.
Or perhaps another vendor will.
While less polished, they showed that there was a market for microcomputers, and inspired Apple and Radio Shack (and lots of other vendors) to made and sold microcomputers.
Today sees a resurgence of small, "unpolished" computers that are designed for tinkerers. They include the Arduino, the Raspberry Pi, the Beaglebone, and Intel's Minnowboard system. Like the early, pre-Apple microcomputers, these small systems are the bare essentials. (Including omitting the power supply and case.)
And like the earlier microcomputer craze, they are popular.
What's interesting is that there are no major players in this space. There are no big software vendors supplying software for these new microcomputers.
There were no major software vendors in the early microcomputer space. These systems were offered for sale with minimal (or perhaps zero) software. The CP/M operating system was adopted by users and adapted to their systems. CP/M's appeal was that it could be (relatively, for tinkerers) easily modified for specific systems.
The second generation of microcomputers, the Apple II and TRS-80 and their contemporaries, had a number of differences from the first generation. They were polished: they were complete systems with cases, power supplies, and software.
The second generation of microcomputers had a significant market for software. There were lots of vendors, the largest being Digital Research and Microsoft. Microsoft made its fortune by supplying its BASIC interpreter to just about every hardware vendor.
That market did not include the major players from the mainframe or minicomputer markets. Perhaps they thought that the market dynamics was not profitable -- they had been selling software for thousands of dollars (or tens of thousands) and packages in the microcomputer market sold for hundreds (or sometimes tens).
It strikes me that Microsoft is not supplying software to these new microcomputers.
Perhaps they think that the market dynamics are not profitable.
But these are the first generation of new microcomputers, the "unpolished" systems, made for tinkerers. Perhaps Microsoft will make another fortune in the second generation, as they did with the first microcomputer revolution.
Or perhaps another vendor will.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Tablets will not replace PCs -- at least not as you think they might
Tablets have seen quite a bit of popularity, and some people now ask: When will tablets replace PCs?
To which I answer: They won't, at least not in the way most folks think of replacing PCs.
The issue of replacement is subtle.
To examine the subtleties, let's review a previous revolution that saw one form of technology replaced by another.
Did PCs replace mainframes? In one sense, they have, yet in another they have not. PCs are the most common form of computing, used in businesses, schools, and homes. Yet mainframes remain, processing millions of transactions each day.
When microcomputers were first introduced, one could argue that PCs had replaced mainframes as the dominant form of computing. Even before the IBM PC, in the days of the Apple II and the Radio Shack TRS-80, there were more microcomputers than mainframes. (I don't have numbers, but I am confident that several tens of thousands of microcomputers were sold. I'm also confident that there were fewer than several tens of thousands of mainframes at the time.)
But sheer numbers is not an accurate measure. For one thing, a mainframe serves multiple users and a PC serves one. So maybe PCs replaced mainframes when the number of PC users exceeded the number of mainframe users.
The measure of users is not particularly clear, either. Many users of microcomputers were hobbyists, not serious day-in-day-out users. And certainly mainframes processed more business transactions than the pre-internet PCs.
Maybe we should measure not the number of devices or the number of users, but instead the conversations about the devices. When did people talk about PCs more than mainframes? We cannot count tweets or blog posts (neither had been invented) but we can look at magazines and publications. Prior to the IBM PC, most technology magazines discussed mainframes (or minicomputers) and ignored the microcomputer systems. There were some microcomputer-specific magazines, the most popular one being BYTE.
The introduction of the IBM PC generated a number of magazines. At this point the magazine content shifted towards PCs.
There are other measures: number of want ads, number of conferences and expos, number of attendees at conferences and expos. We could argue for quite some time about the appropriate metric.
But I think that the notion of one generation of computing technology replacing another is a slippery one, and perhaps a false one. I'm not sure that one technology really replaces an earlier one.
Consider: We have advanced from the mainframe era to the PC era, and then to the networked PC era, and then to the internet era, and now we are venturing into the mobile/cloud era. Each successive "wave" of technology has not replaced the previous "wave", but instead expanded the IT sphere. PCs did not replace mainframes; they replaced typewriters and dedicated word-processing systems and expanded the computational realm with spreadsheets. The web did not replace PCs, it expanded the computation realm with on-line transactions -- many of which are handled with back-end systems running on... mainframes!
A new technology expands our horizons.
Tablets will expand our computing realm. They will enable us to do new things. Some tasks of today that are handled by PCs will be handled by tablets, but not all of them.
So I don't see tablets replacing PCs in the coming year. Or the next year. Or the year after.
But if you insist on a metric, some measurement to clearly define the shift from PC to tablet, I suggest that we look at not numbers or users or apps but conversations. The number people who talk about tablets, compared to the number of people who talk about PCs. I would include blogs, tweets, web articles, advertisements, podcasts, and books as part of the conversation. You may want to include a few more.
Whatever you pick, look at them, take some measurements, and mark when the lines cross.
And then blog or tweet about it.
To which I answer: They won't, at least not in the way most folks think of replacing PCs.
The issue of replacement is subtle.
To examine the subtleties, let's review a previous revolution that saw one form of technology replaced by another.
Did PCs replace mainframes? In one sense, they have, yet in another they have not. PCs are the most common form of computing, used in businesses, schools, and homes. Yet mainframes remain, processing millions of transactions each day.
When microcomputers were first introduced, one could argue that PCs had replaced mainframes as the dominant form of computing. Even before the IBM PC, in the days of the Apple II and the Radio Shack TRS-80, there were more microcomputers than mainframes. (I don't have numbers, but I am confident that several tens of thousands of microcomputers were sold. I'm also confident that there were fewer than several tens of thousands of mainframes at the time.)
But sheer numbers is not an accurate measure. For one thing, a mainframe serves multiple users and a PC serves one. So maybe PCs replaced mainframes when the number of PC users exceeded the number of mainframe users.
The measure of users is not particularly clear, either. Many users of microcomputers were hobbyists, not serious day-in-day-out users. And certainly mainframes processed more business transactions than the pre-internet PCs.
Maybe we should measure not the number of devices or the number of users, but instead the conversations about the devices. When did people talk about PCs more than mainframes? We cannot count tweets or blog posts (neither had been invented) but we can look at magazines and publications. Prior to the IBM PC, most technology magazines discussed mainframes (or minicomputers) and ignored the microcomputer systems. There were some microcomputer-specific magazines, the most popular one being BYTE.
The introduction of the IBM PC generated a number of magazines. At this point the magazine content shifted towards PCs.
There are other measures: number of want ads, number of conferences and expos, number of attendees at conferences and expos. We could argue for quite some time about the appropriate metric.
But I think that the notion of one generation of computing technology replacing another is a slippery one, and perhaps a false one. I'm not sure that one technology really replaces an earlier one.
Consider: We have advanced from the mainframe era to the PC era, and then to the networked PC era, and then to the internet era, and now we are venturing into the mobile/cloud era. Each successive "wave" of technology has not replaced the previous "wave", but instead expanded the IT sphere. PCs did not replace mainframes; they replaced typewriters and dedicated word-processing systems and expanded the computational realm with spreadsheets. The web did not replace PCs, it expanded the computation realm with on-line transactions -- many of which are handled with back-end systems running on... mainframes!
A new technology expands our horizons.
Tablets will expand our computing realm. They will enable us to do new things. Some tasks of today that are handled by PCs will be handled by tablets, but not all of them.
So I don't see tablets replacing PCs in the coming year. Or the next year. Or the year after.
But if you insist on a metric, some measurement to clearly define the shift from PC to tablet, I suggest that we look at not numbers or users or apps but conversations. The number people who talk about tablets, compared to the number of people who talk about PCs. I would include blogs, tweets, web articles, advertisements, podcasts, and books as part of the conversation. You may want to include a few more.
Whatever you pick, look at them, take some measurements, and mark when the lines cross.
And then blog or tweet about it.
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