🚀 go-pugleaf

<hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 1:51:12 AM UTC-4, Charles Richmond wrote:
> 
>>> On Monday, March 19, 2018 at 1:43:54 AM UTC-4, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>>> 
>>>>> Also the "personal computer" boom started in the 80s.
>>>> 
>>>> Mid '70s.
>>>> 
>>>> IBM joined in after the market had been established.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> IMHO, the personal computer market was a niche specialty field
>>> with _relatively_ few units sold until the IBM PC hit the streets
>>> _and_ was accepted by the business community.
> 
> 
>> IMHO your HO is not worth much.  Apple sold quite a good number of 
>> computers *before* the IBM PC.  Radio Shack did so well selling their 
>> computers that they were opening Radio Shack Computer stores.  In May of 
>> 1980, I bought a Radio Shack Color Computer at one of these computer 
>> stores. The Color Computer had a Motorola 6809 processor in it.
> 
> I still maintain that before the IBM PC, personal computers were
> still a specialty niche market.  Yes, there were Radio Shack
> and Apple computers out there.  But in _relative_ terms, the
> number of users was still very small.

The Apple looked like what it was - a machine for hobbyiests. The multiple
ribbon cables coming out of the case, ant the floppy drives in separate
boxes, looked like h@ll and added a lot of vulnerability to the system.
Many places I saw left the cover off for easy access. The machines got a
lot of business use, but they never appeared  to be business machines.

> 
> There was certainly an automobile world before Henry Ford came 
> along with the Model T.  But I think most people would agree that
> the Model T's low price, durability, and widespread availability 
> was what revolutionized the automobile field.
> 
> I knew a lot of early purchasers, and many of them bought machines
> for hobbyist or experimental reasons.  That is, many business users
> got them with the attitude, "well, computers are neat, so let's see
> what this can do for us."  Some business users made very good use 
> of them--I knew a few who ended up evolving from a retail store
> into being a computer consultant for other businesses.  But other
> business users ended up with a machine that sat on a shelf, perhaps
> being slightly used for one small application.
> 
> As others mentioned, the magic letters "IBM" added a great deal
> of cachet to the personal computer market.  I would also submit
> that the wide variety of software and specialty hardware developed
> for the IBM PC helped sales (we bought such a unit for a specific
> data communications application).  In addition, I would submit
> that the discount priced clone market, which seemed to sprout
> up awfully fast, also contributed to the boom.
> 
> As an aside, it seemed to me most IBM PC's came with CGA, the
> coarse color monitor.  I thought it looked like crap and hated
> using it.  I only saw a few units with a monochrome screen, but
> they looked a lot better.  VGA greatly improved things.

CGA was terrible for text, but looked really good with simple graphics like
Lotus-1-2-3. Short of having two monitors the Hercules cards represented
the best compromize.

> 
> FWIW, at the supermarket, the modern scanner/register has a
> screen and for whatever reason, the typeface and style looks
> just like the DOS screen of the old days (in large characters.)
> 

-- 
Pete