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- Hacker News
- I wonder what the average CS grad thinks of these days when they hear the company name "IBM".by lenerdenator
- "I haven't heard of that LLM model, how is it?"by ColdStream
- "I guess we'll need to learn how to program those quantum computers in the end"...by rbanffy
- Might be something like "IBM? What's that?"by userbinator
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
That is the certificate I earned upon completing community college. Their Linux curriculum was originally designed around Debian, but when IBM acquired RHEL, redesigned to offer this foot-in-the-door.
IBM still seems to do alright in the legacy mainframe/mini market. It is quite strange how the AS/400 and zOS stuff all goes without notice of ordinary IT guys like me, as if it didn't exist, but still powers a lot of machine rooms that aren't AI data centers.
- Apple II home computers and TRS-80 are 48.by iberator
- It is one of those things, yes they are old but they also aren't that old considering the impact personal computers have had on everything.by ColdStream
- I learned BASIC in 1981 on the TRS-80 Model I with 4k RAM (later upgraded to a massive 16k), and it wasn't long before someone showed me EDTASM [1], and I was hooked. My parents couldn't believe me when I asked them to buy "How to Program the Z80" by Rodnay Zaks [2]. They were shocked, it was the first time I asked them to buy a technical book. I was so excited I couldn't sleep for days. I was in High School, and I would carry the book around and read, use the lookup tables, and write Z80 assembly in my spiral-bound 8.5"x11" notebook. One three-day weekend, I slept about 4 hours while I was disassembling the BASIC ROM to find nuggets I could call in my Z80 programs, and also to learn so much more about the video, the cassette interface, interrupts, etc. My notebook looked like something a madman had scribbled on the walls of an asylum to everyone around me, but to me it was perfectly organized, and I used it to reference things I would use later in my programs. I got to the point where I could read the hex dumps and "see" the op codes in my mind; people would look over my shoulder while I was debugging, and I'd be explaining what the code was doing, but I hadn't disassembled it yet. I didn't even realize I was doing that until one of my classmates pointed it out: "Hey, disassemble that. I'm not following you, how the heck do you see that?"
And all of this because my science teacher had that TRS-80 Model I sitting in the corner of his classroom gathering dust; nobody knew what it was, I didn't either, but I had to figure it out. I've always had this bug, I don't believe in magic, I want to know how everything works, it's been an insatiable thing all my life, that first machine set me on a course of learning for the rest of my life.
Thanks, Mr. Kruzan, you changed my life. I'll never forget you. Oh, and thanks to all the people who created the Z80, the TRS-80 Model I, and paved the path for me to learn computers and never stop learning.
We are truly building on the shoulders of giants; every generation, more giants. It's humbling to look back and think about it forty-five years later...
by kator - And to think that back then, those weak computers took up entire floors of institutes, with ponds just for cooling them...by GreenLightGo
- time to boot up some Lode Runner.by taude
- I am not a huge fan of the IBM PC. For one, it was a mediocre design. Most important, it caused a mass extinction in the small computer space so that, even today, the majority of desktop computers out there are distant descendants of the original 5150. They probably have a complete 5150 inside them, just for compatibility with ancient software.by rbanffy
- It was a mediocre design, but it came with superb documentation for every bit of hardware and software in it, including the source code for its BIOS and all the hardware details of the peripheral and expansion interfaces.
I wish this had remained true for its descendants.
by adrian_b - What the IBM PC provided was a standard on which competition was unleashed and massive investments went into improving a common platform. Which is how all the closed proprietary alternatives got overwhelmed. Without it, we would have many weak walled gardens incompatible with each other, like we have on the smartphone market.
Listen to Linus Torvalds when he says that the PC is so easy compared to the nightmare of all those incompatible arm SOCs.
I dream of a smartphone PC.
by skywal_l - I became an Intel Field Application (FAE) engineer in 1988, just 7 years after the PC. At my first internal tech conference in Phoenix I was told that the reason IBM used the 8088 over the Motorola 6502 they were also looking at was because the local Intel FAE lent them an 8088 emulator. These things were a pin-for pin replacement for the chip and were the hardware equivalent of a software debugger, with single-stepping, register inspection, breakpoints etc. Having one would have made development of the motherboard that much easier and quicker. This seemed to be common knowledge in the FAE community, but never mentioned by IBM or Intel higher ups. Who knows which version is true, but perhaps a design decision based on the serendipitous fact that the FAE had a loan stock emulator in the trunk of his car when he visited the IBM team was not the story that either company wanted written.by burningdeck
- https://sharktastica.co.uk/image?id=yysMQjg1
Admiring the keyboard layout they went with. I love that Ctrl is placed in my preferred location. That’s prime real estate that modern keyboards waste on Capslock. Unfortunately, Capslock still exists awkwardly adjacent to the space bar.
by k3vinw - That cord storage pocket is pretty nice as well.by jimmydddd
- I love the keyboard casually hanging off the desk like it’s not 20lbs!by abotsis
- It's a weirdly unnecessary AI version of this image (https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/PA-6797798.j...). It should be a green-screen monitor, and the woman staring at the printer...by shever73
- Ah jeez, that makes me feel old. It’s particularly impactful as my dad worked in the computer industry at the time of the transition and the firm he worked for were a little late to the game. They limped on for years but ultimately failed.
My first pc ran CP/M
by secretsatan - Yep. I had a Northstar Advantage and was able to get all the various MicroSoft Language distributions for it.
80 column text and dual floppies. Woot!
by pstuart - In about 1990, my Dad gifted me an old XT. By that point it was almost ancient, no modern software would work on it, but I could do some BASIC programming, and learn DOS and a few PC magazines still had PC software on 5.25" cover disks, so I got some of those going. My mates by this point had Amiga 500s and Atari STs and the other rare PC owner I found was using 386s and dreaming of a 486 (the Pentium was still years away).
A few years later the PSU blew, a mate and I isolated it to a capacitor that burned out, we tried replacing it but it didn't work. I left it to one side and I decided I'd get back to it one day and restore it with more time and knowledge - or get a professional (I'm a software guy), to fix it.
I returned from University one break to find it missing. My step-father had known it was broken and decided it was rubbish. He'd put the whole thing - base unit, monitor, keyboard, all of it, into a wheelie bin for the council to take with the household rubbish collection.
I felt sorry for the rubbish collectors - that thing was heavy. I'm surprised it didn't break the bin, TBH.
And of course, I still haven't forgiven him. Love the guy, but man...
Anyway, when I have the time and space for a small retro computing museum, I'll be getting one of those in the collection. Iconic, beautiful, and close to my heart. And also - I can't understate this enough - really, really heavy and not something you should dispose of with household rubbish.
by PaulRobinson - I was still using my XT clone (with Hercules graphics) in 1990, mostly for WordPerfect and to play SimCity. I also remember getting simcga from a friend in 1991 and using that to play some 80s CGA games. Finally upgraded to a 386SX in 1992.by badc0ffee
- I have a framed copy on my office wall of this story from the NY Times, August 13, 1981: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/13/business/business-digest-...by kmoser
- My first experience with a computer as a child was putting a floppy disk labelled "King's Quest" into an IBM PC XT when my dad wasn't around. And now I'm on this forum.by karim79
- I guess it worked out in the end.by rbanffy
- Where might you be today if it had been Space Quest instead?by Gormo