Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ptsfa!lll-tis!mordor!sri-spam!rutgers!gatech!ukma!psuvm.bitnet!cunyvm.bitnet!ybmcu
From: ybmcu@cunyvm.bitnet.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: What's a PC?
Message-ID: <438YBMCU@CUNYVM>
Date: Thu, 21-May-87 14:21:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: CUNYVM.438YBMCU
Posted: Thu May 21 14:21:16 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 27-May-87 04:58:57 EDT
References: <839@vu-vlsi.UUCP> <3610@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <683@mipos3.UUCP> 3650@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The City University of New York - New York, NY
Lines: 36
DISCLAIMER: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article

In article <3650@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>, mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) says:
>
>In article <683@mipos3.UUCP> ekwok@mipos3.UUCP (Gibbons V. Ogden) writes:
><If Personal Computer is a machine that works on 1-user mode, the PDP-8 is
><probably a PC predating your MITS 8800, as widely available non-custom
><machine (I used one! but not until '77).
>
>Nah, a Personal Computer is a machine that you can reboot whenever you
>want to, without notifying anyone. At least, that's the quick&easy
>test. The idea is that a personal computer is personal: "one's own".
>Something that only you will be using, and can therefore do with as
>you want. The "who do I have to tell if I reboot it" is the qad test.
     
     
By that definition, the largest computer I know of as a "personal
computer" was an IBM 360/75 (one of the largest machines in the 360
series.)  When I was at Columbia in the late 60's, we had just
upgraded from the 75 to a 360/91, and the 75 was sitting idle until
we were able to use it as the front end processor in an ASP complex.
     
As long as it was just sitting, a group of us wrote some code to allow
it to be used as a desk calculator (enter arithmetic operations on
the console, and let it print the results.)  Everything was entered
through the switches on the console (no assembler, no operating system,
no nothing.)  The hard part wasn't the arithmetic routines, but with
no operating system we had to write all the I/O and interrupt drivers.
     
However, since nobody cared what happened, I guess it was a personal
computer, although it was about a thousand square feet of one.
     
     
     
Ben Yalow               City University of New York
BITNET: YBMCU@CUNYVM
Pick a gateway, any gateway ...