Xref: utzoo comp.misc:2930 comp.arch:5824 Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!lfcs!nick From: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.arch Subject: Re: History of PCs Keywords: history, pc, workstation Message-ID: <584@etive.ed.ac.uk> Date: 29 Jul 88 11:26:58 GMT References: <5946@venera.isi.edu> <5458@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <1876@looking.UUCP> <17589@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> Sender: news@etive.ed.ac.uk Reply-To: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U Lines: 28 In article <17589@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle) writes: >In article <1876@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >>and a bit before the TRS-80. It was really the first serious >>all in one box personal computer, that you could plug in, turn on and use. > > Various machines based on the DEC LSI-11 chipset appeared in the late > 1970s, including the Terak, a nicely packaged machine with 64K of RAM. > > John Nagle Yup! And my Terak's still running reliably. It's a real monster though - the box is the size of a small microwave, and contains the 8" floppy drive and 4 or 5 cards for the processor, the 56K RAM and 8K ROM. There's also miles of ribbon cables and a power supply the size of a small planet. I'm still impressed with a 56K machine that could give you an OS, screen editor, filer, pascal compiler and linker on a single 250K disk. I must show the p-System's title bar to somebody who thinks that first came with the Mac... Some months ago, I found the original ads for the Terak in a back-issue of Datamation - summer '79, roughly. Basic machine, 56K RAM, single 250K floppy drive, p-System - $8000. Of course, that's $8000 more than I paid for it... Nick. -- Nick Rothwell, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh. nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk !mcvax!ukc!lfcs!nick ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ...while the builders of the cages sleep with bullets, bars and stone, they do not see your road to freedom that you build with flesh and bone.