If you could go back in time...

I guess this is sort of a companion question to the "What was your first computer?" thread...

So unless you cut your teeth on your very own Altair, if you could go back in time and get into computers sooner (even if you weren't born yet) what would you have wanted your first computer to be?

Heck, even if you started with an Altair, is there another micro/mini/mainframe computer you would have wanted to try given the chance? PDP? S360?

I started out in 1981 with TRS-80 Model III's at school and in 1982 with a VIC-20 and then a C64.

In looking back in old issues of BYTE, I would have loved to own an Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1, fully loaded, with external double 8" floppies and started out with CP/M. I can't complain since I do have an Altair 8800bt stashed, but the DPS-1 just looks cool and had some really cool features, like the orange paddle switches.

Also, even though I started calling BBSes relatively early-on in 1984, (and did happen across a few CP/M boards) I would have also loved to have started calling them back in the late 70's and very early 80's when RCP/M and RBBS (and whatever hacks) were the only systems around.

Obvious...

Obvious...

If you could go back in time...

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Heh, easy: I would kill Hitler, of course!

Oh, wait:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitlekz83hawz?from=Main.HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct

Going back on-topic, it would still be a no-brainer: I would definitely have liked the Amiga to be the first platform to get introduced to. It was simply so much ahead of the competition back in the late eighties (when my Dad bought our first computer, an 8086 machine). In addition to the better video and graphics in games, perhaps I would also have gotten further into low-level programming. Although I dabbled in 16bit x86 assembler a bit, the segmented memory model made low level hacking tedious.

I have a PDP 11/23+ floating around the shop as a future project. Would have been cool to have been around in the early days of small business mainframes

-Lance

I would have loved to have been involved during the early days of computing. The birth of UNICS, Zork, C++.

I would like to have had a JOB in the early days of computing. Back when if you could get it to display text on the screen you were an expert programmer. Then I could ride up while they got more advanced, and be making tons of money before the market became so darn complicated.

I bought (and still have) the Jan 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that had the plans for building the Altair 8800. I really wanted to build one but couldn't afford the kit back then (I was a newlywed college student trying to support a wife and go to school at the same time). I'd like to go back in time and actually build one. As it turned out, I wasn't able to afford to buy any computer until 1984.

I would love to have started programming via punched card. I'm sure the appeal would have soon worn out, but I like hearing the stories of punched card programmers and would love to have a go myself.

I also regret using C on my Commodore 128. The compiler and support utils weren't really up to it and neither were my programming skills in '87. This meant a lot of wasted effort and frustration. I wish I had gone for something more suitable to the machine and my skills at the time, such as Pascal, Assembly, or Forth.

About the only thing I regret that I would change related to computers is programming. My first computer (that I owned) was a Timex 2068. Since Timex died quickly after I got it and had little software I started learning to program on it in the early 80's when I was young and everything came very easy. A few years later I got a C64 and had friends with all the games so I copied disks and quit programming, something I regret.

I would not go back in time and have to deal with punch cards or waiting in line to use the machine and hoping it didn't blow a tube during my reserved time on it. If anything the personal computing revolution is what got me into computers at all, small and easy to use. getting involved in digital video editing in the early 90's would have been fun (with somebody elses money).

Years ago I wondered what it would have been like being a process engineer in semiconductor manufacturing during the 1970's, but the thaught of all that toxic waste companies just dumped into the ground soured that idea pretty quick. Also plenty of people have health issues over the fumes they were in contact with.

The answer was not that easy as I first thought. There are so many amazing breakthroughs and technologies that has been done at various companies and universities. Here is a list of computers/events that would have been exiting to have been part of:

* Ivan Sutherlands sketchpad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USyoT_Ha_bA
* The rise of SGI
* The introduction of the PDP-8
* The pdp-6 (early 36-bit machine)

But I think it is draw between early SGI machines (IRIS) or the PDP-10. Awesome machines for their time.

Securix said:

...if you could go back in time...

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Beating BillG upside the head with a Vista laptop and then selling FreeDOS to IBM.


But in all seriousness, I'd love to go back and play with a real IBM 1401. Maybe one with a 1407 Inquiry Console and some 1311 disk packs (oh and 729 tape drives not those slow 7330 drives.

Then when the time comes when IBM recalls all the 1401s, I will "conveniently" offer to truck the computer to IBM for my employers, and then "conveniently" disappear into the future with my functional 1401. ;P

Then promptly going back and doing all that all over again with a 7094 II and a System/360. Also doing that with some DEC hardware would be fun (saving a few PDP-12s from the dumpster while they're still functional would be nice, add a LAB-8/E and a LAB-11 and you've got a nice Wall of Green).


But yeah... my most willed thing: Go back in time and beat the <expletive> out of Bill Gates and then steal his position as the head of Überrich by selling IBM FreeDOS, a CP/M clone or a UNIX clone. Any of those three would be fine and money making.

Too many people bring up the Bill Gates DOS thing and that troubles me. Back when the 5150 came out IBM was not the most friendly company in the world, the US government was thinking of breaking them up for a long time. What do you think would have happened if anyone else at the time would have tried to sell IBM a DOS, most likely they would have just sold them the whole thing and PC's would be like a Mac today (hardware tied to the OS from one company). It was hard enough for the clones to make a 100% legit BIOS that was 100% compatible, most likely it would have been hard for them to clone each DOS version IBM put out as well. IBM would have been just as bad as Microsoft was with Windows, changing the OS so competitiors apps didnt work. Look at the length IBM went to strangle the clones with a proprietary BUS (MCA).

No brainer for me. Be a programmer on or get to work with the first Crays in the 1970s and into the 1980s. The Cray-1, Cray X-MP and Cray-2 were all incredible machines. Anything to play and develop for the most powerful computers in the world. Even by modern standards nearly 25 years later, the Cray-2 is an impressive piece of hardware.

Followed closely by being at Xerox PARC during development of the Alto and Star. The transition to what we consider "modern computing" in terms of use and daily interaction began there. Steve Jobs merely stole it and mass-marketed it.

Matt

If I could go back in 'computer' time - I'd go back to my roots. For me that would be the programmable calculators of Texas Instruments. I bought, first, the TI-57, then the TI-58, and finally the TI-59. All in 1977. In 1978 I moved on to computers with the TRS-80 Model 1, but nothing in the computer world was ever so much fun, or as fascinating, as learning all the TI's programmable calcs could do. I really liked the card reader of the TI-59, for program storage, the PC100 printer for printouts. I used to print out and pour over the listings, debugging, my little programs. I just couldn't put that little calculator down. Nothing in the electronics realm has ever left me with such fond memories as the TI-59 programmable calculator. Someday, I will have another. I plan to have the TI-57 and TI-58 also, and the PC100 printer - just for the nostalgia of it.
I have a pristine TI-57 so far, that appears to have never been used much. I bought it with all the original stuff - box, books, booklets, etc. It's one of my most prized possessions, even though I got it almost dirt cheap.
But, you can never go back, sigh. I fiddle with the little 50 step programming memory of the TI-57 and I thumb through the 'Making Tracks In Programming' awesome book that came with it - but it's just not the same as it was back in 1977, when the 'programmable' world was fresh. What I'm talking about is overkill here. Overkill is everywhere today. Take mp3 music, for instance. Most everybody now has more music than they have time to listen to. All handy and just a click or CD away. Back in the 50's I would trudge downtown to the Record Store where I would mull over the Top 50 records, all arranged on shelves behind the counter. You would tell the clerk the record you were interested in - usually one of the Top 10 records. He would hand it to you and you would take it into a small glass enclosed booth to 'audition' the record before plunking down your 78 cents to buy the thing. Sometimes you might even buy 2 or 3 records for the week. You'd take them home and put them on your 45 RPM record player and play the grooves off of them. Sometimes a record would develope a scratch and start to skip at a certain place. No problem, you simply took a penny and taped it to the tonearm and then the needle would plow right through the scratched groove. Anybody old enough here to remember these things ? Sorry, I got a little off track there - but it's all about 'going back', right?

For further info about the awesome TI-59 go here > http://www.ti59.com/history.htm
Here's a pic of my current TI-57.
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/picture.php?albumid=14&pictureid=203

I'm not sure but always imagined if I was born just 10 or 20 years earlier it would have been awesome. That would be 1959 or 1969 and then I could have been competent and definitely would have been knee deep in a computer kit back then. I would have LOVED to grown up with an Altair or really any front panel input computer. But to see that for the first time while it was the big current device would have been just awesome.

Alternatively working on the big iron systems would have been neat too but I think I would have loved tinkering and seeing what could be done on the home computer before it was all already done and patented like today. Seems like today's market is just one giant lawsuit happy roadblock.

Although I'm fairly happy seeing some stuff at the time I did, wondering what it was all about with our first computer and I had the fortunate time of seeing Amiga while the PC was young graphically and sound-wise, then the Wintel systems actually started outclassing the Amiga in gaming and was fun also although during that time I kept trying and trying to get an Amiga still lol.

- John

mpickering said:

No brainer for me. Be a programmer on or get to work with the first Crays in the 1970s and into the 1980s. The Cray-1, Cray X-MP and Cray-2 were all incredible machines.

Matt

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I second that. Working with a Cray (or heck, working at Cray) in the early days would have rocked.

As far as computers are concerned, I am happy growing up when I did, with years and years of pleasure writing my own programs for the Commodore 64 following early experience with the Vic20, then the early days of the Internet with a 486 and since then pushing each machine I've had to its absolute limits.

I'm still doing this today with a 3GHz quad-core system I built myself, a massive leap from my early experiments upgrading and rebuilding that 486 I bought from the junk shop all those years ago.

That machine is on the work bench right in front of me, behind my computer desk, but sadly its original motherboard has now been stripped of parts and scrapped due to corrosion from battery electrolyte. I wish I'd checked it whilst it sat there in storage

My only regret is not getting into PC programming, but that is, unfortunately, very much a closed shop thanks to Uncle Bill


BG