Amiga 1000

On today’s show, we’re continuing our coverage of the 32-bit GUI computers. We’ve covered the Apple Lisa, Macintosh, Atari ST, and now we move on to what some say was the ST’s bitter enemy, the Commodore Amiga.

Wikipedia reports: “The Amiga 1000 was officially released in July 1985, but a series of production problems meant it did not become widely available until early 1986. The best selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 and became one of the leading home computers of the late 1980s and early 1990s with four to six million sold.”

David and Jeff are just two collectors looking at things from that vantage point. Here, we take an informal look at personal computing history through the lens of eBay auctions. We’re joined again on today’s show by our special guest, Chuck Hunnefield!

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Atari ST brochure

On today’s show, we’re covering the Atari ST, a “GEM” of a computer that helped spark an interest in music and MIDI.

From Wikipedia: “The Atari ST is a line of home computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The first ST model, the 520ST, was released in June 1985. “ST” officially stands for “Sixteen/Thirty-two”, which referred to the Motorola 68000’s 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals. The Atari ST is the first personal computer to come with a bit-mapped color GUI, using a version of Digital Research’s GEM released in February 1985. The 1040ST, released in 1986, is the first personal computer to ship with a megabyte of RAM in the base configuration and also the first with a cost-per-kilobyte of less than USD$1.”

Jeff & David, along with our guest co-host Chuck Hunnefield, a former user and salesperson of the Atari ST line of computers, discuss the system, along with personally selected eBay favorites.

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Apple Macintosh 512K

On today’s show, we’re covering the Apple Macintosh, Steve Jobs’ publicly acknowledged attempt at delivering the Graphic User Interface to the general public.

From the last show – Wikipedia: “Contrary to common belief, it was not the first personal computer to offer a graphical user interface in a machine aimed at individual business users. Development of the Lisa began in 1978. The Lisa sold poorly, with only 100,000 units sold.

From Wikipedia: “The Macintosh (branded as Mac since 1997) is a series of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple, Inc. Steve Jobs introduced the original Macintosh computer on January 24, 1984. This was the first mass-market personal computer featuring an integral graphical user interface and mouse.”

Jeff & David, along with our guest co-host Adam Rosen of the Vintage Mac Museum in Boston, MA, discuss some of the philosophies about the above statements, along with personally selected eBay favorites.

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Apple Lisa

On today’s show, we’re covering the Apple Lisa, Steve Jobs’ attempt at pushing the Graphic User Interface to the public.

From Wikipedia: “Contrary to common belief, it was not the first personal computer to offer a graphical user interface in a machine aimed at individual business users. Development of the Lisa began in 1978. The Lisa sold poorly, with only 100,000 units sold. In 1982, after Steve Jobs was forced out of the Lisa project, he joined the Macintosh project. The Macintosh is not a direct descendant of Lisa, although there are obvious similarities between the systems. The final revision, the Lisa 2/10, was modified and sold as the Macintosh XL.”

Are these two “facts” correct? Jeff & David discuss.

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On today’s show, we’re covering the very obscure (at least for the US market) Tatung Einstein and what Amstrad products we can find.

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Additional auctions

David and Jeff have just awakened from their Thanksgiving Day, tryptophan and carbohydrate induced comas and recorded the next edition of the History of Personal Computing, eBay edition.

You may have discovered that this series a little more laid back than the original shows. It is certainly a fun way to discuss these vintage systems, mixing together personal memories and an occasional wistfulness over many unobtainable varieties of personal computing systems available back in the day.

The systems discussed in this episode are the Coleco Adam and the MSX platform of computing systems.

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Additional auctions

David and (Cylon) Jeff made it back… again… on their revamped new format.

You may have discovered that this series a little more laid back than the original shows. It is certainly a fun way to discuss these vintage systems, mixing together personal memories and an occasional wistfulness over many unobtainable varieties of personal computing systems available back in the day.

The topic of this episode is a collection of rather obscure and rare personal computing systems. We apologize for the bandwidth issues on Jeff’s side which caused his audio to create a “cylon” vocal effect on occasion.

Also note, Jeff talks about an RS-232 and its data transfer limits. He was referring to the Model 100’s RS-232 port, not the RS-232 standard specifications.

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Additional auctions

David and Jeff are back “on the air” with a new, revamped format for the regular series.

After a Summer hiatus, David and Jeff have recorded the first in a series of “lightweight” regular episodes. These episodes focus more on the historical status of the vintage and collectible computing systems we all know and love. This is done through reviews of eBay auctions, and from other sources where the current state of these machines can be reviewed and discussed. This episode focuses entirely on eBay auctions.

Each episode of this series will discuss two or three items fitting a theme related to the HoPC timeline, and will also include favorite auctions personally selected by the hosts, regardless of the system of topic. The target length of each of these episodes is about 30-45 minutes, however, this episode is a bit longer because there was some catching up to do after the long break.

The topic of this episode is the IBM PC/AT

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Additional auctions

History of Personal Computing and Floppy Days performed a live recording of podcast at Vintage Computer Festival SouthEast 3.0 outside of Atlanta, GA. Present were Randy Kindig of Floppy Days podcast, along with David Greelish and Jeff Salzman (from the remote HoPC offices in Pennsylvania). Without further ado, here is the podcast. Show notes will be added in the near future after everyone recovers from the weekend!

4K TRS-80 Color Computer

Now that we’re firmly into the 1980’s, David and Jeff continue to cover computer systems that can be considered next-generation platforms, introducing color versions to existing model lines. We introduce to you Radio Shack’s first Color Computer, expanding the infamous original monochrome TRS-80 line of computers. Along with that, we hop over the great pond and introduce the successor to the Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81, the Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum series of computers.

http://www.historyofpersonalcomputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/HofPC-5-1-15.mp3

eBay links (you may need to scroll down the linked pages to see the full auction)

Links to lists of SOLD items may differ from items mention in the show content

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