The Computer Chronicles - Mainframes to Minis to Micros (1983)
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- čas přidán 6. 11. 2012
- The very first episode of The Computer Chronicles, a series which would end up spanning over twenty seasons, began right here exploring the dramatic change from room-filling mainframe computing setups to personal computers that fit on your desk.
Special thanks to archive.org for hosting these episodes. Downloads of all these episodes and more can be found at: archive.org/details/computerch...
![How IBM ended up using MS-DOS rather than CP/M (1995) [Computer Chronicles]](/img/n.gif)
These shows should be in a museum and archived forever. Amazing chronicle of the entire beginning of the information age.
yeah watching these videos makes me want a time machine so I can go back in time and show Gary Kildal my computer something he'd never live to see and let him see the inevitable progression of computers with multiple cores in the cpu
dm0527 Well said, agreed.
Did this programme start in 83?
@@JohnnyZenith Yes. by mid-1982 the IBM PC BOIS had been reverse engineered and the market exploded. This show was on our local PBS station and I was in the industry. So it was a big deal for me.
this show is so comfy
Agitating Skeleton fr
because they ask & explain what they need to ask & explain, if today they have question like in this CC series, there will be a questions"Why you ask that ?" and then they will think that question will questionable about something related to their product or their rival, too scary to answer and too much thinking 😂 well, we cant blame too because todays too many copas and copycat everywhere
its delightful. Would be welcome to tea.
How on Earth did I grow up without seeing one episode of these precious, precious moments?
I grew up in Czechoslovakia.
@@marekkrakovsky4187 you may have lived in Czechoslovakia but I doubt you grew up lol
I'm old enough to remember this show but largely ignored it as a teenager. But had I actually took the time to sit and watch an episode, I might have gotten hooked. I was fascinated by computers back then and always wanted our family to buy one, but it was never a priority.
I watched them all. It was my nerd obsession.
easy...keep your cloths on....
"They're just getting smaller and faster...... logical conclusion is they get so small you lose them like your keys." That finally happened with smart phones.
@John Glista:
Computer people are geniuses, way smarter than the average bear, although the average bear is just a dumb animal anyway hehehehe
Yeah. Hey, Gary Kildall, a question from 2019: Why did you guys laugh when you said that?
@@IUSSHistory Yep. So you can lose the fob, instead, and find out they cost $300.
@@calvinsaxon5822 Even though they could envision computers being that small they didn't take it seriously. They had no reason to see it as anything but a distant, scifi future
80 years of refinement led to Twitter and mobs ginning up hatred and outrage. What a waste!
The HP guy was on point when he talked about how we would use different input and interaction methods (keyboard/mouse, voice, touch) in different situations and with different devices. That is exactly how we do things today.
5:11 if your computer made that sound would you worry?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Touchscreens in 1983. Fascinating.
Touchscreen is not new as a technology they are saying on 15:50
There were IR detectors around the sides of the monitor.
Touchscreens are from 60-70th, same as laser video disk 1959 patented
@@mikcnmvedmsfonoteka And, let no one forget:
*The Mother of All Demos, presented by Douglas Engelbart (1968)*
_The live demonstration featured the introduction of the computer mouse, video conferencing, teleconferencing, hypertext, word processing, hypermedia, object addressing and dynamic file linking, bootstrapping, and a collaborative real-time editor_
czcams.com/video/yJDv-zdhzMY/video.html
interesting but Touch screen its just continuation of TX-0 light pen tech from 50s
I've decided to learn about this whole "personal computer" fad. And I'm starting right here.
Meanwhile in Apple land, "What's a computer?"
its that where you,might I ask,describe hardware with the software,alike central processor unit becxomming keyed Dos from simply spoken word? T&C app lied..
Preston Newcomb hey, the market can support about ten computers
@Preston Newcomb
Imagine having a whole 640K! That should be enough for anybody.
@@tridexhbr8947 yeah apple owners are rather stupid and need to be told what to do and how to do it
I like the man in the middle of the episode who predicts correctly that audio and video presentation will be the next big challenge for computers.
That man is Gordon Bell and apparently himself one of the legends and pioneers of computing.
1988-1994 arrived the CDROM videogames, bringing video and plenty speech. Myst 1993.
I more meant developments like cheap DVD. (Laserdiscs were actually analog.)@@TomiTapio
@@SteveLeicht1 CD was already digital, but the laserdisk (laservision) as you said was analog. So the technology was already known what will come and happen.
It's wild watching this show with some of its foresight 40 years later.
I’m on New Year’s Eve 2023 and I’m binging the ‘83 volume.. Maybe next year it’ll be ‘84.. Wonder who’s watching centuries from now lol
I was 21 in 83. I wanted that HP. Went to a computer store and looked at it. I was making $3.50 an hour so too much for me. Now I have computers all over my house... on shelves in closets.
3:39 In "Back to the Future Part III" Doc's letter that he wrote in 1885 and gave to Western Union to give to Marty in 1955 said that Doc could not repair the time machine in 1885 "because suitable replacement parts will not be invented until 1947." Here I learn that the transistor was invented in 1947. It is now clear to me that Doc was probably referring to transistors!
funny how computers are not as voice controlled as they first figured we went the route of pretty gui operating systems instead of voice controlled
Great Scott !
old enough to remember watching this live on Channel 9, KQED back in the day... Excited to go play with my then relatively new IBM PC-XT..
I'm going to show this to my ninth grade computer science students tomorrow. What a trip.
so...how did it go? what about this years 9th grade comp students? :)
@@marctronixx The nerdy ones loved it. The episode on Build Your Own PC was a big hit.
The TX0 was quite advanced for its time, considering it was built in the early 1950s. I enjoy watching these old Computer Chronicles episodes.
and then the tx1 came out and made it look like dog shit and so the race began muhahahahahahahahaha
@@raven4k998 garbaze
@@dragonworldgamer8210 so are you gaming on a commodore 64 or 128?
This is something people need to think about. Compact disc started coming out in the mid 1980s. LCD technology came out in the late 1990s. And that toothbrush you use is still being used today by millions.
Used to love this show. It would have been great if the show kept going and had not stopped back in 2002.
I think Stewart Cheifet got burned out after so many years of making the show run and lining up sponsorship. By the early 2000s you had people like Leo Laporte, Kim Komando and even the "High Tech Texan" picking up the torch.
A computer back then was considered "portable" because it had wheels. -Stewart Cheifet presenting the the Link minicomputer
it's official I just upgraded my ram to 128 gigabytes now I have more ram then you do haha
he likes his semi ridged micro floppy's does he not?
Very good show. Sweet memories that I cannot have cause I lived behind the iron curtain.
teltri Greetings eastern European Friend! Can I ask where are you from then? What were your earliest technology memories then? Did things suddenly flock in once the wall came down? Im 30 so this is slightly before my time, ] but we had computers in my house as long as I remember. First computer a 386. Our 486dx2 66 was the one I really first got my teeth into though!
TheDave000 I was born in former Czechoslovakia in a small town in the East - today it´s Slovakia. I remember the beginning of the digital age mainly in TV documentaries. The first computer appeared in our house in spring 1990. It was a borrowed PMD-80 from my mum´s school - a primitive Czechoslovak school computer for kids. Some kids in that time owned the early home computers like Commodore 64, Sinclair, or Didaktik. Mainly used for games. I knew the names only due to my friend in English afternoon class :-) The first PCs that I remember were appearing only gradually in early 1990s. Our first permanent home PC came in 1998, Intel Pentium, Windows 98.
The host asking if computers had reached their peak (in 1983) made me laugh so hard. Makes you think what the future is going to bring.
Hmm!
Time-wise, we're further away from this show now than they were from that TX-0 computer. Anybody else feeling really old right now?
no cause time is slowing down now.
@@ultimatehistoryofcgi8897 Probably the opposite is happening.
Now, in 2021, 1983 was 38 years ago and 1983 was 38 years after the end of World War II. A little bit mind boggling.
March 2023 and yes I'm feeling old by this eight year old comment.
@@FletcherFinance Good call me too!
I was addicted to this show.
I can make you a portable computer just by putting it on wheels to do you want to see?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
amazing how the groundwork was being laid out for the future. that HP 150 would cost nearly $7k in today's dollars. a $30 cheap dual core smartphone has more computational horsepower than supercomputers of those days yet still embraces touchscreen interaction. wow. if you time warped back then with a modern smartphone they would think you had alien technology in your hand.
oldtwins "they would think you had alien technology in your hand." We do, oldtwins. We do.
oldtwins Huh.. I don't seem to be getting a signal. Hold on. No, seriously, it will be cool. I just can't get a GPS lock..
+Scott Slaughter Not quite "alien technology", but they would ask you, if your name is Captain Kirk ;)
What blows my mind is the old HP-150 (don't think I've EVER seen a printer built in to a monitor before or since!) and their forward-looking predictions re: the internet.
I watch this on a pocket computer, scrolling through its interface to download a video and swiping its touch interface to make a comment about how they were right about everything. Everything except how many ads there would be.
This is the second program I watched. I was 2 yo in 83. Every single second of this show is increeible!!!
damn your old I was only 1 at that time🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Same age here, what a coincidence!
When an "Electronic Rolodex" was cutting-edge...
...and when Stewart Cheifet had no problem with having his name, address and phone number displayed on TV.
@@Landrew0 "...and when Stewart Cheifet had no problem with having his name, address and phone number displayed on TV."
Well, in fairness, it's not his home address and phone number, but rather the address and phone number of the TV station (KCSM) which I assume would be public anyway. Nonetheless, these days it'd be "123 Main St., Anytown USA" and "(555) 555-5555" (because "it is the will of Landrew").
Still play with my Altair at least once a month. Growing up in the 80's and 90's was so much fun for an old computer nerd like me!
do they still make all the parts to make an Altair? to this day?
14:08 "Touchscreen Capability" Well that basically proves the idea that top level corporate technology is about 30 years ahead of retail technology. It's 2015 so think ahead 30 years to 2045 and think about the level of technology that likely exists at high level corporate laboratories today. Nanotechnology, bioprocessors, holograms, eye contact HUDs and we can speculate on the list's remainder.
If you think back thirty years, 1953 was the age of rocketry. 3D models were likely used along with the processing power of the early 80's deployed in high level NASA usage to predict outcomes for rocket prototypes. Wow, this show is FASCINATING.
Thank you for allowing me to hear the discussions of industry insiders of the computer revolution, uploader!
16:19 "Do you see a shift from using a keyboard to using a touch screen displays, for example we have lots and lots of applications that are written for small computer systems, how are you going to get all of these programs to move over to a touchscreen [based interface]?" --- Gary A. Kildall 1983
Back then he could never have predicted the proliferation of smartphones, all with touchscreen. But as we found out, the way to go was to develop an entire app platform specifically designed for use with touch screens. Simply dropping a touchscreen on top of software not designed for it was never going to work. Too bad good old Gary didn't survive to see what computers are like today, RIP.
What a fantastic slice of history. It really shows the competing ideas of the time. Obviously we all sit here knowing that the desktop/mouse user metaphor is near-ideal. Even all those people that thought voice-activation would win, eventually lost out.
I have a $60 budget level smartphone that is more powerful than the worlds fastest supercomputer in the 90s. I lost it along with my keys last week.
19:10 Print is right next to the Delete button!
7:22 “Personal” because it was a cheap enough purchase (5 figure price tag) to be OK’d by the head of an engineering department.
Nice to see the 3.5" floppies were in use as early as they were. 3 years after this show my computer at GM still had 8" floppies (dual).
I'm glad these are being preserved
semi rigid micro floppy?, touch screen monitor..? a printer on top of the monitor?... omg.. where're they going with these stuff! i have seen it all.. i can die in peace now...
founders of our new technology... love 'COMPUTER CHRONICLES'
What a great start to this series!
imagine what would have happened if Gary had a modern ryzen 9 series system with an RTX 3090 ti what he could have accomplished with that kind of system power
Wish we could go back in time
Love this show!... So nostalgic... The feels, the feels!
7:30 you need one of those portable computers they are the future I can feel it
It's funny to hear him talking about losing your computer like you lose your keys, because that's what happens with phones all the fucking time.
I used to watch these shows religiously. Super inresting. Note the $11K THEN dollar "laptop" system!!
"Are we at the end of the line in the evolution of computer hardware?"
Haha! The die size of processors were 1500nm back then, now they're 22nm.
***** I'm from the future and We have computers that minimize space and we have gone into iX2 Tri Intel Processors
funny, just seeing you post this nearly a year ago. We are even smaller now.
I'm pretty sure they were referring to form factor, in which case the end of the line in evolution didn't come until the PDAs of the '90s.
Time is a linear concept within which cycles of cipher replay units of store too reveal Gary Killdal Family Guy its a Knock Out HP Sauece 50's sauce owe pen PDA razar head biz nit dances of 'back en ther daze'sex an violence on TV@oo look that central cores size is queen stamp secretary viewed@In the ole Outer we atomically list word as say too you,New tones accent cycled cipher core sayed other if algerbra doesnt recoil key term too 'size,measurements' conveyor belt of sci fi spsace window dome baloon cosmic voids 'looked out on'Everest double glazings.great scots,Fitzgeraldo..jazz?('aaah yes the great Gatsby'..mean Eng 1401 IBM reels oops watt Sun,L e meant Tree Coal URE ..strike ja!!)
And here Intel still doesn't have a good 7nm solution.
I remember watching these episodes during the mid 1980's thru the mid 1990's on PBS.
Nice to see a bit of skeuomorphism in use during the "Rolodex" demo :)
A legend was born
Herb seemed like such a likable fellow.
He he really did.
Yansouni - HP legend! He did see the future clearly!!!!!
Thank you very much for posting these videos,
I love revisiting this show.
Gotta love that 80's style computer song 4:01 :)
MegaBojan1993
uh... 0:39 - 1:06
Wow! That's so exciting to hear what's coming! I can't wait!
Those were such amazing times!
RIP Gary
Cyril was at it in 1983! Microfloppies, definitely! He and others really knew what was going to happen in the future of technology. It was just a matter of implementing it correctly.
somethings wrong with that computer at 5:15 it's making a noise that no computer every makes that's a bad noise it means it's going to explode so run for it
The same reason of not holding you arm up in the air is why touchscreen monitors on the desktop still haven't taken off much in 2014
jason3fc agreed!
That's why we use mice.
Amazing episode.
So glad this TX-0 gem was caught live.
I wonder if it still runs to this day.
the 80's were just so damn awesome. even the geeks of that time were cool.
Only if you had money though. Being a tech geek, it was a painful period to be in with limited funds. Even modest hardware devices were so costly. Only could dream to get the best technology for yourself, otherwise you only read or watched a show about it. These days, unless you're doing a server farm or something, all hardware is easily within budget of an average shmoe.
love this show!!!
shame they stopped making it sadly though I miss these shows they were unique
8:10 The next step will ve integrating video, television into the computer.
Well, only 2 years after the airing of this episode, Commodore launched the Amiga 1000 which was capable of full broadcast quality NTSC video, realtime animated graphics and 4 channel audio in 1985, backed by a multitasking windowing graphical operating system, which was finally surpassed by pc in 1995....
The Amiga 1000 could only overlay graphics on top of a video signal.
I know this comment was years ago, but I'd say PC and Mac didn't really catch up to Amiga OS until Windows 2000 and OSX.
@@keithd2284 disagree. win95 had a full tcp/ip stack ready to go to get you online. 99% of people needing a consumer OS that was extremely important as win 3.1's winsock sucked. But Workbench 3.1 never had that implementation to begin with. I know, as I bailed on my Amiga once I realized it was uncool not to be online using a full, real , web browser, with true cheap hardware specs to do what was needed to view everything fast.
If I had the choice between working for Gary or Bill, I know who I’d choose!
watching this on my lg v20. Unbelievable to see how far we've come
I love the title and ending music, it is from Network Music Ensemble and the composition is called Byte by Byte. It can be found online.
4:31 “The machine uses a modest 5000 watts of power.” AHAHAHAHAAAAHAA
Even the 2 big BTU air cons don't use anywhere near that much at my place, LOL. Makes even my daily driver seem like a smartphone, LOL.
8:00 Prophetic! Video, audio, photo in computers
The Wiki page for tx-0 says: " Significant pieces of the TX-0 are held by MIT Lincoln Laboratory. In 1983, the TX-0 was still running and is shown running a maze application in the first episode of Computer Chronicles. ". But not when it went out of service or was powered off. Anybody knows ?
This episode aired the first year I was in high school, and at that time, the state of the art computer was the Apple IIe. When fully equipped, it had 128k RAM memory, 2 five and a quarter inch floppy drives (each magnetic floppy disc held 700k of information) a color monitor, and a dot matrix printer. Only one Apple our school had was hooked up to an external modem, but there was no Internet at the time. In inflation adjusted dollars, a computer like the Apple IIe cost way more than any laptop computer, tablet or smartphone of today. That’s why few people had computers in their homes in the 1980s, and it was regarded mostly as an expensive toy and not the essential tool that all people must have today.
You think the Apple II was more state-of-the-art than the IBM PC/XT that came out early that year?
We had BBC Micro in 1988
A computer evolution display that ends in 1983... oh boy here we go.
Well at least the way they made computers back then is basically the same as today, the difference is the process sizes.
and now i am watching this epic on a smartphone...😮
Learn something new every day. I never knew there was such a word as 'synergism' 10:40
Now that hp 50 pc becomes a piece of history and so it belongs to that museum.
That mainframe computer from the 60's with it’s touch screen looks freaking awesome it was really ahead of it’s time.
A touch screen in 1983? wow!
Are we at the end of computer evolution? Hahaha rofl! 🤣
yes we do have everything you said ...sharing text, phone, data, medea, voce, etc...21:34 he must be a time traveler.
keep these backups forever. safe and reupload if needed. amazing evolution history.
Very intesting times then. Literature recently shown to me from around 1980 covering the Intel 8080 already very much published about the future to come. It covers VLSI and all the way to 128 bit computing, although it reads that the switch from 64 (where we are now) to 128 would be an extremely hesitant one since they questioned its effective gain vs cost. However, apparently, the top geniuses at the very front knew very well what the potential future would entail through ongoing miniaturisation, and that it was a matter of time who would get there first through mega-investments needed. Development of internet of things is of course a different matter but dense wireless telecommunication and hyperconnectivity was already something some of them wanted, e.g. by Chuck Peddle. The path of microcomputing towards today wasn't that much of a mistery for people like Gary and all the top notch from that industry at the time.
I agree
Back in '83 a major american university might have a few mainframe timesharing systems each with ~2M main memory and ~2G disk storage. Those were mainframes.
I've been playing around with A.I. all year and it's jarring to see how it all started. This is like stone age stuff LOL
Here we are, 40 years later, and everything's touchscreen. I Have a touch screen TV. Running android it's awesome it's a huge tablet
That floppy disk doe
Probably the ancient tech that still exist today after 35+ years
I still have some floppies somewhere.
At 19:00 you can really see that this man had vision. It's not about an "Electronic Rolodex", it's a byproduct of his ideas.
It's funny - this show was so well made in that it talked intelligently about the subject, didn't dumb down, with knowledgeable people....
But then we look at it from today's perspective, and that little tiny green screen monitor and the AMAZING 720 floppy disc.
What would this show look like if produced today? Would we get lost in the myriad of G's, MB's, K's, etc?
Now we are going into the realm of quantum computing!!
So the monitor of the TX-0 used a crosshatch raster? (horizontal and vertical) The scan rate is very slow and the screen is using high presistence phosphors, so I am thinking the crosshatch scan was used to be able to display reasonably high-res graphics even with the speed/processing limitations of the machine. It looks like the monitor had different video modes as well, because when it displayed the "What?", the picture was not flickering and it might have been using a conventional horizontal raster.
Wow Interesting and fascinating to know that touch screen was out and was featured year 1983. I'm 41 now, I was in my first grade when this happened.
Yea, were were doomed from the start.
Shows a 3.5" floppy some day it could carry as much as a megabyte of data, that is truly portable mass storage! As I look at my phone in 2023 with the 1 terabyte micro sd card in it....And it's me again from 2053, as I look at my personal carbon nano with its 5 brontobytes of memory!
very stimulating
Considering what things were like at that time compared to the way that things are nowadays, there has been so much more advancements in computer technologies. For example touch screens at that time was so rudimentary at the time and yet today it has become second nature.
These days microprocessors are everywhere and even the big mainframes are nothing more than thousands of microprocessors working together to solve massive problems. They also likely run Linux.
This show was recorded 40 years ago next month. Back in those days, I was a computer tech, working on mini computers from Data General, DEC and others. There was also one mainframe system I worked on, which was a mil spec version of an IBM computer, made by Rockwell Collins. I bought my first computer, an IMSAI 8080, in November 1976. Today, I have a cell phone that is far more powerful than anything from back in those days and I run Linux on my desktop and notebook computers.
BTW, Gordon Bell was one of the people behind Ethernet DIX (Digital Intel Xerox) standard.
I have a real nostalgia for the 1980's nostalgia for 1950's computers. I don't have much nostalgia for the 90's nostalgia for 1960's or 1970's computers. But I really wax nostalgic for the 2000's nostalgia for 1980's computers.
1mb is a mass storage medium.
The kinds of stuff they are talking about in the video is so ludicrously funny in November of 2018 !!!
Me my twin brother we’re rocking the Commodore *64 during these days. 😊
@17:14 - Gary Kildall highlighting in 1983, the no1 reason why a finger-based touchscreen desktop monitor should never be a thing.
He did, basically, say that it wouldn't be used constantly. I wouldn't mind having one just for the rare instances I would use it. It definitely cant replace a mouse tho.
I’ve had a touchscreen monitor on a few computers and it was more a nuisance than anything - I’d be pointing something out to someone else and accidentally click on something. Mouse and keyboard are more ergonomic and faster for most applications. Still, it’s hard to imagine modern smartphones and tablets without touchscreens, so they did find an important use in portable computing!
We're back to mainframes, we just call it the cloud. Now everything relies on a huge array of rented servers at some far-away datacenter, where your data is stored and processed. Disconnect your computer and phone from the Internet and see what you can still do. Most companies can't afford to do their own servers, it's all from Microsoft, Amazon and Google.
Brilliant comment. We started going backward around 2006 i think.
@@guymartin6514 Not necessarily a bad thing. Grandma doesn't know about cybersecurity and backing up their data. 80% of the market is best served by leaving the system administration to somebody else. The PC era was started by nerds, it wasn't necessarily the best idea, particularly now communication is fast and cheap.
@@straightpipediesel As one of those nerds I respectfully disagree. I think convenience (whilst good for those selling it) breeds laziness. Which leaves us exposed.
But I do like your initial observation.
6:05;
So that was basically the same concept as all GPU's have been using for something like the last decade or so. Interesting.
Also @8:24 "I can't predict wether the video disk will come in or not"
He basically predicted Video CD's and it's successors DVD and Bluray video disks... O.O
I'm rather shocked by there being touch screen even in 1983. I wasn't born yet and so I wasn't aware of computers regardless but, I think that many of us have no idea just how old some of our technology is. I think all of it's quite fascinating and at the same time, a major headache. I'm happy that we don't have to go through a series of steps just to be able to do basic things on the computer.
The comments by Cyril towards the end are actually prophetic.
"i think the next revolution will be the integration of video, television and sound". And here we are with our mobile phones.
This must've been done in Cali. I grew up in Philly between 80-93 and I don't recall such an informative computer-based program even in passing channel surfing.
Filmed and broadcast in San Mateo.
what is funny to me is this show is as old as me was this on pbs I never saw this growing up.
Before Linus Tech Tips and The WAN Show There was The Computer Chronicles.
who?
youtubers who do basically the same thing as Computer Chronicles, but honeslty, without the Stewart and Gary class.
sdavidf I don't think so. I have never seen them have any guests from major computer companies visit, nor them visit any major company, or site such as Los Alamos National Laboratory.
lol comparing Linus Cucktips to people the caliber of Kildall and Cheifet. Your commentary reeks of underage.
Linus isn't that guy who bakes computer parts for a living?