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Questions tagged [british-computers]

Hardware, software, and people associated with computer development in the UK.

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22 votes
1 answer
456 views

Looking for help understanding a 'Reciproot' routine on the Manchester Mark I (1951)

I'm hoping to understand a routine written for the Manchester Mark I [NOTE: a comment from Raffzahn suggests this may be the Ferranti (wikipedia link) and not the Manchester Mark I] which computes ...
Adam Hyland's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
301 views

When/where was datum and limit relocation invented?

I recently "attended" a meeting of the UK Computer Conservation Society on the subject of LEO (Lyons Electronic Office; Lyons was a bakery and cafeteria business that found itself designing ...
another-dave's user avatar
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8 votes
1 answer
455 views

How much did the RM 380Z weigh?

The Research Machines 380Z was an early British microcomputer, released in 1977. Unlike many other early microcomputers, the design was industrial style, a hefty metal box, sometimes described as '...
rwallace's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
435 views

First 386 PC on sale in the UK

In the early days of personal computers, there was something of a delay in the technology crossing the Atlantic, and when American computers did arrive in the UK, they tended to be expensive relative ...
rwallace's user avatar
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28 votes
14 answers
7k views

History of non-American software/hardware/CS theory development, 1940s-1980s?

I am curious to learn about any developments in computer theory, hardware, and software that took place outside of the United States, in the middle of last century (~1940s-1980s). I have read 'Where ...
skytwosea's user avatar
  • 381
5 votes
2 answers
303 views

What 20th-century computers besides KDF9 replicated hardware for each concurrently-running program?

The KDF9 (English Electric, 1963) had a hardware option for timesharing. This provided four instances of most per-program context: the nest (16-deep expression evaluation stack), the subroutine jump ...
another-dave's user avatar
  • 31.9k