Questions tagged [history]
History of computers, digital electronics, hardware manufacturers and software developers.
147
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What key factor led to the sudden commercial success of MS Windows with v3.0?
Microsoft Windows was originally introduced in 1985, ostensibly to compete with the Apple Macintosh, and other computers shipping with graphical shells by that time. However, early versions of Windows ...
20
votes
8answers
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Retrocomputing software development process/methodologies
This is a test question based on this meta post. If the question can be reworded to be more on-topic, please feel free to suggest improvements. This is an open ended question about software ...
77
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9answers
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How were the first ZX Spectrum games written?
Being a child of the 80s I loved my ZX Spectrum, did my best to learn BASIC but I felt like the games I was playing (Jetpac, Dizzy, Renegade etc) were perhaps not written using BASIC.
I wondered: how ...
75
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12answers
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Back in the late 1980s, how was commercial software for 8-bit home computers developed?
When hobbyists wanted to write software for e.g. the Commodore 64, they either used the built-in BASIC interpreter (with all its limitations) or some native tools, like compilers for other languages ...
43
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3answers
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Why are the symbols on the number keys of PC & Mac keyboards different to ASCII keyboards?
On a US-layout PC keyboard, the symbols above the number keys are as follows:
Whereas the keyboard on an Apple II is different:
Note, for example, the '(' and ')' symbols are now above 8 and 9, and '...
130
votes
4answers
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It's now safe to turn off your computer
One thing I remember very well from my childhood is the screen you got at the end of a shutdown process on old computers:
I don't know if this was a Windows 95/98/2000/ME only thing but I wonder why ...
45
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11answers
9k views
What is the oldest computer capable of running a modern version of GNU/Linux?
A bit of a trivia question: What is the oldest hardware capable of running a modern Linux-based operating system, including user-space? (Not necessarily GNU userspace, but running a standard GNU/Linux ...
48
votes
4answers
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Why did the IBM 650 use bi-quinary?
The IBM 650, announced in 1953, was the world's first mass-produced computer. It represented numbers in decimal, which is understandable, both because it needed to work with exact money amounts, and ...
36
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3answers
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Why did 80×25 become the text monitor standard?
Prior to the 1981 release of the IBM PC, the VT105 (72×20 1971), VT52 (80×12 1974), and VT100 (80×25 1978) text terminals were used on many Unix machines and the PDP-11 (probably the most widely used ...
32
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4answers
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History of Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Q for flow control
Which OS was the first to use Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Q on the console for pause and continue?
I first discovered Ctrl-S in IBM PC DOS 1.1.
18
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2answers
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First commercial DOS game?
What was the first commercial game sold for use on IBM/MS/PC DOS after the IBM August 12, 1981 release.
16
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4answers
2k views
Historical price of ROM
Historical price charts for RAM are quite readily available, e.g. in the mid-seventies a ballpark figure was a penny a byte. What was the price of ROM (assuming you were getting the chips produced in ...
5
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4answers
381 views
Cheapest type of Read-Only Memory allowing Random access before Year 1970
Back in the 50s and 60s people had:
random access, read-write memories like Magnetic Cores.
sequential access, read-write memories like Delay Lines and Magnetic Tapes.
And:
sequential access, write ...
48
votes
5answers
4k views
Filesystems with versioning
I've been reading through The Unix Hater's Handbook. It has many, many very valid criticisms. (I'm still raging that terminal escape codes aren't in the terminal driver...)
There is one anomaly though:...
23
votes
8answers
5k views
Why did 8-bit Basic use 40-bit floating point?
Nowadays floating point is usually either 32 or 64 bits, sometimes 16, occasionally 128. But of course, the Basic interpreters on the 8-bit machines, having to implement floating point in software ...
52
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12answers
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What early home computers have more than one CPU, where both could be used by the programmer? [closed]
I am interested to know if any computers that are on-topic for this site had more than one CPU, where this plurality could be leveraged by a programmer.
Some cases I don't so much care about:
The ...
34
votes
4answers
6k views
What was the IBM PC cost saving for using the 8088 vs 8086?
The decision to use the 8088, a version of the 8086 with the data bus restricted to 8 bits, in the original IBM PC, seems strange on the face of it, certainly hurt performance and intuitively shouldn'...
33
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3answers
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What was the first programming language to support “operator chaining”?
The Python language has a neat feature: An expression like x < y <= z is interpreted, according to mathematical convention, as equivalent to x < y and y <= z. Operands are evaluated only ...
26
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4answers
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Was there a clearly identifiable "first computer" to use or demonstrate the use of virtual memory?
The NPR.org news article and podcast How The World Has Changed! Science During The 40 Years Of 'Morning Edition' includes the photo below with the caption
Before the introduction of the personal ...
26
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10answers
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Graphics chips in 1980
Suppose you were trying to build a computer with a color graphics display in 1980, you have limited engineering resources and time to market is critical, so you want to get as many of the parts off ...
34
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8answers
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Why were relays prevalent in early 1940s computers when vacuum tubes were also available?
Many of of the computers built in the 1940s used relays for logic (see here and here):
Bell Labs Model I, 1940
Bletchley Park Bombe, 1940
Zuse Z2, 1940
Zuse Z3, 1941
Bell Labs Model II, 1943
Bell ...
19
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1answer
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Where does the hierarchical directory structure originate from?
Windows, Macintosh, Unix/Linux: today, they all support a hierarchical directory structure. The differences are in the details (mount points vs drive letters), but all use a hierarchical directory ...
36
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6answers
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What was the purpose and history of the C64's special keys?
I never had a Commodore 64 but I've always been curious what the purpose and history of some of the special keys were. In particular:
C=
Run/Stop
Clr/Home
Restore
I'm mostly used to the standard ...
30
votes
5answers
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Why were early personal computer monitors not green?
Green was traditionally the most common color for computer monitors; it combines strain-free readability with low cost.
Given this, it's surprising that the first versions of the Commodore PET and ...
19
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6answers
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Limiting factor on sprite sizes
Early consoles and home computers that were optimized for games, tended to provide sprites. From a game programmer's viewpoint, these were good to have. Of course, one always wanted more and larger ...
18
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11answers
4k views
What was the earliest system to explicitly support threading based on shared memory?
The notion of multiple processes has been around a long time, at least since the IBM 360. Multiple processes running at the same time, in separate memory spaces with protection from each other.
(In ...
11
votes
1answer
760 views
Did Nintendo pay WDC for their use of the 65816 core?
When Nintendo used the 6502 core in the NES (as part of the Ricoh 2A03/2A07 microprocessor and sound generator), they circumvented the 6502's patent protection by disabling the BCD arithmetic. As a ...
19
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2answers
2k views
First computer emulator in Windows
I released my ZX Spectrum emulation Wspecem, and GPL sources first time publicly in the Internet at large, the 15th May 1996, for Windows 95.
I am quite sure it was the first ZX Spectrum emulation ...
16
votes
4answers
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Why did 3.5" floppies win (and not another size)?
It's an open question whether desktops would've kept using 5.25" until the end of the floppy era, but laptops meant something smaller was going to be introduced; that much was essentially ...
8
votes
1answer
749 views
How was the Traf-O-Data 8008 simulator developed?
Traf-O-Data was the first business partnership between Paul Allen, Bill Gates and Paul Gilbert. In order to develop the software for their custom-built Traf-O-Data machine (Intel 8008 Inside™), ...
46
votes
1answer
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Where and when did the `0x` convention for hexadecimal literals originate?
By the early 1980s, C was using 0x as a prefix to indicate integer literals expressed in hexadecimal, e.g., 0xCAFE. This did not exist in B as of 1972, though B did support octal integer literals via ...
23
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5answers
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Over its lifetime, how many Apple II computers were sold?
It would be nice to break it down by model if possible.
12
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1answer
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Why green phosphor instead of amber?
According to this answer to Why were early personal computer monitors not green? they had a severe disadvantage in that you had to choose between 'too dim' and 'rapid burn-in' whereas amber could ...
9
votes
2answers
911 views
Was there an input device capable of entering all Algol 60 symbols with correct appearance?
This question was inspired by recent discussion on early keyboards and character sets, and mention in passing about how the COBOL designers were concerned about not using "non-existent" ...
7
votes
5answers
750 views
When did smart terminals arrive?
In the days of mainframes and minicomputers, a common user interface was a serial terminal where each keystroke was sent to the computer, which could respond with an update to the contents of the ...
0
votes
3answers
788 views
Does anyone have the source code of an early program written in Assembly? [closed]
I am interested in looking at the source code of any program that was written in Assembly just about when the Assembly language was invented.
If anyone have a source code for such a program, please ...
105
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7answers
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Why was `!` chosen for negation?
It seems that the use of the exclamation mark ! to denote negation started with the C programming language (as far as I can tell from my Google research). Nowhere though is mentioned who and why chose ...
75
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7answers
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What technological factors drove the rise of "high-speed" modems in the early 1990s?
The first inexpensive modem I ever purchased was a 300 baud direct-connect unit for the C64 User Port in late 1983. I recall that a couple of years later (1986), 1200 baud modems were affordable and I ...
31
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7answers
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How exactly did Windows become the OS of the home PC?
As far as I understand it, the whole personal computing revolution that Microsoft Windows did was not entirely by its own design. Is it true that the Windows OS at its core was originally designed to ...
48
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7answers
10k views
Did any compiler fully use Intel x87 80-bit floating point?
There is a paradox about floating point that I'm trying to understand.
Floating point is an eternal struggle with the problem that real numbers are both essential and incomputable. It's the best ...
81
votes
2answers
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Is there any code in Firefox (as of 2020) that comes from Netscape Navigator?
Inspired by comments on the previous question Is it true that Netscape Navigator eventually became Mozilla Firefox? (Answer: Yes).
In 1998, Netscape released a large amount of their existing source ...
39
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3answers
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Why does nobody attempt to build Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine?
The Difference Engine was built in the 90s.
Why has nobody succeeded in building the Analytical Engine?
Charles Babbage designed the Analytical Engine as a general-purpose computer to succeed his ...
37
votes
4answers
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Where does this esoteric Pascal operator come from?
In the documentation for an implementation of Pascal for a Soviet computer, I've encountered a very weird language extension. I'll try to translate it:
Branching operator (branch)
Syntax
&...
32
votes
9answers
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What did code on punch cards do with the other six bits per column?
In the fifties and sixties, program source code was typically stored on punch cards, one card per line.
The most common card format was the IBM 80 column by 12 row. For source code, this was commonly ...
23
votes
4answers
4k views
What accounted for the cost of ENIAC?
I'm used to the fact that first-generation computers were very expensive, which I had always assumed was because they contained large numbers of vacuum tubes, each of which is a rather complex, high ...
65
votes
5answers
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Why did C use the -> operator instead of reusing the . operator?
In the C programming language, the syntax to access the member of a structure is
structure.member
However, a member of a structure referenced by a pointer is written as
pointer->member
...
23
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3answers
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Why was "C:" chosen for the first hard drive partition?
I was reading this answer, as the question came to my mind: why does C: indicate the first hard drive partition?
The usage dates back to CP/M (as noted in a comment), was embraced by MS-DOS, and ...
18
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5answers
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Can a retro-computer be a useful way to learn computer-architecture fundamentals?
I've been reading about the fundamentals of computer architecture, but I think I could get a better grasp of the basics if I could could have an actual device to play with.
I had considered building ...
45
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2answers
7k views
Did IBM encourage Bill Gates to retain the rights over PC-DOS?
As is well-known, Microsoft's negotiations with IBM to deliver PC-DOS 1.0 with the original IBM PC resulted in:
IBM licensing the OS from Microsoft, as opposed to purchasing it outright.
Microsoft ...
33
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1answer
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Is it true that Netscape Navigator eventually became Mozilla Firefox?
Is it really the case that Mozilla Firefox is a modern day version of Netscape Navigator?