A fascinating bit of computer history here, as one of the gents involved in programming VisiCalc (remember it?) relates details of the development, and the hardware of the day, which are hard to believe now, just a few decades later.
Before discussing keyboards, it’s worth noting that back in 1979 people viewed the keyboard as an impediment to using computers. After all, only secretaries could type and the rest of us need to be able to talk to the computer. Hence the decades spent on trying to get computers to understand speech. It turns out that most people could type (at least those who used spreadsheets) since it was a basic skill necessary for getting through college. In fact, speech is a very problematic way to interact with a spreadsheet. In fact, the spreadsheet itself is used as a communications vehicle rather than speech.
The Apple ][ had a simple keyboard that only had upper case letters and only two arrow keys. There were no interrupts nor a clock. If the user typed a character before the keyboard input buffer was emptied it would be lost.
[…] In 1978 the Apple ][ was viewed as a game machine. In fact, it was intended to be a hobbyist game machine. It had up to 64KB (that’s kilo bytes) or 65336 8 bit bytes, or 2^16 compared with today’s PC’s which now have 2^29 (512 Megabytes) or 8000 (ok, 8196) times as much memory. We had no hard drive. Apple had cornered the market for floppy drives but they weren’t universal so we supported the cassette tape player as a storage device but, fortunately, few users even know about it.
There was no way to start or stop the tape drive. We had to leave gaps in the data on the tape to allow for processing of each chunk of data before we got the next one.
Cool.
Yeah, this was a fun article. Brought back memories . . .
Oh, yeah.
My first home computer was a Commodore 64, and I intentionally
eschewed the cassette drive for the (woo-woo!) floppy drive.
Did you have one of the white drives, notorious for going out of alignment?
We started with a Commodore 64 and a tape drive, hooked up to our TV. And we LIKED it.
Could never finish Jumpman, tho. Could never get the second side of the tape to load.
Loved Jumpman. I have a PC version of it now.
My drive was … I seem to recall it being sort of beige. Never had alignment problems, that I remember.
I do remember buying C64 magazines and keying in programs in hex, though. Wow.
I guess I’m the only one who had(has) a Texas Instruments TI99.
We were only to afford the tape drive at the time and we had it hooked up to a B&W(B&W!!!!)TV. Have turned it on in at least 10 years.
Also still have a Commodore SX-64. A “portable” computer, in name only. “Portable” by the fact that it had its own 4″ monitor built in. Thing weighs about 25#!!
I can remember first hooking up my C64 to a little b&w color TV, up on my folks’ breakfast bar, going ooh and aah — and then not being able to do much else, since I hadn’t bought any storage devices yet.
Naner – Naner!
Our first was a Sinclair hooked up to a little B&W portable tv (Philco 12″ screen), and with a tape drive. First thing I did was a six-sider die rolling program.
Ah, the Kansas City Standard. The plus in an Apple ][ plus was Microsoft Basic in ROM. Before that you had to load BASIC from the cassette. The max memory was 48K not 64K. You needed a so-called language card to max it out to 64K. I can’t believe I bought mine at a Team Electronics for $2000.
Jumpman: BEST. GAME. EVER.
I also had a C64, but before then, I had a TRS-80 Level I. I can still remember those two little asterisks in the corner of the screen, one blinking on and off as the data read off the cassette tape. You could basically leave the computer, make lunch and eat it before a program could fill up the 16K (I believe) memory.
Hmm. I started with a Commodore VIC-20! Boy, was I happy when I finally got a tape drive, and didn’t have to type in a game from Compute!’s Gazette every single time I wanted to play it!
Ah, Compute!’s Gazette. Those were the days.