Jeff and David – Page 3 – The History of Personal Computing

Vector Graphic, Inc. Vector 1

Posted on November 14, 2014November 14, 2014 by Jeff and David

Vector Graphic, Inc., like Cromemco which we recently covered, started out by creating expansion cards for S-100 systems. Thier first products were an 8K static RAM card and a 256×256 pixel “high resolution” card, called HRG, or High Resolution Graphics.

Before long, and also like Cromemco, Vector Graphic produced THEIR first S-100 clone, the Vector 1 computer, which went fully to market in 1977. One of the founders, Bob Harp, was the one who initially designed the Vector 1 system. Within the company, Bob was joined as co-owner by his wife Lore Harp, along with their next door neighbor, Carol Ely. Together, they springboarded a company that within four years, surpassed $3,000,000 revenue per month.

That was just a brief company introduction. M Continue reading “Vector Graphic, Inc. Vector 1”

Holiday Season Memories: Your FIRST Computer

Posted on November 8, 2014November 8, 2014 by Jeff and David

It’s 1970-something or 1980-something and you just woke up from a long winter’s nap with sugarplums dancing in your head…

Who are we kidding…?!?

You couldn’t sleep A WINK due to the anticipation of waking up one morning to see what you could find for yourself in that pile of colorfully wrapped packages.

But wait… what is that big one in the back? You push all of the other gifts aside and pull it near you. Oh my, it’s a HEAVY ONE!!! You rip away at the well crafted wrapping to reveal a…
Continue reading “Holiday Season Memories: Your FIRST Computer”

Heathkit H8

Posted on October 31, 2014October 31, 2014 by Jeff and David

Heathkit was a long established electronics retailer, specializing in build-it-yourself electronic kits. In the wake of Altair’s original move to create a home computer for consumers, Heathkit believed they, too, could capitalize on the homebrew personal computer market. The result was the Heathkit H8 computer, introduced in July 1977. The H8 is similar to other S100 class computers in the sense that it used an Intel 8080 CPU, had a backplane expansion bus, and CP/M was commonly used on it, but the similarities ended there. Heathkit’s engineers noted the need to correct some major flaws in the S100 bus design, like having the +5 volt and ground pins right beside each other. Uncorrected, it was possible to short the power supply if a card was inserted crooked or a piece of metal dropped in the S100 slot at the right position. After all, this was the 70’s. You can’t have one of those low hanging disco chains getting in the works and shorting things out when bending over to insert an S100 card.

Continue reading “Heathkit H8”

Cromemco Z-1

Posted on October 31, 2014October 31, 2014 by Jeff and David

Cromemco was founded in Mountain View, CA by two Stanford Ph.D. students in 1974, Harry Garland and Roger Melen. It received its name in honor of their residence at Stanford University, Crothers Memorial, which was a dormitory reserved for engineering graduate students. The two had already been working together on a series of articles for Popular Electronics magazine.The articles were for non-computer electronic hobbyist projects. In late 1974, Roger Melen was visiting the New York editorial offices of Popular Electronics and he saw the prototype of the MITS Altair 8800. He was so impressed with it that he immediately changed his next flight to go to Albuquerque, NM. There he met with Ed Roberts, president of MITS, and Roberts encouraged Melen to develop add-on products for the Altair. Continue reading “Cromemco Z-1”

Podcast Feed Location Updated

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Jeff and David

In order to better distribute our podcast, we have modified our RSS feed generator. This action resulted in the creation of a new RSS feed URL for the podcast.

The new URL is: http://www.historyofpersonalcomputing.com/?feed=podcast&podcast_series=history-of-personal-computing

The protocol(s) for automatic redirects to the new RSS feed have been put into place, so you shouldn’t need to do anthing. Your podcasting software should pick up on the change and permanently update the feed location. The next time you refresh or reload the History of Personal Computing podcast you should notice the update. iTunes should pick it up in 48 hours or less. Some podcast software will create duplicate entries for the existing shows because the naming convention of the podcast titles changed from the old shows.

You will probably know for sure if the redirect works after Episode 5 goes live sometime on October 31, 2014. If it doesn’t, please let us know in a comment on this post, or directly at feedback@historyofpersonalcomputing.com