The History of Personal Computing – Page 15 – The Story of the Personal Computer in Audio & Pictures

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

Podcast Episode 4: Single Board Computers

Posted on October 17, 2014October 17, 2014 by Jeff and David

Listen along as David Greelish and Jeff Salzman discuss several of the early single board computers, including the Nascom 1, OSI Superboard, MOS Technology KIM-1, and the COSMAC ELF.

All of the above single board computers don’t easily fit into the History of Personal Computing’s “Tier” philosophy, so this special podcast episode was produced.

Continue reading “Podcast Episode 4: Single Board Computers”

MOS Technology KIM-1

Posted on October 17, 2014October 24, 2014 by Jeff and David

Launched in 1976, the MOS Technology KIM-1 (KIM being short for Keyboard Input Monitor), was a small 6502-based single-board computer. MOS Technology was a semiconductor designer and manufacturer based in Norristown, Pennsylvania. It is most famous for the 6502 microprocessor. In late 1976, Commodore Business Machines (CBM) acquired MOS.

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COSMAC ELF

Posted on October 17, 2014October 24, 2014 by Jeff and David

The COSMAC ELF was an RCA 1802 microprocessor-based computer based on a series of construction articles in Popular Electronics magazine in 1976 and 1977. Through the back pages of electronics magazines, both Netronics and Quest Electronics offered low-priced kits that were based on this design. The system was a very early personal computer. It was operated without built-in ROMs and programs were entered directly with help of the CPU integrated DMA.

Continue reading “COSMAC ELF”