A Trip Down Computer Memory Lane

News.com has an interesting stroll down memory lane with a look at the "DigiBarn", a collection of technology from early mechanical calculators to modern web appliances. NASA contractor Bruce Damer and partner Alan Lundell run this "museum in transition" from a 19th-century farmhouse deep in the Santa Cruz mountains. In addition to notable success milestones, the company also includes some of the industry failures, like an Apple III Damer acquired from Apple's legal department.

In case you didn't notice

[LordSnooty]

The link goes to page 2 of the article.

I'd be interested to learn more about the "iPod prototype" - described as a Mac in a briefcase - how was the music stored on this? If it were on separate medium such as cassette, disk or somesuch then is it really a prototype of anything? Would it not be a similar, more cumbersome version of the Walkman, which had already appeared by 1980. Since it's a Mac I'd like to say the files were in AIFF format, 'cept WP says that was developed in 1988. What was the state of audio compression at the turn of the eighties? Uncompressed audio seems unrealistic on yesterday's storage media.

Re:Accuracy

[garcia]

One room over, however, was my first computer, the Commodore Vic-20, a 2K masterpiece on which a friend of mine and I would sit and write incredible programs in BASIC to do things like ask you your name and then print it on the screen an infinite number of times.

He could be my twin brother, if I had one, as the Vic-20 was the first computer I used and I was programming in BASIC before I could knowingly spell or read (just imitating my father's keystrokes) and what I remember doing the most was printing my name over and over again.

My second computer was the C-64 (not the fat box with dark brown keys but instead the sleeker one built a few years later) and while we used cartridges almost solely with the Vic-20, we only had one cartridge for the C64 (Spyhunter!)

This article, while it may be filled with date inaccuracies, is still fitting my history nearly to the "T".

I come from that era

[kurt555gs]

I remember when I got my 1st Radio Shack Model 1. I remember when I bought a Kaypro II. ( I still have it ). I remember how much I loved writing Z80 Assembler on CP/M.

I started out fooling around with these computers, sharing information on CP/M bulletin boards, learning how computers worked from the ground up.

I also remember having the opportunity to meet industry leaders like George Morrow, and work for Takioshi Shiina of SORD computer of Japan. I got to travel, and live in Japan working for SORD.

I remember COMDEX when there were competing operating systems and unique hardware before Microsoft got a strangle hold on innovation and creative thinking.

I remember a time where software patents were unheard of and the thought that ideas for software not the software itself could be owned by some one.

I think of how lucky I have been being able to work on projects where the ideas of creative people not the lawyers and accountants counted the most.

I have been lucky to have grown up in that time.

Thank you Mr Shiina

Cheers
 

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 compression is lossy. You do not like audio drop outs on tape, you would not like the non-sense result of MP3-compressing a program saved to audio tape. I am not even sure the loss-less audio encoders would cut it. They are designed for a digital audio input (generally CD quality audio or below), not the A/D conversion back up format on circa 1980s audio cassette tapes.

I remember not too long ago when hard drive prices were high enough people were dreaming up ways to back up their data to the video micro-cassette tapes used in consumer camcorders.

Re:In case you didn't notice

[OakDragon]

My 2nd computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer II. Unfortunately, I could not afford the disk drive for it. Here are a couple of ways I used the tape drive to provide music for my programs.

The first was really a demo. I made a BASIC program to fill the screen with the James Bond "007" logo as the tape drive played "View to a Kill" (which I "downloaded" by holding the tape recorder up to the radio speaker). The program loaded, and started drawing to screen, while the sound played through the computer's hardware to the TV speaker.

The second program used the same technique to load a game (D-n-D type), play some mood music while the title screen was up, then some data was loaded from tape.

As for music produced by the computer, the CoCo was from the "beep-boop" school of sounds. Producing a note pretty much stopped all other processor functions too, if I remember.