Allas Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Interesting infographic about the computer history. Several machines was mentioned as a step of evolution. Was great to see Atari 8bit Computers included in it. Infographic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 (edited) Neat, but those 5 modern consoles seem out of place. Certainly the console evolved long before these modern beasts. This thing must have been conceived by a youngster. Also, why do they have the PowerPC G1, G3, G4, and G5 all in there. Was the PowerPC, in the Macs only, that revolutionary in each of these incarnations that it deserved that many slots in the total history of computers? Edited March 2, 2011 by MrFish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 (edited) (double post) Edited March 2, 2011 by MrFish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zogging Hell Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 (double post) Plenty of Amigas (including the CDTV bizarrely), but no Atari ST, despite this being the first home computer with a colour user graphical interface, and the early history seems to have a strong west Atlantic bias.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Near Atari 400 e 800 computers, it should be written that those computer had outstanding (for 1979) graphics and sound capabilities (128 colors, sprites, 4 audio channels). “Gaming abilities” is a bit reductive. I am glad that someone pointed-out the fact that 400 and 800 are milestones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R6502A Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Too much Apple and Commodore and no mention of the 4004,6502 or 68000. If you going give the modern consoles a mention it seems strange to leave out the 2600 and have a mobile computing section without mentioning the GameBoy, as well as many others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sloopy Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Neat, but those 5 modern consoles seem out of place. Certainly the console evolved long before these modern beasts. This thing must have been conceived by a youngster. Also, why do they have the PowerPC G1, G3, G4, and G5 all in there. Was the PowerPC, in the Macs only, that revolutionary in each of these incarnations that it deserved that many slots in the total history of computers? interesting calling the 601 a 'G1' when it wasnt even designed by the IBM/Apple/Motorola alliance that made the rest of the 603/604/G3/G4/G5... IBM actually made the POWER processor which is a superset of the PowerPC. And is/was used in IBM workstations ( RS/6000 series )... yes there are alot of obvious and ignorance based errors in there... sloopy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wood_jl Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Too much Apple and Commodore and no mention of the 4004,6502 or 68000. If you going give the modern consoles a mention it seems strange to leave out the 2600 and have a mobile computing section without mentioning the GameBoy, as well as many others. Absolutely correct. Too many omissions, questionable inclusions (Playstation?), and mixing of relevant computers that sold in numbers with obscure models that had little impact on the market. How many Nexts were sold, relative to Macintosh, for example? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastRobPlus Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Too much Apple and Commodore and no mention of the 4004,6502 or 68000. If you going give the modern consoles a mention it seems strange to leave out the 2600 and have a mobile computing section without mentioning the GameBoy, as well as many others. Absolutely correct. Too many omissions, questionable inclusions (Playstation?), and mixing of relevant computers that sold in numbers with obscure models that had little impact on the market. How many Nexts were sold, relative to Macintosh, for example? Just to play devil’s advocate a bit. I notice that the playstation is the first “console” on the list after arguably the CDTV. It could be that the author of the chart is trying to show the evolution of the home computer into the 3 devices we see and use today: PC, handheld/PDA, game console. While there were a ton of more noteworthy game consoles prior to the PS and CDTV, it wasn’t until this mid-1990’s transition phase that saw purpose built consoles replacing the home computer entirely. Anyway, just a thought. It’s also possible the person is just a kid with a narrow grasp of history. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sloopy Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 Too much Apple and Commodore and no mention of the 4004,6502 or 68000. If you going give the modern consoles a mention it seems strange to leave out the 2600 and have a mobile computing section without mentioning the GameBoy, as well as many others. Absolutely correct. Too many omissions, questionable inclusions (Playstation?), and mixing of relevant computers that sold in numbers with obscure models that had little impact on the market. How many Nexts were sold, relative to Macintosh, for example? yes macintosh sold many a more unit, the Next is a very notable machine itself... as OS X, is a direct descendant of NextStep, the OS for the Next, and many of the things the Next pioneered in workstations came to desktops... altho the playstation was notable, because i used one for many hours (Gran Tourismo FTW!) there are many consoles more worthy of inclusion... sloopy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 That's a bit of an odd list there, but at least *somebody* finally remembered Atari... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sloopy Posted March 2, 2011 Share Posted March 2, 2011 i think a big part of the problem is twofold... many people compare it to the Commodore 64... and it isnt a peer of the C64, the C64 was just starting to get its design spec on paper when the 800 was available in stores... its contemporary is the VIC-20, which it runs circles around, and the Apple ][+ which it takes to task... and the other issue is the idea is Atari is a game company, so they dont think of anything from Atari more then just a video game system. even to this day people are amazed Atari made computers... sloopy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
in8regs Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 (edited) Meh timeline, missing the ti-99/4a, influence of other systems, a driving force of the commodore 64, biggest market holder for awhile, while listing less noteworthy systems.. and also no ST? Make that a crap timeline. Edited March 3, 2011 by in8regs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 Also, why do they have the PowerPC G1, G3, G4, and G5 all in there. Was the PowerPC, in the Macs only, that revolutionary in each of these incarnations that it deserved that many slots in the total history of computers? interesting calling the 601 a 'G1' when it wasnt even designed by the IBM/Apple/Motorola alliance that made the rest of the 603/604/G3/G4/G5... IBM actually made the POWER processor which is a superset of the PowerPC. And is/was used in IBM workstations ( RS/6000 series )... First of all, the 601 was designed for AIM, by Motorola and IBM as part of the alliance. The reason I referred to it as G1 is because it is the 1st generation processor in PowerPC family. The 603 and 604 are part of the 2nd generation, and so on... PowerPC Processors Also, PowerPC was not merely a subset of POWER, although it was based on it. PowerPC added capabilities not found in POWER, as well as leaving some features out. So, PowerPC was more of hybrid than a simple subset. IBM didn't implement full PowerPC ISA until the POWER3 processor, which wasn't released until 1998. The PowerPC 601 was released in 1993... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DamageX Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 Odd choices. 6502 and TMS9990 (and others...) were chips that had a real impact. Pentium and GeForce 6800, however different their internal architecture was compared to their predecessors, were still just incremental improvements of existing product lines. Also, no mention of ARM, NEC PC-98 series, or harddisk drives? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sloopy Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 Also, why do they have the PowerPC G1, G3, G4, and G5 all in there. Was the PowerPC, in the Macs only, that revolutionary in each of these incarnations that it deserved that many slots in the total history of computers? interesting calling the 601 a 'G1' when it wasnt even designed by the IBM/Apple/Motorola alliance that made the rest of the 603/604/G3/G4/G5... IBM actually made the POWER processor which is a superset of the PowerPC. And is/was used in IBM workstations ( RS/6000 series )... First of all, the 601 was designed for AIM, by Motorola and IBM as part of the alliance. The reason I referred to it as G1 is because it is the 1st generation processor in PowerPC family. The 603 and 604 are part of the 2nd generation, and so on... PowerPC Processors Also, PowerPC was not merely a subset of POWER, although it was based on it. PowerPC added capabilities not found in POWER, as well as leaving some features out. So, PowerPC was more of hybrid than a simple subset. IBM didn't implement full PowerPC ISA until the POWER3 processor, which wasn't released until 1998. The PowerPC 601 was released in 1993... yeah i know what wiki says, i am not going by that... i am going by what i was told by one of the engineers who designed it... basically they took the POWER architecture, modified it for single die silicon, and then added features... if you do a close inspection of the details, you can see where the 601 is significantly different from the 603/604/620... they did this for the rush to get it to market... and since it was based on prev IBM tech, they used IBM design tools to do it, and finally since it was so similar to the POWER1 made it in IBM's fab's only reason why i was in on this, was i used to work for a man who was at GM for 35 years, and knew alot of people in the industry, and at that time GM and Motorola had a close relationship, so somehow he got me invites to the partys, and semi-private demos for the AIM alliance, since he was a big mac person... sloopy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R6502A Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 i think a big part of the problem is twofold... many people compare it to the Commodore 64... and it isnt a peer of the C64, the C64 was just starting to get its design spec on paper when the 800 was available in stores... its contemporary is the VIC-20, which it runs circles around, and the Apple ][+ which it takes to task... and the other issue is the idea is Atari is a game company, so they dont think of anything from Atari more then just a video game system. even to this day people are amazed Atari made computers... sloopy. Ok, if time is your only criteria for the classification of two system as being comparable, then I guess they were not peers. They are both 8 bit machines based on the same processor, so I would say they are quite eligible for comparison. If I built an 8 bit machine today I would expect it to be compared to the Atari, Commodore and Apple of that era not an iPad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 I guess we'd best start calling a playstation a computer then (there again, didn't the 2600 have the word 'computer' given it's original moniker) I think the reason why they mentioned the NeXT system is because they merged with Apple ( since mr Job's was the person responsible for founding both next and co founding apple) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sack-c0s Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 (edited) DamageX has a point -The Acorn Archimedes probably deserves a spot in the list. It's not the most influential machine as far as computers go (unless you are a Brit, in which case you'd have had heavy exposure to them in school), but Acorns decision to roll their own CPU was pretty influential given the amount of ARM-based devices around now. Edited March 3, 2011 by sack-c0s Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sloopy Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 i think a big part of the problem is twofold... many people compare it to the Commodore 64... and it isnt a peer of the C64, the C64 was just starting to get its design spec on paper when the 800 was available in stores... its contemporary is the VIC-20, which it runs circles around, and the Apple ][+ which it takes to task... and the other issue is the idea is Atari is a game company, so they dont think of anything from Atari more then just a video game system. even to this day people are amazed Atari made computers... sloopy. Ok, if time is your only criteria for the classification of two system as being comparable, then I guess they were not peers. They are both 8 bit machines based on the same processor, so I would say they are quite eligible for comparison. If I built an 8 bit machine today I would expect it to be compared to the Atari, Commodore and Apple of that era not an iPad. by the '8bit' criteria, basically we could compare a 2600 and a NES, as both had 6502 based CPU's... the idea here is, we are not comparing the CPU's, but the exteral components to the CPU's, i.e. the video and sound capabilities... if the C64 had been as ground breaking for its time as the 800 was, it should have been more like an amiga... but it wasnt, it was more a mediocre level of technology, what made it so special was how it was marketed, and price point it was marketed at... sloopy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+orpheuswaking Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 Wait there are more computers than Atari? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sloopy Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 Wait there are more computers than Atari? YES! sinclair research made some computers... and this small company called MITS made a few too... but i think that was it, but i could be wrong. sloopy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R6502A Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 (edited) i think a big part of the problem is twofold... many people compare it to the Commodore 64... and it isnt a peer of the C64, the C64 was just starting to get its design spec on paper when the 800 was available in stores... its contemporary is the VIC-20, which it runs circles around, and the Apple ][+ which it takes to task... and the other issue is the idea is Atari is a game company, so they dont think of anything from Atari more then just a video game system. even to this day people are amazed Atari made computers... sloopy. Ok, if time is your only criteria for the classification of two system as being comparable, then I guess they were not peers. They are both 8 bit machines based on the same processor, so I would say they are quite eligible for comparison. If I built an 8 bit machine today I would expect it to be compared to the Atari, Commodore and Apple of that era not an iPad. by the '8bit' criteria, basically we could compare a 2600 and a NES, as both had 6502 based CPU's... the idea here is, we are not comparing the CPU's, but the exteral components to the CPU's, i.e. the video and sound capabilities... if the C64 had been as ground breaking for its time as the 800 was, it should have been more like an amiga... but it wasnt, it was more a mediocre level of technology, what made it so special was how it was marketed, and price point it was marketed at... sloopy. 2600 wins hands down! Seriously, I agree that for the amount of time between the release of the A8 and C64 the technology leap wasn't that great compared to the leap from C64 to NES. Maybe I should have been clearer, by '8bit' criteria I did have in mind devices such as video, sound and I/O beyond the base CPU (Although these devices need >8bit elements to be of any use). Edited March 3, 2011 by R6502A Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+orpheuswaking Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 I thoght sinclair made those really unsafe C5 scooters Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 ...The Acorn Archimedes probably deserves a spot in the list. It's not the most influential machine as far as computers go (unless you are a Brit, in which case you'd have had heavy exposure to them in school)That depends how old you are of course (and your schools budget). I was gone before they were around. Not that it would have mattered as there was zero involvement with computing at my high school in the eighties despite my own efforts to push the need to include them in the curriculum. They had one BBC micro stuffed away in a cupboard and they had no interest in ever using it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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