On Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at 4:12:31 AM UTC-7, Jason Evans wrote:
> I was watching this episode of The Computer Chronicles
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ95IclntIY) which is the 1989 Holiday
> Buyer's Guide.
>
> Let's say you wake up on Christmas Day in 1989 and you can have any
> computer that you want that it available at that time. What do you choose?
> A shiny new 486? The latest Mac? A new Amiga? ...or maybe something more
> exotic?

If the choice is restricted to "ordinary" computers - not an IBM mainframe
or a Cray supercomputer - in hindsight, a 486 would of course be the wisest
choice.

John Savard

Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:
> On Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at 4:12:31 AM UTC-7, Jason Evans wrote:
>> I was watching this episode of The Computer Chronicles
>> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ95IclntIY) which is the 1989 Holiday
>> Buyer's Guide.
>>
>> Let's say you wake up on Christmas Day in 1989 and you can have any
>> computer that you want that it available at that time. What do you choose?
>> A shiny new 486? The latest Mac? A new Amiga? ...or maybe something more
>> exotic?
>
> If the choice is restricted to "ordinary" computers - not an IBM mainframe
> or a Cray supercomputer

With great power comes a great electricity bill.

>- in hindsight, a 486 would of course be the wisest
> choice.

Why?

On 2022-11-15, Jason Evans <jsevans@mailfence.com> wrote:
> I was watching this episode of The Computer Chronicles
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ95IclntIY) which is the 1989 Holiday
> Buyer's Guide.
>
> Let's say you wake up on Christmas Day in 1989 and you can have any
> computer that you want that it available at that time. What do you choose?
> A shiny new 486? The latest Mac? A new Amiga? ...or maybe something more
> exotic?

I think that was the year HP bought out Apollo Computer.
I'd have one of their last models 9000/something, they can still run *BSD.

On 2022-11-16 02:11, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 10:38:50 -0600, D.J. wrote:
>>
>> I received a new Amiga A1000, monitor, and the box the computer came
>> in. The box had some software and a couple of books.
>>
>> Unfortunately the printer, I live in the US, printed the British pound
>> symbol instead of the $ sign. Weird printer... cellophane with wax as
>> the print medium. The printer melted the wax into the standard paper,
>> tracter feed 8.5x11.
>
> What printer?
>
> Reading some old manuals I came across the Epson RX80 (or FX?). It
> allowed to use different font sets already in the early 1980s. You just
> needed to know *how*.
>
> Would be lame though if the retailer sold printers in the US set up for
> the UK market.

Not a month ago I got a ticket printed on a machine that could not do
the euro symbol.

Of course, I did not ask, could be a configuration thing, change code
page or whatever. Still, on 2022...

--
Cheers, Carlos.

Jason Evans wrote:
....
> Let's say you wake up on Christmas Day in 1989 and you can have any
> computer that you want that it available at that time. What do you choose?
> A shiny new 486? The latest Mac? A new Amiga? ...or maybe something more
> exotic?

the Amiga was amazing when it came out and i really did
want one, but i'd already had an IBM PC so could not afford...

songbird

On Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at 5:12:31 AM UTC-6, Jason Evans wrote:
> I was watching this episode of The Computer Chronicles
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ95IclntIY) which is the 1989 Holiday
> Buyer's Guide.
>
> Let's say you wake up on Christmas Day in 1989 and you can have any
> computer that you want that it available at that time. What do you choose?
> A shiny new 486? The latest Mac? A new Amiga? ...or maybe something more
> exotic?

In 1989, I would have chosen a Sequent Symmetry. Nothing too fancy, 2 or 4 '386 procs. Each of their 386's running DYNIX/ptx could run circles around any 386/486 PC. Of course, the power bills would have killed me.

On 2022-11-16, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
> On 2022-11-16 02:11, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>> On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 10:38:50 -0600, D.J. wrote:
>>>
>>> I received a new Amiga A1000, monitor, and the box the computer came
>>> in. The box had some software and a couple of books.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately the printer, I live in the US, printed the British pound
>>> symbol instead of the $ sign. Weird printer... cellophane with wax as
>>> the print medium. The printer melted the wax into the standard paper,
>>> tracter feed 8.5x11.
>>
>> What printer?
>>
>> Reading some old manuals I came across the Epson RX80 (or FX?). It
>> allowed to use different font sets already in the early 1980s. You just
>> needed to know *how*.
>>
>> Would be lame though if the retailer sold printers in the US set up for
>> the UK market.
>
> Not a month ago I got a ticket printed on a machine that could not do
> the euro symbol.
>
> Of course, I did not ask, could be a configuration thing, change code
> page or whatever. Still, on 2022...
>

Possibly a sign of the future. The EU may be facing a fort Sumter
movement. (In keeping accounts, I avoid currency symbols)

--
greymausg@mail.com

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell the stench of an Influencer.
Where is our money gone, Dude?

Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> schrieb:
>> Jason Evans <jsevans@mailfence.com> writes:
>>>On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 15:01:36 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
>>>
>>>> Nice question. Do you mean the me of the present, or me as i was in
>>>> 1989? On the exotic front, i'd consider the MSX2+
>>>>
>>>> https://www.msx.org/wiki/Panasonic_FS-A1WSX
>>>
>>>Present you, it just happens to be in the year 1989. No price limits, it
>>>just has to exist that year.
>>
>> At that time, I would have loved to have a VAX-11/730.
>
>That was slower than the 11/780, at 0.3 VUPs. There were RISC
>machines on the market which outperformed it by an order of
>magnitude or more.

The 11/780 required significant power. The 11/730 was suitable
for a home installation.

On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 20:11:59 -0500, Andreas Kohlbach
<ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 10:38:50 -0600, D.J. wrote:
>>
>> I received a new Amiga A1000, monitor, and the box the computer came
>> in. The box had some software and a couple of books.
>>
>> Unfortunately the printer, I live in the US, printed the British pound
>> symbol instead of the $ sign. Weird printer... cellophane with wax as
>> the print medium. The printer melted the wax into the standard paper,
>> tracter feed 8.5x11.
>
>What printer?
>
>Reading some old manuals I came across the Epson RX80 (or FX?). It
>allowed to use different font sets already in the early 1980s. You just
>needed to know *how*.

Could have been an Epson, but I don't remember.

>Would be lame though if the retailer sold printers in the US set up for
>the UK market.

US Air Force exchange.
--
Jim

On 2022-11-15, greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:
> On 2022-11-15, Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
>> Nice question. Do you mean the me of the present, or me as i was in
>> 1989? On the exotic front, i'd consider the MSX2+
>>
>> https://www.msx.org/wiki/Panasonic_FS-A1WSX
>
> That was the one, made by several companies, but with the same OS..Nice
> keyboard?.. I have one regret, buying a spectrum instead of a C64.
> The Amiga was whole generation ahead of the MSX.

I like that the MSX had an open specification.

An uncle of a friend used an Amiga for video production in the early
90's. The Amiga was definitely ahead. OTOH, the Amiga and MSX game
lists are both about 2,000 games long.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MSX_games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amiga_games

Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
> If the choice is restricted to "ordinary" computers - not an IBM mainframe
> or a Cray supercomputer - in hindsight, a 486 would of course be the wisest
> choice.

I was posting SJMN sunday adverts on internal IBM forums showing prices
significantly cheaper than IBM Boca/PS2 predictions. Then had of Boca
contracted with Dataquest (since bought by Gartner) to do study of
future of PC ... including several hr video taped round table of silicon
valley experts. The responsible person at Datquest I had known for a
number of years and asked me to be one of the experts ... and promised
to garble my identity so Boca wouldn't recognize me as an IBM employee.

note fall 88 , clone makers on the other side of the pacific, had
built up large inventory of 286 machines for the xmas season ... and
then Intel announce 386sx (386sx consolidated lots of chips needed
for 286 build) and the market/prices drops out of the 286.

some old afc posts ... includes some reports on killer micros
taking over mainframe market
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#79 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#80 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#81 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#82 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)

i386 & 486
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I386
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/486DX

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

On 2022-11-16, songbird <songbird@anthive.com> wrote:

> Jason Evans wrote:
> ...
>> Let's say you wake up on Christmas Day in 1989 and you can have any
>> computer that you want that it available at that time. What do you choose?
>> A shiny new 486? The latest Mac? A new Amiga? ...or maybe something more
>> exotic?
>
> the Amiga was amazing when it came out and i really did
> want one, but i'd already had an IBM PC so could not afford...

At that time I didn't have an IBM clone yet. I didn't consider
them sufficiently better than my CP/M box to justify the switch.
When the Amiga came out I got one as soon as I could scrape up
the cash.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

On 2022-11-16, Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:

> An uncle of a friend used an Amiga for video production in the early
> 90's. The Amiga was definitely ahead.

The Amiga was designed from the start to be video-compatible.
It's 7.16-MHz clock speed was twice the 3.58-MHz color burst
frequency, and all its timings made it easy to develop video
hardware, e.g. the Video Toaster. (Those were for NTSC video;
I think there was a version suitably adjusted for PAL.)

Amigas were used in a number of cable TV stations for that channel
showing weather and local news. Occasionally you'd see a Guru
Meditation box.

Todd Rundgren created the video for his sing "Change Myself"
on a bank of 10 Amigas.

At a computer animation festival I saw a video titled "Dance
of the [S]tumblers"; music was the Rimsky-Korsakov piece of the
same name. At the end, the low-rez but cute dancing figures
were crushed by a falling Guru Meditation box; instead of the
normal hex codes, the numbers in it were "THX1138.2001".

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

On 2022-11-16, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

> On 2022-11-16, Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
>
>> An uncle of a friend used an Amiga for video production in the early
>> 90's. The Amiga was definitely ahead.
>
> The Amiga was designed from the start to be video-compatible.
> It's 7.16-MHz clock speed was twice the 3.58-MHz color burst
^^^^
AUUUUGGGHHHHH! My #1 pet peeve spelling error and I MADE IT MYSELF!
Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

On 2022-11-16 15:47, greymaus wrote:
> On 2022-11-16, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2022-11-16 02:11, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>>> On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 10:38:50 -0600, D.J. wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I received a new Amiga A1000, monitor, and the box the computer came
>>>> in. The box had some software and a couple of books.
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately the printer, I live in the US, printed the British pound
>>>> symbol instead of the $ sign. Weird printer... cellophane with wax as
>>>> the print medium. The printer melted the wax into the standard paper,
>>>> tracter feed 8.5x11.
>>>
>>> What printer?
>>>
>>> Reading some old manuals I came across the Epson RX80 (or FX?). It
>>> allowed to use different font sets already in the early 1980s. You just
>>> needed to know *how*.
>>>
>>> Would be lame though if the retailer sold printers in the US set up for
>>> the UK market.
>>
>> Not a month ago I got a ticket printed on a machine that could not do
>> the euro symbol.
>>
>> Of course, I did not ask, could be a configuration thing, change code
>> page or whatever. Still, on 2022...
>>
>
> Possibly a sign of the future. The EU may be facing a fort Sumter
> movement. (In keeping accounts, I avoid currency symbols)

I think it was not only the currency symbols, but also some other
letters used in Spain.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 11:12:23 +0000, Jason Evans wrote:

> I was watching this episode of The Computer Chronicles
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ95IclntIY) which is the 1989 Holiday
> Buyer's Guide.
>
> Let's say you wake up on Christmas Day in 1989 and you can have any
> computer that you want that it available at that time. What do you
> choose?
> A shiny new 486? The latest Mac? A new Amiga? ...or maybe something
> more exotic?

I actually saved up and bought what I wanted in November 1989.

An IBM PS/2 Model 80 with a 115MB disk! And keyboard and monitor.

The keyboard cost me £135 (about $200 U.S. then).

I have used that keyboard (not the computer) daily since then. I am
typing this on it.

--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

On 2022-11-16, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2022-11-16, songbird <songbird@anthive.com> wrote:
>
>> Jason Evans wrote:
>> ...
>>> Let's say you wake up on Christmas Day in 1989 and you can have any
>>> computer that you want that it available at that time. What do you choose?
>>> A shiny new 486? The latest Mac? A new Amiga? ...or maybe something more
>>> exotic?
>>

heavy phone charges mean little phone use in Ireland at that time,
and what was going on was on Amiga's. networking was the thing around
Dublin on lines local to the city. Amiga's. Nobody had HD's. So one got
an MSDOS machine with a HS stuffed with shareware, and enthusiasm waned,
a list of the shareware compared to the PD stuff available from the
Amiga's?.

I met that man later, he was doing publicity for a dodgy politician.

A guy called * Carroll was doing work with the Amiga, emigrated to
Minnesota.

There was a public event about the internet at about that time, 1994, so
I brought my son up. He showed no interest. Blackrock Collage, Dublin,
and the talk was by a man called Andy Mowett, who arrived onstage
wearing an Army coat and frayed jeans.

It turned out that there was more going on in Blackrock Collage that
time than a group of nerds discussing what turned out to be the
internet.

I remember about that time that Bill Gates published a book, `The Way
Forward' which saw an Internet-like system dominated by Microsoft.

I met a man later who knew the late Paul Allen, and said that he was an
OK guy. There is something about a yacht he owned being hard to sell
recently.

--
greymausg@mail.com

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell the stench of an Influencer.
Where is our money gone, Dude?

On 2022-11-15, Jason Evans <jsevans@mailfence.com> wrote:

> Let's say you wake up on Christmas Day in 1989 and you can have any
> computer that you want that it available at that time. What do you choose?
> A shiny new 486? The latest Mac? A new Amiga? ...or maybe something more
> exotic?

The latest Mac. I've been nearly all Mac, all the time, since 1985. The
first one I bought was a Powerbook 140 in, I think, 1992. I used a
Mac Plus at work in 1989. I'd opt for a Mac SE on Christmas Day, 1989.

On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 12:24:21 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>
> On 2022-11-16 02:11, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>> On Tue, 15 Nov 2022 10:38:50 -0600, D.J. wrote:
>>>
>>> I received a new Amiga A1000, monitor, and the box the computer came
>>> in. The box had some software and a couple of books.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately the printer, I live in the US, printed the British pound
>>> symbol instead of the $ sign. Weird printer... cellophane with wax as
>>> the print medium. The printer melted the wax into the standard paper,
>>> tracter feed 8.5x11.
>> What printer?
>> Reading some old manuals I came across the Epson RX80 (or FX?). It
>> allowed to use different font sets already in the early 1980s. You just
>> needed to know *how*.
>> Would be lame though if the retailer sold printers in the US set up
>> for
>> the UK market.
>
> Not a month ago I got a ticket printed on a machine that could not do
> the euro symbol.
>
> Of course, I did not ask, could be a configuration thing, change code
> page or whatever. Still, on 2022...

Printers back that were usually dot matrix and when printing text they
used an installed font for each letter. Today it's more like postscript
or PDF and all printers probably print graphics even if it's "text".
--
Andreas

On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 20:09:15 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>
> I think it was not only the currency symbols, but also some other
> letters used in Spain.

Which oñe do you meañ? ;-)
--
Andreas

On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 17:15:38 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
>
> On 2022-11-15, greymaus <greymaus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>> On 2022-11-15, Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
>>> Nice question. Do you mean the me of the present, or me as i was in
>>> 1989? On the exotic front, i'd consider the MSX2+
>>>
>>> https://www.msx.org/wiki/Panasonic_FS-A1WSX
>>
>> That was the one, made by several companies, but with the same OS..Nice
>> keyboard?.. I have one regret, buying a spectrum instead of a C64.
>> The Amiga was whole generation ahead of the MSX.
>
> I like that the MSX had an open specification.
>
> An uncle of a friend used an Amiga for video production in the early
> 90's. The Amiga was definitely ahead. OTOH, the Amiga and MSX game
> lists are both about 2,000 games long.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MSX_games
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amiga_games

Amazing the Amiga didn't really kick off in the US. From 1985 to may be
1988 (which was a "generation" or two back then) it blew everything out
of the water, especially at that price. Like the IBM PC and its clones. And
the Macintosh only just got color and couldn't even do preemptive
multitasking.

Amazing the Amiga didn't really caught on in the US.
--
Andreas

On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 18:22:20 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
> On 2022-11-16, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 2022-11-16, Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
>>
>>> An uncle of a friend used an Amiga for video production in the early
>>> 90's. The Amiga was definitely ahead.
>>
>> The Amiga was designed from the start to be video-compatible.
>> It's 7.16-MHz clock speed was twice the 3.58-MHz color burst
> ^^^^
> AUUUUGGGHHHHH! My #1 pet peeve spelling error and I MADE IT MYSELF!
> Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

slrn can do supersedes, AFAIR...
--
Andreas

Douglas Miller wrote:
....
> In 1989, I would have chosen a Sequent Symmetry. Nothing too fancy, 2 or 4 '386 procs. Each of their 386's running DYNIX/ptx could run circles around any 386/486 PC. Of course, the power bills would have killed me.

still much better than what a mainframe chewed up. when we
replaced the mainframe the savings in electricity (for running
the computer and also the air conditioning) would eventually
pay for the Sequent.

songbird

On 2022-11-16, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:

> Amazing the Amiga didn't really kick off in the US. From 1985 to may be
> 1988 (which was a "generation" or two back then) it blew everything out
> of the water, especially at that price. Like the IBM PC and its clones. And
> the Macintosh only just got color and couldn't even do preemptive
> multitasking.
>
> Amazing the Amiga didn't really caught on in the US.

Part of that was poor marketing. The president and chairman of the
board, Mehdi Ali and Irving Gould, were pulling down bigger salaries
than their counterparts at IBM, while running the company into the
ground. Stockholder meetings were held in the Bahamas to minimize
the number of pesky shareholders asking embarrassing questions.

The final days were documented in "The Deathbed Video", produced
by the people who made the Amiga go, and got to watch it murdered.
It's hard to watch, but it has its humourous moments - like when
the techs stenciled the names of board members on the speed bumps
in the company parking lot.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

On Thu, 17 Nov 2022 04:05:23 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
> On 2022-11-16, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>
>> Amazing the Amiga didn't really kick off in the US. From 1985 to may be
>> 1988 (which was a "generation" or two back then) it blew everything out
>> of the water, especially at that price. Like the IBM PC and its clones. And
>> the Macintosh only just got color and couldn't even do preemptive
>> multitasking.
>>
>> Amazing the Amiga didn't really caught on in the US.
>
> Part of that was poor marketing. The president and chairman of the
> board, Mehdi Ali and Irving Gould, were pulling down bigger salaries
> than their counterparts at IBM, while running the company into the
> ground. Stockholder meetings were held in the Bahamas to minimize
> the number of pesky shareholders asking embarrassing questions.

I know (Mr. Gould messed up). But why was the Amiga so highly successful
in Europe, but not in the US? Might really just boil down to poor
marketing.

Commodore might just have ran the ads they did in Europe.

> The final days were documented in "The Deathbed Video", produced
> by the people who made the Amiga go, and got to watch it murdered.
> It's hard to watch, but it has its humourous moments - like when
> the techs stenciled the names of board members on the speed bumps
> in the company parking lot.

Yeah, I watched it. That is one of at least two video every Commodore
lover should have watched. The other is Jim Butterfield's Commodore 64
Training Tape from 1983. It runs about two hours
<https://archive.org/details/commodore-64-training-tape-with-jim-butterfield>.
--
Andreas