Reflections on the Home Computer Golden Age

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The traditional home computer market died when PCs became so powerful that they could do anything 'effortlessly', but became inaccessible to hobbyists due to their complexity and emphasis on commercial products. But the demand for a hobbyist computer is still there. Now could actually be the right time to re-release the classic home computer concept to an audience who has never experienced it.

PC was never home market as there was huge variety of expansions with no standard and at the same documentation for advanced functionality was close to zero.
In PC you could only consume work of others or try to do some things using generic knowledge but nothing more advanced...
That's why PC was not so popular choice for home hobbyists...

[lmimmfn]

PCs were relatively cheap in the US vs Europe in the 80's, its probably why cheaper home computers were prominent.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I think the continuity aspect is overstatated, because going from a 1985 DOS EGA 286 with memory managers and boot disks to a 1995 Win95 SVGA internet-ready Pentium with DirectX was nearly as big a jump in concept and usage style as going from Spectrum or C64 to Amiga or ST, and not that much bigger than A500 from floppies to A4000 with a big hard drive.

In a way Windows 95 was a much bigger jump than going from an A500 to an A4000. It opened up a whole new world of computer users who weren't 'computer literate' and never would be. It turned the PC into an appliance in the same way that gaming consoles did.

The Amiga did this many years before, though unfortunately not well enough to capture the market that Windows 95 did. When I got my A1000 I was surprised to find that some operations required use of the CLI. They did the right thing by hiding it by default though, and I figured that soon they would make it unnecessary. However this didn't happen. Instead they extended the CLI and forced you to use it even more.

This was backwards. I bought an Amiga to get away from having to learn archaic commands and wear my fingers down typing. I wasn't afraid of a CLI environment. But the Amiga was supposed to be the first of a new generation of home computers so powerful that you didn't have to pore over operating manuals before using it. It should have been so intuitive that I could teach my dad how to use it in 2 minutes.

Trouble was, Amiga OS wasn't designed by people who had an interest in bringing computing to the masses. It was designed by computer geeks putting in the stuff they wanted, and they never thought about why this was bad. To make matters worse the CLI was clunky and hard to use, without either a hard disk (yeah right) or two floppy drives.

Workbench was better than the CLI, but they still managed to screw it up. One of the first things they tell you to do in the manual is make backups of your system disks. So you open the system folder and there's a nice icon saying 'diskcopy'. You double-click on it, the drive whirs, and a message comes up saying I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that. Why not? Oh I see - you have to select the disk you want to copy, then go to the Workbench menu and select 'copy disk'. And if the disk in question isn't the Workbench disk guess what - you have to swap disks twice to get started!

That's the kind of thing that puts non-computer literate people off. Commodore should have play-tested the Amiga on the people they hoped to sell it to, and tuned it until a random stranger who never used a computer before could say "This is so easy. I want one!".

Admittedly they got pretty close with Workbench 3.0, and even closer with 3.1. But by then it was too late. The Amiga was already losing what little market share it had. Most prospective computer buyers had never heard of it, and those who did knew it was just a fancy gaming console - the one role it managed to get right.

Going from an A500 to A4000 wasn't much of jump in 'concept and usage style'. It was about the same as going from Windows 95 to Windows 98, ie. the same familiar UI with a few more convenient features. So I would say going from the A500 to A4000 was a much smaller jump than DOS to Windows 95. Ironically of course, being late to the party turned in the PC's favor. While PC magazines were plastered with colorful screen shots and tutorials on how to use Windows 95, the Amiga's WB 3.1 was old hat and not worth going to press with. Not that PC magazines were going have anything about the Amiga in them anyway - even if Commodore hadn't gone bankrupt in 1994.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

PCs were relatively cheap in the US vs Europe in the 80's, its probably why cheaper home computers were prominent.

I don't think that PCs were that much cheaper in the US in the 80s. (Quick look on Wiki says the original 5150 model sold for 3000$ in the US and for 8500 DM in Germany. That's 1000 DM more expensive, but in relation to the price not that significant). I'd say the main difference was that in the 80s businesses in the US adopted computers much quicker and the IBM PC became the de-facto standard pretty quick.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

PCs were relatively cheap in the US vs Europe in the 80's, its probably why cheaper home computers were prominent.

And? You could play games (bought or pirated? - honestly have no clue about PC home software market) or you could start coding - MS-DOS provided debug command (i recall my first x86 ASM prog to create border rasterbars by changing RAMDAC color 0 value - this will be something like banging $dff180 on Amiga) or some BASIC dialect - GWBASIC later turned to Quick BASIC - i recall that people if coded something then it was Turbo Pascal, rarely Turbo C and that's all - rather small programs... or commercial like financial stuff, some databases - definitely not home fun, nothing like demos or utilities - on PC practically nobody use assembler - quite opposite to Amiga.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by pandy71

on PC practically nobody use assembler - quite opposite to Amiga.

I'm so stumped by that patently false statement that I need to CTRL+ALT+DELETE my brain.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I'm so stumped by that patently false statement that I need to CTRL+ALT+DELETE my brain.

You don't understand. What he meant by 'practically nobody' is that practically only 'nobodies' programmed the PC in assembler.

And it's largely true if you are comparing the proportion of programs written in assembler vs high level languages, especially once the PC got faster and more sophisticated. OTOH the same goes for the Amiga too for everything but games, except not quite to the same extent.

I'm a diehard asm coder but I still baulked at writing a Win32 app in assembly language. I did write some small utilities for DOS in assembler (on my A3000 with PC Task). I also made a paint program for the IBM PCjr which was a mixture of BASIC and machine code. But in the PC world I was a nobody, so none of that counted.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I'm so stumped by that patently false statement that I need to CTRL+ALT+DELETE my brain.

Nope, almost nobody represent average home use - most home users was consumers of software, more than people in Amiga. This is not general statement that PC developers didn't use asm as it was and it is still used. Most home users if developed something usually use some higher level language and rely on BIOS calls if forced to deal with HW.
Also it was plenty of HW where documentation was not so easily available - especially for graphic cards other than CGA, MDA, HGC, EGA and VGA.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Also it was plenty of HW where documentation was not so easily available - especially for graphic cards other than CGA, MDA, HGC, EGA and VGA.

Which other graphic cards do you mean?

[petran]

a quite revealing article about 80s computer magazines in Greece

http://widerscreen.fi/numerot/2020-2...ixel-magazine/

microcomputers.

In 1983, N. Manoussos, the general director of Compupress, publisher of Pixel and Computer for All (Computer ??? ?????), two of the most popular Greek magazines in the field at the time, noted the rapidly expanding demand for free software for home computers in the form of program listings. It was this demand that pushed towards the publishing of magazines specialized in home computing (Retrovisions of 80s 2019). The program listings were basically commands that formed a microcomputer software program, which were printed as a list on a sheet of paper. The user could type these commands in the microcomputer and then run them to make the software work. The target audience of the listings was users who struggled to find affordable software to run. There were listings for recreational, educational and business uses of the computer.

According to its editorial team, the publication of Pixel was founded on the acknowledgement of the dominance of software over hardware. This dominance was not clear during this early period in the Greek community of computer magazines, as the assumption was that advances in computer technology had mostly to do with hardware and its improvement, which made computers faster and more capable. Pixel’s pioneering sensitivity to the dynamics of the importance of software over hardware was rather novel in 1980s’ Greece.[3] For Manoussos (1983), software was the most difficult to obtain, a “ghost in the machine”. This expression echoes the perception of programming by its protagonists as being a “black art” (Ensmenger 2012) by “the high priests of a low cult.” (quoted in Computer 1980) It has been illustrated vividly on the cover of Time, April 1984, on which Bill Gates was showing off his skills under the headline: “Computer Software. The magic inside the machine” (Time 1984, April 16, 1). For Manoussos (Retrovisions of 80s 2019), at the time, “the thirst of home users for software was endless”. In his view, this explains the publishing of listings in the pages of home computing magazines. “The capability and the availability to write a few commands in BASIC (and, at times, in machine language), to run a program that supported some little application or a game,” he remembers, “was a defining feature of the so-called ‘heroic age of computing’.”

Manoussos further recalls that, back then, a new “home PC” (his expression) was introduced almost every month, which was frequently incompatible with the rest. This made the sharing of software between users of different machines rather impossible and resulted in increasing tension between users and providers of software for home computers. To be sure, in the international case, home computers were personal computers, but the term “personal computer” in the 1980s was used for the IBM PC and IBM-compatible PCs (Sumner and Gooday 2008; Sumner 2012). In the Greek case, however, the term “home PC’ was introduced so as to bridge the gap between home computers and PCs, by assuming that the most powerful home computers could also function as PCs. This was to happen by using home computers to run more PC-related (e.g. office-type) applications.[4] Listings to run such applications were, in the first years, also offered through Pixel, which helped to reduce the aforementioned tension.

Users of program listings were Greeks who wished to utilize their home computers but could not afford to purchase commercial software or wished to learn how to program them. Programming was understood as one of the essential aspects of the use of home computing
The aim of the magazine is to cover the lack of information available to the public on computers. The wider public does not really know what a computer is. Some have a hazy image in their minds, an image promoted by the general press. Even those who do have a better image, do not adequately understand how microcomputers will affect society. Pixel aims to cover the field of home computers (Oric, Spectrum, etc), closely observing the rapidly evolving market of microcomputers and occasionally intervening to shape

The foundation of Pixel was connected to the issue regarding the appropriate identity of a computer user. For its editorial team, a user had to be skilled in programming. In the absence of formalized education in computing, this user-programmer was to be trained through the magazine by participating in the collective production and use of program listings, and, further, by reading a series of special training articles and guides to programming languages of home microcomputers. These were, mainly, the versions of BASIC included in the package obtained during the purchase of a microcomputer. The emphasis on the importance of magazine-mediated training in programming declined by the end of the 1980s but never disappeared (Lekkas 2017). In the third issue, the editors communicated the magazine as “the ultimate expression of the dynamic field of home computers” (Zorzos 1984). It included a series of new columns, some of which went on for several years and gained substantial popularity. This was the case with the column Interferences (??????????), the first column in a Greek computer magazine to focus on modifications of microcomputer software, especially games (Tsouanas 1984, 16).

Through information offered by the Pixel column Parallel Roads, a reader could use the same program in several computers and, at the same time, “identify the changes in the commands of the various dialects so as to understand how to produce the compatibility that he needed.” (Pixel 1984d, 36). The proper use of the computer did not have to do with the simple keyboarding of commands but reached into changing these commands through programming. As for familiarity with BASIC, the magazine assumed that it was indispensable for the “first steps in the use of a home computer”. “We certainly know, all of us, how to write at least one program in BASIC, the most common language of home micros,” we read in a 1985 article in Pixel (Pixel 1985, 28).

The circulation of Pixel remained high during the entire 1980s. This seems even more impressive if we take into account that for many years the magazine only addressed users of home microcomputers and not of IBM compatibles, which represented a community much more prominent in other Western European countries. Pixel quickly obtained a readership in the order of tens of thousands and maintained it for years.

The focus on programming, as well as the publication of program listings, defined the run of Pixel throughout the 1980s. Its contents, however, gradually underwent noticeable transformation. Central to this transformation was the use of computers for entertainment, most notably for playing games. While programming itself was for some still a form of entertainment, there were many who thought of it as an unavoidable step to what was the real computing fun: games. By the mid-1980s, this step could actually be avoided because commercial computer games became available. This brought about a noticeable change, as knowledge of (and experience with tinkering with) the computer was no longer a key part of the culture of computing (Lekkas 2013; Lekkas 2014; Lekkas 2017).

A computer user could now be part of this culture by playing games on the computer without knowing anything else about it. The emphasis was shifting from programming the computer to using ready-made commercial programs for computer games. Playing games frequently meant competing against others, trying to get the highest score. Updates on the performance (scoring) in a whole range of games were regularly offered through computing magazines. Several of them, including Pixel Junior, ????!, SPRITE, GamePro, Computer Games and User, were almost exclusively covering the latest in computer games.

By 1987, Pixel begun to report important changes both in the technical characteristic and the aspects of use of home computers. These were due to the gradual dominance of affordable IBM compatibles,[8] but also the emergence of 16bit home microcomputers, which were superior when it came to audio and graphics. As such, it facilitated the creation and publication of impressive entertainment software. This oriented many to entertainment-related uses of the home computers. The emergence of Atari ST, Amiga 500 and other 16bit home computers marked an important turn for the Pixel content.[9] In comparison to the 8bit machines of the first half of the 1980s, they allowed for the production of “super graphics”, according to Pixel’s terminology. These super graphics impressed both the magazine’s editors and the users of home computers (Kyriakos 1987a, 9).

Starting with the 6th issue (1985), the pages dedicated to program listings had decreased, from one third to about 20% of the available space, while still remaining a substantial part of the magazine.[10] This reduction reflected the gradual availability of ready-made commercial software for home computers. Yet, innovative columns all but disappeared. The editors continue to value highly the use of home computers as a learning and programming tool. The constantly renewed the way they presented program listings so that “both expert and novice programmers can learn through them a few new techniques.” (Kyriakos 1987b, 10)

The unavailability of statistics on the use of 16bit home microcomputers for games makes it impossible to offer a safe estimate on the range of this use. However, the constant references to home microcomputers as ‘game machines’ (???????????????) makes it clear that the use of home microcomputers for games was the dominant one, overshadowing the other types of uses. We should here take into account that home microcomputers of the second generation did not compare favorably to IBM-compatibles when it came to uses beyond gaming. Microcomputers were better only for electronic editing, and the use of graphics and sound.

the consumption of ready-made commercial software. We also saw that after 1987, on the grounds of the incorporation of devices for the reproduction of advanced graphics and sound, the 16bit version of home computers emerged as especially appropriate for the use of recreational software. The gradual emphasis on the recreational use, which challenged the view that tinkering with home computing was by itself pleasurable, lead to the ending of the publication of Pixel by the mid-1990s.

[TCD]

Quite interesting read. Thank you for sharing it