COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 34 — DOLLARS AND SENSE, BANK OF AMERICA'S HOMEBANKING, AND TAX PREPARER BY HOWARDSOFT
The debut of VisiCalc in 1979 is often considered the first “killer app” for the personal computer.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED SPECIAL NO. 1 — THE ELIZABETH ARDEN BEAUTY COMPUTER
From time to time, I’ll be posting these “Special” blogs, which only indirectly relate back to a Computer Chronicles episode.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 33 — STEVE BOROS, SPORTSPAK, COMPUTENNIS CT120, AND THE CONVERSE BIOMECHANICS LAB
Michael Lewis' 2003 book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game described Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane’s use of advanced statistical analysis–known as sabermetrics–to build his team.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 32 — UNIX SYSTEM V SVR 2, BSD 4.2, AND THE HP INTEGRAL PC
In 1969, a computer scientist at Bell Labs named Ken Thompson wrote an operating system for a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-7 minicomputer that he initially dubbed Unics.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 31 — THE ADAPTIVE FIRMWARE CARD, EXPRESS 3, AND KURZWEIL READING MACHINE
Up to this point on Computer Chronicles–we’re now at February 1985 in terms of broadcast dates–the featured computers have largely relied on typewriter-style keyboards as input devices and cathode-ray tube monitors for output.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 30 — THE DATA GENERAL-ONE, TI PRO-LITE, HP 110 PORTABLE, AND MORROW PIVOT
Although Paul Schindler’s commentary comes at the end of the episode just before “Random Access,” I thought I’d discuss his thoughts upfront this time as it helps provide some useful context for this early January 1985 episode, which is about portable computers.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 29 — LOCKSMITH, PC-TALK, AND FRANKIE MOUSE
In the last episode, Wendy Woods mentioned that during her testing of IBM PC software compatibility with the PCjr that only the version of Borland’s Sidekick without copy protection worked with the latter machine.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 28 — THE TANDY 1000 AND COMPAQ PORTABLE
Purchasing software in the late 1980s often required the buyer to carefully read the label, especially if you owned a personal computer that purported to be “compatible” with IBM.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 27 — SARGON III, MILLIONAIRE, AND GHOSTBUSTERS
The original Macintosh would not seem like an obvious gaming machine.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 26 — THE SONY CD-ROM, PIONEER PX-7, AND HALCYON
This episode of Computer Chronicles shows some of the minor tweaking to the show’s format between the first and second seasons.