raydm6
Yay! Cameras! 🙈🙉🙊┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘ [◉"]
From The Verge: Lisa’s Family Photos
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Lisa’s Family Photos
Apple designer Bill Atkinson shares a look through his rare collection of Polaroid photos from the Lisa computer’s development
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Dogman
Mentor
He lost me on the first sentence when he used the word "understated" when he meant "overstated". Bad editing. Bad.
MarkWalberg
Established
Agree on use of understated. Interesting story, though.
Without Xerox Parc, there would not have been a Lisa. One of the computer engineers at work ordered one when new. They were expensive. But not as expensive as my Personal VAX 11/725 with VT241.
JeffS7444
Well-known
The one time that I saw a Lisa computer on display at a dealer, it was roped off, and demonstrations were by appointment only. At least that's what they told me: They probably took one look at me and figured that I couldn't possibly be serious about purchasing a system which was selling for 10K USD in the early 1980s! But a number of years later, I scored a Lisa 2 for something like $150, granted it was borderline obsolete by that time.
Pál_K
Cameras. I has it.
That was a fair bit of time ago. The Polaroids are still looking good.
armadsen
Established
Xerox Parc's work was foundational, and very important, but this always gets overstated anytime anyone brings up the early history of the Lisa and Mac. In the late 1970s when the Lisa project started, Xerox didn't even sort of have anything you could just go out and buy. While Steve Jobs saw the Alto and Smalltalk and was absolutely inspired by them, on a base technical level the Lisa and Mac share little to nothing in common with the Alto and Smalltalk. The engineers at Apple built the Lisa OS and Mac OS from scratch, and some of it was significantly better than the Xerox equivalent (eg. Quickdraw). Xerox invested in Apple, and as a condition of the investment deal, Steve Jobs got to tour PARC. This happened after the Lisa and Mac were already in development.
Also, the GUI on the Xerox Alto was missing all kinds of things that we take for granted and that indeed go back to the Lisa and Mac. Some things that are technical (redrawable obscured windows), and many that are important for end-users (final manager, a system clipboard, pull down menus, etc.) There were several PARC engineers that went to Apple precisely because they wanted to work on something that real people would actually use.
I own a working Lisa 2/10 running Lisa 7/7. It's sitting about 3 feet from me as I type this. The Lisa OS introduced things that modern OSes still don't do as well IMO. Things like actually useful, informative, humanist error messages, a fundamentally document-centric model (as opposed to app-centric), etc. It really was groundbreaking from a software perspective even if it ended up being a commercial failure.
I knew some early adopters of the "Next" machine as well. Steve Jobs short time away from Apple.
My favorite error message of all time is from the $8M TI-ASC. "Non-existent error diagnostic #511" An inspiration when writing software giving error messages. As in 'a little better than a locked keyboard and a blank screen.
I also worked with a group of developers that used a custom made input device much like a trackball in one hand and 5 button keypad in the other, moving windows and text around- circa 1980. Internet connected. I remember watching them, was a custom software/hardware package for writing documentation. I was just happy to have a CRT type terminal on the internet.
My favorite error message of all time is from the $8M TI-ASC. "Non-existent error diagnostic #511" An inspiration when writing software giving error messages. As in 'a little better than a locked keyboard and a blank screen.
I also worked with a group of developers that used a custom made input device much like a trackball in one hand and 5 button keypad in the other, moving windows and text around- circa 1980. Internet connected. I remember watching them, was a custom software/hardware package for writing documentation. I was just happy to have a CRT type terminal on the internet.
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I remember seeing the Lisa at the Austin Computer Fair, 1983. This was when Apple was small enough to show up at local/regional shows.
Attending UT at the time, it inspired me to take advantage of the education discount and get in line for the 128K Mac. There were so many people in the queue, students with early tickets were selling their position in line...I ended up getting mine in the first shipment.
The original Mac was pretty crippled, performance-wise, but getting that Mac was the foundation of my business for the next 20+ years, designing circuit board upgrades for Macs.
Attending UT at the time, it inspired me to take advantage of the education discount and get in line for the 128K Mac. There were so many people in the queue, students with early tickets were selling their position in line...I ended up getting mine in the first shipment.
The original Mac was pretty crippled, performance-wise, but getting that Mac was the foundation of my business for the next 20+ years, designing circuit board upgrades for Macs.
wlewisiii
Just another hotel clerk
The worlds best software development environment dates from those days as well. The MIT version was better known (Symbolics Lisp Machine) but the Xerox Interlisp environment having been spun off to Venue and then opensourced is still available for free:
Medley Interlisp Project
Here's a screenshot from online. I'm at work or I'd share a screen of my build of the system on Linux Mint.
Linux, Mac, BSD - builds easily.
Windows - requires WSL & X11 to build.
(First post here in years & I'm pushing LISP...
)
Medley Interlisp Project
Here's a screenshot from online. I'm at work or I'd share a screen of my build of the system on Linux Mint.
Linux, Mac, BSD - builds easily.
Windows - requires WSL & X11 to build.
(First post here in years & I'm pushing LISP...
)
Pál_K
Cameras. I has it.
Smalltalk…. Now that was an interesting language and development environment.
~~~ wavy lines appear ~~~
For years I worked for Tektronix as a firmware engineer in their Logic Analyzers Division (158th & Walker Rd). I can’t remember if we were in building 92 or 93, but in the other building was an interesting group. They were known for creating the uTek workstation - essentially a Unix box that was totally configurable and preceded the Sun workstations by years. Tek’s management snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by killing this product on the loading dock - they decided they didn’t want to support it or some such reason. Then, years later, management had to eat crow when Tek spent a fortune buying Sun workstations and Micro VAXes - a market Tek could’ve owned. But I digress…
So, after the uTek disaster, this group worked on a product for doing automated testing of circuits. That itself isn’t unusual, but what the project was developed under was …Smalltalk. This project went on for a few years and was eventually killed - progress was too slow and, worse, the performance of the system was poor.
~~~ wavy lines ~~~
That was well over 30 years ago - yikes!
Camera related stuff: those were the days you could take your camera into work and make photos without Security coming after you. Although I could still do it in a smaller company in 2018.
~~~ wavy lines appear ~~~
For years I worked for Tektronix as a firmware engineer in their Logic Analyzers Division (158th & Walker Rd). I can’t remember if we were in building 92 or 93, but in the other building was an interesting group. They were known for creating the uTek workstation - essentially a Unix box that was totally configurable and preceded the Sun workstations by years. Tek’s management snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by killing this product on the loading dock - they decided they didn’t want to support it or some such reason. Then, years later, management had to eat crow when Tek spent a fortune buying Sun workstations and Micro VAXes - a market Tek could’ve owned. But I digress…
So, after the uTek disaster, this group worked on a product for doing automated testing of circuits. That itself isn’t unusual, but what the project was developed under was …Smalltalk. This project went on for a few years and was eventually killed - progress was too slow and, worse, the performance of the system was poor.
~~~ wavy lines ~~~
That was well over 30 years ago - yikes!
Camera related stuff: those were the days you could take your camera into work and make photos without Security coming after you. Although I could still do it in a smaller company in 2018.
wlewisiii
Just another hotel clerk
Speaking of Next, when they came out I lusted after a cube like you couldn't believe.
Now though there's a great emulator out there called Previous (for running what was Next ... ah, IT humor...) that emulates quite well the Next M68k hardware. I run NextStep 3.3 on it and it's a really classic back to the future vibe.
Previous - A NeXT Computer Emulator is a place to start if this interests you.
Now though there's a great emulator out there called Previous (for running what was Next ... ah, IT humor...) that emulates quite well the Next M68k hardware. I run NextStep 3.3 on it and it's a really classic back to the future vibe.
Previous - A NeXT Computer Emulator is a place to start if this interests you.
AndersG
Well-known
I'm too young. Me and my brother got a Commendore 64 in around 1988, when I was 11 years old. Then a Commendore Amiga 2000 a couple of years later and an Amiga 3000 in 1994-5. But on the very early 2000th when I was working on my Ph.D. in computer science I got some old computers from the university: two Sun SPARCstation 10 (fetched from a container of junk, I still got them) and a NeXT of some sort and a bunch of SGI Origin O2:s that was stored in my office. I guess the threw these old computers after I had left them.
Too funny- after almost 50 years of writing code, I still need a multimeter and o-Scope to debug. I like a Fluke 27 that I pulled out of the trash at work and repaired, and a Tek 2465b picked up for $150. Times have changed. These days- I've been asked to setup tutorials for interns to learn some of the old methods.
JeffS7444
Well-known
I somehow got word of blowout pricing by BusinessLand, and managed to score a Cube w/256K floptical drive, Megapixel display, even the laser printer for around $3K, and I was in geek heaven. But of course there were challenges too, the biggest of which was lack of any economical way to distribute software in those days of slow dialup connections. I never dreamed that someday in the future, Unix PCs would be cheap enough to give away as premiums with the purchase of a magazine.
I got three sets of IBM PGC (640x480 color) graphics cards with monitors for "free"- were about $7K per set. Lack of software for them. I wrote all my own device drivers and graphics software. I wrote a "CA-Displa" look-alike for the PC that could be used for realtime data acquisition and display. I made my own "Sprites", there's a term that should bring back some memories... Also had a Panasonic TQ-2026 Laser Video Disk controlled by the software to do stop-frame animation. That thing was $25K. I liked the IBM PC for this work as they had the multi-volume technical manual that went down to the board schematics. My copy has hand-written notes after using the O-Scope to find mistakes in the hardware when chasing down lost interrupts. These days you have to have custom hardware made to spec to get that level of detail.
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pixelated
Established
My wife did some work on a Xerox Star in the tech writing job she had in the '80's. Soon after she bought a Lisa. It's in its box in our attic but hasn't been powered-up in a very long time.
Unfortunately- powering up the CRT on 40+ year old systems may smoke them. I powered up my Xerox 820-II CP/m machine- high voltage supply blew out, smoked big time. It did boot off the 5.25" DSDD floppy. Same with my IBM PGC Monitor- smoked after just plugging it in to AC power. My two Infrared scopes from the 1940s both work, as does my 80 year old Triumph 241 Oscillograph.
mapgraphs
Established
My introduction to the world of sprites, circa 1981 with coin-op conversions to desktop, was with if I remember correctly, a TI 9928 VDP based game console. Fifteen colors plus transparent. The chips could be stacked, hence the reason for transparent. There was one undesired display effect that was called the fifth sprite problem iirc ; - )...
rfaspen
[insert pithy phrase here]
The Timex Sinclair was "my first" I promptly fried it attempting to mod the external memory attachment.
Then yeah....the Commodore, many x86 versions starting with 8086/88. My first work machine was a truly inspiring 486DX4 100MHz with 16MB RAM. I was the envy of the group. Habitat modeling using satellite imagery (MSS Landsat 1 and 2) in the mid-late 80s.
New Mexico Inst of Mining "gave" me my first RISC machines -- Sparc II, IPX, and 10. Straight from the dumpster to my spare room (aka the junk room). How things change... today I'm such a slacker; Some nameless underpowered laptop.
But Brian seems to have had a Personal VAX! Hmm. I remember the PDP-11 we used to keep in the adjacent room. VMS still flashes in my mind during nightmares.
I promptly fried it attempting to mod the external memory attachment.Then yeah....the Commodore, many x86 versions starting with 8086/88. My first work machine was a truly inspiring 486DX4 100MHz with 16MB RAM. I was the envy of the group. Habitat modeling using satellite imagery (MSS Landsat 1 and 2) in the mid-late 80s.
New Mexico Inst of Mining "gave" me my first RISC machines -- Sparc II, IPX, and 10. Straight from the dumpster to my spare room (aka the junk room). How things change... today I'm such a slacker; Some nameless underpowered laptop.
But Brian seems to have had a Personal VAX! Hmm. I remember the PDP-11 we used to keep in the adjacent room. VMS still flashes in my mind during nightmares.