History Problem with a Friend

Histories
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Eventually the most common computer found in people’s homes were the successors of IBM’s PC, but I would not call these “home computers”. A Sinclair Spectrum or a Commodore 64 would certainly deserve that label: they were designed and marketed for that purpose.

The 1977 “trinity” already mentioned here might qualify, but comparing how they ended up actually being used (contrast the TRS-80 Model I and the TRS-80 Color Computer, for example) I would consider voting on the 1979 Atari 400 and 800 as the first actual home computer.

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14

The original Atari 8-bits are a good choice. Notably, they originated from plans for Atari’s next console generation – which may tell some about home computers in general, or, at least, the home computer market. (Similarly, the C64 had its origins in a console architecture – as seen in the Commodore Max.)

For a more “serious” use, the Ohio Scientific computers (Challengers) may be worth a consideration. These were not just enthusiasts’ machines, but also meant and bought to be “just used”. (While not exactly cheap, I’d consider the Challenger III [1977] a full fledged computer for home/home-office use, but more “home-computery”, than than, say, S100-bus machines.)

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A machine which illustrates the “home computer dilemma” quite well is the Sharp MZ-80 (one of my favorites): Introduced in 1978, it was meant to exploit an established market. It was originally sold as a kit, but in considerably preassembled subunits. It was sold to home users, but to small businesses as well. With just the base unit (built-in CRT, cassette drive, keyboard, like the PET 2001), it was probably a home computer. However, there was also an IO extension unit for disk drives and numerous peripheral devices, including even a punch card reader, which clearly transcended home computer use. For a certain period, things were more in flux, and it took some time, until there were those well established and segregated market segments.
(One of the discriminators may be color RF output. While this was great for playing games at home, you definitely wanted a monochrome text display for any viable business use. However, the earlier Sinclair ZX computers, while BW only, were clearly home computers and the ZX80 even lacked serious capabilities for realtime video games.)

PS: And we may make a point in arguing that Atari considerably contributed to segregating these market segments by separating game consoles from a 8-bit computer line for home use, which was great for playing games, but was also (at least in the case of the Atari 800) suitable for more “serious” tasks (not that unimportant for justifying the [still considerable] expenses), as well.

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Some background on Ohio Scientific’s line - the first machine I owned was a Compukit UK101, an unlicensed copy of OSI’s Superboard, a single-board system which came after the original backplane based series:

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17

To change the question, I would rather ask 'What computer was first marketed to the HOME by means of ‘non-specialist media’

Which computer was first to be advertised on TV - that to me is a Home computer.

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I suppose you saw the one hour video documentary in the thread about the first computer game? That’s very much the same kind of thing - every time you tweak the definition, you get a new answer.

As I bought my first computer, while still at school, before any television advert, and ran it at home, I’d use a different definition from you! (Before I bought my computer, which was a kit, I clubbed together with a couple of friends, and hired a PET for a day - also a computer we ran at home!)

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hahah… I didnt grow up in the UK so TV is different… My family only got TV in 1980 and then 2 years later I got a ZX-80… it was awefull and moved to a ZX81 with 16K ram pack… then ZX spectrum.
In the conservative country I was in, TV’s were a work of evil so computers were pretty much left alone in the media. It was always the domain of the enthusiast/nerd!

The first Home computer can be anything… but I think its a personal story for everyone and there is no ‘definitive’ answer to the question. Mine is a Sinclair ZX-80 (I still own my ZX-81 and 48K now, proudly displayed on the wall)

Perhaps a generational answer… Kids in the 1960/1970 era might say Altair

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No doubt the ZX80 was a game changer! Really affordable, and genuinely a usable computer. And with no custom chips - maybe the last popular machine that didn’t make use of gate arrays. 100k sold, apparently.

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21

I’ve been looking up other documentaries online, and found out that TCP/IP came out long before MS DOS. I distinctly remember hearing that Bill Gates thought the internet was just a fad, and didn’t get into the internet until much later in the game. The real trick is to get him to see what I’ve found. Some people don’t like seeing their own notions get squashed. :wink:

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Personally, I had always thought the Apple1 was the first home computer. I wouldn’t consider the Altair a home computer, since it was limited (more so than the Apple 1) as to what it could do, in addition you had to wire it up yourself.

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TCP/IP was well routed in the big machines in ARPANET - a defense project at about the cold war period. For home/small networks,Serial cables, Arcnet was there. In the 80’s and 90’s, the main networking system software was Novell using the IPX/SPX protocol which shares some things with TCP/IP. There was Token Ring, but only big-biz installed that network. (there are other networks, but focusing on PC based networks)

DOS had no concept of networking… and even MS-DOS 7 does not have any concept of networks - even the whole principle of DOS did not lend itself to sharing as files. File locking was only introduced in Dos 3.3.

All these systems were local LAN based networks, and WAN was X.25

ARPANET was for military purposes and was only handed over in 1990. After that it went between universities and then public. Winsock for Windows came out in 1992 and before that there was the DOS KA9Q software stack; which was written by Amateur radio enthusiasts in 1985

The Networking was added to Microsoft… but saying that Microsoft had a role apart from providing the operating system. If MS had not existed, it would have been the next company. (perhaps IBM)

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The virtue of TCP/IP was really in its ability to incorporate and route other, already existing protocols. (E.g., AppleTalk was part of TCP/IP and, if ISP on both sides supported it, you could encapsulate your AppleTalk connection and connect to a Mac on the other side of the globe.) TCP/IP is really more of a wrapper than anything else and facilitatated the use of much older protocols, like telnet/TTY.

As a historical footnote, TCP/IP as evolved from ARPAnet (three independent implementations of TCP/IP had been contracted by ARPA in 1974, one to Cerf at Stanford, one to BBN, one to London University College and all had been operational by the end of 1975) was already at some of a dead end in the mid 1980s, when OSI networking had become the official standard. What came to the TCP/IP’s rescue was CSnet (Computer Science Network), intended as some kind of equal access to ARPAnet for academic institutions, funded by the NSF (US National Science Foundation), an effort started around 1979/1980. In 1985, NSF launched five super computers, networked via TCP/IP, while there wasn’t any real world implementation of OSI to be seen. Apparently, it had really been NSFnet and its spread over educational institutions, which gave the decisive impulse for the Internet, we know today.

(Edit: Dates are based on the account provided in Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop, which I personally consider to be still a good source on the subject – and a great book in general.)

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The Sphere I came out in November 1975 while the Apple I was launched on April 11, 1976. The Sphere had quality control problems that doomed it to obscurity even though it sold twice as many as the Apple I.

It was as costly as the Apple, so I would consider it more a professional computer than one for the home.

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My idea of the US market at that time is that professionals - doctors, dentists, engineers - might well have bought machines for their home use which would be considered unaffordable by families with more ordinary incomes, and certainly not machines for children or teenagers. That’s still a pretty big market, and indeed often these early adopters subsidise the development of the mass market machines. So, home computer as a computer at home is one thing, home computer as a teenager’s entertainment/educational device is another. As volumes go up, costs come down, prices come down, and more people are reached. Eventually a supplier can even afford television advertising with endorsements by recognisable people.

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Only with the advance of cheap dynamic memory in the early 80’s did you get the mass market products. Simple cpu’s like 6502 and the 8085
and a VIIDEO display chip kept the logic simple. The IBM PC was the only thing aimed at the Professional market for a single user, so it sold.

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I’m not so sure about professional markets only: The IBM 5150 was some of a hybrid, too, with a number of features we would identify as typical for a home computer: BASIC in ROM, a clock rate derived from the NTSC carrier frequency, cassette interface for mass storage… Also, at 4,77 MHz and an 8-bit bus it wasn’t much faster than a typical Z80 home computer (for some applications even slower, due to additional latency). 16K (basic configuration) or 64K RAM was also within home computer specs.
In order to make this a professional machine, you had still to add a number of (rather expensive) cards. And, if you did so, those built-in standard features were perfectly useless.

(Mind that this was not the PC as we know it, which came only with the 386 generation. The original PC in a corporate environment was more meant as an intelligent terminal to interface with applications, which were still running on a mainframe. Notably, limited local capabilities were apt to preserve IBM’s established corporate IT solutions. On the other hand, its success was some of a self fulfilling prophecy, since many were planning to introduce office computers, but had waited for IBM to enter the market. Even, if it may have underfulfilled expectations, it was to become the standard anyway. Accordingly, it was the proclaimed “industry standard”, even before any of the specs were known. In hindsight, the original PC was more of a transitional product – and not that disruptive as often said.)

Edit: Contrary to the popular narrative, IBM hadn’t just missed out over the emerging home computer market, but recognized this quite early on and was ready to lead, but struggled over the 1970s with various concepts and prototypes. (Some, like the IBM Aquarius prototype look rather amazing, with interesting specs, like applications distributed on bubble memory cartridges.) Apparently, at the end of the 1970s, they just had given up and there were even talks of buying Atari’s computer division with their new 8-bit lineup. As we know, this came to nothing, followed by the outsourced PC architecture. With a look at the specs of the 5150, we may guess that IBM hadn’t completely given up on the home computer idea, but then decided to market the machine to businesses only (as there was great expectation, probably also recognizing that selling this as a home computer as well wasn’t exactly going to further the marketing proposition) and to split the home segment to dedicated machines, as seen in the PCjr / Peanut.

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Thanks for your expansive and interesting comment @NoLand!

My feeling is that the badge “IBM” on the front, and the slick advertising, had a lot to do with the initial success of their PC offering. And of course the clones, when they came, expanded the market for software and hardware still further.

There might be an alternate reality in which CP/M and perhaps MP/M held sway for longer, or maybe Flex, but there had to be a route to using more than 64k RAM. We know now that what counts is not hardware but software, and killer applications in particular. VisiCalc, dBase, Lotus were hugely important. I might mention Turbo Pascal too, although I don’t know what implementation languages were dominant for the most successful applications. It’s true, I think, that 68k machines were widely used in Germany for business purposes: the PC platform was not overwhelmingly dominant everywhere instantly.

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Here’s an image from an alternate reality, where the Atari 800 became the IBM PC, an actual design prototype by IBM – illustrating quite well, how blurry the lines actually were.

ibm-atari-pc-1979
ibm-atari-pc-1979.jpg900×647 128 KB

(Image source: IBM Archive, reproduced in: Atkinson, Paul. Delete. A Design History of Computer Vapourware. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.)

Edit: How hilarious this may seem in hindsight, it would have made perfectly sense. Performance wise, the gap to the actual PC wasn’t that big, especially for text oriented applications. Moreover, the Atari 800 featured an expandable architecture with an array of expansion slots and even the cartridge slot would have made sense, given the previous plans for an ecosystem (for the Aquarius) of applications distributed on bubble memory cartridges. Just a bit of IBM treatment for the motherboard (for industrial robustness) and you are ready to go. (The limited amount of CPU registers of the 6502 may have proven a bottleneck later on, however. But then, there would have been the 68000 readily available as the rather logical choice for a follow-up architecture. A dark alternate universe for Intel.)

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Tandy made a bunch of IBM-Compatibles that used a similar form factor to this.

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The real interesting scenario would have been Acorn entering the US market with the BBC Micro in a timely manner, with a 6502 running at double speed, superior OS, various text and graphics modes, networking and an expandable architecture (including the Tube interface for additional processors). Acorn had even contracted a GUI for the purpose. Apple was apparently pretty much afraid of this and I’m also not so sure about what this could have meant for the business market. (Ironically, it was for all those buses and expandability that Acorn struggled over FCC compliance and burried a fortune in the effort.)

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