[ Retro Scan of the Week ] The Transistor
June 2nd, 2008 by Benj Edwards
The transistor — need I say more?
Let’s give a big round of applause to the electronic component that made our current computer revolution possible: the transistor. Here’s an advertisement from RCA touting the benefits of solid state transistor technology from a time when it was still novel. 55 years later, we’d be cramming 300 million of these onto a single piece of silicon smaller than a penny. And Microsoft Word still runs slowly.
Discussion topic of the week: What was your first computer’s CPU clock speed?
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June 2nd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
A 166 MMX Pentium was my first computer ever; back in the day you could boot the latest Windows (95 in this case) in something around 15 seconds…
But yeha, Word killed it, I remember it being as slow as some 3D games from the day ^^’
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:54 pm
First device capable of running multiple programs (ROMs in this case): MOS 6507 @ 1.19 MHz [Atari 2600]
First device that had a keyboard and could run “anything”: MOS Technology 6510 @ 1.02 MHz [Commodore 64]
First device that was IBM PC compatible: Intel 80286 8 MHz / 12 MHz switchable [I don’t remember the brand, but it wasn’t one of the big ones and it isn’t still around today; bought from Sears and I’d know it if I saw it]
Layne
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:00 pm
My very first PC was 486 DX of 66 MHz. With its 4 megs of memory I was king of the hill. I had all the optional (at that time) equipment for it: mouse, joystick (more important for gaming than mouse at that time), soundcard. Later I bought 8 more megs of RAM for it and a lightning-fast 4x CD-ROM. Oh yeah, and it had 80 megs of HD – that was a space for lots of games at that time…
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I also started with a 2600, but first ‘real’ computer was a Tandy 1000 with a 2 MHz (I think) 8088. And it only cost me $2000!
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:14 pm
It’s interesting that the advertisement is trying to sell the very concept of the transistor. I suppose the add seems odd to me just because I have the benefit of hindsight. I mean, it seems that the whole ad could consist entirely of:
Q: What is this?
A: A miracle. Buy a ton of them.
As for my first computer, it would be a 1MHz 6502 in an Apple II+. Of course, that was a family computer. The first machine I actually owned had an 8 MHz 286 if I remember correctly.
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:59 pm
1,78 MHz (Atari 65XE). And my wordprocessor worked great. 🙂
Damn, probably my (cheapest one) MP3 player has bigger computation power now. 😀
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:59 am
LOL I’m going to work the phrase “I TRANSIST!” into everyday conversation. Great RSOTW as always, Benj!
June 3rd, 2008 at 3:54 am
1,77Mhz Z80 in a TRS80 Model 1, but that was my father’s. My first very own machine was an XT Clone with something around 8Mhz.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
1.77MHz Z80 in a Video Genie EG3003, a clone of the TRS-80. Started with 16KB RAM and 12KB ROM.
Later expanded to 64KB RAM, external system bus with floppy disks (35 track single sided single density, 80KB on a floppy), and later even put CP/M on that machine. Overclocked with a better CPU to 5MHz or so..
June 3rd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
0.895mhz (TRS-80 CoCo)
June 3rd, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Packard Hell 486 DX2 66 MHZ
June 4th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Apple II with something like 1,000,000 Hz it was the king of my living room. Good bless it, that machine is still working today.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:25 am
The first computer I ever bought was a Northgate Slimline 386 20MHz with a 100 MB hard drive (but the drive had to be partitioned into 4 logical drives of 25 MB each because DOS couldn’t address the whole physical drive!). I think it had 1 MB of RAM. The machine cost $3,184.00. After 18 years, I still have the (totally awesome) Northgate keyboard.