Information on Old Computers?

sj12fn asks: "I am working on a Computer Family Tree. It's going to include every OS ever made, every piece of hardware ever produced, every computer language ever written, and every standard ever published. What I'm here to ask is if anyone out there in the Slashdot crew has any useful info for us to use." That's a pretty tall order, but it sounds like a worthwhile project, if only from a historic point of view. It looks like the recent question on the first computer OS will get more use than expected.

Good starting point

[nutsy]

The Great Microprocessors of the Past and Present [uregina.ca] site is a good place to start.

some URLs...

[einstein]

looking back into my bookmarks, here is some useful stuff

here [crowl.org] is a site with some pictures of some of the major players, starting with Babbage and going up to the DEC VAX 11/780

on the home user end of things, this [www.diku.dk] site has some useful information and links about old atair systems and their kind..
hope that helps
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Re:[Slightly OT]: Realistic goal?

[sj12fn]

Why not try?

every standard!?!?

[cheeserd00d]

i think this would be a good idea and all but it seems a bit unrealistic - do you just plan on using only the RFC standards or every standard ever - i mean, there are a TON of standards that were published and and are still being published - it would take years with lots of full-time people to get even a portion of this accomplished

Don't forget the Manchester Baby

[zero-one]

American historians typically forget the Manchester computer which (arguably) executed the first ever stored program on June 21st 1948.

For some info see this site [computer50.org.uk] or visit the The Manchester Museum of Science and Industry [msim.org.uk] where you can see the rebuilt computer in action (although there does not appear to be that much on the museum's web site). There is also an emulator available but I can't find a link for that right now.

Source of Computer History

[martyb]

I'm a former owner of an Ohio Scientific Inc. Challenger 4P. [1] Didn't see it in this article's history, so went looking for some links and found a treasure trove of computer history on a site in New Zealand. Check out this query on Google [google.com] where you can try and reach the original site [embassy.org.nz] (I kept getting timeout errors) or access the cached pages on Google.

[1] When I first showed this computer to my girlfriend at the time, she saw the big letters "OSI" on the front of it, and her mouth just dropped open and her eyes got as big as they could be. I could tell she was VERY IMPRESSED. This was around 1982, and since very few people had personal computers, then, I understood her amazement. That is, until she explained that she thought I was involved with the ultra-secret government agency "Office of Scientific Intelligence" [scifi.com] which was featured on the then-popular TV show "The Six-Million Dollar Man"! [scifi.com]

Atanasoff-Berry Computer info

[Lish]

Here's some excellent info on the Atanasoff-Berry Computer:

ISU Library Special Collections Dept. [iastate.edu]

Iowa Computer Science and Math History Links [iastate.edu]

Also, IBM has an extensive collection of historical items about its own systems, you may have luck there.

"Every" is possibly a little optimistic

[JonK]

I hate to break it to you, but you're doomed from the get-go: trying to catalogue every piece of hardware ever built and every computer language ever to get a grammar are impossible tasks (or at least the difficulty tends to infinity as t increases). After all, every self-respecting hacker has created at least one toy language to solve problems in a particular domain, and I'd guess that most hackers who've got enough motor co-ordination to avoid burning themselves on a soldering iron have built at least one piece of hardware. Are you going to catalogue all these?

For the record, I've created (that I can remember) three languages and breadboarded several bits of kit. The bits of hardware may be around somewhere, but I'm not sure where.
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Cheers

The Roots of DOS

[Cy Guy]

Extensive interview [patersontech.com] with Tim Paterson author of the Quick and Dirty OS for the 8086 (QDOS-86) the OS MS bought from Seattle Computer to use on the orginal IBM PC.

Previously, Paterson also had done the first port of MS-Basic to the 8086 platform.

The 1983 article is both amusing and sad since the guy went back to Seattle Computer after MS-DOS 1.1 was released, and says how happy he was to get a director position there. I expect he'd be worth Billions now had he stayed with MS.