In 1987, your portable Osborne computer had a problem. Who you gonna call? Well, maybe the company that made “The Osborne Survival Kit,” a video from Witt Services acquired by the Computer History Museum. The narrator, [Mark Witt], tells us that they’ve been fixing these computers for more than three years, and they want to help you fix it yourself. Those days seem long gone, don’t they?
Of course, one thing you need to know is how to clean your floppy drives. The procedure is easy; even a 10-year-old can do it. At least, we think [William Witt] is about 10 in the video. He did a fine job, and we wonder what he’s up to these days.
The next step was taking the machine apart, but that required adult supervision. In some cases, it also took a soldering iron. As a byproduct, the video inadvertently is a nice tear-down video, too.
We remember lugging systems like this around. Your phone is worth hundreds or thousands of these old machines and fits in your pocket. But we still love this old iron. There are some pretty advanced repairs covered later in the video like adjusting the drive speed or replacing the keyboard (with slightly older Daniel). The monitors were prone to jitter and that repair is in there, too.
We can’t imagine a computer seller today asking us to drill a hole in the case to attach an external monitor connector. To tell the truth, we kind of miss that. At the end of the video are bits of another video from Witt about building an XT-compatible computer. That was about $30 — quite a bit in the 1980s. We don’t know how much the Osborne video cost.
If you make it to the end of the video, you may have the urge to rewind it before returning it to the rental store. No need, though. It’s YouTube.
We wonder what [Mark] would think of an Osborne 1 case with a Raspberry Pi brain. While the Osborne was the first well-known luggable computer, there were a few other huge sort-of portable computers around that time.
Thanks [Stephen Walters] for the tip!
Hm. To me it’s the most normal thing in the world. I guess I’m getting old.
The boy does fine in the video, as well, I think, judging by my own memories.
Way back in the 80s/90s, many of us kids did tinker with construction kits, home computers or played with fire and not so harmless chemicals.
I had installed ISA cards in my PC compatible and used my dad’s soldering station at roughly age 7.
Other kids before me had dialed into BBS systems as a teen or pre-teen, too, I assume.
Back then it felt just natural that kids had more knowledge about electronics and appliances than their parents.
Kids of that time would never stick a floppy disk to a fridge using a magnet, for example. ;)
Indeed! In my day we pinned them to a corkboard.
Or stapled them inside the front cover of the relevant user manual.
It’s perfectly OK to pin or staple them through the corner ;)
Hah, that’s so funny, I almost laughed. But seriously, I often wonder why kids are being used to showcase “simple work”.
To my experience, kids that age can be very reasonable and have great deal of sensitivity.
Before they get into puberty and have all these weird emotional breakdowns, I mean. ;)
I mean, let’s just think about it.
Here’s another example: The kids in the 50s/60s/70s had their crystal radios sets, which they had to build on their own.
They had to wind the AM coils all by themselves, for example, which required lots of patience and a great deal of sensitivity, too.
Probably just an appeal to the customers vanity, “Well if a 10 year old can do I of course I can!”
My buddy’s dad had to quit school too with in a coal mine when he was 12… Kids were just built different back then.
Not only at that time kids knew more about electronics that their parents, to this day I know more than them (helps me the fact that I am an EE).
What’s also seemingly being forgotten is that in those days, owners of computers were more than just consumers.
In the 1970s and 1980s, computer users were being expected to be able to install a certain piece of hardware on their own.
If we look closely at the supplied manuals of that era, we find schematics of the electronic device, sometimes even with the circuit boards being drawn.
In case of computers, there were even hex dumps or assembler listings of the rom chips being printed.
These things were often being included on the last pages, near the end of the user manuals.
I don’t think we should praise those times too highly. Technology being overly complex to use stifles creativity. This used to be seen as a virtue but we now recognize that wrong, which is why it’s STEAM and no longer STEM.
I hear that. The barrier to entry for stuff like that used to be super high. Even in the late 90’s, before the internet as we know it, I struggled to install Linux variants many many times and was successful zero times and fully gave up.
.
Last year I downloaded Mint to a thumb drive with like one click, booted a refurb laptop from that following the instructions and now I have a fully functioning system with zero hiccups.
I don’t have nostalgia for a lot of it hahah!
Pre-internet if something didn’t work, you were on your own, and often stuck.
Now when something doesn’t work you do a quick search and often find the answer/solution from someone else, often more expert, who has already solved it. Provided you can filter it out from all the “noise” of adverts, cat videos and pornography of course.
“Pre-internet if something didn’t work, you were on your own, and often stuck.”
No, that’s a cliche. There were online services (say CompuServe, Genie), free books in the public library, your friendly dude at Radio Shack..
It wasn’t the dark ages, really. Some people met at Ham fairs or talked to other users through CB radio.
Computer user clubs existed, too.
“I hear that. The barrier to entry for stuff like that used to be super high. Even in the late 90’s, before the internet as we know it, I struggled to install Linux variants many many times and was successful zero times and fully gave up.”
No. I don’t think that was the case.
From my point of view, people simply had to sit down and think for a moment.
Being rational, being concentrated. Like in a math exam.
And Linux is a completely different beast.
Linux and Unix never had been “easy”. See “The Unix Haters Handbook”.
It’s meant as a parody, but it’s being so right at certain things. :)
@craig said: “Last year I downloaded Mint to a thumb drive with like one click, booted a refurb laptop from that following the instructions and now I have a fully functioning system with zero hiccups.”
Craig, you obviously haven’t tried to install the latest Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia 64-bit Cinnamon edition dual-boot along-side Windows 11 Pro on a fairly modern PC that is infected with a UEFI BIOS that is seemingly impossible to completely disable. What a NIGHTMARE that is!
I have been trying to do that dual-boot install for almost TWO WEEKS now – without success. There are muliple failure points, from being unable to create reliable install media from the downloaded Mint .iso files using the likes Etcher or Rufus, to installations consistently failing with Mint INCORRECTLY detecting that Windows 11 Pro is installed with BitLocker disk encryption active (it most certainly isn’t).
The machine I am installing to is a circa 2017 14″ FHD Dell Latitude 7480 laptop with a Core i7 CPU, 16GB SDRAM, and a brand new Crucial 1TB M.2 SSD. The Windows 11 Pro install is fresh from Microsoft’s own installation media creator tool using a valid Product Key. Unfortunately the target Dell 7480 laptop has only one M.2 SSD slot, so to have both Windows 11 Pro and Linux Mint on the same machine, I must install Linux Mint along-side Windows dual-boot via the Grub bootloader. But the installation always fails before I get to that point.
BTW the Windows 11 Pro installation is a work requirement, otherwise I would happily dump it in a heartbeat. I am constantly fighting with Windows 11 to keep it from spying on me and shoving stupid ads in my face.
What a mess… :-(
Just wondering if only installing Linux on the laptop and then running Win11Pro as a client in a virtual environment is an option?
So, you’d always boot-up into native Linux and just fire-up the virtual client App (e.g. VirtualBox, VMware, etc.) when you need access to a Win11Pro environment.
Well, honestly, I’m not sure to agree. Let me explain why:
Those platform were mainly aimed at experts or experienced users, or companies with teams of experts around. As a result, a certain level of transparency was the rule, with sometime crude details hard to understand but which were literally gold mines for experienced users (blueprint, schematic assembly code)
In our days, a common point of view among technology and design gurus is, on this opposite, that it should look far more accessible with almost no effort at all, less a strict subordinate, and more a friend easing your life, even in a certain way not distinguishable from magic. Positivists may argue that it
– It is a better approach to ease and stimulate the creativity (to trigguer the “magic” of the creativity, all the crude rationality of computer science shall be hidden)
– It is more democratic because common people wants things accessible easily without effort
But there are huge drawbacks to that approach:
– Waste, huge waste of resource: computer with hundred time the power of the ones we’re talking about are reduced to me leisure, pleasure and consuming terminals. 8 F***ing cores to play influencers videos….
– Incitation to laziness: in the end of the 90 up to mid 2000’s, I saw a noticeable expansion of computer sciences, were you had or students exploring open source OSes and studying cost efficient ways to expend the hardware of old machines they wanted to continue to exploit despite their age. This ended with the beginning of Iphone/Ipad ERA
– Companies that are promoting this approach don’t do it for the sake of mankind: not evolutive phones are guarantee to sell another phones, Fully electronic glass cockpit cars “offers the confort” to require you to bring them back to a certified garage even for the most basic servicing
– Even in the professional world, this complexity obfuscation is a source of the development of a quite dynamic external prestation and service market: you’re not anymore master of your own stuff but have continuously to pay for services around it… and “to relax and be creative, of course”
“Well, honestly, I’m not sure to agree. Let me explain why:
Those platform were mainly aimed at experts or experienced users, or companies with teams of experts around. As a result, a certain level of transparency was the rule, with sometime crude details hard to understand but which were literally gold mines for experienced users (blueprint, schematic assembly code)”
Um, I must confess that this was a bit before my time.
To my understanding, though, the people involved in the early microcomputer days of the 70s were hobbyists. Ordinary people, like you and me.
Such as students or curious school teachers (maybe looking for a new teaching tool?),
electricians, musicians and artists looking for a platform for experiments,
young priests, radio amateurs, clock makers who like all sorts of tech, car mechanics..
There were so many kinds of people who had an interest in a little computer.
A gardener maybe, who wanted to measure the humiditiy of the plant’s soils or the green house..
By using the X/Y paddle inputs of an homecomputer this was no problem.
Even the cheap ViC20 had this feature built-in (joystick port).
An analog sensor was all it needed. Magazines and DIY books teached them the details.
I mean, in the beginning, there was no commercial market yet. Most things were sold in kit form.
Things like AIM-65 or KIM1 were educational “computers”, meant to teach people. To teach kids..
They wouldn’t do their job very well if they came pre-assembled and wouldn’t challenge people.
I don’t think that technology should be blamed for a failed society, though.
In nature, same thing that can be a poison can also be a cure.
About STEM.. I don’t mean to judge, but especially the US and its way of life is something that’s uhm, “special”, I think.
I don’t know how to express, I don’t mean to be unfair or something.
Let’s just say certain things just seem, err, weird or cheesy. To me, as an foreigner. Looking at things from the far.
And the web/internet (US tech companies, social networks) seems to export that ideology/culture across the globe.
We (rest of the world) didn’t have seen that amount of influence back in the day. Still don’t, in certain ways.
To my knowledge, in my place kids aren’t being raised by tablet PCs and smartphones yet, for example.
Parents still try to spend some time with their children, despite job life. Family goes first, still.
Anyway, I guess we’re a bit oldschool here in certain ways, don’t know. 🤷
Maybe that will change, evenetually. Only time will tell.
Also, I think in those old times technology wasn’t overly complex, really, if teenagers could write best seller games at their parent’s house.
Rather contrary, I think – in those days a home computer or 16-Bit PC could be understood, still.
You could do about everything with PEEK and POKE and watch the code flow through the system.
It was a time in which the user had full control over the hardware/software and modify things to their needs. Users weren’t slaves yet.
Provided that the user actually wanted to use his/her/they brain.
Remember the teachers of the old day, who had said that use of calculators makes us dumb, eventually? They had no idea how right they were.
But it wasn’t the pocket calculator or home computer, but the smartphone.
In terms creativity, the 70s (Apple II/PET days) and 80s there weren’t as primitive as it may seem at first glance.
Picture scanners, frame grabbers and tone generators that could be built on a kitchen table.
Let’s just think of the Commodore Amiga, for example, which saw a lot of hardware hackers.
Same goes for the IBM PC, which shipped with a whole encyclopedia of information.
And other systems of the day. The Macintosh excepted, maybe (just kidding). :D
To give an idea, a b/w picture scanner could be built by mounting a photodiode+LED to a matrix printer, for example.
Kits were being sold, of course, which had to be assembled by the user.
By mid-late 1980s, Genius and other companies had sold little handy scanners for all major platforms, too.
Alternatively, there were simple frame grabber circuits for parallel port being sold.
The DigiView dongle for Amiga was a popular model, for example.
They could also be built in a DIY fashion, of course.
There wasn’t much hardware inside, anyway.
Such a frame grabber could be used with a VBS (mono composite) source.
Say, an old b/w tube camera used for surveilance (Vidicon, Orthicon).
These cameras were around before CCD/CMOS.
Painting programs were being bunbled with mice, often, around same time.
They made users curious and encouraged them to get a little bit artistic.
Like PC Paint or Dr. Halo on PC platform, for example.
And now in modern days, on a large scale, we”ve become mere consumers.
The smartphone, a blackbox, is being glorfied all the time. We’re addicted to it, really.
I agree with you…it is not the tech…society has become more stupid over the past 3 decades. In the 70s’/80’s/early 90’s people were generally more knowledgeable about the operation of things they were using (not just tech). Most of us already had the capability to do component repairs/changes on board level in our teens, because that was simply the way things were done…you don’t touch something until you understood it inside and out. FFS…even my 90-year old granny could program a VCR through that archaic programming interface. If you give a teen or someone in their early 20’s a device like that today (including the manual), they are screwed (and I tried it). The first problem you run into is: “You want me to do what?…reading? Have you lost your marbles?”. The 2nd problem is that it requires an abstract process to be visualized in your mind to keep your place in the sequence…not a chance of that happening.
As with all things there are always exceptions, but nothing (especially society) gets labeled by its exceptions. It gets labeled by the capability of the herd majority. Society has definitely become more stupid, and less capable.
“That was about $30 — quite a bit in the 1980s.”
On the other hand, Infocom games typically cost about $39.95 at the time.
The current society tech level as a whole can be summarized with: In the 60’s and 70’s car owners manual gave procedures on how to check valve clearances and how to time the crank shaft. Today the owners manual tells the owner not to drink battery acid.
I grew up in a TV repair shop that my Dad owned. Electronics were like Legos to me (I still love both) , I was like 10 (maybe 12, definitely before ’79) when I was exposed to programing at a Radio Shack, and the light bulb lit when I realized it was 74 series logic, just flexible.
Built my first Z80 machine starting in 79, bought a Commodore 64 six months after it’s release, ended up with an electronics vocational certificate and a career in IT.
I Shoulda finished college, but I was making money then, and there was always tomorrow for school.
Stupid is as stupid does.
What I started to say, before I got lost, My Dad was and old Radio E.E. vacume tubes, who survived the transition to Semiconductor electronics (there was a break there, yes there was) and even managed a patent for a 8 radio phones one one radio channel system in like ’65 or ’66 and he was always complaining “Kids have no idea what’s in those black boxes, they just wore them up and go whee, with no concept of what’s in them.” talking about I.C.s
So really, nothing has changed just more complex black boxes.
Another example, motor controllers, that was a big thing when I was in college, it’s was a project in one of my classes, and I managed to make on that survived reversing, some how, don’t ask me how, because I couldn’t replicate it 20 years later, not from memory, scorch marks on the ceiling and everything.
Microcontrollers for the win for real, that was the solution in 2010 to what I remember as a semester of frustration in the late 80’s trying to solve the proboem with 74 series logic and the early MOSFETS.
or something. lolz
Need to remember to proof read.
“What I started to say, before I got lost, My Dad was and old Radio E.E. vacume tubes, who survived the transition to Semiconductor electronics (there was a break there, yes there was) and even managed a patent for a 8 radio phones one one radio channel system in like ’65 or ’66 and he was always complaining “Kids have no idea what’s in those black boxes, they just wore them up and go whee, with no concept of what’s in them.” talking about I.C.s”
He wasn’t wrong about that, I agree.
Most kids had no idea what was going on, but they could get that information if they really wanted to.
Information about 74s and 4040 series ICs was widely available in the 70s,
simply because it was very relevant at the time.
About any young radio amateur could help out with datasheets or tips.
If not, a call at ARRL or a visit in a Radio Shack could provide information.
Ok, making a photocopy still wasn’t trivial yet, maybe.
Photocopiers were still rare, but postal offices or public libraries often had them.
In a similar way to how telephone booths still were a thing because not every household had a phone at home.
Using a college note pad and a pencil to replicate the diagram of an IC was possible, though.
An polaroid camera could be used, too, to make a photo. We just do that with smartphones now.
I assume he also thought of transistors,
which originally had a metal cap but were later being sold in a black plastic package.
Some early tranisitor models in a plastic chassis were transparent but gotten painted black.
By removing that black paint, they could be used as photo transistors.
“So really, nothing has changed just more complex black boxes.”
ICs were also available in a clear case, sometimes, for demonstration purposes etc.
Popular ICs like 555, 741 or 386 were also being described in great detail.
It was possible thus to replace them by discrete logic anytime, if it was necessary.
I don’t think the same can be said about the smartphone these days.
It’s not so much a piece of technology anymore, but rather a religious object.
We’re addicted to it and off-load our thinking onto it all the time, in my opionion.
Instead of thinking on our own, we constantly feel the urge to grab our phone and check the net.
And I’m not excepting myself here. I was addicted too, but didn’t truely notice the amount of addiction until I took a break.
After about one week of not using my smartphone, I noticed how my concentration came back.
I could finish my meals and watch movies without taking a break to check my phone.