Strangest Computer Designs of the '70s

[Megalith]

Lazy Game Reviews has a new video for the nostalgics out there. One of the more noteworthy mentions include the Xerox Alto, which was the first system to flaunt the concept of a GUI. This decade was pretty historic for computing in general, as computers became affordable for the general public due to the mass production of the microprocessor in 1971.

The 1970s. As the personal computer concept was still being defined, many of these machines appeared "strange" at the time simply because they were the first of their kind! Let's take a look at some that stand out the most for their design and significance.

 

[Deleted member 245375]

I had an uncle that worked at Xerox PARC in those days, was actually there on the day the Apple folk came rumbling through and he knew things would never be the same after they left and, well, history proved him right.

 

[Nukester]

I owned several of these ancient data crunching machines. Found them quite useful for word processing. Other than that... well... It was fun to do some basic programming. I did like the keyboards, they felt awesome. Clickity clack.

 

[prime2515102]

Wow... Look at the transformer and caps at 7:30... It looks like they pulled parts out of a tube amp. lol

 

[BulletDust]

I personally see this as a golden era of computing, it didn't seem as soul less as computing today. Even now I find the machines quite fascinating, the capabilities of these machines is actually very impressive considering the limitations the programmers had to work within, no inefficient code that's for sure.

 

[grtitan]

I personally see this as a golden era of computing, it didn't seem as soul less as computing today. Even now I find the machines quite fascinating, the capabilities of these machines is actually very impressive considering the limitations the programmers had to work within, no inefficient code that's for sure.

I would say, 80s and early 90s computing was the golden age and perhaps, it ended with the death of Be inc.

Everything after is just souless and bloated.

 

[cyberguyz]

My golden age was the late 70's & early 80's before IBM trademarked the name "PC" and before Bill Gates bought his MS-DOS (that is about the point things started going downhill).
I so miss that time of discovery and newness.

 

[BulletDust]

My golden age was the late 70's & early 80's before IBM trademarked the name "PC" and before Bill Gates bought his MS-DOS (that is about the point things started going downhill).
I so miss that time of discovery and newness.

That's exactly what it was! A time of discovery and newness.

Well said.

 

[AK0tA]

Time to fire up my Ti-99/4a and get back to coding.

 

[cyberguyz]

Time to fire up my Ti-99/4a and get back to coding.

Ti-99/4a + Assembly cartridge was a lot of fun. Learned a lot of cool stuff from that (like an instruction to switch entire 16-bit register stacks by simply updating an address - totally insane concept back then).