Ah, now we’re getting into one of the more interesting nuances of the 80’s computer scene – graphics! While today our systems simply use software to create everything we see on screen, with hardware doing the raw math to make it all happen, back in those days, you didn’t have processing power, memory, or, well, […]
Wow, we haven’t taken a look at Bits and Bytes since July! Time to get back to it. Bits and Bytes episode 8 deals with Simulation software and games which have an educational lean to them. While being an episode dealing with games, it does touch into some elements of gaming back in the early […]
One set of early applications that the home computers of the early 80’s were exceptional at (given the primitive graphics available) were those that taught something. Known in this video as “computer aided instruction” this episode of Bits and Bytes focuses on some rather impressive instructional programs intended for children, spanning the various major home […]
Alright, finally we’re getting to something that will feel familiar to everyone: networking! More correctly, the pre-internet computer networking methodology known as BBS’s, via literally dialing a number and putting a phone on the modulator-demodulator – a modem, if you are old enough to remember those kinds of things! This episode shows our friend Billy […]
One thing that all computers do in some form is store data, be it programs we install on them, or data we generate ourselves using these programs. This is, of course, by design – computers are tools to help us do work (or at least, that’s why they are made, whether or not we use […]
I stumbled across this gem of a video yesterday and thought it worth sharing – a 1980 documentary from Madison, Wisconsin, about the then-new personal computer scene. The video is a little dry in some regards but it proves to be oddly perfect in its predictions for computers in the future – as a kid […]