TMOliver wrote:

"Greg Procter" wrote in message
...
"Mr. Travel" wrote:

Greg Procter wrote:
TMOliver wrote:

"Greg Procter" wrote ...


My answer is absolutely straight.
I own an IBM PC which is significantly different in specification to
an
XT.
I don't have a manual for it, but I do have a manual for an XT. They
are
not the same.

To most of us, "PC" simply is the vernacular description first accorded
small "desktop" computers of IBM/IBM clone genre.


That's entirely due to your ignorance of computers.

What about your ignorance of the XT being a PC.
It's name was IBM Personal Computer XT, also known as IBM PC/XT




IIRC, IBM itself produced a series of machines of this type, including
the
"XT" model and the (earlier, but you're asking for memories from long
ago)
"AT". It's possible that the first or an early example of the series
of
products may have actually borne the "PC" designation, but the term
soon
passed into the more generic usage. I can barely recall my first
desktop,
1985 or so, an NCR with 2 5.25" floppies combined with the CPU and the
Monitor, all in single heavy package.


Ok, so you were a later starter. I guess that's not your fault.

Maybe he was 6 in 1985.


Maybe, but I was in my 30s, had built my own computer, and then moved up
through the varieties of British mini-computers using binary and the
various Basic programming languages.
The IBM PC was an interim product that was only on the market for a
short time _before_ the XT. Judging by Wikipedia it has been totally
forgotten by those who were 6 or younger in 1985.

I was around data processing long before terms like "mini-computer" or
"personal computer" came into use. Prior to 1980 or so, it was main frames
or nothing.

Not quite nothing - I built my first computer from a circuit published
in Electronics Australia 1978-79.


Akshulee, my first "computer" was a Mk37 GFCS, already ancient, in 1962,
since the sextant I used on the Bridge was not complicated by
computerization, still relying upon the carefully crafted tables in the
_Nautical Almanac_, the boon companion of celestial navigators everywhere.
I suppose one could have called the DRT a "computer, electro-mechanical".
Come 1967, a couple of years back from the Navy, I was shanghaied into
learning to program my employer's new main frame, a best forgotten NCR 315,
already obsolete when it arrived compared to the new IBM 360s,


I remember those - first came into contact with one in the late 1960s.
('came in contact' in as much as I dated a data input operator)


NCR's
programming language, now lost runes, was called "NEAT", based somewhat on
the concept of "Plain English" commands. The first semi-portable "desktop"
I recall was an, Osborn, IIRC, and we had given our oldest daughter, then 12
or so, one of the TI "plug'n plays" which used a home TV as a monitor.

Yup, I had one of those - about the size of a suitcase or 'portable
sewing machine' and twice as heavy. A screen about 4" across.



Groggy must be barely out of puberty which reputedly last longer in the
Antipodes.

How could puberty out last your yank example of a complete lifetime?


It must be the upside down aspects of life, clinging to the orb
with sucker-soled bootees. His rank adolescence is well reflected in the
naiveté of his perspective and the narrow spectrum of his intellect.

In measuring things, Grog, my first Transatlantic flight was in 1959, back
when I was a college student and the engines "turned instead of burned".

My first flight was about then : Vickers Viscount after a pre-puberty
holiday with friends.


I
had to wait a few years for my first Transpacific flight, returning from a
neighborhood I just as soon would have avoided visiting.


Yeah, I've always been glad to escape the oppression of the US too!