• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

It's 1976. What's on Your Holiday Gift List?

S

saundby

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 21, 2009
Messages
306
Location
The Villages, FL, USA
Imagine it's today's date, but in year 1976. You're thinking about getting your first computer, or talking the folks into getting it for you. What would you ask for?

Budget:
Pick one or more set-ups for what you'd want depending on your budget level, either:
low budget (up to $250),
medium budget (up to $500),
or a huge budget (up to $5000, more than the price of a new car at the time. No doubt you're selling CB radios like hotcakes in your day job!)

Are you a student begging mom and dad for an Elf II or HP-25C? A well off stereo salesman picking up an assembled and tested Pacer? Or a ham who wants to give an SWTPC 6800 kit a try?

What do you want for 1976, and why?

For the chronologically challenged, there are period magazines online that're sure to get you excited about the hottest thing with up to 8K and a full front panel. :!:

Anachronisms should be gently pointed out when found.

And no fair assuming your best buds Steve Wozniak and Seymour Cray both decide to put their company's first computers under (or around) your tree that year. :D
 
Last edited:
1976.

I am looking out of the window in my 4th year on elementary school.
It's May 6, and some traces of snow are still lining the lawn that is our playground.
Little did I know the hottest summer ever was coming.

It's one year to go until my friend gets this strange pong/duckshoot device for his birthday.

e.g. I hadn't really seen a computer up close yet.
 
One of the gifts that I gave that year was a digital watch; I don't recall if it was that year or 1977, but I also gifted a National Semiconductor Adversary video game (very hot that year) to my brother's kids.
 
A Nova scientific calculator, it was RPN and ate batteries for breakfast. I really wanted the TI scientific but could only afford this one. It did get me through many electronic theory classes.

Kipp
 
Interesting to know http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm. So $250 (US) would be 959.75 today, $500 = $1,919.50, and $5000 turns into $19,194.99 if one was to pretend your salary right now is equivalent. The home computer wouldn't really be out yet.. let's see.. I'd like to say I'd go with an Altair since it'd be a year old now or the new IMSAI but I like the metal look more than plastic. Depending on budget though, (not sure back then I would have $2000 for a toy) so if I really wanted a computer I probably would have ended up with a Kim-1 although I'm not familiar with all the machines out at that time.

That's a guess though, there's a large possibility I would have waited a few more years until something with a more official display came out. Kim-1 would have been ok though since it has it's display right there, but again being honest I'm not sure I would have been on the latest hype behind computer until software I thought I or the family could enjoy was out.

Out of curiosity what brought this year and this post to your mind saundby? What would you pick?
 
I didn't have any money to spend because I was saving it for my trip to San Francisco. I went to the First West Coast Computer Faire. To me the coolest thing there was a Cromemco which had a huge colour monitor and was showing some kind of bright, changing, fractal thing. I think it was the first time I had really seen a colour display. Anyway, that thing would have cost much more than my trip.
FWCCF-1977.jpg
 
One of my friends had gotten a job with Commodure about then and had just shown me a prototype of their first scientific calculator (in a wooden box, yet). In the office building on Moffett Park Drive, a bunch of guys on the first floor (we were on the second floor) were doing some interesting things. I think they called their little outfit "Atari" or something.

In 1976, I ordered a Sinclair "Black Watch" kit out of the ads in the back of Popular Electroncs. They left out the main circuit board from the kit and kept sending me other bits and pieces after I complained. My first computer-related rip-off experience.
 
NeXT said:
I don't exist yet. ;)
Click to expand...

That's the magic of the internet forum. Imagine you got up this morning and the calendar says 1976. You've got a TV, a radio, probably a stereo system, and a hankering for a computer to do God knows what but it sounds like fun. From what's available in computers in 1976, what would you want if you were there?
 
Last edited:
barythrin said:
Out of curiosity what brought this year and this post to your mind saundby? What would you pick?
Click to expand...
Originally I was thinking of doing 1975 as a sort of even numbers thing (35 years), but I thought 1976 would be easier for more people to relate to, since there was a huge difference in the market over the course of that year. Far more products came in to the market. They were still mostly kits, but fully assembled systems had a presence in the market, too,

But the packaged commercial computer wasn't quite there. Exactly what a small computer system should be like was still an unknown, the variety was broad. Anything seemed possible and likely. The CPUs were simple to build around compared to the 8008, several were available and prices had dropped by a factor of 10. Even 16 bit chips could be had (like PACE), new applications were appearing all the time. It was a ferment of activity and excitement.

If all you've known is the excitement of getting a 10% speed bump and SIMD on your new computer, you can't imagine what it was like. Only big institutions like banks and governments had computers before. Now the ordinary enthusiast could have one and operate it with less than monkish dedication. Imagine being able to buy your own space program and run missions to Mars off your back patio. It was like that. And maybe next year you'd be able to get a warp drive, who knows?

I thought it might lead to more interesting answers than "I'll take an Apple II or a PET."

That's some of what had me pick 1976. It was a pivotal year.
 
Ole Juul said:
I didn't have any money to spend because I was saving it for my trip to San Francisco. I went to the First West Coast Computer Faire. To me the coolest thing there was a Cromemco which had a huge colour monitor and was showing some kind of bright, changing, fractal thing. I think it was the first time I had really seen a colour display. Anyway, that thing would have cost much more than my trip.
Click to expand...
I was standing next to you staring at it, too. I was the kid with a red, white, and blue backpack selling scavenged RAM, shift register, CCD and MSI chips out of the backpack.

The board was a TV Dazzler, running Li-Chen Wang's Kaleidoscope program. They also ran a wine glass animation. As I recall, the show price on the board was $350 or so. I could have bought one (I netted about $450 on memory chips at the Faire), but then I couldn't have afforded a system to put it in!
 
saundby said:
I was standing next to you staring at it, too. I was the kid with a red, white, and blue backpack selling scavenged RAM, shift register, CCD and MSI chips out of the backpack.

The board was a TV Dazzler, running Li-Chen Wang's Kaleidoscope program. They also ran a wine glass animation. As I recall, the show price on the board was $350 or so. I could have bought one (I netted about $450 on memory chips at the Faire), but then I couldn't have afforded a system to put it in!
Click to expand...

Wow! It was so long ago and I was so mixed up and clueless at the time . . . Interesting to know what that was, because it was indeed the most memorable machine for me.

I went to a few Comdex shows in Vancouver some years later and they were extremely boring by comparison. You used to be able to get free floppies with demos on them which you could take home and format for good use, but when it became free CDs there was no point in going to the shows any more.
 
In 1976, any computer was out of my reach. They seemed pretty futuristic back then, if you were considering one for personal use. I was pretty amazed at the calculators of the day still. A computer? Well, maybe someday done the road. Right then I had a wife and two kids so the family came first. By late 77 though I was drawn into the programmable calculators and spent a goodly sum going from the TI-57 to the TI-58 and finally the TI-59 with the PC100A printer attachment. My first computer didn't arrive until I bought a Radio Shack Model 1 in 1978.
You have a good question though, with using 1976. . . .
Humm, well, I would have to choose the Rockwell AIM 65 for the year 1976. I would have been enthralled with one of those. Keyboard, printer - all in one. An awesome machine for 1976, to be sure.
attachment.php
 
Most likely I would find a cheap system of some kind and learn assembly language plus move to silicon valley.
 
Okay, that'd be what, about $200 in today's money (I could buy a new car for $3K in 1976). Okay, what's the instruction set look like? I'd love to see the weather prediction program, however--the local weather forecasters certainly would benefit from it!

:)
 
A "cheap" systems would be some kind of home built kit, hopefully with a processor that isn't a complete dead end. I would not care so much for the machine (don't realy like anything in 1976) but I would like to learn assembly language on a system that should be simple enough to learn on and build from there with later generations (assuming I am now stuck back in 1976 and have to live it out to the present day again).

Home computers for me didn't become interesting until the early 1980's. The problem is I started some programming on my Timex 2068 in 1983 but game it up for gaming when I decided to buy a C64 shortly after. So for me this would be a way to learn programming from the ground up since there isn't much gaming to take my time away. In 1976 I was around 8 years old.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top