10 Revolutionary Computers

[HardOCP News]

Live Science is taking a trip down memory lane today, looking back at ten of the most revolutionary computers of our time.

Despite appearances, today's online world did not spring to life fully formed. Before they were made a major part of our lives, some pioneering computers either had to capture the public's imagination, establish what could be done by computers, or both. Here, we'll look at some computers that played, and sometimes continue to play, a major role.

 

[silentcoercion]

RoadRunner is just... bigger than anything before it, nothing revolutionary about it. The first big cluster of it's kind, that'd be a lot more deserving of a spot on the list. Also, nothing portable? Odd.

 

[Project_Nightmare]

My computer should be on the list!

 

[killerbobjr]

Where's the MITS Altair 8800? This certainly was more revolutionary than its two listed contemporaries, the TRS-80 and the Apple II.

 

[sfsuphysics]

RoadRunner is just... bigger than anything before it, nothing revolutionary about it. The first big cluster of it's kind, that'd be a lot more deserving of a spot on the list. Also, nothing portable? Odd.

Agreed, while that list was predictable, it was so in the sense that they'd pick apple & ibm computers near the end of that.

First cluster, yeah, first laptop yeah, but TSR-80, Apple II, IBM PC, pick one of them, but not all three, especially if they didn't do anything vastly different.

 

[Shotglass01]

That Xerox PARC Alto kicked ass. Ethernet in 74. Too bad Xerox blew it.

 

[Ockie]

That Xerox PARC Alto kicked ass. Ethernet in 74. Too bad Xerox blew it.

Xerox blew a lot of things, if they had patents on some of the things they discovered, they would be putting Microsoft to shame in financial scale.

 

[Stoly]

C-64, Vic-20, Amiga, Atari ST, Sinclair ZX-80, Atari 400/800,NeXT Cube...

The list could go on and on

 

[Grimlaking]

Yea no Amiga, no commodore 64, No first mass market modem?

 

[Wumpus]

Not one beast made by Seymour Cray? I'd go with the CDC6600 myself.

Add me to the din replacing the TRS-80 with a C64 (and I'm an Atari guy myself).

Must include:

CDC6600
Multics
IBM PC (the revolution was to replace engineering with kludge, but boy did the revolution succeed).
Star
something with a 6502 (Apple ][ or C64)
Reality Engine (it was more than a "graphics card" if you include the computer).
The first truly embedded computer. Once they put CPUs in toasters, the game was truly afoot.

Not quite 10, but all more revolutionary than most of their list.

 

[Serpico]

That Xerox PARC Alto kicked ass. Ethernet in 74. Too bad Xerox blew it.

Xerox blew it bigtime by not making a marketable product out of it. And the fact that they allowed Apple to use their research in exchange for restricted Apple stock speaks volumes to just how badly Xerox's upper management didn't get it in a fundamentally huge way. To quote Steve Jobs, "They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory".

 

[Joe Average]

These kinds of lists by non-computer related people or industry related history makers is always a joke in the long run. They never consider certain aspects as "worthy" of being included on the list, which is ridiculous.

 

[Evil]

Apple Macintosh listed as revolutionary and #2? WTF

 

[Serpico]

Apple Macintosh listed as revolutionary and #2? WTF

It was the first mainstream personal computer with a GUI and mouse. Yup, pretty frigging revolutionary. Microsoft didn't have anything close to that until Windows 3.0 came out six years later.

 

[ianken]

C-64, Vic-20, Amiga, Atari ST, Sinclair ZX-80, Atari 400/800,NeXT Cube...

The list could go on and on

Of those I cite the biggest a toss up between the C64 and the Amiga. Either should have been on there.

Amiga - real mulittasking in a consumer machines. A REAL OS. Not some DOS clone with a poor mans finder on top (cough *ST* cough).
C64 - first to ship assloads of units.

IMHO.

 

[Joe Average]

Definitely. The Amigas were the first truly multitasking personal computers ever made, and I don't mean in the OS, I mean true hardware-based multitasking. I still to this day say the Amigas were and will forever be the best personal computers ever made and I'll always stand by that as a believer and an owner.

Amazing machines, then and even now...

 

[Zepher]

Definitely. The Amigas were the first truly multitasking personal computers ever made, and I don't mean in the OS, I mean true hardware-based multitasking. I still to this day say the Amigas were and will forever be the best personal computers ever made and I'll always stand by that as a believer and an owner.

Amazing machines, then and even now...

Ya, my first PC that I bought for myself was an Amiga 3000. Blew away my friends Dell 386 machine.
I still have an Amiga, an A3000T, that I sometimes hook up to play some of my classic Amiga games, like Lemmings 2, Super Frog, Birds of Prey, and a few others.

 

[Joe Average]

Killing Game Show from Psygnosis was the one for me. God I loved that game so much, so many great memories of that one. Full 4096 colors (unheard of outside of Amigas), 16 bit stereo sound with a kickass soundtrack... oh the fun.

 

[gaspah]

that was THE WORST top 10 pc list I have EVER seen.. people like this need to be ignored or tortured...

the only thing i liked was the schematics for the 1820s pc

 

[Serpico]

Of those I cite the biggest a toss up between the C64 and the Amiga. Either should have been on there.

Amiga - real mulittasking in a consumer machines. A REAL OS. Not some DOS clone with a poor mans finder on top (cough *ST* cough).
C64 - first to ship assloads of units.

IMHO.

The C64 was a toy (hey, I'm not bagging on it, I loved mine!) but the Amiga absolutely should have been on this list. They were the only other game in town aside from MacOS that was running a decent operating system at the time. Its too bad they were doomed since most closed-end systems went the way of the dodo in the 90s.

 

[Serpico]

Definitely. The Amigas were the first truly multitasking personal computers ever made, and I don't mean in the OS, I mean true hardware-based multitasking. I still to this day say the Amigas were and will forever be the best personal computers ever made and I'll always stand by that as a believer and an owner.

Amazing machines, then and even now...

A friend of mine in college who went on to work in visual effects had Video Toaster running on an Amiga 2000 and a tricked out Apple-whatever-was-top-of-the-line in 1992 (I think it was a Quadra). That was a ridiculous amount of horsepower to be having in one's dorm room back in the day. I always thought it was cool but I don't think I appreciated it nearly as much as I should have (I was too busy playing Doom on my 486 ).

Of course, now you can run Final Cut Studio on a $1000 machine. Film students these days have no idea how good they have it.

 

[Zepher]

A friend of mine in college who went on to work in visual effects had Video Toaster running on an Amiga 2000 and a tricked out Apple-whatever-was-top-of-the-line in 1992 (I think it was a Quadra). That was a ridiculous amount of horsepower to be having in one's dorm room back in the day. I always thought it was cool but I don't think I appreciated it nearly as much as I should have (I was too busy playing Doom on my 486 ).

Of course, now you can run Final Cut Studio on a $1000 machine. Film students these days have no idea how good they have it.

My Amiga 3000 with the Video Toaster 4000 card, 18megs of Ram, 120meg SCSI system drive, and 345meg SCSI storage drive (toaster software was on a crapload of floppies, about 50 I think and wouldn't fit on the stock 120meg system drive) cost me nearly $7K back in 92/93.
The investment paid off since I was able to get a job in 1994 at the Norfolk Public Schools' TV station running their Toaster system since there weren't many people in the area that knew how to work the Toaster. I mainly did Lightwave animations and basic graphic slates.

 

[Joe Average]

The investment paid off since I was able to get a job in 1994 at the Norfolk Public Schools' TV station running their Toaster system since there weren't many people in the area that knew how to work the Toaster. I mainly did Lightwave animations and basic graphic slates.

I knew how to do it, and I'm from P-town just over the river originally. There were a few places in Hampton Roads (least that's what people call it now, I always called it Tidewater myself) that specialized in Amigas, one place in particular over in Chesapeake. But like all the others, they too eventually had to move on from the Amiga, unfortunately.

I miss those machines, I really do.

 

[Serpico]

My Amiga 3000 with the Video Toaster 4000 card, 18megs of Ram, 120meg SCSI system drive, and 345meg SCSI storage drive (toaster software was on a crapload of floppies, about 50 I think and wouldn't fit on the stock 120meg system drive) cost me nearly $7K back in 92/93.
The investment paid off since I was able to get a job in 1994 at the Norfolk Public Schools' TV station running their Toaster system since there weren't many people in the area that knew how to work the Toaster. I mainly did Lightwave animations and basic graphic slates.

My friend that had the Toaster in college is one of the main effects supervisors at a VFX house in New York City now. The funny thing is I hadn't seen him in ten years, then on a commercial I was shooting I hear a familiar voice say my name. Turns out he was working on the same project I was! It was cool bumping into him again and nice to see him doing so well for himself. Lord knows he knew his shit back when he was just a freshman in college with all that cool gear.

 

[Zepher]

I knew how to do it, and I'm from P-town just over the river originally. There were a few places in Hampton Roads (least that's what people call it now, I always called it Tidewater myself) that specialized in Amigas, one place in particular over in Chesapeake. But like all the others, they too eventually had to move on from the Amiga, unfortunately.

I miss those machines, I really do.

I bought my System from that shop in Chesapeake, Video Computer Resources (aka VCR) out on Battlefield Blvd.

I call this area both Tidewater and Hampton Roads, just depends on how I am feeling at the time .

 

[Gearoid]

I don't really have a grip about any chose, I just thought a Cray supercomputer would have been among one of the top 10.

 

[gator09]

Of those I cite the biggest a toss up between the C64 and the Amiga. Either should have been on there.

Amiga - real mulittasking in a consumer machines. A REAL OS. Not some DOS clone with a poor mans finder on top (cough *ST* cough).
C64 - first to ship assloads of units.

IMHO.

Agreed.

 

[HardOCP News]

that was THE WORST top 10 pc list I have EVER seen.. people like this need to be ignored or tortured...

the only thing i liked was the schematics for the 1820s pc

And that is precisely why we post these things...debate / discussion. Some people like it / some people don't and everyone has an opinion

 

[AthlonXP]

The only 2 i remember ever using was the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh.