1980s Computer Ads:

[wtsinnc]

From a link at www.techspot.com
A bit of nostalgia.

http://techyshit.com/10-computer-ads-from-the-80s/

[redwudz]

I have both the Macintosh and the Amiga pictured there. Thanks.

[bendixG15]

Oh yea, the good old days...........
Living thru it was an experience of a lifetime...

[Po|arbeaR]

*Sniffs. . .

[CogoSWSDS]

I actually had that style of TRS-80 Color Computer. I remember the ad and the computer well. It was board revision "E" which was easier to upgrade to 64K than the "D" boards. Later I had a CoCo 3 with 128K of memory. Those were the days.

I do remember the IBM ad though.

CogoSWSDS

[Verify]

Reminds me of a project that I was involved in that used the pictured Mac, PC, Amiga, and a different Atari (the 1040ST):

In late 1986 a team of four programmers, consisting of an electronic designer, a computer science college student, and two high school students began a software project. It was to be a graphical communication program that would allow interactive drawing, text messages, and voice communications between two computers via modems over telephone lines. The program was called Communicate!

Each programmer was provided with a different computer: an IBM PC, a Mac Plus, an Amiga 1000, and an Atari ST. All programming was done in Forth (K-Forth, MacForth, J-Forth, and Multi-Forth).

Shortly after the beginning of the project, one the high school students left and the other high school student added their part of the project to his own. Later the high school student and the college student shared responsibilities for three of the four computers.

The electronics designer supervised the other two programmers and wrote the application program, which was then interfaced to each of the four computer's operating systems; PC-DOS, Mac OS, Amiga OS, and Atari TOS (which was derived from GEM).

Since the only graphical operating systems for the IBM PC available at the time were GEM 1.1 and Windows 1.0 and almost all PC were, at that time, running DOS, it was decided that the electronics designer would write a drawing package to interface with the application. Fortunately a graphical toolbox akin to the Mac QuickDraw ROM routines was available from Metagraphics called MetaWindows (which was loaded by PC-DOS and called from c).

The PC version of Forth had to be enhanced to use multiple segments and separated headers, have a high-memory loadable and discardable 8086 assembler and Forth editor, a floating point package, mouse, modem, and printer drivers, have methods to make c-like calls to the graphics toolbox, have a drawing package, and provide it's own windows environment.

ComputerOS.....Used.........Forth Ver.....Forth Company......Programmer
IBM PC..............PC-DOS....K-Forth*......K-Enterprises.........E-designer
Amiga 1000......Amiga OS..J-Forth.........Delta Research......H. S. student
Atari 1040 ST...Atari TOS...Multi Forth...Creative Solutions..H. S. student
Apple Mac Plus..Mac OS.....Mac Forth....Creative Solutions..Col. student

* The version for the PC was originally PC-Forth by LMI but it only used 64K of address space and to purchase the source code so that it could be expanded was very expensive and so it was abandoned and the electronic designers own version of Forth was enhanced and used for the project.

If you've read this far you might be wondering what happened to the project. Well, the program performed as planned and was submitted to a variety of software vendors. They all responded favorable - nice work etc. but ultimately they all said the same thing "it's too new and different and we don't know how to market it."

The lesson? Good technology and no market research is not a good idea! (But we had a good time, learned a lot, and it helped the three students in their future careers.)

Now that the internet is established and communication speeds are well above 1200baud, you can find several collaborative programs that are similar, such as: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhiteBoardMeeting and others.