Time travel and portable computers

[Karel Jansens]

No, it's not about a new Time Machine SDIO card...

I was musing the other day, as I seem to do more and more often, if I could go back in time to my college days (not the American kind, but close enough) in the seventies, what portable computer and peripherals I would take with me (now, don't ask why, of all things, I'd take a computer with me. I don't make the rules, mh'okay?).

Stunningly enough, the only combo that would fit my needs of yore were my Psion Series 3a and my Canon BJ-10x printer. I'm not entirely certain whether I could find the ink to refill the bubblejet's cartridge back in the seventies, but I'm fairly positive something could be brewed up. In a pinch, I'd switch for my Psion 5mx, as it has a much better keyboard, but then I'd have to live with a really bad screen (and I know I had a crappy desk light back then).

Did anyone else have this epiphany that most of our modern cargo pants tech would have been effectively useless thirty years ago? I mean, the Nokia N800 is luvverly an'all, but what would one do with it in 1978? Connect to a seventies WiFI-enabled UNIX server?

Consider it an hommage to the humble Psions, who reminded us that we've allowed ourselves to give up on a lot of basic computing tasks, in order to get all the pocketable glitz we enjoy today.

[fpp]

Too many recursive paradoxes in there for my poor head. Conclusion probably right, but inferred from incorrect postulates :

- using a Psion (*any* Psion) in college in the 70s would get you abducted by the FBI (or local equivalent thereof) and indefinitely sequestered to Area51 (or local equivalent thereof), so fast that you wouldn't have time to worry about bubblejet ink, and,

- if someone in the future had invented a time machine that was reliable and foolproof enough that someone in the present could use it to goof away in the past, well, we'd know, right ? :-)

[penguinbait]

I am thinking of "back to the future", how about the history of sports almanac. Go to Vegas and never lose a bet, buy IBM and stop them from putting Microsoft on the first million PC's. Oh the fun we could have....


And I dont know about you but I have given up nothing. My n800 does everything I want it to, and more. An n800 would be MORE than enough power to run any code written in 1970, dont you think?

[schmots]

yeah, but how to get the code onto and off of it.

[Karel Jansens]

You guys are waayyy too serious about this. I started from the "old fart axiom": "You kids have it so easy these days! Back in my time we didn't have [insert random rambling]..."

The gripping hand: Who's going to give us Data for the 770/N800?

The program, not the android. Sheesh... :D

[penguinbait]

input is onscreen keyboard, output is screen/audio. What are you looking for a punch card reader for the n800? Its 2007 and the n800 still can't print? What other media was available in 1978? I used to put basic code on my audio cassete recorder for storage, but that was 1984, it was always fun to play back and listen to.

[Texrat]

20 years from now time travelers will come back to laugh at our N800s. Wait-- go back. Ack... now I understand why Larry Niven bemoans the lack of a good time travel syntax...

[TA-t3]

In 1978 you could have interfaced to a paper tape reader. Some of them were _fast_. And if you were good you could actually read them directly.. say, if it had your Basic program or other ASCII on it.
On the time travel expedition I would probably have brought my Linux laptop stuffed with tools and software and storage. From rs232 ports you could have easily built interfaces to a lot of stuff. Then I would have loaded data, processed it, and pushed it back out. Just as I did with my first Unix computers about a decade later or so, I sent data and code from a minicomputer through X.25 via self-made transport protocols, massaged the data on the unix box, and pulled it back. That saved a lot of work and I saw the power of the Unix way (simple tools and filters that do one thing only but do it well, and which can be chained together). Ah, and I would have brought the N800 as well, as it could talk to the laptop at least.. and the computer folks of then would have fainted when seeing it and hearing the specs. That would be worth watching.

[speculatrix]

any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic -- Arthur C Clarke

someone else suggested that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.


personally, if I went back 27 years to when I had my first computer as a young teenager, and took my Zaurus or my N770, the teenager would be amazed that I didn't have only 4K, nor only 4MB, but 4GB of data in it... he would be amazed at the hires graphics, the stereo sound etc. And then he'd say "but it's so small, can you do any useful programming on it"? And I'd cough, and say I could hack some shell or perl scripting!

[barry99705]

I hate it when they say "it's so small, can you do anything usefull with it?".

[Benson]

For I/O, EIA RS-232-C dates from 1969 (original RS-232 was from 1960). With a BT RS-232 adapter, and osso-xterm (flying keyboard edition), you could play "I'm-a-terminal" with the N800. Of course, you could use a tape punch/reader for storage in contemporary-machine-readable form. The N800 (perhaps with a custom kernel for the RS-232 adapter?), could definitely hold its own. N810's keyboard could also be nice for the terminal thing.
And you think the camera on the N8x0 is crap; they'll think it's the sweetest video camera interfaced to a computer they've ever seen. (You'll both be right!)
Oh, and don't forget, your N8x0 can blast audio, even multiple frequencies simultaneously. You know what that means... software blue- and red-boxes should be easily constructable. Hey Bell :p

[Greyghost]

Karel, thanks for this whimsical post. The thought of using my N800 instead of the punch card stack I had for my final project (a 'star trek' game) in data processing (what they called it) class in HS ('74) made me LOL!

Me: I'd go back and avoid dropping that stack o cards on that fateful day and, instead of having to re-do my project, I'd make the A by simply playing Asteroids on my N800 for the teach!

It would be magic indeed! BTW the quote from A.C Clarke reminds me that it was in one of his short stories that I first got a 'glimpse' of the N8xx! Now I have one! Amazing!

[keithlm]

you could play "I'm-a-terminal" with the N800.

Just a terminal? The N800 may be small... but size doesn't count.

You could have the N800 do all of the computing normally done by an entire time-sharing mainframe from that era... all while you watch Star Wars. (And you would have tons of storage left over to spare... so you could probably do all of the work of many mainframes if you did batches.)

EDIT: Sorry: we don't need no stinking batches.

EDIT2: Make that The Lord of the Rings. The geeks from that era would like both... but LOTR would probably be more awesome to them.

[TA-t3]

The N800 has a built-in FM radio too, that would fit right in in 1978 (and earlier). In 1979 I bought my first battery-only LCD clock radio.. it looks quite like a just slightly larger N800, just without the LCD screen. So it could hide like that for a while..

And Karel said 'going back to 1978'.. that's perfect, because the first experimental GPS satellite was launched in 1978. I don't know if it transmitted anything on the civilian band yet though. But in the early eighties more satellites were launched, and where I worked at the time there would regularly arrive engineers with huge racks of equipment to test the GPS system, this was long before it became operational. If they did transmit anything on the civilian band back then then I imagine those engineers would be quite shocked to see my BT GPS used with my N800! :)

[gemniii42]

Gad - all this talk about the late '70' as if it was ancient history.
We were running full blown Apple II's at my lab (http://www.vintage-computer.com/apple_ii.shtml) doing line of sight plots. It just took longer.
Now back around 1970 when I was processing computer chips at IBM Burlington a Nokia N810 would have been a big hit. I still remember when we celebrated getting three transistors on a chip with good yield.
And what would I take - a good power source and some form of usb to RS232 would be essential.

[HAC]

In 1978 you could have interfaced to a paper tape reader. Some of them were _fast_. And if you were good you could actually read them directly.. say, if it had your Basic program or other ASCII on it.



I cut my IT teeth on things like an IBM 1401 and paper tape.. Tape was a pain in the butt, it was NOT fast , and was useless for transfer of large volumes of data. It was a good way to input data from teletype systems, though. High speed was considered to be around 24 to 30 inches of tape per second (which is between 240-300 characters per second). It was a real pain to handle , as you really needed to avoid tears, folds, and bends.
Punch cards and Unit Record stufff were even more fun. Chad made a great prank material, and you haven't lived unitl you were on the next to last pass of a multipass, multitray card sort on a high speed sorted, only to hear the dread sound of cards being shredded by the sorter, as a slight edge fold got hung up..
I can also remember the day when the company photographer was there to phtograph our "new" tape drives.. We poor operator types warned him, but the data centre manager told him to shoot. The flash triggered the EOT and rewind sensors, throwing drives from forward into fast stop/rewind, in the middle of production runs. (the old IBM drives used a reflective tape spot to mark the end of tape. The drive had a light beam and photocell that detected this)..
Or the joys of IBM 1403 line printers when the carriage control tape snapped, and ran away, spewing paper everywhere?
Ah the good old days..

Cheers
Harold

[gazza_d]

Interesting and timely (excuse the pun) thread, seeing as this week at work we have turned up an original IBM AT with IBM color monitor, and several Psion Organiser II's. Both very interesting bits of kit to power up and see what it was like back in the mid 80's.

Like a lot of folk on here I'm sure, I remember the early days. I started with a sinclair zx81, and progressed though various incarnations of desktops and psion handhelds. What we can do now would have absolutely stunned people 25 years ago.

The internet tablet is almost exactly what I was willing the psions to be 7 years ago, and what was being hinted at by some companies, remember the zenith cruisepad or the 3com audrey anyone?

[Karel Jansens]

Wow. Is this thread still around?

[HAC]

My first "home" computer was an Altair 8800.
As far as PDAS, I started out with a Newton OMP, and have owned every Newt released since that one..
My N800 should be arriving next week, and from what I have seen of them, this is what I would have loved to have seen the Newton eveolve towards. My son has an Ipod Touch, and while its a cute toy, hadling and playing with it pushed me over the edge to the N800. Getting an N800 in Canada turned out to be interesting, but doable. I'll let you know what my impressions are once it lands..
As far as Unix?, well, I'm an AIX bigot, mainly, and I still have a few SCO client and server licences kicking around.. I did once manage to get KDE running on SCO...(why? I dunno, seemed like fun at the time)
Cheers
Harold