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liam_on_linuxSome thoughts on Computers
The basic design of computers hasn't changed much since the mechanical one, the Difference Engine, invented by Charles Babbage in 1822 – but not built until 1991. Alan Turing invented computer science, and the ENIAC in 1945 was arguably the first electronic general-purpose digital computer. It filled a room. The Micral N was the world's first “personal computer,” in 1973.
Since then, the basic design has changed little, other than to become smaller, faster, and on occasions, less useful.
The current trend to lighter, smaller gadget-style toys – like cell phones, watches, headsets of various types, and other consumer toys – is an indication that the industry has fallen into the clutches of mainstream profiteering, with very little real innovation now at all.
I was recently looking for a new computer for my wife and headed into one of the main laptop suppliers only to be met with row upon row of identical machines, at various price points arrived at by that mysterious breed known as "marketers". In fact, the only difference in the plastic on display was how much drive space had the engineers fitted in, and how much RAM did they have. Was the case a pretty colour, that appealed to the latest 10-year-old-girl, or a rugged he-man, who was hoping to make the school whatever team? In other words, rows of blah.
Where was the excitement of the early Radio Shack "do-it-yourself" range: the Sinclair ZX80, the Commodore 8-bits (PET and VIC-20), later followed by the C64? What has happened to all the excitement and innovation? My answer is simple: the great big clobbering machine known as "Big Tech".
Intel released its first 8080 processor in 1972 and later followed up with variations on a theme [PDF], eventually leading to the 80286, the 80386, the 80486 (getting useful), and so on. All of these variations needed an operating system which basically was a variation of MS-DOS, or more flexibly, PC DOS. Games started to appear, and some of them were quite good. But the main driver of the computer was software.
In particular, word-processors and spreadsheets.
At the time, my lost computer soul had found a niche in CP/M, which on looking back was a lovely little operating system – but quietly disappeared into the badlands of marketing.
Lost and lonely I wandered the computerverse until I hooked up with Sanyo – itself now long gone the way of the velociraptor and other lost prehistoric species.
The Sanyo bought build quality, the so-called "lotus card" to make it fully compatible with the IBM PC, and later, an RGB colour monitor and a 10 gig hard drive. The basic model was still two 5¼" floppy drives, which they pushed up to 720kB, and later the 3.½" 1.25MB floppy drives. Ahead of its time, it too went the way of the dinosaur.
These led to the Sanyo AT-286, which became a mainstay, along with the Commodore 64. A pharmaceutical company had developed a software system for pharmacies that included stock control, ordering, and sales systems. I vaguely remember that machine and software bundle was about NZ$ 15,000, which was far too rich for most.
Then the computer landscape began to level out, as the component manufacturers began to settle on the IBM PC-AT as a compatible, open-market model of computer that met the Intel and DOS standards. Thus, the gradual slide into 100 versions of mediocrity.
The consumer demand was for bigger and more powerful machines, whereas the industry wanted to make more profits. A conflict to which the basic computer scientists hardly seemed to give a thought.
I was reminded of Carl Jung's dictum: that “greed would destroy the West.”
A thousand firms sprang up, all selling the same little boxes, whilst the marketing voices kept trumpeting the bigger/better/greater theme… and the costs kept coming down, as businesses became able to afford these machines, and head offices began to control their outlying branches through the mighty computer.
I headed overseas, to escape the bedlam, and found a spot in New Guinea – only to be overrun by a mainframe run from Australia, which was going to run my branch – for which I was responsible, but without any control.
Which side of the fence was I going to land on? The question was soon answered by the Tropical Diseases Institute in Darwin, which diagnosed dengue fever… and so I returned to NZ.
For months I battled this recurring malady, until I was strong enough to attend a few hardware and programming courses at the local Polytechnic, eventually setting up my own small computer business, building up 386 machines for resale, followed by 486 and eventually a Texas Instrument laptop agency.
These ran well enough, but had little battery life, and although they were rechargeable, they needed to be charged every two or three hours. At least the WiFi worked pretty consistently, and for the road warrior, gave a point of distinction.
[I think Chris is getting his time periods mixed up here. —Ed.]
Then the famous 686 arrived, and by the use of various technologies, RAM began to climb up to 256MB, and in some machines 512MB.
Was innovation happening? No – just more marketing changes. As in, some machines came bundled with software, printers or other peripherals, such as modems.
As we ended the 20th century, we bought bigger and more powerful machines. The desktop was being chased by the laptop, until I stood at a long row of shiny boxes that were basically all the same, wondering which one my wife would like… knowing that it would have to connect to the so-called "internet", and in doing so, make all sorts of decisions inevitable.
Eventually I chose a smaller Asus, with 16GB of main RAM and an nVidia card, and retreating to my cottage, collapsed in despair. Fifty years of computing and wasted innovation left her with a black box that, when she opened, it said “HELLO” against a big blue background that promised the world – but only offered more of the same. As in, a constant trickle of hackers, viruses, Trojans and barely anything useful – but now included a new perversion called a chat-bot or “AI”.
I retired to my room in defeat.
We have had incremental developments, until we have today's latest chips from Intel and AMD based on the 64-bit architecture first introduced around April 2003.
So where is the 128-bit architecture – or the 256 or the 512-bit?
What would happen if we got really innovative? I still remember Bill Gates saying "Nobody will ever need more than 640k of RAM." And yet, it is common now to buy machines with 8 or 16 or 32GB of RAM, because the poor quality of operating systems fills the memory with poorly-written garbage that causes memory leaks, stack-overflow errors and other memory issues.
Then there is Unix – or since the advent of Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, GNU/Linux. A solid, basic series of operating systems, by various vendors, that simply do what they are asked.
I wonder where all this could head, if computer manufacturers climbed onboard and developed, for example, a laptop with an HDMI screen, a rugged case with a removable battery, a decent sound system, with a good-quality keyboard, backlit with per-key colour selection. Enough RAM slots to boost the main memory up to say 256GB, and video RAM to 64GB, allowing high speed draws to the screen output.
Throw away the useless touch pads. With the advent of Bluetooth mice, they are no longer needed. Instead, include an 8TB NVMe drive, then include a decent set of controllable fans and heatpipes that actually kept the internal temperatures down, so as to not stress the RAM and processors.
I am sure this could be done, given that some manufacturers, such as Tuxedo, are already showing some innovation in this area.
Will it happen? I doubt it. The clobbering machine will strike again.
Friday September 20th 2024
