Discussion

Computer Ads from the Past

drob518: Fantastic article. It does a great job of describing a point in time in the computer business from the point of view of someone who was deeply inside it. It’s fascinating to see how much Peddle got right and how much he got wrong. This early on, there was little to no installed base, so everything was up for grabs and there were many companies doing the grabbing.

pdevine: You can emulate the Victor 9000 / Act Sirius 1 computer he talks about in the article with mame. There's a lot of software on the internet archive or this machine. It's quite interesting to look at the hardware level how many differences there are in the design decisions compared to an IBM PC.

curiousObject: Clearly Chuck Peddle is a major designer and engineer. So what went wrong with the new computer he’s describing?The company filed for bankruptcy protection within a couple years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius_Systems_Technology