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posted by Blackmoore on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-belongs-in-a-god-damn-museum dept.

The Computer History Museum, with the aid of Xerox PARC has released the source code for the Xerox Alto.

Depending on your age, your first computer might have been an Apple II, a Radio Shack TRS-80, an IBM PC, an Apple Macintosh, or another of the early personal computers. If you missed these early machines the first time around, perhaps you have seen them in the Personal Computer section of the Revolution exhibit at the Computer History Museum. ...

It’s hard to explain just how advanced the Alto seemed at the time. It had a full-page graphics display with 606 by 808 black & white pixels, a keyboard, a mouse, a fairly powerful processor with 128 KBytes of main memory, a hard drive with a 2.5 MByte removable cartridge, and a 2.94 Mbit/sec Ethernet interface. The Ethernet connected Altos together into a local network that included a high-performance laser printer, an Alto-based file server with hundreds of megabytes of capacity, and gateways to local networks at other Xerox offices and to the ARPANET.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by cats on Thursday October 23 2014, @03:01AM

    by cats (4817) on Thursday October 23 2014, @03:01AM (#108997)

    This is a real treasure trove of vintage computing! Growing up in the late 80's the Alto was almost mythological.

    If you want an idea of how day-to-day use of the Alto would be like, take a look at these training documents "Introduction to your workstation": http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/Indigo/BravoX/Editor/.index.html [computerhistory.org]

    An incredible time-capsule that contains gems like: "The disk drive makes a characteristic chugging sound when in operation. You may find this noise a bit startling at first, but most users quickly become accustomed to it."

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by lentilla on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:25AM

      by lentilla (1770) on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:25AM (#109069)

      The disk drive makes a characteristic chugging sound

      Reminds me of the first time I used a hard disk on a friend's computer. Typed SAVE MYPROG.BAS and the prompt came back instantaneously. I couldn't believe that it was that fast - and there was no audio feedback to reassure me the operation had completed. It was with great trepidation that I rebooted and there; to my astonishment and relief; was my file.

      Even today I miss that feedback with SSDs. You could always tell what your computer was up to by the crunch/chug/krrik sounds that emitted from the disks.

    • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday October 23 2014, @11:57AM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday October 23 2014, @11:57AM (#109128) Journal

      For most of us at the time something as advanced as the Alto was a pipedream. Here is MY first computer [youtube.com] and while it instilled in me a love for computers that lasts until this very day sadly it could never match up to the alto.

      But this is why I tell folks to take a minute to truly appreciate this true golden age of computing we live in, an age where you can get a monster multicore for less than $400 that allows you to do things that you'd need a computer costing tens of thousands just a few years ago, machines that let you make your own videos, record your own albums, or play games with effects better than the movies of the 80s could acomplish with multimillion dollar budgets? Its insane just how much power we have now! I know many consider the early 00s to be the real golden age but that was only if you had the bank, back then I'd have to build a new PC every other year (with a major hardware upgrade on the off year) just to keep running the latest software, but now? Now my 5 year old hexacore has 8GB of RAM, 3TB of space, and thanks to a dirt cheap $100 GPU upgrade plays the latest games smooth and easy.

      So as you look back on the advanced Alto? Take a second to appreciate that monster you are viewing on, for we really have it good nowadays.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jackb_guppy on Thursday October 23 2014, @03:18AM

    by jackb_guppy (3560) on Thursday October 23 2014, @03:18AM (#109001)

    I gentalman I worked for may years ago, had an Alto. It was wonderful fun. There were cool things on it... Billiards, where the impact and moment transfer was right on. Cool clock that were like the wood cube on the book "Gobel Escher Bach". The numbers rotated showing the next number.

    Was even neat that it multi-booted, based on the key held down during the boot. Primary, Alter, Removable.

    The Alto showed what a Mac was to become.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:16AM (#109021)

    The other week, I saw a story on how source for Kildall's OS is available.
    Mountain View, CA: Computer History Museum makes source code for several versions of CP/M available as free download [theregister.co.uk]

    N.B. Both of these, in their 4th decade, are still proprietary.

    -- gewg_