You're twenty minutes late. You can't remember the room
number. You haven't studied. You don't even recall signing up for
the class, and it's time for the final exam!
Fortunately, a medium size piece of scrap metal from a
disintegrating satellite crashes through the roof of your house
shocking you into wakeful consciousness. Ahhhh! That dreadful
experience of having to face a daunting examination was just a
dream... or was it?
Personal computers ( the electronic digital variety ), have
only been around for about two decades. That's not much by normal
historical standards, and not even a hair's breadth on the
geological cronographic metric. None the less, personal computing
already has a history of its own. The perspective any given
reader may have on the evolution of what BYTE magazine's first
edition proclaimed as "the World's Greatest Toy!" is probably a
function of the reader's age and just when the computer bug first
bit. There are books on the development of computers, and there's
even a computer museum where very young folk can see how things
were in the olden days, but for many of us the pages of personal
computing's history were experienced in a more personal and
immediate way. Those that were "in on the act" of the computer
revolution probably all have images of at least one of the early
"Greatest Toy!" computers permanently pasted into their mental
scrap book of fond memories. It could be that some of these dream
machines are still responding to the touch of the same hands that
first lifted them from hastily discarded packaging to become the
focus of countless hours of wonder, frustration and
enlightenment. Multitudes of its like have been sold, traded or
abandoned; with still others having been torn asunder, achieving
a sort of transcendental existence by contributing its parts to
some other whole. No mater how inglorious the fate of any
individual machine, they each had their day in the sun, and for
even the lowliest, poorest designed, bug, glitch and gremlin
riddled excuse for a computer that ever lived, there is at least
one person that still loves it - if only from a distance.
In the spirit of nostalgia, or just for the heck of it, the
following is provided for your entertainment, and for some reason
it comes to you in the form of a multiple choice quiz.
1) What computer was the first to reach the one million sold
milestone? a) MOS Technology's KIM-1 b) Apple II c)
Commodore's VIC 20 d) Sinclair ZX80 e) IBM PC
2) The first Z80 based computer was a) Radio Shack's TRS-80 b)
Commodore PET c) Osborne 1 portable d) Cromemco Z-1 e) IBM PC
3) Just about every popular computer has had a magazine devoted
to that machine. The periodical for Sinclair & Timex/Sinclair
users was titled a) Antic b) Time c) US News & World Report
d) TS News e) SYNC
4) Of the following, which computer did NOT have an upper and lower
case character keyboard a) Atari 400 b) Atari 800 c) Apple II+
d) TI 99/4A e) IBM PC
5) The Heathkit H-8 microcomputer's front panel keypad operated
in what number base a) Binary b) Octal c) Decimal d)
Hexadecimal e) IBM PC
6) The term clone, when applied to computers, now generally
refers to machines modeled after the IBM PC and its descendants.
What was the name of the first imitation Apple II computer? a)
Pear b) Pineapple c) Orange d) Kumquat e) Kiwi
7) What may have been the first laptop computer, the Epson HX-20,
had a display that would generally be considered small by today's
standards; was it a) 20 characters by 4 lines b) 40 characters
by 20 lines c) 80 characters by 2 lines d) a 3 by 5 index card
8) Many computers became better known by the names given to them
by their users than they were by their official designations. The
name "COCO" refers to a) Commodore 64 b) Coleco ADAM c) TRS-
80 COLOR COMPUTER d) Compaq Portable e) Rick Swenton's cat
9) The largest computer users group in the world is a) The New
York PC users group. b) Northern California Mac users group c)
Federation Computer National d) Boston Computer Society e) West
Coast PC Congress
10) In 1978 the first microcomputer chess tournament was won by a
Program called Sargon. This 16k program ran on which
microprocessor a) Z80 b) 6504 c) F8 d) 8080 e) 6800
11) A perennial "Great Idea!" is to combine two popular systems
into one package. 1985 saw the introduction of at least two of
them. One allowed an upgraded Commodore 64 to run CP/M software
on its built-in Z80 - the C128, the other let a Macintosh run IBM
software and was named a) IB-Macintosh b) RAM-Phage c)
MacCharlie d) MI-Dream
12) Intel introduced the first 8-bit microprocessor in what year?
a) 1970 b) 1972 c) 1974 d) 1975
13) Microsoft, the international giant of commercial software
development, got its start by adapting a programming language to
run on early micros. Was that language a) Ada b) BASIC c) C
d) Assembly e) Pascal
14) In 1983, Radio Shack brought out the TRS-80 model 100
weighing 4 lbs and costing $800. Advances in o have made
it possible to create computers smaller and less costly. As an
example, by 1889 Apple was able to unveil the Mac portable with
the what weight and price? a) 3 lbs/$600 b) 2 lbs/$400 c) 1
lb/$200 d) 16 lbs/$6000
15) December of 1976 saw the first sale of 5 1/4" floppy disk
drives for a list price of $390. What was the manufacturer's name
a) Winchester b) Fuji c) Shugart d) Polymorphic Systems e) IBM
16) Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss are credited with what
milestone in micro computer history? a) Inventing the BASIC
language b) designing the MITS Altair 8800 c) Being the first
persons convicted of software piracy d) Running the first BBS on
a micro
17) Of the following computer systems, which is oldest? a)
Commodore 64 b) Kaypro II c) Franklin ACE d) Coleco Adam e)
IBM PC
18) In 1973 a computer programming language called PILOT was
created to help teach the fundamentals of computer subjects to
children. A notable use of the language was to control a device
that basically worked as a mouse in reverse. This device was called
a a) Turtle b) Walkman c) Spider d) CAT e) IBM PC
19) The Apple Macintosh was introduced to the general public in
TV adds that played during which nationally televised sporting
event a) '84 Olympics b) Ali/Liston title fight c) Superbowl
XVIII d) NBA championship finals
20) TIME magazine made the computer its "Man of the year" in what
year a) 1970 b) 1977 c) 1983 d) 1989 e) IBM PC
The sources for these questions consist mainly of back issues of
computer magazines including, but not limited to; Personal
Computing, Micro, BYTE, Popular Computing; as well as random
snatches from personal experience and caprice BRN..91
