> On 23 Jan 2021, at 00:36, Paul Eggert <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 1/13/21 1:28 AM, Hans Åberg wrote: >> My first computer was a SWTPC 6800 at 980 KHz! > > Hah, the first computer I used was a GE 225 codesigned by Steven Spielberg's > father. It took 36 µs to add two integers, and its memory cycle time was 21 > µs. Its RAM had only 8,192 20-bit words, which I had to share with up to 19 > other simultaneous users.
The original comment was about a computer one had, not merely used; nice comment anyway. :-) The SWTPC 6800 was the first personal RAM memory computer with ROM sufficiently large that one did not have to bootstrap it when powering it on. Earlier, I had used a computer with core memory, a small box with iron rings that are magnetized, using punched tape rather than cards, but the latter I saw a use of in the late 1980s, at a helpdesk, the helpers having a strange facial expression.
