What could the home computers in the 80's do?

Question

what were the goodies(benefits)that came out of it?

Answer 1

seems like most people I knew in the 80s where more likely to have an apple rather than a pc.

pc became more widely excepted in the 90s it seems

I had an apple IIe when I was a young child (6 years old, 1982)
it did absolutly nothing except have a blank screen with a blinking curse

You had to have an outside disk with some program written in basic.
the programs where not complicated at all.

it had no hard drive. any info you wanted to save must have been safed onto a floppy.

mostly good as a calculator, a word processor, a small database builder, an 8 bit coloring program, a way to learn programming, and a "gaming system"

I lived in saudi arabia as a child and had no access to software as most of the world did.

If I really wanted my computer to do anything I had to write my own qbasic program. (i learned alot)
I even wrote my own games.
they even had magazines that had pages of code in it that you could transcribe to make your own program.

kinda lame, kinda cool.

Ultima (III i think) from Origin was I guess the number 1 performing game for the time and its release ushered in a standardized PC gaming scene. before ultima PC games we're written by very small groups (mostly as a hobbie) and even released in zip lock bags with a pencil sketching on a piece of paper inside and hung on the walls of computer parts stores and sold for a buck or two
Ultima was the first to be sold in a box with quality pictures printed on it, and even a nicely printed cloth map and metal "ankh" trinket

I think that turtle he's refering to was part of a really simple plotting program called logo.
http://www.mathsnet.net/logo/turtlelogo/index.html
apples didn't have mouse control until the apple 2Gs came out...(mouse control originated with xerox machines) then it moved to mac (intosh) and then ol Bill gates stole it.

here is an apple IIe emulator. Its a program that runs in windows, but looks and acts like and apple IIe
http://applewin.berlios.de/

you'll need to find programs to run in it unless you can program in qbasic

game disk images
http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=appleiiroms.List&game=6
all kinds of progs I think
http://www.apple2.org.za/mirrors/apple2.archive.umich.edu/apple2/


later (around 1986) the amiga came out on the market and kicked apple's @ss
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga
but PCs and MSDOS where already growing in popularity and the other where left in the dust right around 1985

by 88 when MSdos started using a "shell" = a gui idea stolen from apple IIgs

it was over for the rest.

Answer 2

Computers of the 80's:
Apple IIE. an 8 bit processor had speech synthesis module and game modules, and as far as I remember the first mouse type cursor system called a 'turtle'. As all computers of that time, they could do about anything a programmer could come up with useing 8 bit graphics.
TRS-80 by Radio Shack. Not too different in capabilities. Very few software programs, had to write our own.
Commodore Vic 20, 16, 64, and 128. Now here was the company who gave ibm a run for their money. The c-64 had a 16 bit processor with the equivelent of vga graphic, when all ibm could do was cga and ega with their 8086 16 bit processor. The c-64 also boasted 3 simultaneous audio voices compared to the soundblaster with only one. I also had a price tag a thousand bucks or more cheaper than ibm.
I still have my c-64 and my c-128 which used a different form of DOS called CPM. All in all, the computers of the 80's and the fierce competion led to the ibm clones of today and the speed race for faster everything. Even the Texas Instruments folks made computers, and in my vast antique arsenal, I still have my old original Timex Sinclair with tv connection and 1K ram. no disk or even tape drive, just a small plug in port to play all three of the games that came with it. Only sound was beep.

Answer 3

In the early 80's Microsoft Word was introduced into the world of home computers. These computers also had a program called Lotus 1-2-3, which was a spreadsheet program, presentation graphics, and a simple database. There were also many games that these computers could play. Granted they were very poor graphics wise but at the time they were state of the art. SOme of these included Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Frogger. Then in the mid 80's Mac was the first commercially sold computer to have a graphical user interface.

Answer 4

you could do some word processing. this helped eliminate the need for a typewriter. if you needed to make changes to a paper you could make the change without having to retype the entire paper on a typewriter. you could also play some video games that were cool at the time.

Answer 5

You could play dos games like police quest and leisure suit larry, and you could do typing.

Thats all I can remember.

Answer 6

they could word process, and play pacman. Nothing much else.

Answer 7

pong