The Guardian, October 1, 1998

 

Not Just Any Old Iron
Karlin Lillington

 

A festival of vintage computers threatens to rewrite computing history

Computing history is clear - microprocessors were invented by three engineers at Intel in 1971. Or were they? That notion was disputed in a press conference at the Vintage Computer Festival in Santa Clara, California on Saturday, when an obscure computer consultant from San Jose revealed that he initiated work on a secret onboard computer for the US Navy's F-14A TomCat fighter jet that contained a chipset comprising three microprocessors and three support chips - in 1968 (and completed in 1969).

According to 53-year-old Ray Holt, the Navy has only now released documents allowing him to publish the details of his work. Holt read out an analysis from a former chip designer for Motorola, Russell Fish, which stated his belief that, had the microprocessor design been made public in 1969, it would have advanced the industry by five years. However, two of the Intel engineers involved with the creation of the 1971 microprocessor, Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin, have already disputed the claim in a Wall Street Journal article, centring on the correct definition of a microprocessor (six chips should not qualify, according to the two).

Whoever deserves the laurels, the achievement of Holt and his small team was astonishing for its time. In today's world of finicky microprocessors, which overheat easily, the chips in Holt's F-14 could function at the temperature of boiling water - in a range of -55C to +125C. Because of size and weight restrictions for the F-14, the circuit board was an extraordinary 6 by 4 inches for a highly sophisticated flight computer that analysed and controlled altitude, angle, speed, missile systems, positioning of the movable wings, and other functions. Machines of similar power at the time weighed 300-400 pounds.

'I think as computer designers and people interested in history, we need to know this happened,' says Holt. 'That back then, we could do this.' Other hardware at the show at least enjoyed a moment of fame - however fleeting. Who now remembers the MAD Computer, the Sol, the Exidy Sorcerer or the Czech-designed Tesla 780, which used a TV set as its monitor? Most people might see the machines as just back-of-the-garage dust magnets, but hardcore computer buffs were entranced by these footnotes to the history of computing, lovingly displayed at the show.

Organised by a Sam Ismail, a goateed, hyperactive young programmer who started his own collection of 200 machines 11 years ago at age 17, the festival attracted several hundred devotees. The kind of person who thrills at the mention of the Altair, the kit-built, embryonic personal computer from 1975.

Some came for the computer flea market, others to hear such speakers as computer designer turned Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell (who admitted during his talk on the prehistory of personal computers that he proposed to his wife using a program he created at DEC). But the festival's soul lay in the impromptu museum of geriatric hardware.

Sitting among neat rows of his Commodore PCs, exhibitor Larry Anderson explained the motivation for collecting what others send to the landfill: 'Nostalgia. This is the type of computer I went to school and used,' he says, caressing the metal casing of a 1977 Commodore 2001 series PC. The machine boasts 4 kilobytes of memory - in comparison, computers today routinely come with 4,000 times as much. 'Chips were so unreliable that the Commodore came with a spare,' says Anderson, pointing to an extra chip taped into one corner of the box, like an extra coat button. The manufacturer warned that chips frequently came loose and needed to be pushed back down. The Atari manual, he says, actually recommended dropping the machine from three to four inches if it wasn't working properly.

Nearly every species of computer basked in visitors' attention: the 1975 prototype Apple I, screwed onto a piece of plywood by Apple founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs; the first IBM PC, and the first Sun micro computer.

The crowning event was the Super Nerd computer quiz, covering such categories as computing acronyms, computers in the movies and 'Nerdpourri'. Ismail conducted the entire quiz - to much general admiration - from behind the green-screen glow of an Apple III from his collection.

Ray Holt's paper on the F-14A computer's architecture is at http://www.microcomputerhistory.com.