A tour of the Odra computers – computers designed and built in Poland

tzok wrote:

Terminals and teletypewriters, or tape readers and punches, were technically peripheral devices, not an integral part of the computer.

At that time, it was the computer system that was sold, not just the processor cabinet, so you would receive a processor + disk controller(s) + disk(s) + tape drive controller(s) + tape drive(s) + an operator console (a teletype, DZM-180KSR or, later, a CRT terminal) + a punch/tape reader + a punched card reader + line printer(s) + a terminal controller + terminals.
Not all of these components were required, but at least a few were needed to get the system up and running, and for me that constituted a computer/computer system, rather than just the processor itself.
I don’t know what criteria my colleague uses to distinguish between what is a computer and what is an accessory, but one could say that a PC or PC XT is also a processor plus basic I/O, as it’s a motherboard with a power supply, but without expansion cards it’s useless – even to connect a monitor, it needed a CGA or MDA/Hercules graphics card. And were the monitor and keyboard parts of the computer, or were they already peripherals?

It is true that you were buying a computer system, but its core component was precisely that ‘cabinet containing the processor and memory’ – in other words, the computer itself – whilst peripheral devices were selected as required.

The monitor and keyboard are, of course, peripheral devices, and all the more so the terminal, which is/was a completely separate device. The PC and PC/XT standards (i.e. 4th-generation computers) were similar to 3rd-generation computers. The breakthrough, from the perspective of the emergence of personal computers, was the integration of the console (terminal) with the computer – that is, the creation of a graphics card and a keyboard controller, which had ‘always’ been, de facto, a separate computer in its own right – it had its own processor, memory and built-in software. Around the same time, mass storage controllers were also integrated. In third-generation computers, mass storage devices were separate units, often communicating with the computer/processor via a character channel (serial port).

tzok wrote:

Yes, you were buying a computer system, but its core component was precisely that ‘cabinet containing the processor and memory’ – in other words, the computer itself – whilst peripheral devices were selected as required.

Nowadays, when you buy a personal computer, you either get a ready-made set (a laptop or a pre-configured desktop) or you build it yourself, and this set always includes a processor and memory (we’re taking a step backwards in terms of development, as memory is now separate from the processor ), and a graphics card (either integrated or discrete).
What sort of keyboard controller does the ZX-81 have? It has an integrated keyboard and graphics, along with a TV signal modulator.
There’s no processor there, nor any particularly sophisticated keyboard-reading logic (just simple scanning of the key matrix), nor for image generation – this is largely done in software, and the ULA essentially has line and character counters and a shift register to feed pixels to the modulator, whilst also interleaving the synchronisation signals.

A keyboard with a separate controller is more of an adaptation of this teletype – separating the keyboard from the printer and leaving a processor in the keyboard (for encoding and serial transmission) and a second one on the PC’s motherboard to receive and decode what comes from the keyboard.
Where’s the revolution in that?

tzok wrote:

In third-generation computers, mass storage devices were separate units, often communicating with the computer/processor via a character channel (serial port).

Are you sure that was the case in the third generation?
The Odra 1305 mentioned had character channels in its processor (for handling slower devices such as a tape reader, tape punch or printer) as well as autonomous channels (something like DMA for transferring blocks of data) and this is where disk controllers and tape storage controllers were connected. I do not believe the Odra was so unique, so the claim that in that generation storage devices were often connected via the character channel is unfounded. Otherwise, please provide examples.
I understand that, looking back at the evolution of technology, mass storage devices are now connected via serial interfaces – PCIe, SATA, SAS, USB 3.x

stachu_l wrote:

We’re falling behind in development because the memory is separate from the processor

Nowadays, memory architecture is far more multi-level; we have cache memories (which are integrated into the CPU), with sizes exceeding the total RAM capacity of computers from two decades ago. The CPU is increasingly rarely just a CPU; more often it is an APU, which is effectively a complete computer system. Early computers had electronic memory only for registers (and even then, not always), whilst main memory was magnetic (e.g. drum-based); there was no mass storage as such – at most, there was a teletype with a reader/puncher for punched tape.

stachu_l wrote:

A keyboard with a separate controller is essentially an adaptation of that teletype – separating the keyboard from the printer and leaving one processor in the keyboard (for encoding and serial transmission) and a second on the PC’s motherboard to receive and decode what came from the keyboard.
Where is the revolution here?

Right here – it’s no longer a single processor, but many programmable single-chip microcomputers, specialised to relieve the main processor of secondary tasks.

stachu_l wrote:

What sort of keyboard controller does the ZX-81 have? It has an integrated keyboard and graphics unit, including a TV signal modulator

Contrary to appearances, it’s very wasteful
This is because the CPU handled the keyboard, wasting most of its address space allocated to I/O circuits.
Of the 64 kB of this space, the keyboard left a mere 256 bytes for other I/O circuits.
This is one of the reasons why this little computer was practically impossible to upgrade and was nothing more than a cheap toy.
But then, that was its purpose from the very beginning.

tzok wrote:

Exactly here – this is no longer a single processor, but rather many programmable single-chip microcomputers, specialised to relieve the main processor of secondary tasks.

This particular idea dates back to the mid-1970s and was first used in a German typewriter. It was later developed by a German company for the CP1600 microprocessor (does anyone still remember it?), the processor itself disappeared, but its programmable chips gave rise to the popular PIC microcontrollers (which stands for ‘Programmable Interface Controller’) from Microchip.

The development of computers was halted by a ‘gift’ from IBM to the Chinese in the form of a PC, which was overpriced, already obsolete at the time of its launch and simply poorly designed.
At that time, IBM and Intel – whose new x86 CPU family wasn’t even capable of competing in terms of speed with chips designed five years earlier, yet were the biggest beneficiaries of all state subsidies – decided to salvage whatever they could, and gave the Chinese a PC that no one in their right mind would have bought anyway, so that they could flood the global market and kill off the competition, which effectively brought the PC market to a standstill.
Fortunately, Apple gave them a bit of a kick up the backside from time to time, forcing them to produce something that allowed the Chinese to modify that pile of scrap that had flooded the market.

gulson wrote:

One might ask the obvious question: what has happened to us? Why were we manufacturing computers back then, but not now? For example, South Korea and Japan are currently leading the semiconductor race (mainly memory), and their markets are at all-time highs. Here, however, concrete and banks reign supreme. Back then it was profitable and feasible, but now it isn’t? What did South Korea do differently?

It pains me greatly too that investment in industry, including electronics and IT, has ceased. But even investment in people has been curtailed. The standard of maths and physics in schools has fallen sharply.

Added after 5 [minutes]:

gregor124 wrote:

Oh, what hampered computer production in Poland the most was our mentality and our attachment to Western culture – and thus our perception of copyright within the context of Western civilisation.

Asians view intellectual property quite differently; in practice, it doesn’t exist there in the way we understand it.

I suppose you sometimes look through patents, probably American ones at times… I sometimes wonder how these patents get approved. They’re incredibly broad – more along the lines of ‘I’ll take some wood, make a board and a few pegs, and there’ll be a stool’. But it’s not clear how it will be made, what the stool will look like, or even how many legs it will have. As a result, if you try hard enough, virtually any solution in a given field could fall under these patents. And because they’re so general, they effectively stifle all innovation, because, for example, any engineer given the task of designing an electric kettle would probably design it in a similar way. By the way, I wonder if anyone ever patented the electric kettle?

It seems that patent law is in need of revolutionary changes.

Added after 1 [minute]:

PRL wrote:

As far as I’m aware, Optimus was evading tax.

It wasn’t so much that he evaded them as that he exploited certain regulations to avoid paying tax. But the tax office decided that these regulations should be interpreted differently, and it all turned into a mess. Poland needs simple, precise regulations, not laws running to 300 pages!

Added after 7 [minutes]:

TechEkspert wrote:

with drum memory heads

Whilst I have a rough idea of how ferrite memory worked, I’m very curious to know what was inside such a drum memory unit. Can anyone offer any insights or has any additional material?

ken-wawa wrote:

Whilst I have a rough idea of how ferrite memory worked, I’m very curious to know what was inside a drum memory unit. Can anyone offer any insights or have any additional material?

They worked more or less like magnetic hard disks, except that instead of a disk there was a drum, and each track had its own read/write head. It served as main memory, not mass storage. Like later ferrite memory, drum storage did not lose its contents when the power was switched off. I don’t know about the Odry, but some computers with drum storage had a small amount of fast memory based on flip-flops (tube or transistor-based), which acted as processor registers.

ken-wawa wrote:

I suppose you sometimes have a look at patents, probably American ones from time to time... I sometimes wonder how these patents get approved. They’re incredibly vague – basically along the lines of ‘I’ll take some wood, make a board and a few pegs, and there’ll be a stool’. But it’s not clear how it’ll be made, what the stool will look like, or even how many legs it’ll have. As a result, if you try hard enough, virtually any solution in that field could fall under these patents. And because they’re so general, they effectively stifle all creativity, because, for example, any engineer given the task of designing an electric kettle would probably design it in a similar way. Come to think of it, I wonder if anyone ever patented the electric kettle?

And to think I used to believe I was the only one who didn’t understand them.
Seriously though, these American patents usually look like this because they’re written not by engineers, but by lawyers. They ceased to fulfil their role of protecting intellectual property a long time ago, and have instead become, first, a source of additional income – mainly for lawyers – and later a way of defending companies against them.
In the US, you can wait years for a patent to be granted – often more than a dozen – but interestingly, patent law there doesn’t take effect from the moment the patent is granted, but from the moment the application is filed, which effectively means retroactively.

Sometime in the 1980s, certain companies realised they could make money from patents by accusing others of infringing them.
The first major case of this kind was probably brought by Texas Instruments against Intel over who had built the first microprocessor, and at the time it was followed almost like a soap opera.
Later, large companies, in order to defend themselves against such attacks if the need arose, began patenting everything.
The idea was that if company ‘A’ took legal action against company ‘B’, claiming that the latter was infringing their patent No. 1, then company ‘B’ would counter by saying, ‘OK, but you’ve infringed our patents ‘3’ and ‘4’, and I wonder whether a court battle will be worth your while.
In such cases, they usually reach an agreement by selling patents back and forth to one another.
Sometimes this line of argument is enough, but sometimes the ‘lawyers’ take the risk anyway, and that’s when these lawsuits arise.

As for the electric kettle, it wasn’t that straightforward at all, and the design we know today was developed gradually over more than 100 years.