On Wed, 31 Jan 2024 at 12:13, Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
I write for an international audience and sometimes people from the > USA are openly and repeatedly incredulous that "obscure" British > computers -- that means they've never heard of them -- can be > considered significant or important, even compared to American > machines that were on sale in East Futtbuck Idaho for 6 weeks in > Spring 1973 and have never been mentioned since. > I wish that I were in a position to visit that VCF and see those machines. As an American it's true that the vast majority of my vintage computer experience is completely americentric, but I'm aware that Acorn had a significant presence in the overseas market and that RiscOS is viewed fondly. Perhaps it's time for me to find an emulator and experience the system for myself. And yes, there does appear to be outsize interest from the community in dead-end and/or sub-par American machines vs. those from overseas. For example, I gather that Omron did fairly well in the UNIX hardware business in Japan, but had effectively zero market penetration elsewhere. Interest in those systems here is effectively zero, mostly because they never appeared on the secondary market and so there was no long tail leading to hobbyist use. > The biggest selling CPU in history is a British design from a British > company. Its native OS is still updated and is FOSS today, and > provided the inspiration for a key part of the Windows 95 user > interface now used by billions. The core of the OS dates from the late > 1970s or so and may be the oldest OS of which a modern derivative > still can run on the bare metal of new hardware in 2024. > Surely by this definition UNIX would take the crown? The "core of the OS" dates from 1969 and modern derivatives are everywhere. -Henry
