[124710] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: legacy /8
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Roland Perry)
Sun Apr 4 09:43:46 2010
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 14:41:43 +0100
To: nanog@nanog.org
From: Roland Perry <lists@internetpolicyagency.com>
In-Reply-To: <201004041249.o34CnUUt078737@aurora.sol.net>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
In article <201004041249.o34CnUUt078737@aurora.sol.net>, Joe Greco
<jgreco@ns.sol.net> writes
>> Some sources claim the PET is later, but I remember it because I was
>> doing a project on "PCs in Schools" in the spring of 1977, using an
>> 8-bit PC that I had built myself on a patchboard. And the PET arrived
>> just in time for me to be able say to "I'm not completely insane - a
>> viable PC you could install in a school is now commercially available".
>
>Your memory seems to be in error; the PET was created for the June 1977
>CES, and wasn't shipped to customers until at least later that year. It
>seems very likely that you received your PET in the spring of 1978.
I use the expressions "arrived" and "available" in the spirit of
vapourware that was endemic in the industry at the time. In other words,
it was when the product was "introduced". It's true that we would not
have expected to see a real one in the UK until much later.
There are at least two sources which date the PET to "Winter CES" and
"Jan 1977", but I agree that June CES is where production items would be
first shown; however by then schools were out and my project was
finished (I was studying to be maths teacher).
--
Roland Perry
