Digital natives? In reality it was us, that is, those born exactly in 1970. A decade before, and as a child you already found yourself sixty -eight without realizing it; A few years later, and of that technological revolution made of the first home computers and the first consoles you lost a piece. Among other things, there is a beautiful channel on YouTube called IT archeology, hundreds of videos dedicated to all those machines that have entered history, and listening to their history discovered others that, as children, did not imagine.
To put on this project is Carlo Santagostino, a brilliant computer engineer, entrepreneur, very expert, great storyteller and popularizer, I don’t know how many old computers he has at home, I believe everyone, and in difficult times like these for publishing also sends the magazine to newsstands also on newsstands Retrocomputer. He too was born in 1970, goes without saying.
Listening to his podcasts I sunk in the abyss of nostalgia, but I also embarked on a journey between those who were the computers and consoles of the eighties for me. I could have them all (almost everyone, let’s say) because all my companions had a scooter, and with my parents I always bartered the scooter with a new computer, a new console. I did not suffer from it, because I didn’t give a damn about the companions or the scooter, but I pretended, to be brought to the computer shop again. Also because they were convulsive years, divided into factions.
Everything happened in Italy in the early eighties, exactly between 1980 and 1983 He said then, because the cabinets were either at the bar or in the game room. However, there was a bombardment of fear advertising, especially of the first console that arrived in Italy, the Atari 2600. The advertisement of the ARTARI was made so well that every fifty year old remembers the slogan “Wow Atari, perhaps!”. The Atari 2600 had a great advantage over others: he could convert his arcade into his console, having the exclusive, and even if the conversions sought out (just see the version of Pac Man for the 2600) every time you saw that child On television say “Wow Atari, maybe!”, Even if you knew you had the best console, you wanted to buy it. And since I renounced the scooter, I also took 2600. And also the Intellivision (of Mattel), because they were all divided between Atristi and Intelligisionists, I did not want to give up any of the two, so I took that too.
At the hardware level they were very simple machines seen today, but at the time they left you speechless (apart from those who had chosen the scooter). The cartridges put themselves, and it was played with video games with a graphics where the pixels were almost half a centimeter large, but they seemed realistic. A bit like it had to seem realistic Giotto’s perspective to those of the fourteenth century, while today, well, if you have not studied art history and you are in front of Giotto is only suggestion.
But immediately the first home computers arrived, who made the consoles out, and they were substantially two: the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair Zx Spectrum (at 16 or 48 k). Everyone immediately divided into spectrumists and commodorians (there was also the Amstrad, in the middle, but the Amstradians were less violent, the Amstrads were made). To save and upload the programs they were used either a normal home recorder, or the first five -inch floppies disks, and to load a game of 20 k were also five minutes waiting. The two pioneers were Clive Sinclair, and for the Commodore the Polish Jack Tramiel, a Jew who survived the Auschwitz concentration camps. Arriving in the United States, after producing writing machines, he threw himself on electronics, at the beginning with the calculators. He wanted a military name for his company, but Admiral was already there, the general was also taken by General Motors, and chose the Commodore. Paradoxically, despite having already fifteen the idea of becoming one of the greatest Italian writers, my first thing published was written in Basic, on a commodore 64, in the magazine list, and when I saw my list published I did not believe my parents eyes.
But every birthday and every Christmas was the scam exchange: “Mom, dad, I would like the scooter … everyone has it!”. “… it’s dangerous …” “Ok, then there would be the synclar ql.” I only had the Sinclair QL among those I knew, it was beautiful, and of a modern aesthetic still today. It was also sold as if it were a 32 -bit computer, while he had 16, but it was already another revolution. The only problem: he had a storage system invented by the Sinclair engineers made by two micro crates with built -in tape, the micro cartridge, which blocked, spit out with the whole intricate ribbon, lost data and programs.
From Carlo Santagostino I learned that then there was a better version, but I had already passed at Atari ST, with mouse and monochromatic screen, you seemed to have an Apple Macintosh, the subject of desires but too expensive (much more than a scooter ), because Steve Jobs already pointed high (and over time he was right). Finally, in the second half of the eighties, before going to the compatible IBMs (what we call PC today), one could not have the Commodore Amiga 500, beautiful, very powerful, for the times of course. Jack Tramiel had already sold his Commodore, after selling millions of computers, because his philosophy was the low cost, and the computer market was becoming more and more competitive for a pioneer like him, and under a certain figure it could not be DESCEND.
Of these legendary home computers and consoles, if they seem a few 16 k, 48 k, or 64 k, when in your iPhone you can also have a terabyte, think that the computer of Apollo 11, which brought the first men to the moon, had 4 K of memory.
But it was thanks to the technological studies of NASA, the acceleration due to the Cold War, the competition with the USSR, that a decade after our desks those wonderful machines, directly from the moon, arrived on our desks. By the way: I am 54 years old and I have never had a scooter. Now mom, you will have already understood it, but I can also reveal it to you in no uncertain terms: I never wanted the scooter.