[ih] Chat room and forum archives

[Michael Kjörling]

On 1 Sep 2022 07:35 -0500, from internet-history at elists.isoc.org (Haudy Kazemi via Internet-history):
> If all this is supposed to be set in 1995, there may be a timing issue with
> referencing Visicalc and Apple II. They would be around 10 years old at
> that time, with both dating to the mid-1980s. All depends on the context.

Wikipedia puts the original Apple II at a 1977 release, and the
original VisiCalc for Apple II in 1979, which sounds about right; so
by 1995, the combination would be more like 15 years old, and woefully
out of date. Mid-80s vintage would be more like the IBM PC/AT (maybe
PC/XT if you didn't see the need for the AT's computing power with its
blazing-fast 12 MHz 80286) and Lotus 1-2-3. On the IBM compatible
side, 386-based systems would perhaps start to be available but not
commonplace; the Compaq Deskpro 386 hit the market in 1986. The
Macintosh had just debuted at the time, and was generally short on
software.


> 1995 era spreadsheet software would include Microsoft Excel, Lotus 1-2-3,
> and Quattro Pro. Windows 95, Windows 3.1, and DOS versions were available
> for at least some of those products.

Seconded. And let's not forget OS/2, which was still a somewhat
serious contender on the desktop at the time, though I'm pretty sure
that it wasn't until OS/2 Warp 3 (1994?) that it came with a built-in
TCP/IP stack.

Mainstream at the time would probably have been Windows 3.1 or Windows
for Workgroups 3.11 running on MS-DOS, running any of the spreadsheets
you mention. Excel was nowhere near as dominant then as it is today.

Anything before OS/2 Warp 3 or Windows 95 (or maybe before WfW 3.11)
required third-party software to connect to the Internet. On Windows,
Trumpet Winsock was a common TCP/IP implementation and, if I recall
correctly, dialer and PPP client.


> Intel Pentium and 486 CPUs were common in newer PCs of the time, generally
> running at clockrates somewhere in 60 to 133 MHz range.

Slower 486-based systems were also common. I remember around that time
having a 486/33 with 4 MiB RAM (later upgraded to a whopping 8 MiB)
and a ~500 MB hard disk, and that was quite decent for the time.

Also look up the Multimedia PC (MPC) levels for example contemporary
PC specs; Level 1 and Level 2 would probably be reasonable starting
points. While upgrades brought serious improvements at the time (going
from a 486/33 to a 486/66, or even a Pentium/60, never mind from say a
386/25, was a MAJOR upgrade in terms of relative performance), lots of
people also stayed with older, slower systems because they did the job
and were far more affordable.

For some inspiration both about early personal computers as well as
glimpses of what early general public Internet access was like,
consider watching _Triumph of the Nerds_ and _Nerds 2.0.1_. Both are
available on the Internet Archive and will take a few hours of your
time.

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se
 “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”