The Hobby Computer Culture (technicshistory.com) 63
A fairly comprehensive look at the early personal computer culture reveals that from 1975 through early 1977, personal computers remained "almost exclusively the province of hobbyists who loved to play with computers and found them inherently fascinating," according to newly surfaced historical research. When BYTE magazine launched in 1975, its cover called computers "the world's greatest toy," reflecting the recreational rather than practical focus of early adopters.
A BYTE magazine survey from late 1976 showed these pioneers were remarkably homogeneous: 72% held at least a bachelor's degree, had a median annual income of $20,000 ($123,000 in 2025 dollars), and were overwhelmingly male at 99%. Rather than developing practical software applications, early users gravitated toward games, particularly Star Trek simulations that appeared frequently in magazine advertisements and user group demonstrations.
The hobbyist community organized around local clubs like the famous Homebrew Computer Club, retail stores, and specialized magazines that helped establish what one researcher calls "a mythology of the microcomputer." This narrative positioned hobbyists as democratizing heroes who "ripped the computer and the knowledge of how to use it from the hands of the priests, sharing freedom and power with the masses," challenging what they termed the "computer priesthood" of institutional gatekeepers. This self-contained hobbyist culture would soon be "subsumed by a larger phenomenon" as businessmen began targeting mass markets in 1977.
A BYTE magazine survey from late 1976 showed these pioneers were remarkably homogeneous: 72% held at least a bachelor's degree, had a median annual income of $20,000 ($123,000 in 2025 dollars), and were overwhelmingly male at 99%. Rather than developing practical software applications, early users gravitated toward games, particularly Star Trek simulations that appeared frequently in magazine advertisements and user group demonstrations.
The hobbyist community organized around local clubs like the famous Homebrew Computer Club, retail stores, and specialized magazines that helped establish what one researcher calls "a mythology of the microcomputer." This narrative positioned hobbyists as democratizing heroes who "ripped the computer and the knowledge of how to use it from the hands of the priests, sharing freedom and power with the masses," challenging what they termed the "computer priesthood" of institutional gatekeepers. This self-contained hobbyist culture would soon be "subsumed by a larger phenomenon" as businessmen began targeting mass markets in 1977.
Them were the days! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Them were the days! (Score:4, Interesting)
Blasting like a Sirocco into BBS culture of the 80s/90s.
'74 to '94.... God what a time.
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Charter subscriber to Byte Magazine here. I built my Altair 8800 from the Popular Science article. Article left out the First Annual World Altair Computer Convention, March 1976 in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
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I had a friend who ran a BBS as a sideline of his comic book store. He said it became too much of a chore when people would upload stuff like a recipe for nitroglycerine. Without explaining the minor detail of the exothermic reaction part.
He couldn't afford the liability.
Re:Them were the days! (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed. Byte Magazine was fun to read in those days. Its articles were informative and insightful, going well beyond just reviews of hardware and software. Gradually, it deteriorated into just another PC World type clone. I suppose today's closest approximation is Ars Technica.
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I don't think it's a matter of disguising it (Score:3)
And every time you talk about how horrible things are that's going to inevitably bring up what the solutions are how horrible things are and those solutions are political not economic or technological.
So it's basically impossible to get politics out of your life because it controls every single aspect of your life at this point
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It's just the world is a lot worse than it was 20 years ago so it's hard not to talk about how bad the world is now.
And every time you talk about how horrible things are that's going to inevitably bring up what the solutions are how horrible things are and those solutions are political not economic or technological.
So it's basically impossible to get politics out of your life because it controls every single aspect of your life at this point
Based on the number of people I interact with who don't care about politics in the slightest, I'm going to say that this is wildly inaccurate unless someone is terminally online or never turns off cable news. If you live in a hyper-political bubble, then of course, you see nothing but politics around every corner, everyone else is just living their lives.
Even in places where you would think events should be overtaking everyone's life, you see people living normally. You can look at videos coming out of Ukra
Re:Them were the days! (Score:4, Interesting)
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And Nibble Magazine
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As a side note, I have a complete set of Kilobaud / Microcomputing magazines, plus the first three years of Byte. I actually met Wayne Green, original publisher of Byte, and full publisher of KB/MC, at a Philly computer show. Interesting guy, but he got into some weird stuff years later.
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Wayne Green, the publisher of Kilobaud, originally wanted to call it Kilobyte because he lost control of Byte magazine in a divorce settlement with his wife.
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I had a few articles published in 2600 back in the day. They used to give you a year long subscription if your article was published, and I was a poor student...
Not just games (Score:4, Informative)
Also, BBSes and community forums. And just slightly later, with the introduction of Commodore's Vic 20 and 64, graphics (art) and digital music.
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Yeah I was kinda in on the last bit of that. I was born in 81 and my first computer was a used Commodore 128 in the early 1990's, after they were getting fairly obsolete. I spent some time on BBS systems and the like for a few years before they waned in favor of the internet.
It was a fun time when everything felt kinda experimental. It ended up fueling my desire to go into Computer Science as a major in college, but I kinda wish I'd have been a little older during that time. When I think about how much
I remember (Score:3)
Back in 82-3-4-5 there was an article on how to build your own mouse, schematics, bom, everything.
Re: I remember (Score:3)
Nowdays, of course, we have youtube for that...
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The Atari 800 was amazing (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly even at 123k a year that would be a stretch. The price did come down and the computer was so advanced that it was a viable computer right up until about I'd say 1986 which is pretty amazing almost 10 years.
The commodore 64 was basically the raspberry pi of its day. It had an expansion slot with a direct line to the cpu. That meant you could do all sorts of crazy things with it as a controller.
Every now and then I come across some bizarre set up where a commodore 64 is driving a CNC machine or something like it. And of course it was used all over the place to drive displays like that famous train station.
But again the launch price which at the time was revolutionary was still really really high so you had to be one hell of a dedicated hobbyist or have a specific work use case for it.
Although you did have people using commodore 128s for desktop publishing clear up until the early nineties.
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The commodore 64 was basically the raspberry pi of its day.
It wasn't a Raspberry Pi, it was a Shenzhen Back Alley #3 version of the Pi. Because of Tramiel's relentless cost-cutting the production quality was abysmal, my school set up a lab with C64s and I remember coming in on the first day and seeing the pile of C64s, power supplies, and whatnot that were DOA stacked against the wall. They were faulty straight from the factory.
And don't even get me started on the genius idea of multiplexing a single tape-drive emulator, a.k.a. 1541, across 8 C64s using a Vic-sw
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I can deal with some warranty claim work for all that.
And it came down in price fast.
As for the 1541 you just bought a fast load cartridge. Kind of sucked because they were pretty expensive for the time, around 70 to $100 but again the super cheap price you paid for a super powerful computer more than made up for it.
It was stupid of commodore to insist on Vic 20 backwards compatib
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I suspect the real problem was that because of the shortages due to high demand if you got a bad drive you couldn't just take it back to the store and get another one.
You saw the same thing with high-end video cards a few years ago and to some extent even today where RMA is a pain in the ass because the companies just do not have enough stock to properly manage RMA by just sending out replacements.
To be fair I didn'
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The power bricks were always failing. I ended up chiseling the case of the power supply and potting plastic to get at the wires so I could solder in a regulator IC from Radio Shack to revive the C64. That lasted several years (longer than the original).
I had one (Score:3, Interesting)
Admittedly I was ... 14? - and my Dad bought it for me, but I remember it fondly.
Dad worked for RCA, so we had an RCA VIP (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]). Came with 2K of RAM and a video resolution of 32x64 (yes, that's pixels). No software internally except a tiny 256-byte "monitor" that allowed you to input or display hex code.
Oh I know, all very primitive by today's standards. Yet at the time it was wonderful.
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It hasn't changed much (Score:1)
Isn't that all what we still want? All this "practical software applications" crap is merely our jobs, so that we can pay for housing, food, and of course computers (to do fun things on, at night).
Super Star Trek! (Score:4, Interesting)
Steve Ciarcia (Score:4, Interesting)
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but I wish we had the easy custom PCB manufacturing of today back then.
Real geeks wire-wrapped their systems.
wire wrap (Score:2)
>Real geeks wire-wrapped their systems.
I made my first computer, with an 1802, with wire wrap.
But it had its limits as frequency went up.
I heard multiple reports of attempting to clone Apple ][ with wire wrap, all of which failed, as their RF emissions interfered with themselves (in fact, this was the *only* reason I didn't try one myself!)
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Historically misleading (Score:2)
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The article is rewriting history by using the term personal computer.
The term "personal computer" was used in the seventies, amongst others by Commodore [parceladigital.com] and Sharp [homecomputermuseum.nl].
Historically accurate (Score:2)
Except they were called personal computers [decodesystems.com]. DECs were on a completely different level, as the price shows. VisiCalc came later and drove practical business use.
Can totally relate (Score:1)
Most importantly - user ruled everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Most importantly the user was king of everything. There was not a single line of code in early operating systems to artificially prevent you from doing anything you could dream of. As long as you skills were up to the task and you had enough memory and processing power you could do whatever you wanted. Yes, there were an infinite number of things they COULDN'T do, but none of those things were because they were artificially crippled so that functionality could be sold back to you, or nothing that reported what you did to anyone. This was the golden age of computing and it needs to return to that. Truly fuck all of this phone home, DRM, artificially crippled feature sets because those features interfere with a business model. Many of these things really do need to be enshrined in law as consumer protections.
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Engineer: "You're welcome."
Why didn't more of those involved make it big ? (Score:3)
Why not ?
Some did (Score:3)
BASIC 80 (Score:2)
>which was Microsoft's second stage to orbit after providing Level II Basic for the TRS-80.
But that was just BASIC 80, rev 2, which was also found on most other micros of the day and shortly thereafter, Apple's base Integer BASIC and Atari's initial cartridge BASIC being the most notable exceptions. (for that matter, Level I basic on the TRS-80, too). [yes, there were other tiny basic machines, but they were in the toy to hobby range].
BASIC 80 came in three levels, with "Extended" and "Disk Basic" bein
Hours of fun (Score:3)
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And while you were typing it in you are already thinking about to add and modify stuff to make even more fun! Those were the days.
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or you had to figure out how to get code written for an Apple ][ to work on an Atari 400/800 (and hope there weren't any peeks and pokes in the graphics sections as those were pretty much untranslatable without an assembly guide to the graphics renderer).
Granted, that skill became VERY useful into college and adulthood needing to get C(++) code written for BSD/SunOS 4 to work in SystemV systems, back before "./configure" was a common thing in open source packages.
Vic20 baby (Score:3)
3K of RAM was enough!
Typing in games from Compute! magazine ... good times, good times.
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Typing in games was only half the fun. Tracking down all the typos made while typing that game in was the other half. :) I would spend hours typing in all the code I could get my hands on from as many magazines and books as I could find. I learned to code and type that way.
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(It was 3.5K RAM. Every bit counts!)
Fun times. (Score:1)
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My friend Sphinx wrote a compiler he called C--, around that time. A subset of C, it didn't have any of the "fancy" C stuff, but it would output machine language the way you would translate C into assembly. info [bkhome.org]
Hacking was FUN back then! (Score:3)
I was born in 1967 so I just missed this group and didn't get my first computer until 1980, a TRS-80 Model III. My father was an electronics tech so we had fun modding the hell out of that thing. My first exercise was learning how to piggy back the RAM chips on our CoCo1 to raise it from 16K to 32K. We then made our own parallel to serial adapters and custom circuit boards to switch radios and frequencies on my father's HAM equipment for RBBS, RTTY, CW, and eventually packet radio use. (Does anyone remember Moon bouncing? Receiving slo-scan images?) I wrote custom software within the RBBS software that would use the CoCo's MOTOR ON and MOTOR OFF command to click the tape deck relay with a Morse like code that the custom circuit board would interpret and switch to the correct radio and frequency. Over the course of a few years that RBBS software was not even recognizable any longer from all the mods and additions I made and it required 4 diskette drives to operate. Man those hacking days were fun! Today's micro-controller stuff is fun, I guess, but nothing like the custom hacking back then.
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Model II, wow. Your friend had deep pockets back then. The Model II was expensive.
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You may be thinking of the Model III that I had. The Model II's price started at $3500 (about $15000 in today's money) for the base model (no printer) and skyrocketed from there depending on the peripherals and options added. Cool that you had access to one though. My local Radio Shack's manager used to let me hang out and use their display computers all the time but they never had a Model II on Display. You had to go to the Radio Shack computer center to play with those, which was unfortunately located 30
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The Model II was *well* more than that.
Probably they had a Model I Level 2.
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