Legacy Computers

[scidata]

The dawn of small computers saw myriad machines, a few of which were perfect for exploring GOFAI.

I’ve listed some of the key machines I used in my AI journey. It would be very interesting to see others’ lists as well. I’ve noticed that such lists depend greatly on the geographic location of what was important or available. For example, there was a heavy focus on basic functionality and market share in North America, while style and form were experimented with a lot in Europe. In academia, you’d see more exotic (and expensive) machines such as dedicated LISP and PROLOG workstations.

[scidata]

Some of the legacy machines I've worked with:

 

This is the 1976 version of the COSMAC ELF computer, built as described in Popular Electronics magazine. Built as a single board (open) layout, it was little more than a CPU, memory, switches, and LEDs. It featured a COSMAC 1802 microprocessor, an amazing chip with only 5,000 transistors (modern CPUs have almost a million times that many). An elegant processor, with 16x16 bit programmer-configurable registers, which greatly reduced the load on memory traffic (it had only 256 Bytes of RAM). The ELF II (1978) was my first general purpose computer (keypad, video, expansion bus, tape storage), which I used to learn hexadecimal math, interfacing, and early computational thinking.
 


This is the MOS KIM-1. It featured a 6502 microprocessor, the same chip in the Commodore PET, Apple II, and many others. It was another single board computer, with traces laid out by hand!, and with most of the I/O only available through edge connectors. This was the machine that ran MICROCHESS - in 1976!

 

This is the Commodore PET 2001. It featured a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor - a low-cost 8-bit CPU intended to compete with the Motorola 6800 using a small number of cheap support chips. The 6502 was possibly the most popular 8-bit chip of them all, used in Commodore, Apple, and many other computers, as well as in many game consoles.

The PET was my first ‘real’ computer, being an all-in-one package. I used it for BASIC and 6502 Assembler coding of early AI designs such as chess and Expert Systems (ES).

 

I especially liked the TRS-80 Color Computer for AI. First released in 1980, with several newer models over the following years. It featured a Motorola 6809 microprocessor, which was an 8-bit CPU that looked like 16-bit to the programmer. This chip presented a nice, linear, orthogonal space, ideal for AI languages. Powerful addressing modes and a relatively coherent instruction set made for smooth sailing in FORTH, my preferred language. The Extended BASIC was one of the best of its time as well. Unbelievably cheap and powerful machine (if you could cope with that crude ‘chiclet’ keyboard)

 

When the Palm™ computer arrived in the 1990s, truly portable AI development became possible. One example was the picoXpert story.

[ChiefDijononA]

The COSMAC ELF looks like something I’d be working on back in High School, with the exception of about a little more than 99% of the transistors haha.