Why exactly did compact all in one computers (apple ii, atari, commordores) fall out of fashion in favor of big ugly beige pc's during the 90's?
I can't think of a single advantage pc's had over them.
>>51485016
More flexibility for adding internal drive bays, storage etc. I guess. ATX also helped to standardise component layout somewhat - no need to replace the entire machine for an upgrade.
Exchangable parts like mice, keyboards, speakers, and monitors are all advantages.
>>51485016
Two words anon:
I.B.M.
>>51485126
>IBM
>InternationalBusiness Machine
>>51485016
cooling
>>51485129
Intentional Bowel Movements
the best kind of BMs.
>>51485016
>spill coffe on your keyboard
>have to replace whole computer
All in ones are shit and its sad that theyre making a comeback
>>51485129
You. I like you.
really? educate you'reself if you're really interested OP. watch 'Triump of the Nerds" 3 part series. good luck finding it as YT seems to have taken down any copies of it.
>>51485016
Heat wasn't exactly a major problem. 68040 was the last CPU I owned that could get by with a small heatsink and no fan. You're also not picturing the behemoth external 5.25" floppy drives, and dotmatrix printer with the box of paper on the floor. Cartridges were read only. At best you had addition slots for more KB of RAM.
>>51485167
They gave you very detailed manuals back then on how to replace every part including the chips in the fucker and the tools to do so. They even gave you full on schematics. They also came with very detailed programming and troubleshooting manuals. Have you ever owned one?
>>51485247
My dad's Atari 800 was built like a tank ready to go into outer space. It had insane amounts of RF shielding because the FCC didn't have class b regulations yet. I'm pretty sure the Commodore and Apple II had similar shielding.
Because big business was uncomfortable with any company that didn't start with the letters ibm anon.
>>51485016
>commordores
>>51487118
protugeueses for brithish comordores
>>51485016
Could also have something to do with aesthetics. Compare an 80's all-in-one to a standalone keyboard from the same era. The all-in-one looks like some bulky terminal keyboard from the 70s compared to the thin standalone keyboards.
Windows.
Win 2.1 - 3.1 changed everything, and it ran on IBM PCs and the PC clones.
Hardware is only as good as the software it can run
>>51488264
>Win 2.1
>implying they're was any version prior to v3
>>51485016
1. The IBM name
2. Advertised as a 16bit PC but could use expansion cards built with 8 bit peripherals.
3. Expansion cards - made the PC very flexible. You could add ports, change graphics cards, add custom cards etc..
4. Proper enterprise support
>>51485016
Relatively cheap expansion. Standardisation, or at least the easier availability of reverse-engineered compatible components - and outright clones - very early on. And Microsoft Windows, which had Excel and Word.
The IBM Model M keyboard being absolutely based high quality for professional office use didn't hurt either.
Another few choices, and it could've been Mac, who we all know would have been worse. Or Amiga. Or even Atari, although I refuse to believe they wouldn't have fucked it up somehow.
>>51488614
Word and Excel were written initially for the Macintosh.
>>51485016
IBM and Microsoft. That's the short and simple answer.
>>51488666
I'm aware. Microsoft started off with BASIC, after all.
Like I said: another few choices, and it could so very easily have been Apple. They had a very professional-looking computer for the time - but a very expensive one. We all know how that would have turned out: you need only look at iOS to see the hints that Apple would have been absolute tyrants had they achieved monopoly. (Not that Microsoft weren't.)
I'd say little things like the 386's MMU cemented it: a very advanced MMU for the time, if ... warty. But cheap. Cheap clones were the key.
It could've been GEM instead of Windows. Or maybe NeXT. (OK, NeXT was probably too expensive.)
UNIX variants were probably out of the question as a mainstream runner also because of the lack of reasonably-priced hardware which could run it, and the furore surrounding licencing for things such as Minix, until the BSDs were cleaned up.
Outside of the US the 16bit Amigas were king for business use. The IBM PC line was crap compared to an Amiga 1000. But commodore fucked up and couldn't sell the amiga in america for ages leaving the market wide open for a business machine. IBM and microsoft swooped in and then the rest of the world needed American computer compatiblity so the IBM became the defacto standard. The availability of cheaper clones cemented the hardware spec and then that was the end of non-x86 PCs.
>>51488407
>any version prior to v3
Things existed before you were born Anon....
I remember when a "window" was just a way to run your programs in DOS without having to navigate to the programs directory, you would store your "windows" in a .....wait for it....windows directory.
>>51485016
You needed the external volume to hold the hard drives, floppy drives, and cooling stuff necessary to keep a non-8 bit cpu from melting.
You show that c64/128 as standalone, but odds are there were some big floppy drives hooked up to it, or maybe a cassette recorder.
Basically your example for a compact all in one wasn't.
>>51485016
>I can't think of a single advantage pc's had over them.
better hope your all-in-one 8-bit shitbox is good enough for you out of the box, otherwise you better hope you've got a big desk
>>51485016
I'd say it's pretty simple really... It's the IBM PC clones' fault.
When IBM went into the home computer market they accidentally created the PC clone market by making their machines really easy to clone by using off-the-shelf parts. The by far easiest machines to build from these off-the-shelf parts were these beige boxes with external keyboards and monitors. The fact that these off-the-shelf parts were then standardized to suit these types of machines meant that it didn't make sense to re-engineer the parts to fit any different form factors.
Companies like Commodore, Atari and Apple who designed their own boards rather than using ones off the shelf did put out a lot of all-in-one machines for the rest of the 80's and into the 90's. Just look at the Atari ST line, the Commodore Amiga 500, 600 and 1200 as well as Apple's Macintosh and iMac lines.
>>51491970
>home computer
not exactly. big blue (and by extension, the early-ish microsoft) cemented they're position in the microcomputer market the same way they did in the mainframe market--but leveraging business sales around the U.S., then around the world.
Once Lotus 1-2-3 hit the field, they never looked back.
>>51491970
>IBM
>home
No way, despite being a shitbox itself, the PC was still many levels above the average home 8-bit and built for the office.
To say IBM went /entirely/ off the shelf is false as well, there were no standards back then before the PC clone market made them a reality, the "off-the-shelf" distinction is that the chips weren't entirely IBM designed and manufactured like previous personal computers they marketed.
But ultimately, the beige box arose due to expansion requirements. self-contained systems like the C64 were underperforming garbage unsuitable for any real job, and totally un-upgradable without resorting to expensive external attachments that would still be hobbled by a primitive architecture. You could buy damn near anything you wanted for an IBM clone back then, the same didn't quite carry over to 6502 systems.
>>51485126
>IBM
>two words
>>51485016
They are still a thing there called laptops
>>51491832
w2c acoustic coupler
>>51485016
Expansions :
c64 couldn't be upgraded internaly
Apple 2 had expansion cards, although it wasn't as compact as the c64.
And expansions were shit. because nobody had a proprietary system. I think up until the advent of they smartmodem, modems literally required you to place your phone on a speaker and mic cup instead of wiring to the phone line...
And while the excuse for well we don't do that now can be invoked, the shitty peripherals may have left a bad taste in the mouths of the consumer - when PCs were building systems based around standards (which is another reason why people went to them)
>>51491832 nails it desu - granted only TI could pull off a trashpile like that.. (IIRC they had something like a tower, probably the size of a small child, that you can input your peripherals in and use them, or something)
at least other companies let you have more space by usually being connected by wires instead of daisy chained like that
Heat - cause an i3 runs hotter than a 6502 and i think the amiga's topped out at a 68060 for their compact models, however i think they could've engineered something if they didn't die
Also AIOs shifted designs - Apple 2e was i think the last apple design to be of it's style AIOs became Sys+Screen vs Sys + Keyboard
Why we don't go back to them today? Beyond me.. I mean literally that style is just a keyboard sans screen... Now we don't really need that much expansion, Ports are pretty standard... So in theory we could go back to them
Although i think part of the charm is lost in comparison
>>51489818
How did Microsoft Make it that far? like pre 3.x was really poop-tier (not that 3.x was the best) , like Desqview was better...
>>51495182
MS was on the track to eat shit but their saving grace was being able to convince OEMs to ship new systems with Windows 3.0.
price... you could get a more powerful PC clone than the equivalent Atari ST or Amiga computer ( please do note that when I say price I include a HDD in the total price, as Atari/migas have separated & expensive & underperforming HDD.. Another reason was CPU performance stagnation. Amigas/Atari St studied for years and years with the 68000 8 MHz while Intel and AMD made steady progress with the x86 CPU family. When Commodore and Atari waked up to 68020 / 68030 chips it was to late, Intel was on the 386 / 486 era.
>>51495752
AMD wasn't making any progress because they didn't make their own chips then, just Intel chips under license.
The rest of that is reasonably true, though high-end Amigas especially were capable of some pretty insane shit that PCs couldn't touch, likewise with 68k Macs.
It's cheaper to produce components for standardized brass boxes than for dozens of differently shaped compact cases. Same for the cases itself.
>>51495802
The high end Amiga's like the 4000 were beige boxes though. Small ones at that. My dad had his packed to capacity with the video toaster and other expansion cards. He rigged up a cooling system with cardboard and desk fans to keep it from starting a house fire.
>>51485016
You mean like a laptop.. all in one? And one size fits none?
>>51485209
Dont forget the cassette loader so you can save your valuable programs onto cassette tape ..
My firat computer was an appleIIc. I had that for several years before i saved yp enough money to build my own... a 486dx2-66 (best chip out then) with a dual 200meg hdd, 19.6k modem, DUAL 2.88 floppy drives, 18-pin dot matrix printer with integrated tractor feed, 256k ram, graphics card, cd-rom (cd write wasnt quite out yet) and sound blaster audio and put it all in a full tower cause i was sure i was a bad ass. I spend about 3000 just in parts on that bad boy... lol!
Because they were never truly in fashion to begin with. People didn't buy them solely because they were small, they bought them because they were cheap and accessible, perfect for the average home computer user in the '80s who just wanted to play some games or learn to program on their shit quality living room TV or on their tiny, cramped desks. Nobody who was "seriously" using a microcomputer back then was running a C64, they were using powerful, expandable platforms like S-100 systems or, later; PC clones, Macintoshes and UNIX workstations.
8-bits like C64s and Ataris were hopelessly dated and had terrible performance under the hood, as well as god awful expandability and data storage capabilities. They for the most part only really had four advantages over a PC or similar system early on:
>price
>graphics
>sound
>incredibly talented developers capable of getting you the most out of all three
And all of these eventually went to shit as time went on and PCs started encroaching into the home as clones drove the prices down.
