ICT~ History of Computers Part II

Turing Machine - Turing machines are basic abstract symbol-manipulating devices which, despite their simplicity, can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm. They were described in 1936 by Alan Turing. Turing machines are not intended as a practical computing technology, but a thought experiment about the limits of mechanical computation. Thus they were not actually constructed. Studying their abstract properties yields many insights into computer science and complexity theory.

A Turing machine that is able to simulate any other Turing machine is called a Universal Turing machine (UTM, or simply a universal machine). A more mathematically-oriented definition with a similar “universal” nature was introduced by Alonzo Church, whose work on lambda calculus intertwined with Turing’s in a formal theory of computation known as the Church-Turing thesis. The thesis states that Turing machines indeed capture the informal notion of effective method in logic and mathematics, and provide a precise definition of an algorithm or ‘mechanical procedure’.

The Turing machine mathematically models a machine that mechanically operates on a tape on which symbols are written, which it can read and write one at a time using a tape head; operation is fully determined by a finite set of elementary instructions, such as “in state 42, if the symbol you see is a ‘0′, write a ‘1′; if you see a ‘1′, shift to the right, and change into state 17; in state 17, if you see a ‘0′, write a ‘1′ and change to state 6;” etcetera. In the original article (”‘On computable numbers, with an appliation to the Entscheidungsproblem”, see references below), Turing imagines not a mechanical machine, but a person, whom he calls the “computer”, who executes these deterministic, mechanical rules slavishly (or as Turing puts it: “in a desultory manner”).

Apple Computer - Apple was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. They were hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips)—not what is today considered a complete personal computer.The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at US$666.66.

Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977 without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of US$250,000 during the incorporation of Apple

Established in Cupertino, California on April 1, 1976 and incorporated January 3, 1977, the company was called “Apple Computer, Inc.” for its first 30 years, but dropped the word “Computer” on January 9, 2007 to reflect the company’s ongoing expansion into the consumer electronics market in addition to its traditional focus on personal computers. Apple has about 28,000 employees worldwide and had worldwide annual sales of US $24 billion in its fiscal year ending September 29, 2007. For reasons varying from its philosophy of comprehensive aesthetic design to its distinctive advertising campaigns, Apple has established a unique reputation in the consumer electronics industry. This includes a customer base that is devoted to the company and its brand, particularly in the United States. Fortune magazine named Apple the most admired company in the United States.

Bill Gates- At thirteen he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school. When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School’s rummage sale to buy an ASR-33 teletype terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school’s students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he reflected back on that moment, he commented on it and said, “There was just something neat about the machine.” After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.

At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC’s software in exchange for computer time. Rather than use the system via teletype, Gates went to CCC’s offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including programs in FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970, when it went out of business. The following year, Information Sciences Inc. hired the four Lakeside students to write a payroll program in COBOL, providing them computer time and royalties. After his administrators became aware of his programming abilities, Gates wrote the school’s computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with mostly female students. He later stated that “it was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success.” At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.

Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and subsequently enrolled at Harvard College in the fall of 1973. While at Harvard, he met his future business partner, Steve Ballmer, whom he later appointed as CEO of Microsoft. He also met computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou at Harvard, with whom he collaborated on a paper about algorithms. He did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the school’s computers. He remained in contact with Paul Allen, joining him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. He had talked this decision over with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gates wanted to start a company.

After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS’s interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration, held at MITS’s offices in Albuquerque, was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Paul Allen was hired into MITS, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS in Albuquerque in November 1975. They named their partnership “Micro-soft” and had their first office located in Albuquerque. Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and on November 26, 1976, the trade name “Microsoft” was registered with the USPTO.

November 1985	Windows 1.01	1.01	Unsupported
November 1987	Windows 2.03	2.03	Unsupported
March 1989	Windows 2.11	2.11	Unsupported
May 1990	Windows 3.0	3.0	Unsupported
March 1992	Windows 3.1x	3.1	Unsupported	5
October 1992	Windows For Workgroups 3.1	3.1	Unsupported	5
July 1993	Windows NT 3.1	NT 3.1	Unsupported	5
December 1993	Windows For Workgroups 3.11	3.11	Unsupported	5
January 1994	Windows 3.2 (released in Simplified Chinese only)	3.2	Unsupported	5
September 1994	Windows NT 3.5	NT 3.5	Unsupported	5
May 1995	Windows NT 3.51	NT 3.51	Unsupported	5
August 1995	Windows 95	4.0.950	Unsupported	5
July 1996	Windows NT 4.0	NT 4.0.1381	Unsupported	6
June 1998	Windows 98	4.10.1998	Unsupported	6
May 1999	Windows 98 SE	4.10.2222	Unsupported	6
February 2000	Windows 2000	NT 5.0.2195	Extended Support until July 13, 2010[19]	6
September 2000	Windows Me	4.90.3000	Unsupported	6
October 2001	Windows XP	NT 5.1.2600	Current for SP2 and SP3 (RTM and SP1 unsupported).	8
March 2003	Windows XP 64-bit Edition 2003	NT 5.2.3790	Unsupported	6
April 2003	Windows Server 2003	NT 5.2.3790	Current for SP1, R2, SP2 (RTM unsupported).	8
April 2005	Windows XP Professional x64 Edition	NT 5.2.3790	Current	8
July 2006	Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs	NT 5.1.2600	Current
November 2006 (volume licensing) January 2007 (retail)	Windows Vista	NT 6.0.6001	Current. Version Changed to NT 6.0.6001 with SP1 (February 4 08)	8
July 2007	Windows Home Server	NT 5.2.4500	Current	8
February 2008	Windows Server 2008

ICT~ Histoty of Computers Part I

ENIAC - Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer

Size - Largest in its time. It weighed 30 tons (27 t) and covered 680 square feet. Was roughly 8.5 feet by 3 feet by 80 feet (2.6m by 0.9m by 26m) and consumed 150 kW of power.

Switches – 6000 multiposition mechanical switches.

Data Entry – Each digit used up 36 tubes, the Eniac consists of 17468 vacuum tubes. The Eniac was basically used for simple addition or subtraction operations. It could also do other types of mechanic operations.

What was it used for? – The U.S. military sponsored their research; they needed a calculating device for writing artillery-firing tables (the settings used for different weapons under varied conditions for target accuracy).

Vacuum Tubes – Used to operate switches, faster that human switching them on and off. The Eniac used 19,000 vacuum tubes and 1,500 mechanical relays.

TRANSISTOR – Semiconductor device commonly used to amplify or switch electronic signals.

Size Advantage – Small size and minimal weight, allowing the development of miniaturized electronic devices.

Materials Used – Germanium, Silicon, Gallium Arsenide, and Silicon Carbide.

First made by – The first patent for the field-effect transistor principle was filed in Canada by Austrian- Hungarian Physicist Julias Edgar Lilienfield on October 22^nd 1925/

Intergrated Cirtcut (IC) - A miniaturized electronic circuit (consisting mainly of semiconductor devices, as well as passive components) that has been manufactured in the surface of a thin substance of a semiconductor material.

First made by – Geoffry W.A. Dummer, Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce.

Timex Sinclair – The first computer produced by Timex Sinclair, a joint-venture between Timex Corporation and Sinclair Research. It was launched in July 1982. The TS1000 was a slightly modified Sinclair ZX81 with an NTSC RF modulator instead of a UK PAL (Units sold in Portugal have a PAL RF modulator) device and the onboard RAM doubled to two KBs. The TS1000’s casing had slightly more internal shielding but remained the same as Sinclair’s, including the membrane keyboard. It had black & white graphics, and no sound. It was followed by an improved version, the “Timex Sinclair 1500”.

Info-Tech Questions

What are some things that you would like to accomplish this year?

This year i would like to accomplish having good grades in all my classes, and ending the year with a satisfying grade point average. I would also like to drive and be able to earn my “L” drivers license by the end of December, before new year! Other goals that i would like to accomplish are making my own computer by the end of the year, be able to actually help people in math, and become a “changed person” so my life itself will change.

What types of technology are you interested in? Why?

The types of technology I’m interested in are computers, cell phones, “i” technology, game consols like Nentendo, PlayStations, X-boxes and the portable ones like DS (light), PSP, and more. I am interested in these types of technology because most of them give us access to communicate with our friends and family around the world, or just around the corner! Also, alot of these types of technology, gives us access to information around the world comming from differnt contries, so we learn more about the world everyday! And the rest of these are just fun entertainment when there’s nothing to do at home!

What piece of technology could you not live without? Why?

I could not live without the computer! The computer is where i spend alot of my time on and it gives me alot of access to communicate with my family and freinds! The internet is such a powerful thing, it can let you share pictures and vidoes with people and can meet people around the world! (Which is technecly not a good thing) You can also get information about anything form any part of the globe, learn about upcomming new products of technology that are comming up in the future and just finding out whats going on in the world!

What would you like to learn about this year in this course?

In this course, i would like to learn how to build my own computer machine. Using separate parts that are found from other computer machines or in stores to make my own powerful, faster computer witout any of those usless programs and cookies built in the machine.

ICT Definitions…

Hard Drive: Also known as “Hard Disk Drive” or a “Fixed Disk Drive” is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces.

CPU: Short for “Central Processing Unit”. Is a description of a class of logic machines that can execute computer programs.

Motherboard: is the central or primary printed circut board (PCB) making up a complex electronic system, such as a modern computer.

Power Suply: is a reference to a source of electrical pwer. A device or system that supplies electrical or other types of energy to an output load or group of loads is called a “power supply unit” or “PSU”.

PCI: Stands for “Peripheral Component Interface”. Specifies a computer bus for attaching peripheral devices to a computer motherboard.

PCI Express: a computer expantion card interface format introduced by Intel in 2004. PCI Express was designed to replace the general-purpose PCI expansion bus, the high-end PCI-X bus and the AGP graphics card interface.

USB (Universal Serial Bus): is a serial bus standard to interface devices to a host computer. USB was designed to allow many peripherals to be connected using a single standardized interface socket and to improve the plug-and-play capabilities by allowing hot swapping, that is, by allowing devices to be connected and disconnected without rebooting the computer or turning off the device.

Firewire: The IEEE 1394 interface.

IEEE-1394: is a serial bus interface standard for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer, frequently used in a personal computer (and digital audio and digital video).

LCD (Liquid Crystal Display): an electro-optical amplitude modulator realized as a thin, flat display device made up of any number of color or monochrome pixals arrayed in front of a light source or reflector.

Plasma: Many tiny cells located between two panels of glass hold an inert mixture of noble gases (neon and xenon). The gas in the cells is electrically turned into a plasma which then excites phosphors to emit light.

HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface): A compact audio/video connector interface for transmitting uncompressed digital streams.  HDMI supports, on a single cable, any TV or PC video format including standard, enhanced, and high-definition video along with up to 8 channels of digital audio.

RAM (Random Acces Memory): A type of computer data storage. Today it takes the form of integrated circuits that allow the stored data to be accessed in any pie order, i.e. at random.

Flash Memory: Non-volatile computer memory that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It is a technology that is primarily used in memory cards and USB flash drives for general storage and transfer of data between computers and other digital products.

 

AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port): A high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a graphics card to a computer’s motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics.

DVD (Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc): A popular optical disc storage media format. Its main uses are video and date storage.