Name that old computer quiz
Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7671677.stm
Fans of computers past were delighted when Jeremy Paxman asked contestants on the BBC's University Challenge to identify some from their pictures.
So with a respectful nod to that quiz institution, we've dug out some archive pictures of iconic models, to test your knowledge.
I got 4/10. Which isn't too bad given the first machine mentioned dates from 15 years before I was born.
Mike Willis
15 Oct 2008 19:24
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[Skip to the latest comment]Steve Rumsby
I got 8/10. I lost out on the games consoles – I never got into games consoles.
I’d never seen a PDP 1 before either (I’m not that old) but I did know the others and it wasn’t one of them. I had seen (even used) all of the others, I think…
15 Oct 2008, 20:14
John Rawnsley
I got 6/10 and only got the PDP-1 by elimination also. However my computer knowledge does date from that era as I got to program a Ferranti Pegasus at Leeds University in the early ‘60s.
15 Oct 2008, 21:39
Chris May
9/10 (with a couple of lucky semi-guesses :-) Failed to know the difference between a PC-engine and a neo-geo though – retro-gaming is not my strong point.
My knowledge goes back to the PET (first computer I ever used), but I got the PDP by guessing that no-one would ever write a game for a VAX!
15 Oct 2008, 23:46
Mathew Mannion
I only got 4/10 – the older ones I knew a lot better because Warwick teaches History of Computing (which included some stuff about the PDP-1 and the Apple II) but since I didn’t really get into computers until the 90s the 80s is lost to me :) (Although my family did have a ZX-81 so I knew that the pic of the ZX-80 wasn’t that…)
16 Oct 2008, 00:17
Steven Carpenter
10/10 for me, although I was lucky with the first one and the eMac because I’d recently seen them in a book. I once had a PC Engine and a Neo-Geo so I knew those anyway.
16 Oct 2008, 12:20
Tim
I got 6, but I guessed a couple.
16 Oct 2008, 22:03
James Taylor
I didn’t do so well on the early stuff but aced the games consoles, and of course the later Mac one.
I should have recognised the Commodore Pet – as a kid we used to have one at a school I went to. One day I found that the fuse had been removed from the back so it wouldn’t work – it was sitting next to the computer and was a sort of screw in module, so I reached behind it to put the fuse back in and instead of putting the fuse into the right hole, I put my finger in there. I vaguely remeber staggering away from the computer in a bit of a daze – my first and thankfully last electric shock.
17 Oct 2008, 09:30
James Mears
7/10 for me.
PDP-1, AppleII and SNK Neo Geo caught me out :-)
17 Oct 2008, 14:12
10/10. I wasn’t tech editor of the Boar for nothing.
This stuff’s my THANG.
17 Oct 2008, 17:47
Roger Lindley
We had Commodore PETs when I was an undergrad student at the Lanch. If you look at the picture, that’s the built-in tape player on the left, and just to the left of the hand is the keypad! Later ones had full-sized keys. They had two programmes which I think the lecturers had written: Simeq (for solving simultaneous equations) and LSCurfit (Least squares curve fitting).
We were also supposed to learn BASIC on them, but most of our efforts went something like:
10 PRINT “TREV IS A PUFF”
20 GOTO 10
30 Oct 2008, 14:28
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