Much like the photography mini-reviews, these are short (mini) reviews on computer and hardware topics, including some mobile technology items. They are in no particular order, except chronological:
https://www.nishiryu.us/publications/mini-computer-reviews
The first computer I ever used was an IBM 360/67, a very large, expensive mainframe built around iron-core memory. It was one of the few large university-hosted mainframes in the world, and was run by the Washington State University mathematics department. A computer science department was created to teach courses in computer science, but in actuality, it was essentially an offshoot of the mathematics department.
The university also had a smaller IBM 360 to do administrative things (grades, registration, etc.), and several smaller DEC PDP-8 and PDP-11 computers, plus some large (desk-sized) Hewlett-Packard and Wang calculators, plus some desk-sized word processors, mostly from Wang. As a history major, I played with all of them, mostly because the departments hadn’t set up rules to limit access, and, honestly, what mischief could a history major cause?
From there, I purchased a TRS-80 Model I, and within a few weeks I was Vice President of the San Mateo TRS-80 user group. The Zilog Z-80-based TRS-80 Model I was followed by a Radio Shack Color Computer, based on the more advanced Motorola 6809. This was followed, after seeing one in action at the West Coast Computer Faire, by a Z-80-based Osborne-1, a portable computer that weighed a ton but was still outweighed by all the manuals and floppy disks that shipped with it.
Then there was a TRS-80 Model III, a much faster, more elegant version of the Model I, still based on a Zilog Z-80 processor, but a faster one. Then there came the Radio Shack Model 100, a very small portable computer based on the low-power Intel 80C85 processor. It was essentially a keyboard with a small 8 line screen of 40 characters, but it had a built-in modem capable of using the Japanese telephone system, a useful feature since I was in Japan.
Then we purchased a Macintosh: the original, 128K machine with one floppy drive and a small black-and-white screen. Things then got interesting.
The mini-reviews started almost two decades later.
