QOTD: What's the Most Influential Hardware?

Page 4 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Status
Not open for further replies.
[citation][nom]highhandz[/nom]Xerox for giving us the GUI and the Mouse.[/citation]
umm.... hardware???? Was your answer mouse then? Already taken. Why don't you just give him a thumbs up instead of repeating him? (don't know why so many encouraged him...)

I'm a bit late to the comments so I doubt I'd come up with anything new, instead I'll just give people some thumbs :)

 
Sorry for the long post - I started reminiscing.

OK Guys (an Gals)... the question was asked from the computer point of view and they are asking about the most influential development of all time.

Computing was well on it's way when Apple Compatibles such as the Peach came around....

How about "portable" computing. Go look up the first Compaq portable - try using one of those on a plane. I don't think they would even be allowed as a carry on.

Speaking of Compaq - how about the entire PC compatible movement? Remember the Rainbow PC? I even built a PC compatible from plans that featured a built in EEPROM burner so you could copy the IBM PROMS and rip a real PC.

Several have mentioned the modem. Truly, this is a monumental development. Where would the world be without the movie "War Games"? Mathew Broderick used an MSAI computer - those things were kits. All of the awesome screens in the WOPR war room required prodigious computational power for the time and were created using a few S-100 bus computers. I don't remember the exact manufacturer, but I think it was Cray. A different Cray than the super computers, but really sweet hardware, none the less. The S-100 bus machines stomped the ISA bus and you can still find this thing in industrial computing.

Next is the switching power supply. The old toroid coil and linear power supplies were 50-100 lbs. You could break a desk with those things and they had huge capacitors in them that were quite dangerous.

Ultimately, I still think that the Hercules Graphics adaptor changed the world. The original PC and all previous computers (except the origial Commodore PET and VIC) were monochrome text. The Color Graphics Adaptor (CGA) by IBM was grossly expensive and required a very expensive monitor, then the computer was barely usable for normal spreadsheet because you could barely read the text.

Hercules was really the launching point for Visicalc because you could use the 132 column mode and see more. Then Lotus 1-2-3 started doing graphs...gasp! Then Ashton-Tate made DB-III to hold more data than you could fit in 64K of RAM.

You can't talk about War Games, BBS's, nor any form of Internet without honoring the Hayes 103 Acoustic modem. There were earlier modem type thingy's, but Hayes moved the speed up and made 300 baud a global standard. Soon, Bulletin boards started popping up and most were running one or two line systems in someone's garage. They were expensive ($1-$2 per MINUTE) and you had to schedule your computer to keep trying to connect all night and grab your mail and news updates and hang up. A few started growing and Cactus Net (In Austin, I think) grew to 30 lines fueled by online roll playing games. (At $10 per hour!). Then Compu-Serve began business oriented services. Previously, some computer manufacturers operated their own BBS to download firmware and patches. Compu-serve moved the BBS and email into the business world... And the online world took root from there.

On hardware, don't forget the AST 6 Pack Plus. The mother of all add-in cards in a time when NOTHING was integrated onto the main CPU board and everything took up a slot. Serial port, Parallel port, a clock (yeah - you used to have to set the time and date every time you turned the machine on) and 384K of RAM. Good GOD! You couldn't even use all that at the time, so they gave you software to emulate a floppy in RAM.... as hard drives cost more than your car.

And where would we be without hard drives - Long live Seagate ! Somewhere I have the issue of PC Magazine magazine that introduced the FIRST hard drive for under $1000.

Publications - I loved Byte magazine - required reading to be a real geek. In those days, PC Magazine was the standard for acceptance. You didn't have a real product until it was feature in PC Magazine. Around 1982 or 1983, the industry started changing fast enough the every issue of PC Mag was more than 1000 pages! For a number of years, they even published bi-weekly in a 500+ page tome. I read EVERY word! TWICE.

Aaawwww - those were the days. FWIW, I graduated High school in 1985 and had to fight my way into the advanced placement computer class my senior year. They had a limit of 10 students and there were two Tandy Model 1 computers. For christmas that year, the school received three brand new Tandy TRS-80 computers. WOW! 64K of RAM and Dual Floppy.... It was HEAVEN.

 
I would have to say USB port. It has allowed for many useful things. Just imagine a computer without one. Your pc would be loaded with all sorts of ports. The USB has become the all in one multifunctional port.
 
Adlib sound card.

My 1st sound card. Back in the day of beeps, Adlib made a huge difference for PC gaming.

I still remember firing up the 1st game with the Adlib installed, Budokan, and listening to the awesome music (compared to the beeps anyways)
 
The window. Especially one that makes a spectacular shattering sound when throwing that *cough* Mac *cough* out the window.

Seriously? I think the power button on the computer is one of the most influential hardware components. One needs a way to turn a computer on. 😉
 
According to my favorite thespian, Johnny 5, star of the movie Short Circuit, the most influential hardware is in fact: Boobies.
 
Someone invented electricity???

The most influential hardware is the printing press. Without it, there won't be any modern society.
 
The monitor. Without a doubt. Back in the 'day, everything was printouts and punchcards. With the advent of the monitor, things like the keyboard could be translated over to the computer. This enabled extensive programming capabilities. This then enabled making visually-based computing. It's a given that this was a logical progression, but this is by and large the most influential piece of hardware ever to hit the market. The mouse, the personal computer, the graphics accelerator would all be impossible if people didn't decide to use their oscilloscope as a way to display text and save paper. Could you think about computers as being what they are today if they still operated without a visual interface beyond a printout? YEah, that's what I thought.
 
What's up with this new trend in the last few days of the first poster just rehashing the headline and linking to the article that is JUST ABOVE THE FIRST POST!!! I bet it's the same pasty-faced mom's basement dwelling loser with multiple forum names. Have something original to say or get ranked down into oblivion.
 
I see now... the first post is automatically generated by the article writer, ooh, nice feature. At least that gets rid of the "lookit me, I got the first post!!!111" spammers. I guess I should pay more attention. I didn't recognize the names till I got to one of Jane's articles. I apologize to you, you do have something original to say.
 
I have something that comes to mind, but it might not necessary qualify as a piece of hardware. I think that the miniaturization of electronic components was monumental. Without it, we would not have the small sleek laptops, cell phones, and digital cameras we have grown to not be able to live without.
 
For me the most influential hardware was the Amiga 500. It blew me away with it's graphics, the stereo sound(from the speakers in the monitor), it's ability to multitask, and this was at a time when Windows 3.1 was just coming out. While my PC using friends were saving up to buy a sound card, a graphics card, and Windows I was busy playing Shadow of the Beast. Out of the box it had everything I needed(except a hard drive and extra disk drives). This machine really inspired me to want to get into the computer graphics field.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.