Guest lecture on home computing (and the channels 5th birthday!) 

A big thank you to Shiv and Atharva from work who helped film the lecture. 👍

Ah thank you so much Jason for the kind words. I actually came here to watch this as part of my prep for a presentation for some kids this week and I knew I'd get some good tips from you on engaging the audience and keeping everyones attention which you totally did. Well done on a great talk and happy 5 years!

Congrats on the 5 year milestone, Jase! That was a really enjoyable lecture. I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of the kids in there decided to spark up an emulator after that lecture and start poking around the whole retrocomputing thing.

Congratulations on 5 years from the land of the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum. You don't often see content about retro-computing presented in a lecture format so this was a refreshing change. Thanks for sharing it with the wider world!

Good work Jason. I can't believe it's been 5 years, that's a huge achievement in and of itself! On a personal note, you were one of the people who inspired me to start my own channel and I've always had a lot of respect for what you do. I appreciate RU-vid has its ups and downs but you've managed to be consistent (well, consistent enough 😉) for all these years and that's impressive. Keep up the good work mate.

I really loved everything about this video Jason. I *get* your comments about detail levels. I used to do this exact lecture 2000-2006 during my post-grad years. I really really (!) loved watching it. You did a brilliant job. In the end in my era, we ended up having "an additional afternoon informal demonstration and chat" where people could come and after a tour of the systems have a bit of a bash on them with some basic instructions for each machine. It was though a huge amount of effort and the computer club helped. It makes me really appreciate how effort RMC's show'n'tell gallery people can visit must take to maintain day-in and out. I think you kept 'just' enough detail for the young ones.. it's so incredibly hard not to detract and go down rabbit holes with corporate history and..and ..and. It's something I struggle with. I hope you don't ever stop youtubing, because it's something I really look forward to. You've inspired me to get going again with my ridiculous collection after an eight year hiatus due to personal reasons. It's great. A question.. Have you ever considered branching out from the home and small computer area into minicomputers, old mainframe gear (and emulation), desktop and deskside workstations (SUN/SGI/IBM/NeXT/Fujitsu/Canon/$etc) ? Fair enough if you don't have the interest. Best Wishes. Al.

Mate, your enthusiasm and love of the subject and its why I keep watching and it permeates through your videos! When at Uni we had MS-DOS 3.3 with EGA graphics running an ECAD program called EEDesigner which had a custom GUI interface everybody hated. When it came to the custom VLSI design module we got to use the Apollo 9000 UNIX work stations with Mentor Graphics and SOLO1400 - 1.4 micron process, none of this nanometer stuff! Looking forward to the next 5 years over in WA 😉

Happy Birthday Jason. Your channel has come a long way in 5 years. Keep up the great work and content!

You just described my love of old computers ☺️

The lecture was lovely! My interest in retro-computing comes from the fact that I wasn't even born when most of these were on the market. I wasn't around to experience the Amiga in its heyday, but I certainly was in the right spot to adopt and resurrect my A500 in 2019/2020; and I can definitely enjoy it in a retrospective, retro-futurist fashion.

Early home computing was an amazing and a very unique time in human history. Rarely before in human endeavour did such an advanced technology become so inexpensive so quickly to end up in the hands of kids/teenagers. I feel extremely blessed to have lived through the 80's and the rest of it. Thank you for documenting the history through UC and your channel.

Thank you Jason for all the great content. I'm really looking forward to the next five years of Mr Lurch's Things.

I'm glad you get a chance to educate some of these youngsters. Even here on RU-vid there's people who talk as if IBM compatible was the only game in town when, as someone who grew up in the '80s and '90s, it wasn't true in the slightest. You go into anyone's home prior to 1995, and if they had a computer, it wasn't an IBM or compatible unless it was their dad's business machine or they were absolutely loaded. It would've most likely been a C64 or Amstrad CPC, with the older kids having Amigas and STs. Keeping the memories of these machines alive is such a great thing to do.

Great presentation. I like how you took it full circle regarding the hobbyist angle with soc's such as the Raspberry Pi. In the early days when pc's weren't so common, these machines were in some ways magical with regards to the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. Having a GPIO bus like the Pi has is an invitation to create things

Brilliant. I went from a ZX, to Apple Ice, Mac128, many crappy Macs, now an M1 iMac. Still have a modern ZX. Congrats on the 5 years and almost 10,000. I got excited when one of my videos just went past 30 views. It's a journey.

A really enjoyable lecture. My high school in 1993 still had a lab of Microbees, all networked via an Apple II (I think) with it's lid off. It was already WAYYYY out of date then. My Atari ST was already out of date, everything was going PC, yet we had this labe of Microbees. Without fail, every lesson, one would smoke out. By 1994 they were all chucked in a shed. And I remember the craziness that surrounded those jellybean iMacs - they were even on Home and Away!

Congratulations on the anniversary. And Important for the younger generation to appreciate a little of where the modern kit came from, so great lecture.

Congratulations Jason, every one of your subscribers very well earned 👍👍👍

Don't you lecture me! And also, thanks for lecturing me. Just like the previous one these are always good watching. And happy 5 year channel anniversary, do we get to have cake or something?

Congratulations on the milestone. Really enjoyed the lecture and glad the BEEB got lots of well deserved mentions. It’s a machine close to my heart having used them at school here in London growing up.

This is amazing. I remember all of the changes that happened from the first Apple 2’s we used in kindergarten in the mid 80’s to the first 386 we had to how fast that was obsoleted and the quantum leap that Pentium and windows 95 brought into the world. Plus well the internet explosion of the mid 90s.

Thanks for the time, money and effort you put on this channel Jason! Your work is much appreciated!!! Two thumbs up!

Congrats on the 5 year anniversary from Canada. Best wishes for many more years and subscribers.

Congratulations Mr Lurch for thoroughly enjoyable and informative videos over the last 5 years! I watched the whole lecture, and it was very well put together and educational. It sounds like the students really appreciated it, too! Onward and upward!

Congrats on 5 Years! You have done an excellent job with your channel. Looking forward to what the future holds.

The IBM PC had a major influence on the PC industry ahead of the introduction of the Atari ST, so much in fact that the BIOS mapping of the Atari ST was modeled on the BIOS of the IBM PC. This had the effect of making it easier to port programs and games between the platforms a bit easier, and they did end up sharing many software titles in common.

This is so rewarding to listen to. Thanks so much for putting it online.

Congrats on your milestone achievement mate, well done. Hope the next five are just as awesome :)

That was great, thanks for recording it! And congratulations on 5 years!

Congrats on the 5 years mate. Come a long long way since all night LAN parties upstairs in Shoalhaven Internet! Still remember the MRTG graph of the 2mbit internet connection being maxed out for 48 hours! 😁

Congratulations on your 5th anniversary. Your videos are always worth watching. When I was at school we had 4 computers! An Apple II, A TRS-80 L1, an Australian computer called a "Minimap" (which I've never been able to find any information on since), and a "Canola" which was basically a programmable calculator with punch cards. That was the "lab". All great fun though, and many lunchtimes spent coding. My first experience with a "lab full" of personal computers was at CCAE (Bld 10) when they bought heaps of Burroughs B25's. A great machine. Cheers,

Happy 5th RU-vid year Mr Lurch... Keep up the great work and your lecture was amazing and a true treat for the younger generations. :)

Thanks for sharing the presentation, and happy 5th channel anniversary!

Well done Jason. I've done a similar talk at my kids primary school before. Took in a ZX Spectrum, Raspberry PI and about 10 Desktop PC's running Linux. Took them through the history then setup a network with PC's and got them to spin up 1 line Python web servers. The Spectrum went down the best though!

Thanks for all the great videos and as far as taking your time to share your knowledge with young folks, that's going above and beyond. Well done, sir.

Congratulations on achieving 5 years on RU-vid, Jason! Tbh, the one video from your channel that still hits close to home for me is the "R U OK Day" video. I still wish that there was an equivalently themed day here in the USA. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (types 1 & 2), a "learning disability", ADHD and I came to realize more recently that I may be on the autism spectrum. What a wonderful little cocktail of fun in my head... Not!! I'm trying to get the help I need for all of this, but living in rural America makes it sooo difficult. I hope that your mental health isn't currently an issue. I always look forward to a video from you because I think that I can relate to your struggles more than other creators. I'm already looking for the next video. lol

Great update to the original, Jason. Happy birthday!

Happy 5th anniversary! I've only been subbed for a year or so but would watch some of your videos before that and I thought you were more established than that, maybe 10 years.

So cool! 5 years? how time flies! Hey amazing lecture, you're a great presenter. I'd like to see more of these, if you happen to do more! Cheers from Argentina!

Came here because I saw you at the UC lecture. Keen to look in to more of you videos!

Congrats on the 5 years and I've always enjoyed every single one of the videos! :) Thanks for making them and thanks for sharing the lecture, very nice.

Very nice lecture, especially for the perspective it may give the those kids. I used to have a similar role a couple of years ago at my uni and was tasked as well to give the same kind of talk. That was well before my newfound love for the retro machines. I was certainly not as good and as entertaining as you! Keep up the good work!

Congrats on the milestone, and I think you did a fine job covering the overall timeline and mentioning various noteworthy points along the way.

Congrats on the 5 years, and great lecture! So many great machines. As it turns out, I've been in Oregon for the last couple of weeks (coming back to AU this coming Friday), but freight is SO expensive that all I've managed to "collect" is a Vic-20 that I can bring back on the plane with me :-(

This was great stuff mate. Lucky students having your incite imho. So many keen young PC users actually don't have a clue about the history. And a shocking number of keen "gamers" have no clue what goes on inside the machine they use daily. Great work! Watched the entire lecture. Do I have to pay student fees now?

That was a nice trip through memory lane Jason, well done! I think we all collect vintage computers for the same reason: they are important bits of our computing history and they deserve to be kept preserved. Well done with the channel, I really enjoy your content!

You are an extraordinary producer. Here's to you! #Cheers

Great stuff! Congrats on the 5th year Jase!

Awesome lecture and congratulations on 5th anniversary 🎉

Congratulation on your anniversary. Always look forward to your videos 👍

Congrats on the 5 years, looking forward to seeing you in the next one! ;)

Your videos are great - very glad I found your channel a view years ago :) Best wishes from the UK

congrats on the anniversary and thanks for all the videos.

Love watching your channel. Keep up the great work. -Mark.

Found your channel via this week in retro, good channel and keep up the good work.

Only recently subscribed, but have been enjoying. Congrats on 5 years. :)

Amazing Jason. Five years had passed !!! And we're still here...and the following years to come. Your channel and personality really engage the audience. Keep the way you are ;-)

Wish we had this at school, from New Zealand :)

Never knew you worked for the uni! One of my best childhood memories was coding basic on my mates c64, had to ride my push bike to the library just to get the textbooks. Kids these days are so spoilt for choice they can never understand what it was like back then without the internet.

Great stuff. Here's to the next 5 years!

Happy birthday man, really well done!

So, every time we watch you on RU-vid we have to click like and subscrive and then applause.

Great video, Mr Lurch!!

Great lecture! Very informative and in a way that folks of this age can understand. As someone who was also IT manager for 20 years in Universities, but in the US, great job!

"The government decided..." is usually the death knell of any industry.

Congrats on 5 years!

Congrats on the five years Jason! I'm glad i stumbled upon your channel and stuck around for the ride. This lecture was great, it really shows that you are overflowing with interesting information on the subject and are really passionate about this stuff.

Yes.. it’s really entertaining… luv it..❤

Just to give another positive and constructive comment: This was great! ;-) You are charismatic and enthusiastic and it's a pleasure to watch you tell stories. I would have watched this even if it wasn't about vintage computers.

This was excellent!

👍 Cool lecture, thanks! 👏🏻

Great lecture. Will share this with my "normal friends" :D

Congrats!

Couple of notes: Apple Extended Keyboard II for the win! 😉 And secondly: Microsoft Office was released on Mac (Jun 19 1989) before it was released on Windows (Oct 1 1990). 😜 At that stage Office or lets say Word was not yet very popular. It all came a bit later when Windows became more usable (Win 3.0). Before that Wordperfect was much more popular among PC-users - at least in Europe.

Aww the TEC-1 is a baby compared to the other SBC you showed. It didn't rock up until the early eighties - bit of poetic license me thinks ;-) Great presentation.

Very nice lecture :) I enjoyed it a lot.

"And, lo, Steve Jobs said, 'Let there be iThings'" ... ;) Thoroughly enjoyed the video & lecture! /Brett

Amazing

10:48: Hypothesis: I think a lot of the fascination even today with these old machines is their simplicity. Modern computers are so complex that it's very difficult to fully understand everything. Both in software and in hardware. In contrast, these early computer are much easier to repair and to program. You can see that, for instance, in the game development. Back then, a lot of the commercially successful top-of-the-line games were made by only a handful of people, some by just one guy in his garage. Nowadays, AAA video games require hundreds of people and easily cost tens of millions in development. But you don't need an army of programmers and artists to wrestle 8 measly bits and a maximum of 64K of ram. It's kind of like with vintage cars where a moderately skilled layperson can still repair everything with just basic tools and doesn't need specialized equipment, proprietary tools and software, and double-ultra-secret documentation just to get to the spark plugs. Congrats on the anniversary!

And just to 'keep it real'.. I've got some new high end servers arriving in my lab, hopefully in May (if the shipment isn't delayed *again*). Few TB of memory, more cores than I can count, and 4 x 25G network connectivity, backed by All Flash fibre channel array. First thing I'm going to do with them?... Run up a Quake 3 server and have a little LAN party in the office!

Good video, Sir.

Congratulations...

That was actually a very good lecture and I was able to follow along very well with it. I love the sound of the crickets in the background there. Also, with respect, what was the occasional ting ting ting noise that occurred during your talk?

What was the 'Bonking' noise ?

Quite a comprehensive lecture to fit into 40-ish minutes. I would however like to point out a few factual errors. Firstly; when Microsoft bailed out Apple, they were already producing a version of Microsoft Office for Mac. What happened, was that they committed to continue producing new versions of Office, ensuring the Mac wouldn't become completely irrelevant for business use. It could also be mentioned that Microsoft wasn't being entirely altruistic, as they were already under investigation by the U.S. Government for anticompetitive practices. If Apple had gone out of business, Microsoft would become a monopoly and faced almost certain break-up like Standard Oil and Bell Telephone before it. Secondly; Apple moving to the M1 processor isn't the biggest change. In fact it's not even the first time they changed processor architecture. They had already moved from Motorola 68k to PowerPC and later to Intel x86. So, in that sense they are already well versed in making this type of change. It's not even the first time Apple was involved in designing processors. The PowerPC architecture was a collaboration between Apple, IBM and Motorola. Hopefully this information helps a bit.

What, not a single question? Man, we're doomed... 😂

Need a new lecture about the history of 3dfx cards from the first to the latest voodoo5500, all cards quake tested

Congrats!