I sometimes wonder what the alternate reality where semiconductor advances ended in the eighties would look like.
We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation?
One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.
cosmic_cheese 52 minutes ago [-]
For me the interesting alternate reality is where CPUs got stuck in the 200-400mhz range for speed, but somehow continued to become more efficient.
It’s kind of the ideal combination in some ways. It’s fast enough to competently run a nice desktop GUI, but not so fast that you can get overly fancy with it. Eventually you’d end up OSes that look like highly refined versions of System 7.6/Mac OS 8 or Windows 2000, which sounds lovely.
APIs in a B2B style would likely be much more prevalent, less advertising (yay!) and less money in the internet so more like the original internet I guess.
Show that we could have had quality desktops and mobile devices
bluGill 2 hours ago [-]
I remember using the web on 25mhz computers. It ran about as fast as it does today with a couple ghz. Our internet was a lot slower than as well.
peterfirefly 1 hours ago [-]
It crashed a lot more, the fonts (and screens) were uglier, and Javascript was a lot slower. The good thing was that there was very little Javascript.
graemep 9 minutes ago [-]
I cannot recall crashes being a problem.
szundi 11 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
romperstomper 10 minutes ago [-]
> One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.
Maybe they could, as ASICs in some laboratories :)
kaashif 2 hours ago [-]
I don't think there's really a credible alternate reality where Moore's law just stops like that when it was in full swing.
The ones that "could have happened" IMO are the transistor never being invented, or even mechanical computers becoming much more popular much earlier (there's a book about this alternate reality, The Difference Engine).
I don't think transistors being invented was that certain to happen, we could've got better vacuum tubes, or maybe something else.
jhbadger 2 hours ago [-]
As someone has brought up, Transputers (an early parallel architecture) was a thing in the 1980s because people thought CPU speed was reaching a plateau. They were kind of right (which is why modern CPUs are multicore) but were a decade or so too early so transputers failed in the market.
vardump 2 hours ago [-]
When MC68030 (1986) was introduced, I remember reading how computers probably won't get much faster, because PCB signal integrity would not allow further improvements.
People that time were not actually sure how long the improvements would go on.
PetahNZ 2 hours ago [-]
We did have web browsers, I had Internet Explorer on Windows 3.1, 33mhz 8mb RAM.
phwbikm 1 hours ago [-]
I still remember the Mosaic from NCSA. Internet in a box.
drzaiusx11 1 hours ago [-]
Probably was "Windows 3.11, For Workgroups" as iirc Windows 3.1 didn't ship with a TCP/IP stack
dpe82 57 minutes ago [-]
There was a sockets API though (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsock) and IIRC we all used Trumpet Winsock on Windows 3.1 with our dialup connections. But could have been 3.11 - my memory is a bit hazy.
vidarh 41 minutes ago [-]
There are web browsers for 8-bits today, and there were web browsers for e.g. Amiga's with 68000 CPU's from 1979 back in the day.
JdeBP 2 hours ago [-]
Transputers. Lots and lots and lots of transputers. (-:
And imagine if telecom had topped out around ISDN somewhere, with perhaps OC-3 (155Mbps) for the bleeding-fastest network core links.
We'd probably get MP3 but not video to any great or compelling degree. Mostly-text web, perhaps more gopher-like. Client-side stuff would have to be very compact, I wonder if NAPLPS would've taken off.
Screen reader software would probably love that timeline.
iberator 2 hours ago [-]
you are wrong. Windows 3.11 era used CPUs with like 33mhz cpu, and yet we had TONS of graphical applications. Including web browsers, Photoshop, CAD, Excel and instant messangers
Only thing that killed web for old computers is JAVASCRIPT.
vidarh 46 minutes ago [-]
I don't see how this contradicts any of what they said, unless they've edited their comment.
You're right we had graphical apps, but we did also have very little video. CuSeeMe existed - video conferencing would've still been a thing, but with limited resolution due to bandwidth constraints. Video in general was an awful low res mess and would have remained so if most people were limited to ISDN speeds.
While there were still images on the web, the amount of graphical flourishes were still heavily bandwidth limited.
The bandwidth limit they proposed would be a big deal even if CPU speeds continued to increase (it could only mitigate so much with better compression).
cluckindan 2 hours ago [-]
Not JavaScript. Facebook.
j16sdiz 2 hours ago [-]
Netscape 2 support javascript on 16-bit Windows 3.1
phwbikm 1 hours ago [-]
I have a Hayes 9600kbps modem for web surfing.
drob518 29 minutes ago [-]
Depends how pervasive OC3 would have gotten. A 1080p video stream is only about 7 Mbps today.
rm30 49 minutes ago [-]
I remember when I went from 286 to 486dx2, the difference was impressive, able to run a lot of graphical applications smoothly.
Ironically, now I'm using an ESP32-S3, 10x more powerful, just to run Iot devices.
dheera 24 minutes ago [-]
> Would we still get web browsers?
Yes, just that they would not run millions of lines of JavaScript for some social media tracking algorithm, newsletter signup, GDPR popup, newsletter popup, ad popup, etc. and you'd probably just be presented with the text only and at best a relevant static image or two. The web would be a place to get long-form information, sort of a massive e-book, not a battleground of corporations clamoring for 5 seconds of attention to make $0.05 off each of 500 million people's doom scrolling while on the toilet.
Web browsers existed back then, the web in the days of NCSA Mosaic was basically exactly the above
intrasight 2 hours ago [-]
Well, we wouldn't have ads and tracking.
vidarh 39 minutes ago [-]
Prodigy launched online ads from the 1980s. AOL as well.
HotWired (Wired's first online venture) sold their first banner ads in 1994.
DoubleClick was founded in 1995.
Neither were limited to 90's hardware:
Web browsers were available for machines like the Amiga, launched in 1985, and today you can find people who have made simple browsers run on 8-bit home computers like the C64.
peterfirefly 1 hours ago [-]
If such an alternate reality has internet of any speed above "turtle in a mobility scooter" then there for sure would be ads and tracking.
p_ing 44 minutes ago [-]
The young WWW had garish flashing banner ads.
zahlman 1 minutes ago [-]
> 46K RAM
Not 64?
rustyhancock 2 hours ago [-]
Stunning work! Astounding progress since its under 3 months old from PCB to this result.
Funnily enough I've been musing this past month would I better separate work if I had a limited Amiga A1200 PC for anything other than work! This would nicely fit.
Please do submit to HackaDay I'm sure they'd salivate over this and it's amazing when you have the creator in the comments. Even if just to explain no a 555 wouldn't quite achieve the same result. No not even a 556...
guidoism 20 minutes ago [-]
> Yes, I know I'm crazy, but
Any time I see this phrase I know these are my people.
readme 12 minutes ago [-]
Crazy for wanting a computer that's actually yours.
I believe there will come a day where people who can do this will be selling these on the black market for top dollar.
ted_dunning 1 hours ago [-]
I love the super clunky retro esthetic!
Takes me back to a time when a laptop would encourage the cat to share a couch because of the amount of heat it emitted.
Amazingly quick as well. Pointless projects are so much better and more fun when they don't take forever!
drob518 27 minutes ago [-]
Brilliant! I love it. Bonus points for using the eWoz monitor. It’s giving me the itch to build it.
I implemented "multitasking" (well, two-tasking) between a BASIC program and native code on a Z80, using a "supervisor" driven by hardware interrupts. There's just so much you can pack in a 4MHz CPU with a 4-bit ALU (yes, not 8-bit). It worked for soft-realtime tasks, but would be a rather weak desktop.
We might have had to manage with just a few MB of RAM and efficient ARM cores running at maybe 30 MHz or so. Would we still get web browsers? How about the rest of the digital transformation?
One thing I do know for sure. LLMs would have been impossible.
It’s kind of the ideal combination in some ways. It’s fast enough to competently run a nice desktop GUI, but not so fast that you can get overly fancy with it. Eventually you’d end up OSes that look like highly refined versions of System 7.6/Mac OS 8 or Windows 2000, which sounds lovely.
Both the hardware and the forth software.
APIs in a B2B style would likely be much more prevalent, less advertising (yay!) and less money in the internet so more like the original internet I guess.
GUIs like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SymbOS
And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_OS
Show that we could have had quality desktops and mobile devices
Maybe they could, as ASICs in some laboratories :)
The ones that "could have happened" IMO are the transistor never being invented, or even mechanical computers becoming much more popular much earlier (there's a book about this alternate reality, The Difference Engine).
I don't think transistors being invented was that certain to happen, we could've got better vacuum tubes, or maybe something else.
People that time were not actually sure how long the improvements would go on.
We'd probably get MP3 but not video to any great or compelling degree. Mostly-text web, perhaps more gopher-like. Client-side stuff would have to be very compact, I wonder if NAPLPS would've taken off.
Screen reader software would probably love that timeline.
Only thing that killed web for old computers is JAVASCRIPT.
You're right we had graphical apps, but we did also have very little video. CuSeeMe existed - video conferencing would've still been a thing, but with limited resolution due to bandwidth constraints. Video in general was an awful low res mess and would have remained so if most people were limited to ISDN speeds.
While there were still images on the web, the amount of graphical flourishes were still heavily bandwidth limited.
The bandwidth limit they proposed would be a big deal even if CPU speeds continued to increase (it could only mitigate so much with better compression).
Ironically, now I'm using an ESP32-S3, 10x more powerful, just to run Iot devices.
Yes, just that they would not run millions of lines of JavaScript for some social media tracking algorithm, newsletter signup, GDPR popup, newsletter popup, ad popup, etc. and you'd probably just be presented with the text only and at best a relevant static image or two. The web would be a place to get long-form information, sort of a massive e-book, not a battleground of corporations clamoring for 5 seconds of attention to make $0.05 off each of 500 million people's doom scrolling while on the toilet.
Web browsers existed back then, the web in the days of NCSA Mosaic was basically exactly the above
HotWired (Wired's first online venture) sold their first banner ads in 1994.
DoubleClick was founded in 1995.
Neither were limited to 90's hardware:
Web browsers were available for machines like the Amiga, launched in 1985, and today you can find people who have made simple browsers run on 8-bit home computers like the C64.
Not 64?
Funnily enough I've been musing this past month would I better separate work if I had a limited Amiga A1200 PC for anything other than work! This would nicely fit.
Please do submit to HackaDay I'm sure they'd salivate over this and it's amazing when you have the creator in the comments. Even if just to explain no a 555 wouldn't quite achieve the same result. No not even a 556...
Any time I see this phrase I know these are my people.
I believe there will come a day where people who can do this will be selling these on the black market for top dollar.
Takes me back to a time when a laptop would encourage the cat to share a couch because of the amount of heat it emitted.
Amazingly quick as well. Pointless projects are so much better and more fun when they don't take forever!
https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-pocket-reform
What I really would love: modern (continously built) modern (less than 10 years old tech) devices ryf-cetified.