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The circles of life

Post #: 322
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2026-04-06 00:13:46.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: computer history

The most magical moment of my life was on Christmas Day, 1979. I was seven years old, and our family was visiting Uncle Allan’s house in Burnaby. I had been playing on the Heathkit H-89 computer for hours when my dad said it was time to go home. I pleaded with him for more time with my uncle’s magical machine. I still remember him smiling at me and explaining that what I had been obsessed with all evening was in fact my computer.

I loved that computer to bits, even as the years went on and technology started to pass it by. It was a great computer for text, with its sharp, 80-column white phosphor screen and clear upper and lower-case characters. But it did not have bitmapped graphics. Instead, you had a special graphics mode, where lower-case letters became various symbols: lines, boxes, triangles, and so forth. It was enough to make simple games, but I yearned for control over individual pixels.

In 1983, my uncle was visiting our house in Gibsons, and he brought with him an amazing new computer that he had built from a kit. It was a Heath/Zenith H-120, an impressive battle station of a machine. It had not one but TWO microprocessors: an Intel 8085 to run 8-bit software like CP/M, and a sparkling new 8088 that ran 16-bit applications like CP/M-86 and Z-DOS. The latter was a version of Microsoft MS-DOS customized for the Heath/Zenith 100 and 120 computers. It was not an IBM compatible machine. It was superior to IBM and the clones’ offerings. And it was beautiful:

For one thing, it had way better graphics modes. To make any graphics at all on an IBM PC in 1983 you had to buy a CGA card, which could manage 640 x 200 pixels but only in black and white, or 320 x 200 with four hideous colors. Usually they were cyan, magenta, white, and black. Clever programmers could swap those with red, green, yellow, and black, but that was only slightly better.

The H-120, however, had 640 x 225 bitmapped graphics in 8 glorious colors. This was so much better than CGA that early versions of AutoCAD were developed specifically for these computers.

Z-DOS shipped with Z-BASIC, a version of Microsoft BASIC tailored for the Heath/Zenith 100 and 120. It had built-in commands to draw, with pixel-perfect accuracy, points, lines, and circles.

I only had this wonderful computer for a day, so I didn’t have a chance to get too deep into manipulating individual pixels to make bitmap designs. But oh boy, did I have fun with circles.

Seeing those circles pop up in any location just mesmerized me. It was like my Heathkit H-89, only faster, and with added pixel magic.

I was so taken with drawing circles that, once my uncle had gone and taken his new computer with him, I tried my best to make a circle program in BASIC on my character-mode-only H-89. It worked. Sort of.

I could place character-mode circles in different part of the screen, in black, white, grey, and outline, in five discrete sizes. When I ran the program again in an emulator, I realized that I never even bothered to finish the size five grey circle. It was just too disappointing compared to the magic of the H-120’s beautiful pixels.

Anyway, that was it for circles for me. At least for another forty-three years or so.

In the last few months, I’ve been working on a secret project. It’s hard to even explain what it is. I wanted to blend together my fond memories of childhood computing with my more recent love of the LISP programming language. I wanted something that was easy and fun for making games, just like BASIC was all those decades ago.

The work is progressing slowly. I had to learn all sorts of nonsense about C and how pointers worked. I had to learn how to parse arbitrarily-complicated lists into pairs of cells that all pointed to each other. Many times the whole effort seemed too difficult, too impossible to even attempt. But I kept going.

Last week, I added a new instruction to my graphical LISP programming engine. It creates circles.

I feel like a little kid again, wondering at the power of pixels, amazed at what computers can do.

It’s a good feeling.

My History of the Internet (Part 3) is on Ars Technica!

Post #: 314
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2025-09-22 15:20:49.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: internet, computer history

The saga is complete! In this final installment, I discuss how the Internet changed post-dotcom collapse, explore how Google works and how it rose to power, and discuss the rise of social media and smartphones.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/a-history-of-the-internet-part-3-the-rise-of-the-user/

My History of the Internet (Part 2) is on Ars Technica!

Post #: 312
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2025-06-10 16:07:22.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: internet, computer history

The second part of my History of the Internet is up on Ars Technica! You can read it here:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/a-history-of-the-internet-part-2-the-high-tech-gold-rush-begins/

It was super fun writing this article. As I was firing up emulators for old computer hardware and operating systems and installing old browsers, it felt like I was getting pulled back in time. Back to the exciting and tumultuous 1990s! Come and join me!

My History of the Internet (Part 1) is on Ars Technica!

Post #: 310
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2025-04-21 15:44:50.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: internet, computer history

The first of my three-part article on the history of the Internet is up on Ars Technica!

It's getting some great reviews, including a video review from Vint Cerf, the father of the Internet and co-creator of TCP/IP. Which is really cool. Check it out:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19htTKvmifeHH3mTj6fw5rmWAhA19O-bJ/view

Part 2 is on its way!

A logo for micro-history.com

Post #: 289
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2022-04-20 20:16:36.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: Computers Microhistory

This is a little something I whipped up on paper and then made real with a great little program called Affinity Designer.

I started with a stylized representation of an old 1970s all-in-one computer, something like a TRS-80 Model III, or my own Heathkit H-89.

Then I replaced the floppy disk drive on the right with a stylized book, to indicate the "history" portion of the site. Micro, History? Get it?

The orange color is just a color I liked and decided to theme the site around. No personal computers in the 1970s and 1980s were orange, but maybe that's the point. I tried the logo in more boring colors like grey and beige, but it just wasn't as cool.

And cool was what I was going for.

Comments (1)

The case for preserving microcomputer history

Post #: 288
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2022-03-31 15:15:42.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: Computers Microhistory

The term “Microcomputer” was born in the 1970s, along with computers it described. It distinguished these machines from “minicomputers”, which were the size of refrigerators, and “mainframes”, which were the size of rooms. Sometimes entire floors.

But while minicomputers were just smaller mainframes, microcomputers were a completely different thing. Banks and governments used mainframes, as they still do (in some cases) today. Minis were cheaper than mainframes, so they could be used by smaller organizations, like universities. Both types of computers were designed for, and sold to, institutions.

But microcomputers were for people.

The companies that made mainframes and minis couldn’t understand why any individual would want to own a computer. And the folks who made micros happen were people who would do anything to have their own personal computer. So when Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I at his desk at Hewlett-Packard on his own time, for fun, he was required by his contract to offer HP the chance to own it.

The HP manager declined, and the rest was history.

Today, we all carry, at all times, a nanocomputer, a super tiny and powerful computer in our pocket that is entirely ours, and is typically called a “smartphone”. Smartphones aren’t phones at all. They are smaller microcomputers, in exactly the same way that minis were smaller mainframes. They all connect to a massive global network of even more powerful microcomputers that all talk to each other constantly.

How did we get from there to here?

The story of the personal computer, the microcomputer, has been told at various times by various people. Some of these stories are in books that are now out of print and on television shows that can no longer be found on anything but faded, used VHS tapes.

And some of the folks who were around at the beginning of this revolution are starting to pass on. In just the last couple of years, we’ve lost Clive Sinclair, who gave the world the ZX81 and Spectrum, and John Roach, the driving force behind the TRS-80, among others.

There are many stories of this time that remain untold. There weren’t just a couple of microcomputer companies in the late 1970s. There were over fifty.. I know this because I counted them once, as a kid, looking at a single issue of Computers and Electronics. Even back then I knew this number was unsustainable. The industry exploded and companies rose and fell with frightening speed. Many fortunes were made and lost.

So who is going to tell all these stories?

I have my own experience in this space. Thanks to Ars Technica, I was able to complete my own dream of telling the complete History of the Amiga. This took me years, but it was some of the most exciting writing I’ve ever done.

Now, I want to do the same thing, but for all the other computers. I also want to do this on a new website that I’m building myself.

It’s a big project, and I’m going to need a lot of help. It also won’t happen right away. I’m going to take the time to prepare the groundwork first.

If you’d like to know more, and you’d like to sign up to be notified when the alpha of the site goes live, just head over to micro-history.com and sign up.

I’ll see you there!

Comments (2)

Breathing new life into an old computer for $50

Post #: 233
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2015-01-30 11:32:25.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: Computers

I have a collection of old computers that seem to be approaching the end of their natural lives. The specs on one of them will seem familiar: a Core 2 Duo CPU, Windows XP, 2 GB of RAM, and a 19 inch 4:3 LCD monitor. Lots of people have computers like this. They are about eight to nine years old, and there is nothing particularly wrong with them, but these days they seem sluggish and ancient. They often get confined to closets or the recycling bin. However, there is a way to revive computers of this era, and it doesn’t cost that much. This is a story of how I gave my wife essentially a brand new computer for just over $50.

The first stop was Memory Express to pick up a brand new SSD. I asked the store clerk for a recommendation, and he told me about the Kingston SSD Now 300 series. The low-end, 120 GB version was just over $50, so I picked it up. It has good reviews and I like supporting a company that also supports professional Starcraft teams.

The next choice I had to make was what operating system to install. Windows 8 was right out, because my wife (like many people) has seen and dislikes the new user interface. Windows 7 might be a good choice, but getting a legal copy is expensive, and it’s an old and outdated operating system at this point. In the old days, Windows was a necessary choice because not many apps were web-based, and Linux distributions were still a bit finnicky to get going. Things are different now. But the most popular Linux distro, Ubuntu, has a very unusual user interface, so it wouldn’t be a good choice either.

I settled on Linux Mint 17, with the Xfce interface. It is the most lightweight clone of the standard Windows desktop, so it runs really well on older computers with limited amounts of RAM. It’s also familiar to anyone who has run Windows XP or 7. In fact, you can customize the bitmap image for the start button (and add the word "Start" to it). This makes it look a lot like good old XP, while simultaneously being a modern, secure operating system.

Linux Mint 17 comes pre-installed with Libre Office, which is a great clone of Microsoft Office and has an interface that is similar to Office’s standard menu and toolbar layout from 1995 through 2007. It also reads and writes Office documents seamlessly. Aside from using web applications, being able to write documents and spreadsheets was an important use case for my wife. She likes Libre Office better than the new Office "ribbon" interface that was introduced in 2007, and was using it on Windows XP before I upgraded, so this was a pretty seamless transition.

The only missing element for moving this computer to Linux would be gaming, but as my wife isn’t a gamer (apart from a few apps on her iPad) so that wasn’t an issue.

To install Linux Mint, I disconnected the existing two spinning hard drives and plugged the Kingston SSD into a single SATA port, then burned the .ISO to a DVD-R (I could have used a USB thumb drive, but it would have been a bit trickier, plus it’s been ages since I burned a DVD!) and booted from the shiny new disc. I let the installer format the entire SSD and install the operating system. Only once it was completely installed and running did I plug in the two drives again, setting them as secondary drives in the BIOS. Mint detected them instantly and I was able to copy over all the old documents on the drives to the new SSD. Having done this, I was able to disconnect the drives again to save power when running the computer.

It’s amazing how much faster this machine feels now. Launching LibreOffice takes less than half a second, compared to the half a minute it used to. It looks and feels like a brand new machine, and the price ($50 for the SSD and $0 for Linux Mint) couldn’t be beat.

Comments (8)

Half an Operating System - the triumph and tragedy of OS/2

Post #: 219
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2013-11-25 10:47:19.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: Computers, Operating Systems

Writing is a funny thing.

As a young nerd, I was fascinated by personal computers and operating systems, and became a huge advocate of a funny operating system called OS/2. I spent a lot of time arguing about its merits on Usenet forums like comp.os.os2.advocacy. I moved on to Windows 95 when it was released, but always had a soft spot in my heart for IBM’s failed OS.

Twenty years later, I felt like the need to tell the story was welling up inside me until I was about to burst. I wrote the entire first draft in two days. Today, the article has been published on Ars Technica.

So did I take 20 years to write it, or two days? I guess it depends on your point of view. But I’m glad I wrote it.

What was the deal with OS/2 anyway?

Post #: 193
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2013-06-27 20:56:27.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: Computers, Operating Systems

A lot of people today have some sort of vague idea about what OS/2 was, why it existed, and why it failed. Why did IBM fail to unseat Microsoft Windows? The reasons are many, but mostly it boils down to a very successful big computer company being afraid of disruptive change.

IBM hired Microsoft to write OS/2 because IBM wasn’t confident in writing PC software. But IBM still had control of the design of OS/2, even though Microsoft was writing the code. The 386 chip had been released in 1985, but IBM wanted to write OS/2 to support the older 286 chip instead, a chip that Bill Gates had called "brain-damaged". IBM didn’t want to code for the 386 because they were worried it was too powerful, and would cut into their profitable AS/400 minicomputer business.

So if Gates didn’t like the 286, why did he let Microsoft go along with IBM’s plan? Because at the time IBM bestrode the PC industry like a Colossus. IBM was the "bear" and you were either riding the bear or you were under the bear, so Microsoft was going to ride the bear as long as they had to. If that meant dealing with IBM’s strange decisions, so be it. IBM made the rules for the PC industry, and Microsoft followed. Microsoft owed everything they had to the IBM PC and the clones that followed.

But Microsoft was smart enough to see that the winds were changing. IBM couldn’t hold back progress forever, and the decision to design OS/2 around the 286 meant that legacy DOS apps had to be run in the "penalty box", a compatibility box that could only run one app at a time and didn’t work with many apps anyway. (The 386, in contrast, had a ’virtual 8088’ mode that made multitasking many DOS apps fairly trivial).

So while Microsoft outwardly was promoting OS/2 as the next big thing, inwardly they kept dogging away at their Windows thing and they supported the 386 rather quickly (Windows/386 was in fact a special version of Windows 2.0 that multitasked DOS apps using the virtual 8088 mode, and all future versions of Windows would support this feature).

When Windows 3.0 was getting ready to be released, IBM offered to handle all the marketing and promotion, but in exchange IBM would own the code and the future of Windows. Microsoft wisely walked away from the deal. This was the beginning of the Microsoft-IBM divorce.

Windows 3.0 ended up being a smash success, and Microsoft realized that if they just kept telling other people that OS/2 was the future while they built their own Windows apps and stopped putting any real effort into OS/2, they could eventually own the world. Companies like Lotus that hated Microsoft with a passion just couldn’t wait to support OS/2 and ignore Windows. 1-2-3 for OS/2 (called 1-2-3/G) actually shipped before 1-2-3 for Windows. This gave Excel a chance to come in and just swoop up all the 1-2-3 for DOS users that were without a viable upgrade (1-2-3/G was not only late and missing features but performed extremely poorly) IBM eventually released a version of OS/2 that was coded for the 386 (although it still had 286 code in it for a long time) and tried to market it on their own with OS/2 Warp, but by that time IBM was no longer the standards setter in the PC business.

So what lessons can we learn here? IBM was afraid to push ahead its PC operating systems business because it might cut into sales of the more profitable minicomputer and mainframe lines. Microsoft, a more nimble and agile company, was able to ride this transition while preparing their own more powerful PC operating systems.

These days, Windows is the entrenched monopoly, and mobile devices are the disruptive force. The iPhone and iPad (and Android models) are rapidly becoming more powerful and finding their way into traditional personal computer use cases.

Windows, in this case, is the new AS/400, and the iPad is the new 386 PC. Microsoft doesn’t want to make the same mistake IBM did, so they are trying to make their own "386 PC" with Surface and unify their own "tablet experience" with the old school Windows. Thus you get the sort of odd hybrid that is Windows 8.

The market reaction to Windows 8 has not been positive, but Microsoft is used to playing the long game. Don’t count them out just yet.

The History of the Amiga series returns!

Post #: 177
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2013-04-29 08:37:06.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: Amiga, Computers

Part 8, or 8.5, or 9, depending on how you're counting, has been posted at Ars Technica!
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-9-the-demo-scene/

In this installment, I look at the demoscene, the amazingly creative group of people who made demos on the Amiga (and later the PC), held demoparties, and pushed forward the limits of graphics and the imagination.

Reaction to the article has been very positive:

"This article gave me chills. Excellent, excellent writing." - generic_1013

"Thanks author, I’m loving this series even though I just found out that it existed. Here’s hoping that it won’t take so long for the next installment." - secretknight42

"Awesome article and I got a mention in it too -- woot!" - MrNSX

I'm really excited and I'm going to start working on the next article right away!

Comments (1)

So who am I?

I'm a writer and programmer. I write science fiction stories and novels.

I am the writer for the upcoming documentary series Arcade Dreams.

I also write technology articles for Ars Technica.

I'm the creator of newLISP on Rockets, a web development framework and blog application.

Email: jeremy.reimer@gmail.com

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