[zanethomas]

I think the minicomputers of the 70s well-represent the halfway point between there and what we have today.

At Basic Four Corporation I worked on systems built from 8"x11" circuit boards. A CPU might consist of two such cards joined on the front by a couple flat 50-pin cables and to the other components by a backplane.

Disk Controller: 1 board Terminal controller: 1 board etc

https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery/equipme...

Would be interesting to see some enterprising soul recreate a modern computer in such a form factor.

[bitwize]

I am unaware of many Hackernews who had even heard of Basic Four, let alone worked there! Did you know Chuck Milden?

[zanethomas]

If I did I don't remember him. :) How are you familiar with Basic Four?

[bitwize]

Chuck was president of ICS, which was acquired by Basic Four in like the mid-70s. I only met him long after, but he told me stories. Including one about how he wheeled an Apple II into the Basic Four boardroom and demonstrated it, saying in effect "this is the future, and if you're not on board with the microcomputer revolution you'll be left behind". They decided to pass, and continue figuring out ways to sell $50,000 hard disks to existing customers. And that's why most of Hackernews hasn't heard of Basic Four :)

I do know that MAI ended up selling microcomputer based products eventually, but by that time they were well into day-late-dollar-short territory and would continue to lose ground along with all the other minicomputer vendors like PRIME that hardly anyone these days has heard of.

[zanethomas]

Basic Four was about 300 employees when I landed there and having spent most of my time in manufacturing I didn't rub elbows with upper management. Although they did rub elbows with me once when they thought I was stealing their operating system. But that's a whole nother story. :)