
The Computer Chronicles (1983 – 2002) - Merem
https://archive.org/details/Computer_Chronicles
======
LeoPanthera
My lockdown project has been organizing these episodes. The full resolution
versions are in an annoying format (interlaced MPEG-2), there's a bunch of
duplicates caused by some of the recordings being from repeated episodes, and
many of them are incorrectly tagged.

I'm actually pretty much finished now, I just need to re-upload the new
versions back to the archive.

~~~
betamaxthetape
Wow, that's an amazing effort! What a generous thing to devote your time to -
I'll look forward to the results.

I'm not sure how you're planning to upload them back to the archive, but be
aware that the command line tools[1] sometimes have issues with uploading
larger files. I've found that the command-line tools are more reliable
(supporting more retries by default) than the direct Python API.

Also, by default, archive.org will "derive" the uploaded video into a variety
of different formats (this is normally a good thing, but I'm mentioning it
since you might have already re-encoded them yourself and may want to avoid
the system from "messing" with them). You can turn off derivation with a
command line flag "\--no-derive" to the "ia upload" tool (or a
"queue_derive=False" parameter to internetarchive.upload() if using the Python
API).

(source: I'm currently uploading thousands of local government videos, many of
them 3+ hours long, to archive.org. With this many videos, I have scripts
checking the hashes of uploaded videos to make sure the process worked before
deleting any source files on my machine.)

[1]
[https://archive.org/services/docs/api/internetarchive/](https://archive.org/services/docs/api/internetarchive/)

~~~
LeoPanthera
My current plan is to upload each season as a single item, rather than
individual episodes.

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corysama
In the days before the Internet, a new episode of Computer Chronicles was a
big deal to a young me. It was the only source of personal computing news at
the time besides going to the library once a month to read the new magazines.

Fun moment in retrospect: Someone from Blizzard demoed a preview of Diablo on
the show. In the live demo, the first monster he kills drops a Book of
Identify (permanent ability). Before the game shipped, they removed that item
and made buying and carrying Scrolls of Identify (consumable) into a rather
annoying gameplay mechanic.

~~~
mattl
Before the web?

~~~
Lammy
Before you could be on it 24/7.

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Lammy
TCC is so good. The late Gary Kildall—CP∕M creator and DRI founder—was a
frequent co-host!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall)

~~~
rbanffy
He was the Bill Gates we needed.

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the-dude
I haven't clicked the link, but some are on YT too, featuring the coolest guy
in the industry : Gary Kindall

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall)

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jim_lawless
This presentation by Stewart Cheifet from the 2018 Tandy Assembly (TRS-80
enthusiasts conference) included some interesting information about the
genesis and life of the Computer Chronicles TV show:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIf6leAPaEM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIf6leAPaEM)

(He states that there's a connection between his trying to get funding for the
show and a famous TV ad.)

~~~
rbanffy
Love the story about his first unpleasant experience with a certain tech
personality, "one of many".

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protomyth
The HyperCard episode was fun to watch
[https://archive.org/details/CC501_hypercard](https://archive.org/details/CC501_hypercard)

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classichasclass
I remember watching the 1980s episodes as a kid. Didn't understand a thing
past the Commodores and Ataris and Apple ][s, but I loved it. It was a whole
new world.

Now I watch them again and I actually understand (and actually have many of
these computers in my collection), but I still have that same sense of marvel
at looking at a new world unfolding. The microcomputer revolution was
something to behold and this show captured it.

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Mountain_Skies
The Computer Bowl episodes were fun too. East vs West, back when Silicon
Valley hadn't dominated the industry completely. The first couple of Computer
Bowls had pretty big industry leaders participating.

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0134340
And FYI, Stewart Cheifet also hosted a spinoff show called NetCafe which is
historically interesting in its own right. Some episodes you can also find on
archive.org and youtube.

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bluedino
Loved this show as a kid. The annoying thing about now is, because of the
format of the show, they only get to spend a couple minutes on each demo. I
would be fine watching a whole half hour of the latest piece of hardware or
newest application.

One great thing about the show was that it covered more than Windows and DOS,
the most exciting episodes to me were the ones that showed UNIX workstations

~~~
bane
Lots of people forget that until quite recently computing was an extremely
diverse environment. Everything from home computing to mainframes had dozens
of manufacturers, mostly incompatible not only with each other, but even
between their own computers! Dozens of OSs, CPU architectures, graphics, and
so on were everywhere.

Today's computing is pretty boring by comparison. It used to take _work_ to
keep up to date with what was going on just in consumer PCs, it seemed like an
entirely new system architecture was being announced every few months. In the
80s and early 90s, specialized work for various business cases often even
required entirely custom hardware. The average computer just wasn't versatile
enough to cover all of the use-cases.

CC, by trying to cover a broad swatch of computing, inevitably spent lots of
time in these interesting areas, even if they seem kind of niche these days.

Really fascinating is that their interview and showcase desk often features
"titans" of industry like Jack Tramiel demoing something alongside a small
company's disheveled software engineer. Even more interesting is how the
industry has completely transformed such that the ratio of suited sales guys
that used to be everywhere in the public face of computing like CC are mostly
gone, and replaced by those same engineers.

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theodpHN
Much as my son happily got up early before school to watch Pokemon, I happily
got up early before work to catch The Computer Chronicles.

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aSithLord
Episode 3 is a Classic. 17 year-old Will Harvey showing his summer coding
project, Music Construction Set from EA.

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rbanffy
On the very first episode Herb Lechner, from SRI, mentions the feeling of
nostalgia brought by visiting the Computer Museum (before it moved from Boston
and became the Computer History Museum).

It's fun to see the interest in retrocomputing dates back to the early 80's.

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nsxwolf
Great interview with Stewart Cheifet from a few years ago.

[https://youtu.be/mBvT3B3sB_U](https://youtu.be/mBvT3B3sB_U)

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gbolcer3
"total size of requested files (105 GB) is too large for zip-on-the-fly"

Bummer, I was going to download and watch offline using a USB in my TV.

~~~
corysama
[https://github.com/jjjake/internetarchive](https://github.com/jjjake/internetarchive)

[https://archive.org/services/docs/api/internetarchive/](https://archive.org/services/docs/api/internetarchive/)

------
fnord77
I would have loved this show as a kid. Was this local to the bay area or was
it picked up by other PBS stations?

~~~
parrellel
It was definitely in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. So, probably picked
up by most of the PBS's.

