The Hobby Computer Culture (technicshistory.com)
- Reference: 0177829207
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/05/28/126210/the-hobby-computer-culture
- Source link: https://technicshistory.com/2025/05/24/the-hobby-computer-culture/
A BYTE magazine survey from late 1976 showed these pioneers were remarkably homogeneous: 72% held at least a bachelor's degree, had a median annual income of $20,000 ($123,000 in 2025 dollars), and were overwhelmingly male at 99%. Rather than developing practical software applications, early users gravitated toward games, particularly Star Trek simulations that appeared frequently in magazine advertisements and user group demonstrations.
The hobbyist community organized around local clubs like the famous Homebrew Computer Club, retail stores, and specialized magazines that helped establish what one researcher calls "a mythology of the microcomputer." This narrative positioned hobbyists as democratizing heroes who "ripped the computer and the knowledge of how to use it from the hands of the priests, sharing freedom and power with the masses," challenging what they termed the "computer priesthood" of institutional gatekeepers. This self-contained hobbyist culture would soon be "subsumed by a larger phenomenon" as businessmen began targeting mass markets in 1977.
[1] https://technicshistory.com/2025/05/24/the-hobby-computer-culture/
Not just games (Score:4, Informative)
Also, BBSes and community forums. And just slightly later, with the introduction of Commodore's Vic 20 and 64, graphics (art) and digital music.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah I was kinda in on the last bit of that. I was born in 81 and my first computer was a used Commodore 128 in the early 1990's, after they were getting fairly obsolete. I spent some time on BBS systems and the like for a few years before they waned in favor of the internet.
It was a fun time when everything felt kinda experimental. It ended up fueling my desire to go into Computer Science as a major in college, but I kinda wish I'd have been a little older during that time. When I think about how much
I remember (Score:3)
Back in 82-3-4-5 there was an article on how to build your own mouse, schematics, bom, everything.
Re: I remember (Score:3)
Nowdays, of course, we have youtube for that...
Re: (Score:3)
There's kits for the internals so you can 3d print the rest nowadays, haven't done it yet as the kids are hogging the printer time but looked fun
The Atari 800 was amazing (Score:4, Interesting)
But it was also something like $4,300 in inflation adjusted money.
Honestly even at 123k a year that would be a stretch. The price did come down and the computer was so advanced that it was a viable computer right up until about I'd say 1986 which is pretty amazing almost 10 years.
The commodore 64 was basically the raspberry pi of its day. It had an expansion slot with a direct line to the cpu. That meant you could do all sorts of crazy things with it as a controller.
Every now and then I come across some bizarre set up where a commodore 64 is driving a CNC machine or something like it. And of course it was used all over the place to drive displays like that famous train station.
But again the launch price which at the time was revolutionary was still really really high so you had to be one hell of a dedicated hobbyist or have a specific work use case for it.
Although you did have people using commodore 128s for desktop publishing clear up until the early nineties.
I had one (Score:3)
Admittedly I was ... 14? - and my Dad bought it for me, but I remember it fondly.
Dad worked for RCA, so we had an RCA VIP (see [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]). Came with 2K of RAM and a video resolution of 32x64 (yes, that's pixels). No software internally except a tiny 256-byte "monitor" that allowed you to input or display hex code.
Oh I know, all very primitive by today's standards. Yet at the time it was wonderful.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COSMAC_VIP
It hasn't changed much (Score:1)
> Rather than developing practical software applications, early users gravitated toward games
Isn't that all what we still want? All this "practical software applications" crap is merely our jobs , so that we can pay for housing, food, and of course computers (to do fun things on, at night).
Super Star Trek! (Score:3)
As an 8th grader hanging out at the Uni where my mom worked in 1979, i was able to play Super Star Trek. It was the gateway drug to a lifetime of computing.
Steve Ciarcia (Score:4, Interesting)
I still have my well worn copy of Steve Ciarcia's "Build Your Own Z80 Computer" and I'd go to the Library all the time to read Byte Magazine's Circuit Cellar. I miss early computer culture, but I wish we had the easy custom PCB manufacturing of today back then.
Re: (Score:2)
> but I wish we had the easy custom PCB manufacturing of today back then.
Real geeks wire-wrapped their systems.
Historically misleading (Score:1)
The article is rewriting history by using the term personal computer. Small computers such as that were usually called microcomputers and minicomputers, not personal computers. The article is misleading when it says they were mostly used by hobbyists and mainly for gaming. The article implies that accounting software was never written for them but if I were to take time to do research I am confident I can find examples of accounting software for them. Also, see the Wikipedia article about the PDP-8 minico
Can totally relate (Score:1)
I started reading Compute magazine during the late 1970s which led to my first Commodore 64. Byte magazine was a big part of the mix. I used the same C64 to dial in to a PDP-11 for my CS degree mid 80s. The application I used as a terminal (do not recall the name) emulated a 80 column CRT on the 40 character C64. Cool times.
Most importantly - user ruled everything (Score:2)
Most importantly the user was king of everything. There was not a single line of code in early operating systems to artificially prevent you from doing anything you could dream of. As long as you skills were up to the task and you had enough memory and processing power you could do whatever you wanted. Yes, there were an infinite number of things they COULDN'T do, but none of those things were because they were artificially crippled so that functionality could be sold back to you, or nothing that reported w
Why didn't more of those involved make it big ? (Score:2)
One would have thought that a lot of the people involved in the early computer scene would have been able to capitalize on being in early and have made a lot of money from it, but I don't think that happened to many of them, I think they went on to have normal careers.
Why not ?
Some did (Score:2)
Jobs and Wozniak got rich off Apple, Gates and Balmer off Microsoft. Sinclair was already rich. Tandy, Commodore, Atari, and IBM had hugely popular machines but no "rock stars" single-handedly responsible for their development, and bad business decisions ultimately killed them. Similarly Coleco, which had a great chance to undercut the PC with the Adam and its cheap letter quality printer, but they were too ambitious and by the time they worked out their manufacturing problems the PC had taken root. But
Hours of fun (Score:2)
Those were the days when you could go to the public library and check out books that held the published BASIC code for various games. There were many hours spent as you typed the different games in, but when you were done you had a game to play and you felt like you had accomplished something!
Re: (Score:2)
And while you were typing it in you are already thinking about to add and modify stuff to make even more fun! Those were the days.
Re: (Score:3)
or you had to figure out how to get code written for an Apple ][ to work on an Atari 400/800 (and hope there weren't any peeks and pokes in the graphics sections as those were pretty much untranslatable without an assembly guide to the graphics renderer).
Granted, that skill became VERY useful into college and adulthood needing to get C(++) code written for BSD/SunOS 4 to work in SystemV systems, back before "./configure" was a common thing in open source packages.
Vic20 baby (Score:2)
3K of RAM was enough!
Typing in games from Compute! magazine ... good times, good times.
Them were the days! (Score:5, Informative)
Byte magazine, The Byte Shop, and warm IMSAI 8080s.
Re:Them were the days! (Score:4, Interesting)
Blasting like a Sirocco into BBS culture of the 80s/90s.
'74 to '94.... God what a time.
Re: (Score:2)
Charter subscriber to Byte Magazine here. I built my Altair 8800 from the Popular Science article. Article left out the First Annual World Altair Computer Convention, March 1976 in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
Re: (Score:2)
I had a friend who ran a BBS as a sideline of his comic book store. He said it became too much of a chore when people would upload stuff like a recipe for nitroglycerine. Without explaining the minor detail of the exothermic reaction part.
He couldn't afford the liability.
Re:Them were the days! (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed. Byte Magazine was fun to read in those days. Its articles were informative and insightful, going well beyond just reviews of hardware and software. Gradually, it deteriorated into just another PC World type clone. I suppose today's closest approximation is Ars Technica.
Re:Them were the days! (Score:4, Interesting)
Ars 20 years ago. It's now all political nonsense disguised as science and tech.
Re: (Score:3)
Byte was Ok but I was an avid 2600 reader...
Re: (Score:2)
And Nibble Magazine