TWENTY QUESTIONS You're twenty minutes late. You can't remember the room number. You haven't studied. You don't even recall signing up for the class, and it's time for the final exam! Fortunately, a medium size piece of scrap metal from a disintegrating satellite crashes through the roof of your house shocking you into wakeful consciousness. Ahhhh! That dreadful experience of having to face a daunting examination was just a dream... or was it? Personal computers ( the electronic digital variety ), have only been around for about two decades. That's not much by normal historical standards, and not even a hair's breadth on the geological cronographic metric. None the less, personal computing already has a history of its own. The perspective any given reader may have on the evolution of what BYTE magazine's first edition proclaimed as "the World's Greatest Toy!" is probably a function of the reader's age and just when the computer bug first bit. There are books on the development of computers, and there's even a computer museum where very young folk can see how things were in the olden days, but for many of us the pages of personal computing's history were experienced in a more personal and immediate way. Those that were "in on the act" of the computer revolution probably all have images of at least one of the early "Greatest Toy!" computers permanently pasted into their mental scrap book of fond memories. It could be that some of these dream machines are still responding to the touch of the same hands that first lifted them from hastily discarded packaging to become the focus of countless hours of wonder, frustration and enlightenment. Multitudes of its like have been sold, traded or abandoned; with still others having been torn asunder, achieving a sort of transcendental existence by contributing its parts to some other whole. No mater how inglorious the fate of any individual machine, they each had their day in the sun, and for even the lowliest, poorest designed, bug, glitch and gremlin riddled excuse for a computer that ever lived, there is at least one person that still loves it - if only from a distance. In the spirit of nostalgia, or just for the heck of it, the following is provided for your entertainment, and for some reason it comes to you in the form of a multiple choice quiz. 1) What computer was the first to reach the one million sold milestone? a) MOS Technology's KIM-1 b) Apple II c) Commodore's VIC 20 d) Sinclair ZX80 e) IBM PC 2) The first Z80 based computer was a) Radio Shack's TRS-80 b) Commodore PET c) Osborne 1 portable d) Cromemco Z-1 e) IBM PC 3) Just about every popular computer has had a magazine devoted to that machine. The periodical for Sinclair & Timex/Sinclair users was titled a) Antic b) Time c) US News & World Report d) TS News e) SYNC 4) Of the following, which computer did NOT have an upper and lower case character keyboard a) Atari 400 b) Atari 800 c) Apple II+ d) TI 99/4A e) IBM PC 5) The Heathkit H-8 microcomputer's front panel keypad operated in what number base a) Binary b) Octal c) Decimal d) Hexadecimal e) IBM PC 6) The term clone, when applied to computers, now generally refers to machines modeled after the IBM PC and its descendants. What was the name of the first imitation Apple II computer? a) Pear b) Pineapple c) Orange d) Kumquat e) Kiwi 7) What may have been the first laptop computer, the Epson HX-20, had a display that would generally be considered small by today's standards; was it a) 20 characters by 4 lines b) 40 characters by 20 lines c) 80 characters by 2 lines d) a 3 by 5 index card 8) Many computers became better known by the names given to them by their users than they were by their official designations. The name "COCO" refers to a) Commodore 64 b) Coleco ADAM c) TRS- 80 COLOR COMPUTER d) Compaq Portable e) Rick Swenton's cat 9) The largest computer users group in the world is a) The New York PC users group. b) Northern California Mac users group c) Federation Computer National d) Boston Computer Society e) West Coast PC Congress 10) In 1978 the first microcomputer chess tournament was won by a Program called Sargon. This 16k program ran on which microprocessor a) Z80 b) 6504 c) F8 d) 8080 e) 6800 11) A perennial "Great Idea!" is to combine two popular systems into one package. 1985 saw the introduction of at least two of them. One allowed an upgraded Commodore 64 to run CP/M software on its built-in Z80 - the C128, the other let a Macintosh run IBM software and was named a) IB-Macintosh b) RAM-Phage c) MacCharlie d) MI-Dream 12) Intel introduced the first 8-bit microprocessor in what year? a) 1970 b) 1972 c) 1974 d) 1975 13) Microsoft, the international giant of commercial software development, got its start by adapting a programming language to run on early micros. Was that language a) Ada b) BASIC c) C d) Assembly e) Pascal 14) In 1983, Radio Shack brought out the TRS-80 model 100 weighing 4 lbs and costing $800. Advances in o have made it possible to create computers smaller and less costly. As an example, by 1889 Apple was able to unveil the Mac portable with the what weight and price? a) 3 lbs/$600 b) 2 lbs/$400 c) 1 lb/$200 d) 16 lbs/$6000 15) December of 1976 saw the first sale of 5 1/4" floppy disk drives for a list price of $390. What was the manufacturer's name a) Winchester b) Fuji c) Shugart d) Polymorphic Systems e) IBM 16) Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss are credited with what milestone in micro computer history? a) Inventing the BASIC language b) designing the MITS Altair 8800 c) Being the first persons convicted of software piracy d) Running the first BBS on a micro 17) Of the following computer systems, which is oldest? a) Commodore 64 b) Kaypro II c) Franklin ACE d) Coleco Adam e) IBM PC 18) In 1973 a computer programming language called PILOT was created to help teach the fundamentals of computer subjects to children. A notable use of the language was to control a device that basically worked as a mouse in reverse. This device was called a a) Turtle b) Walkman c) Spider d) CAT e) IBM PC 19) The Apple Macintosh was introduced to the general public in TV adds that played during which nationally televised sporting event a) '84 Olympics b) Ali/Liston title fight c) Superbowl XVIII d) NBA championship finals 20) TIME magazine made the computer its "Man of the year" in what year a) 1970 b) 1977 c) 1983 d) 1989 e) IBM PC answers: 1)c 2)d 3)e 4)c 5)b 6)c 7)a 8)c 9)d 10)a 11)c 12)b 13)b 14)d 15)c 16)d 17)e 18)a 19)c 20)c The sources for these questions consist mainly of back issues of computer magazines including, but not limited to; Personal Computing, Micro, BYTE, Popular Computing; as well as random snatches from personal experience and caprice BRN..91