Re: The integral type 'byte' (was Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?)

On 25/03/2025 20:45, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

On 25.03.2025 19:50, bart wrote:

On 25/03/2025 18:18, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

>
If you'd have said 40 years ago, about the time when MS DOS systems
got popular,

>
1985? That's a bit late!

 I was speaking about MS-DOS systems that got available where I live
around 1982. Few people could afford to buy the IBM systems. But they
marked the line where these system got popular here. A non-significant
but noticeable distribution of these systems could be observed around
1984/1985. That's about when "common folks" started to "talk IT".
 

8-bit processors started around the mid-70s, pretty much 50 years ago.

 One of the first systems I used (around 1978) was a Commodore PET 2001.
There were (very few) other folks that used the first Apple computers
(also very expensive equipment here). There was another (I forgot the
name; it ran the CPM OS) which was affordable, and a bit later came
the Amiga and the Atari.
 

I would guess more people started using those during the late 70s,

 The pervasion in society came much later! (It may have been different
where you live. But I'd be surprised if it would have been a completely
different situation.)

In the UK at least, home computers were wildly popular from the start of the 1980's, when they became much cheaper, had usable BASIC languages, and a wide supply of games.  DOS and CP/M systems were pretty much business only - home computers hugely outnumbered such systems. Virtually all home computers were 8-bit - though most users would have little knowledge of that.

 In 1978 a Commodore Pet 2001 costs 2000 DM (I think it must have been
around 500 US$ back these days). Few people could afford to buy one.
And most people had no use for it anyway. Only nerds with sufficient
income could buy one to play with it.
 

The Pet was early and expensive - my father had one at home in connection with his job.  (I never got to program it, but I was six at the time.)  But the market exploded a few years after that with a wide variety of home computers.  By the mid eighties, a large proportion of households in the UK with teenage boys had a home computer of some sort.