Space Odyssey was written on an Archives III microcomputer running
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It was Allen's idea to call it Micro-Soft, an amalgam of microcomputer and software.
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The shoe, called Micropacer, had a microcomputer hidden in the left tongue to collect data.
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If an opposing player's beam has struck home, the microcomputer will deactivate the disrupted player's Phaser for 10 seconds.
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Julian and his wife Pat explain that they don't wholly own their microcomputer, but share it with several other people.
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While the box holding the pumps and microcomputer is clear, the installation is not accompanied by diagrams or detailed documentation.
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In the same year, he outlined an early vision of what turned out to be the Internet to Microcomputer Interface magazine.
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The Raspberry Pi Foundation's flagship product, its $35 microcomputer, has now sold more than 10 million units in its standalone form.
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But here was a microcomputer powered by code that couldn't answer my questions, and I didn't know what to do with it.
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Most appliances these days have a microcomputer inside, which are susceptible to electromagnetic interference from other Bluetooth-enabled electronics like phones, speakers and computers.
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It featured the Altair 2100 microcomputer with an Intel 21988 CPU (a variant of the 21997 design) and an 1003-inch floppy disk drive.
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You can create a range of embedded pumpkin effects with the world's most popular microcomputer, including a lantern that lights up as someone approaches.
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This story of a boy, a girl and a medicinal microcomputer known as a Squip (super quantum unit Intel processor) powers down Off Broadway.
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Apple II, 1977 Designed by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in 1977, the Apple II was one of the first successful mass-produced microcomputer products.
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Even more bananas: you can plug the Teal into a monitor via HDMI and use it like a regular microcomputer and run regular apps and games.
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The MKRZero is basically a really, really small microcomputer with a number of outputs and headers as well as a battery management system and USB control.
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The site Make was launched two months ago and is run in partnership with the BBC, incorporating the broadcaster's programmable microcomputer, the Micro Bit, which TWSU designed.
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In 1975, they moved to Albuquerque, N.M., where a fledgling microcomputer company, MITS, made the Altair 8800, a primitive machine often credited as the first personal computer.
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This little bot is made up of lithium polymer batteries, a microcomputer, and a springy, passively compliant leg, meaning that the springs can store their own energy.
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If you try to power a Raspberry Pi 4 using one of these cables, it will detect the microcomputer as an "Audio Adaptor Accessory" and won't power it.
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Today's smartphone is a high-powered microcomputer; incredibly, now all that computing power is being harnessed collectively for the greater good, in the search of a cure for the Zika virus.
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There's a 96 x 96 OLED display, its case is made from a mixture of aluminum, brass, and 3D-printed plastic, and the whole thing is powered by an Adafruit microcomputer.
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Based on a coin-sized Intel microcomputer, BatSense incorporates accelerometers, a gyroscope and a wireless transmitter, allowing it to beam data to the commentary box on everything from bat angles to stroke speed.
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A $10 microcomputer with Wi-Fi is nothing to sneeze at – if you did you'd blow it off the table – and it's fascinating to see these little boards get smaller and more powerful.
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Back home, Dan plugged a Raspberry Pi microcomputer into the on-board diagnostics port of his dad's Volt, and ran Mario Kart in a N64 emulator on a laptop perched atop the dashboard.
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The four titles available for download (all originally published in the UK) include Programming Tricks and Skills, Machine Code for Beginners, Introduction to Computer Programming, and Practical Things to Do With a Microcomputer.
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The video (above), posted just a couple of weeks ago, shows a bespectacled early Paleolithic era nerd firing up massive modem (a Minor Miracles WS2000) to connect his microcomputer computer to the Prestel network.
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Thirty-five years ago today you came into world with a compact design and a $19813,565 price tag, at time when IBM's entry-level "microcomputer" run $90,000 and looked more like a washer and dryer set.
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As well as the hardware for housing the low cost Raspberry Pi microcomputer, the team makes software designed to make learning to code simpler and more fun for a target age range of roughly 10- to 16-year-olds.
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Check it out: In the box, you'll get a circuit board, a GSM module, sound module, amplifier module, main microcomputer module, a 128x160 full-color TFT LCD, a microSD card, and even the tools you'll need for the build.
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Connected to pumps and valves powered by an Arduino microcomputer all contained within a transparent box and set on a shelf above a pool of blue liquid, the tubing of "Computer 1.0" was handwoven through white cotton and forms a continuous loop.
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But now, a new crop of "hearables," or ear-based wearables that use hearing aid-like wireless technology that fits a microcomputer in your ear canal, is expected to be worth $25 billion by 2019, saturating the fastest growing market in wearables.
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" The opening festivities delighted one visitor in particular: the 83-year-old watchmaker and longtime IWC ambassador Kurt Klaus, who created one of the brand's most complex mechanisms, the 1985 Da Vinci perpetual calendar, described by Mr. Grainger-Herr as "a microcomputer for the wrist.
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When an early microcomputer was introduced, appearing on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine, Mr. Allen persuaded Mr. Gates to drop out of Harvard and move to Albuquerque, where a start-up called MITS had built a machine that has been credited as the first personal computer.
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The Raspberry Pi Foundation has finally put out an official starter kit for its low cost microcomputer — offering what it dubs an "unashamedly premium" bundle for the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, complete with optical mouse and keyboard in a very Apple-looking shade of white, plus all the cables you need to get up and running.
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This is the part of the story where I build on the IBM PC analogy I hinted at above, and tell you that Defense Distributed's Ghost Gunner, along with its inevitable clones and successors, will kill dinosaurs like LMT Defense the way the PC and the cloud laid waste to the mainframe and microcomputer businesses of yesteryear.
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The company's long history in the sector is almost uniquely tied with the country that gave birth to it, spun out of the British computer company Acorn in a joint venture with Apple, after they developed the processors that powered the BBC Microcomputer — the computer which defined the first generation of home computing in Britain, almost as much as the Apple II did in the States.
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Besides the Ricoh Theta S camera, which provides the imagery, the rest of the setup is also almost entirely built from commercially available components and supplies, including: a Raspberry Pi microcomputer that serves as the camera's controller, a wooden post, PVC plumbing pipe, pieces of silicone cut to form a holster, a "lampshade"-like glass enclosure to protect the camera lens from the elements and insects, a standard USB cable, a power-over-ethernet cable for power and internet connectivity, and a grounding cable to protect against electrical fluctuations caused by potential nearby lightning strikes.
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Microcomputer Associates was founded by Manny Lemas and Ray Holt. It produced the low cost Jolt Microcomputer, released in 1975. Microcomputer Associates introduces the 6502 based Jolt computer kit for $249. It was later acquired by Synertek, a second source manufacturer of the 6502, and renamed Synertek Systems.
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Webster's Microcomputer Buyer's Guide is a book written by Tony Webster and published in 1981. Webster's Microcomputer Buyer's Guide is a book which contains over 300 pages of computer industry information.
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Three microcomputer systems frequently associated with the first wave of commercially successful 8-bit home computers: The Commodore PET 2001, the Apple II, and the TRS-80 Model 1. By the early 2000s, everyday use of the expression "microcomputer" (and in particular "micro") declined significantly from its peak in the mid-1980s."microcomputer". OED Online. December 2013.
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Donald E. Lancaster is an American author, inventor, and microcomputer pioneer.
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Telmac 1800 Microcomputer Telmac 1800 Microcomputer The Telmac 1800 was an early microcomputer delivered in kit form. It was introduced in 1977 by Telercas, the Finnish importer of RCA microchips. Most of the 2,000 kits manufactured were bought by electronics enthusiasts in Finland, Sweden and Norway. An expansion board, OSCOM, later became available, and included an alphanumeric video display, and up to of memory.
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Roger Douglas Melen (born 1946) is an electrical engineer recognized for his early contributions to the microcomputer industry, and for his technical innovations. Dr. Melen was co-founder of Cromemco, one of the earliest microcomputer companies. At Cromemco he developed color graphics systems that were widely used in television broadcast, and in mission planning systems deployed by the United States Air Force. He also developed the first microcomputer systems widely distributed in China.
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Canoco reference manual and user's guide: software for ordination (version 5.0), p292. Microcomputer Power, Ithaca, NY.
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Intel also marketed the Intellec microcomputer development system as a system for developing other OEM microcomputers.
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This was sold as the MK14 microcomputer kit. Science of Cambridge ultimately became Sinclair Research Ltd.
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Planet Miners (sometimes The Planet Miners) is a game published by the Microcomputer Games division of Avalon Hill for the TRS-80 Level II microcomputer in 1980. It was ported to the Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, and Commodore PET. The game is written in BASIC.
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7, 873 - 882. or prosthodontics.Beaumont, A. J. Jr. Microcomputer aided removable parture denture design. - J. Prosthet. Dent.
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André Trương Trọng Thi (1936–2005) was a Vietnamese-French engineer. He is considered to be the "father of the personal computer" for his 1973 creation along with French inventor François Gernelle of the Micral N microcomputer based on an Intel 8008 processor, the world's first commercial microcomputer.
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Many pioneers of the microcomputer industry, such as Bill Gates while working for MITS, were also in attendance.
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A 1981 look at the Hayes firm's internal operation described Heatherington as "technical guru .. provide technical solutions." Heatherington retired from Hayes Microcomputer in 1985; his share of the firm resulted in receiving $20 million. The Hayes company's products were superseded by higher speed Modems, and Hayes Microcomputer Products went bankrupt in 1998.
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Cromemco 8K Bytesaver (1976) The Bytesaver, introduced by Cromemco in 1976, was the first programmable memory board for the MITS Altair and S-100 bus microcomputer systems. The Bytesaver had sockets for 8 UV-erasable EPROMs providing up to 8 Kbytes of storage. The EPROMs could be programmed by the Bytesaver, or read as computer memory. In the history of microcomputer systems, the Bytesaver was the first viable alternative to the use of punched paper tape for storing programs, and has been called “a great advance in microcomputer technology”.
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By early 1984 InfoWorld estimated that Sierra was the world's 12th-largest microcomputer- software company, with $12.5 million in 1983 sales.
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Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) produced the Altair 8800 in 1975, which is widely regarded as starting the microcomputer revolution.
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Upon his return to California, he visited the Byte Shop of San Rafael and began his love affair with the microcomputer.
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George Morrow (January 30, 1934 – May 7, 2003) was part of the early microcomputer industry in the United States. Morrow promoted and improved the S-100 bus used in many early microcomputers. Called "one of the microcomputer industry's iconoclasts" by Richard Dalton in the Whole Earth Software Catalog, Morrow was also a member of the Homebrew Computer Club.
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Arduino Uno, a popular microcomputer. A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit (CPU). It includes a microprocessor, memory and minimal input/output (I/O) circuitry mounted on a single printed circuit board (PCB). Microcomputers became popular in the 1970s and 1980s with the advent of increasingly powerful microprocessors.
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In 1982, he could start developing in GramR a new system for translating the weather bulletins on a high-end Cromemco microcomputer. METEO 2 went into operation in 1983. The software then ran in 48Kb of central memory with a 5Mb hard disk for paging. METEO 2 was the first MT application to run on a microcomputer.
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They also published a monthly series of articles for their "system 68" microcomputer based on the Motorola 6800 Microprocessor, most of them written by John Miller-Kirkpatrick, the dozen or so articles described in detail how to build a M6800 based microcomputer, including a VDU. In that sense it was one of the first computer magazines.
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Custom version written for Western Digital to run on their Pascal MicroEngine microcomputer. Included support for parallel processes for the first time.
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K-Power rated Zork III 8 out of 10, calling it "the most intelligent text game for a microcomputer that we've ever seen".
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Many microcomputer BASICs did not support this data type; matrix operations were still possible, but had to be programmed explicitly on array elements.
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To begin playing The Thompson Twins Adventure a player must transfer the game data from the flexi disc to the microcomputer (ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64). This can be accomplished in two ways. For both ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 the recommended method involves making an intermediate 33 rpm recording from the flexi disc onto an audio cassette which will then be used to transfer the data to the microcomputer via its cassette connector. For the Spectrum version, a player can instead choose to transfer game data directly to the microcomputer without using an audio cassette intermediate.
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Intel MCS8 Intellec microcomputer with the cover removed Intel MCS8 Intellec microcomputer showing the rear of the chassis Intel did not market the Intellec as a general-purpose microcomputer, but rather as a development system. As the first microprocessors were intended to run embedded systems such as in calculators, computer terminals and digital watches, the Intellec was used for programming programmable memory chips used by embedded systems, e.g. the 2048-bit (256-byte) Intel 1602A programmable read-only memory (PROM) or erasable 1702A EPROM chips which were plugged into a ZIF socket on the Intellec-8's front panel.Freiberger & Swaine (2000).
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Maximite Microcomputer is a Microchip PIC32 microcontroller-based microcomputer. Originally designed as a hobby kit, the Maximite was introduced in a three-part article in Silicon Chip magazine in autumn of 2011 by Australian designer Geoff Graham.Silicon Chip magazine, March, April, May 2011 The project consists of two main components — a main circuit board and the MMBasic Interpreter, styled after GW-BASIC.
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The first version of Empress was created by John Kornatowski and Ivor Ladd in 1979 and was originally named MISTRESS. It was based on research done on "MRS: A microcomputer database management system" at the University of Toronto, which was published by the Association for Computing Machinery in SIGSMALL SIGMOD 1981."MRS: A microcomputer database management system", 1981. Retrieved on Jan 26, 2010.
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CPU had financed the development of a SC/MP based microcomputer system using the income from its design-and-build consultancy. This system was launched in January 1979 as the first product of Acorn Computer Ltd., a trading name used by CPU to keep the risks of the two different lines of business separate. The microcomputer kit was named as Acorn System 75.
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In July 1977, Sinclair Instrument Ltd was renamed Science of Cambridge Ltd. Around the same time, Ian Williamson showed Chris Curry a prototype microcomputer based on a National Semiconductor SC/MP microprocessor and parts from a Sinclair calculator. Curry was impressed and encouraged Sinclair to adopt it as a product. In June 1978, Science of Cambridge launched its MK14 microcomputer in kit form.
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The APF Microcomputer System is a second generation 8-bit cartridge-based home video game console released in October 1978 by APF Electronics Inc. with six cartridges.APF Microcomputer System The console is often referred to M-1000 or MP-1000, which are the two model numbers of the console. The APF-MP1000 comes built-in with the game Rocket Patrol.
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Space Cowboy is video game written by Scott Lamb for the Atari 8-bit family and published by Avalon Hill Microcomputer Games in 1983.
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TIM-001 with Ei PP-2400 M modem TIM-001 was an application development microcomputer developed by Mihajlo Pupin Institute (Serbia) in 1983/84.
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Space Battle (also known as Space Battles) is a 1978 video game developed by Level IV for the TRS-80 16K Level II microcomputer.
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Invasion From Outer Space is a 1980 video game designed by Chris Freund for The Software Exchange for the TRS-80 16K Level II microcomputer.
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Forecasting sales, expenses and stock market values by quarterly financial statement ratio analysis: a microcomputer software development model. Managerial Auditing Journal, 10(2), 7–33.
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Dobb's was a contraction of Dennis and Bob. It was at a time when computer memory was very expensive, so compact coding was important. Microcomputer hobbyists needed to avoid using too many bytes of memory. After the first photocopies were mailed to those who had sent stamped addressed envelopes, PCC was flooded with requests that the publication become an ongoing periodical devoted to general microcomputer software.
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The chip was mainly designed and realized by Faggin, with his silicon-gate MOS technology. The microprocessor led to the microcomputer revolution, with the development of the microcomputer, which would later be called the personal computer (PC). Most early microprocessors, such as the Intel 8008 and Intel 8080, were 8-bit. Texas Instruments released the first fully 16-bit microprocessor, the TMS9900 processor, in June 1976.
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Both Brower and Common Knowledge are recognised in the Library Microcomputer Hall of Fame.WLN: Library Microcomputer Hall of Fame. wiredlibrarian.com. last modified November 08, 2005 One of Mahatma Gandhi's earliest publications, Hind Swaraj published in Gujarati in 1909 is recognised as the intellectual blueprint of India's freedom movement. The book was translated into English the next year, with a copyright legend that read "No Rights Reserved".
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The Mean Checkers Machine is a 1980 video game designed by Lance Micklaus for The Software Exchange for the TRS-80 Level II Model I microcomputer.
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BUNCH followed IBM into the microcomputer market with their own PC compatibles. but unlike that company did not quickly adjust to retail sales of smaller computers.
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During the time the magazine has been publishing computers have become mainstream and the concept of the microcomputer is fundamentally accepted in both workplace and home.
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BEEBUG was a magazine published for users of the BBC Microcomputer between 1982 and 1994. It was the first subscription magazine for computers made by Acorn Computers.
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The Vic-20 and the Commodore 16 more specifically competed with this simple microcomputer. At its UK launch, Texet claimed that the £98 TX8000-branded version was the cheapest colour home microcomputer on the market. However, this was not enough to ensure its success against the dominant ZX Spectrum and similar machines already on sale.Bennett, Bill, Texet TX-8000 review , Your Computer magazine, April 1983. Retrieved 21 March 2007.
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The circuitry in the ABC 80 is described in detail in the book Mikrodatorns ABC (The microcomputer ABC), by Gunnar Markesjö. It starts off with a course in digital electronics and microcomputer principles (assuming some general knowledge in electronics) and then presents a large number of block diagrams and partial circuit schematics, covering most of the computer, along with detailed explanations of how it works and why certain solutions were chosen.
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HIARCS has won numerous computer and human tournaments. In 1991, it won the title of the World Amateur Microcomputer Chess Champion at the 11th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCCC), in 1992, it won the gold medal at the 4th Computer Olympiad, and in 1993, it won the World Microcomputer Chess Championship held in Munich. In April 1997, HIARCS 6.0 became the first PC chess program to win a match played at tournament time controls over a FIDE International Master. In the same year, HIARCS went on to win the Godesberg Open ahead of Grandmasters and International Masters. In January 2003, HIARCS played a four-game match against Grandmaster Evgeny Bareev, world number 8 at the time.
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This was used by the COSMAC Elf microcomputer and its successors to load a program from toggle switches or a hexadecimal keypad with no required software and minimal hardware.
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The Research Machines 380Z (often called the RML 380Z or RM 380Z) was an early 8-bit microcomputer produced by Research Machines in Oxford, England, from 1977 to 1985.
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David Edwin Potter (born 1943) is the founder and chairman of the microcomputer systems company Psion PLC., and Psion Teklogix after Psion's acquisition of Teklogix in the year 2000.
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Percom Data was an early microcomputer company formed in 1976 to sell peripherals into the emerging microcomputer market. They are best known for their floppy disk systems, first for S-100 machines, and the later for other platforms like the TRS-80 and the Atari 8-bit family.Hardware Reviews: Percom double-density disk drive for Atari micros, By Robert DeWitt, InfoWorld, 26 Jul 1982, Page 48, The company was purchased by Esprit Systems in 1984.
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Dialog was a microcomputer system developed by Gorenje in 1980s. It was based on the 8-bit 4 MHz Zilog Z-80A microprocessor. The primary operating system was FEDOS (CP/M 2.2 compatible), developed by Computer Structures and Systems Laboratory (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana) and Gorenje. There were 3 variants of the Dialog microcomputer system, distinguished only by minor changed: home, laboratory and personal (PC) (in Slovene: hišni, laboratorijski, osebni).
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Vector Graphic was an early microcomputer company founded in 1976, the same year as Apple Computer, during the pre-IBM PC era, along with the NorthStar Horizon, IMSAI, and MITS Altair.
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The Canon V-20 was a MSX microcomputer made by the Japanese corporation Canon. It had an innovative digital camera interface (T-90/DMB-90) to use with the Canon T90.
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McGovern quickly renamed IMJ to be InfoWorld, as his first microcomputer periodical, later converting it to various glossy magazine formats. He hosted PBS television's Computer Chronicles series for their first two seasons (originated at the College of San Mateo's KCSM-TV, Channel 60, 1981–1982). Warren also founded and published the short-lived DataCast magazine, edited by Tony Bove and Cheryl Rhodes, focused on in-depth tutorials about specific microcomputer programs, and was the founder and producer of the equally ill-fated Video Initiative, providing similar self-paced videotape tutorials. Warren was the founding Editor of Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia, the first computer magazine to focus on microcomputer software, created and published by the nonprofit People's Computer Company.
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The name husITa (Human Service Information Technology Applications) was coined in 1983 by Walter LaMendola and Brian Klepinger at the University of Denver. The Human Service Microcomputer Conference was held in Seattle.
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Controller is a simulation video game published in 1982 for the Apple II and Atari 8-bit computers by The Avalon Hill Game Company and developed by its division Microcomputer Games, Inc.
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CP/M-80 was the first popular microcomputer operating system to be used by many different hardware vendors, and many software packages were written for it, such as WordStar and dBase II.
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Elwro was a Polish company that manufactured mainframe and microcomputers from 1959 until 1989. Its plant was in Wroclaw. Computer models included Odra mainframe systems, and the Elwro 800 Junior microcomputer for education.
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Junior won the World Microcomputer Chess Championship in 1997 and 2001 and the World Computer Chess Championship in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2013; both organized by the International Computer Games Association.
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The ability to place logical and loop commands in-line, like was not copied over and does not appear on any common version of microcomputer BASIC. MS BASIC also lacked the matrix commands.
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This was because these systems had severe resource constraints, imposed idiosyncratic memory and display architectures, and provided limited, buggy system services. Perhaps more important was the lack of first-class high-level language compilers suitable for microcomputer use. A psychological factor may have also played a role: the first generation of microcomputer programmers retained a hobbyist, "wires and pliers" attitude. In a more commercial context, the biggest reasons for using assembly language were minimal bloat (size), minimal overhead, greater speed, and reliability.
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Mikrotron Digital Microcomputer and Analog Technology GmbH was established by Bernhard Mindermann and Andreas Stockhausen, two Kontron AG employees, in 1976 in Eching, near Munich, Germany, and entered into the commercial registry on January 19, 1977, to develop microcomputer programs, devices and systems. The Mikrotron name is derived from Kontron. In the 1980s, the company supplied data logging systems that can input data into other systems. The company continued to grow and evolve, as they developed customized electronic data logging systems.
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Japanese PC Shipments by bit designs 1983–1993 In 1976, NEC released the TK-80, a single-board computer kit, and it became popular among hobbyists in Japan. joined foundation of the first Japanese microcomputer magazine I/O (ja) as an editor when he was a student at the Waseda University. The I/O initially served information for assembled microcomputer systems with a few video game columns. Growing the video game market, it was shifted to a video game magazine.
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BYTE in 1981 stated that when chess programs such as Microchess appeared, "we all laughed and proceeded to demolish them ... microcomputer chess programs had a poor reputation". Tim Harding in 1985 called Microchess "dreadful".
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The first microcomputer-based image database retrieval system was developed at MIT, in the 1990s, by Banireddy Prasaad, Amar Gupta, Hoo-min Toong, and Stuart Madnick. A 2008 survey article documented progresses after 2007.
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Weisbecker designed the 1861 PIXIE graphics processor in 1975 as a minimal-cost simple video output for microcomputer systems. In a single chip, it provided all the functions necessary for a bit-mapped graphic display.
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Peter R. Jennings (born 1950) is a Canadian physicist, scientist, inventor, software developer, computer chess programmer, and entrepreneur. He is best known for creating MicroChess, the first microcomputer game to be sold commercially in 1976.
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On-Court Tennis is a microcomputer-based tennis simulation that can be played against the computer or another player. The game automatically moves the avatar to the ball; the player controls the swing and timing.
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In the 1970s, the MOS microprocessor was the basis for home computers, microcomputers (micros) and personal computers (PCs). This led to the start of what is known as the personal computer revolution or microcomputer revolution.
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SWTPC 6800 microcomputer. The Hazeltine 1500 was a popular smart terminal introduced by Hazeltine Corporation in April 1977 at a price of $1,125 (). Using a microprocessor and semiconductor random access memory, it implemented the basic features of the earlier Hazeltine 2000 in a much smaller and less expensive system. It came to market just as the microcomputer revolution was taking off, and the 1500 was very popular among early hobbyist users. Two modified versions were introduced in June 1977, the $1,395 Hazeltine 1510 and $1,650 Hazeltine 1520.
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Klein hosted the show and wrote articles in mc to supplement the series. He published a book on the same subject, titled: Microcomputer Selbstgebaut und Programmiert (DIY Microcomputer Building and Programming), through Franzis Verlag, which also released the TV series on VHS. The computer's hardware was provided by Graf Elektronik System in Kempten, and sold at an electronics store in Detmold. The company Fischertechnik also produced a robot kit, which was one of the most comprehensive 32-bit programming language applications at the time.
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MCM Model 70 microcomputer, made by Micro Computer Machines, 1974 The MCM/70 was a pioneering microcomputer first built in 1973 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada"Idea nation". Canadian Business, Dec 25, 2006 Andy Holloway and released the next year. This makes it one of the first microcomputers in the world, the second to be shipped in completed form, and the first portable computer. The MCM/70 was the product of Micro Computer Machines, one of three related companies set up in Toronto in 1971 by Mers Kutt.
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In 1983, the company started manufacturing a microcomputer teaching kit called "Poly-Computer 880". VEB Polytechnik is also known for creating Poly Play, the only arcade video game to be made in the German Democratic Republic.
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CHS Electronics is a former multinational distributor of microcomputer products, personal computers, peripherals, networking products, and software. It was based in Miami, Florida from its 1994 founding to its 2000 collapse.Businessweek: Overview of CHS Electronics, Inc.
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Dennis C. Hayes (born 1950) is the founder of Hayes Microcomputer Products, a manufacturer of modems mostly known for introducing the Hayes command set, which has subsequently been used in most modems produced to this day.
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Intel Corporation, "Microcomputer Components: Intel Introduces the 8089 IOP, an I/O processor for the advanced 8088/8086 CPU family, the first of a series of new subsystem components", Intel Preview, May/June 1979, Pg 9.
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Cromemco DOS or CDOS (an abbreviation for Cromemco Disk Operating System) is a CP/M-like operating system by Cromemco designed to allow users of Cromemco microcomputer systems to create and manipulate disk files using symbolic names.
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In 1983 Softline readers named VisiCalc tenth overall and the highest non-game on the magazine's Top Thirty list of Atari 8-bit programs by popularity. II Computing listed it second on the magazine's list of top Apple II software as of late 1985, based on sales and market-share data. In its 1980 review, BYTE wrote "The most exciting and influential piece of software that has been written for any microcomputer application is VisiCalc". It concluded, "VisiCalc is the first program available on a microcomputer that has been responsible for sales of entire systems".
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Newscientist Sept 21 gallery: March of the outdated machines The Altair is widely recognized as the spark that ignited the microcomputer revolution as the first commercially successful personal computer.Dorf, Richard C., ed. The engineering handbook. CRC Press, 2004.
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In December, 3.0 easily won the second microcomputer championship in London. Sargon III was a complete rewrite from scratch. Instead of an exchange evaluator, this version used a capture search algorithm. Also included was a chess opening repertoire.
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He learned to program on a BBC Micro.The BBC Microcomputer and me, 30 years down the line BBC News, 1 December 2011 He is married to primary care ophthalmology consultant Stella Hornby and has a daughter, Sophia Wolfram.
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History founded in 1983 to provide microcomputer software to the federal government of the United States. By 1986, it worked with local, state and federal government agencies. In 1996, it registered its URL and engaged in e-commerce.
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The Q40 and Q60 (sometimes known generically as the Qx0 series) are computer motherboards designed in the late 1990s, based on the Motorola 68040 and 68060 microprocessors respectively and intended to be partially compatible with the Sinclair QL microcomputer.
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Ashton-Tate licensed Vulcan and re-released it as dBASE II in 1980, which sparked the microcomputer database market. Most of RETRIEVE's original syntax remains unchanged in dBASE and the many xBASE clones that survive into the 21st century.
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TAC is a wargame designed by Ralph Bosson of Microcomputer Games, a division of Avalon Hill. The game was originally released for Apple II in 1983. It was later ported to Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64 and IBM PC.
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Electronics Australia, p. 80. The VDU Expansion Board (VDUEB) was an enhanced video display board for the Super-80 developed by Microcomputer Engineering (MCE). The VDUEB gave the Super-80 an 80×25 video display with limited graphics capabilities.
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In 1979, Jordi Ustrell designed what would be considered the first personal microcomputer developed in Spain. The project caught the attention of publications specialized in the history of modern computing technology. He also developed some personal and professional Computer systems.
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The IMSAI is largely regarded as the first "clone" microcomputer. The IMSAI machine ran a highly modified version of the CP/M operating system called IMDOS. It was developed, manufactured and sold by IMS Associates, Inc. (later renamed IMSAI Manufacturing Corp).
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In the early days of home micros, this was often a data cassette deck (in many cases as an external unit). Later, secondary storage (particularly in the form of floppy disk and hard disk drives) were built into the microcomputer case.
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BASIC helped jumpstart the time-sharing era, became mainstream in the microcomputer era, then faded to become just another application in the DOS and GUI era, and today survives in a few niches related to game development, retrocomputing, and teaching.
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The first product was a memory card for the S-100 bus. A full microcomputer using the Z80 microprocessor, the Vector 1, was introduced in 1977. There were several Vector Graphic models produced. The Vector 1+ had a floppy disk drive.
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Apricot File was a British magazine catering to users of early Apricot Computers microcomputer systems. It was based in London, published by TP Group and edited throughout its lifetime by Dennis Jarrett. The magazine was in circulation between 1985 and 1988.
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Most BASIC interpreters differed widely in graphics and sound, which varied dramatically from microcomputer to microcomputer. Altair BASIC lacked any graphics or sound commands, as did the Tiny BASIC implementations, while Integer BASIC provided a rich set. Level I BASIC for the TRS-80 had as minimal a set as possible: , for CLear Screen; , which lit a location on the display; , which turned it off; and , which returned 1 if a location was lit, 0 if it was not. The coordinates could be any expression and ranged from 0 to 127 for the X-axis and 0 to 47 for the Y-axis.
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Prior to the 1980s, IBM had largely been known as a provider of business computer systems. As the 1980s opened, their market share in the growing minicomputer market failed to keep up with competitors, while other manufacturers were beginning to see impressive profits in the microcomputer space. The market for personal computers was dominated at the time by Tandy, Commodore and Apple, whose machines sold for several hundred dollars each and had become very popular. The microcomputer market was large enough for IBM's attention, with $150 million in sales by 1979 and projected annual growth of more than 40% during the early 1980s.
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He reported that the layout "nearly drove" science- fiction editor Jim Baen "crazy", and that "many of [Baen's] authors refused to work with that keyboard" so could not submit manuscripts in a compatible format. The magazine's official review was more sanguine. It praised the keyboard as "bar none, the best ... on any microcomputer" and described the unusual Shift key locations as "minor [problems] compared to some of the gigantic mistakes made on almost every other microcomputer keyboard". "I wasn't thrilled with the placement of [the left Shift and Return] keys, either", IBM's Don Estridge stated in 1983.
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The 6800 ("sixty-eight hundred") is an 8-bit microprocessor designed and first manufactured by Motorola in 1974. The MC6800 microprocessor was part of the M6800 Microcomputer System that also included serial and parallel interface ICs, RAM, ROM and other support chips. A significant design feature was that the M6800 family of ICs required only a single five-volt power supply at a time when most other microprocessors required three voltages. The M6800 Microcomputer System was announced in March 1974 and was in full production by the end of that year. "Motorola's M6800 microcomputer system, which can operate from a single 5-volt supply, is moving out of the sampling stage and into full production." The small-quantity price of the MC6800 is $360. The MC6820 PIA cost $28. The 6800 has a 16-bit address bus that can directly access 64 KB of memory and an 8-bit bi-directional data bus.
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Zzyzzyxx is a stand-up coin-operated arcade game developed by Advanced Microcomputer Systems, and manufactured by Cinematronics in 1982. It was retitled as Brix for release as a conversion kit in 1983. The title screen and marquee were the only changes.
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TRS-80 is the name of Tandy Corporation's original 1977 microcomputer system (also known as the Model I). The TRS-80 brand was also later applied to many different computers sold by Tandy, including several unrelated in design to the Model I.
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The PC/104 PC/104 defines a compact / modular form-factor bus for embedding ISA Bus system functions within embedded microcomputer applications. The PC/104 modules' small size (3.6" x 3.8") and low power requirements make them ideally suited to embedded control applications.
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Quest of the Space Beagle is an action-adventure game written by Scott Lamb for the Atari 8-bit family and published by Avalon Hill Microcomputer Games in 1984. It's the sequel to Jupiter Mission 1999. A Commodore 64 port followed in 1985.
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Victor V. Vurpillat brought the deal to Pete Musser, chairman of the board of Safeguard Scientifics, Inc., who provided the seed funding. The company initially did not do well. The microcomputer produced by the company was comparatively weak against performance by competitors.
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Moon began his career in Silicon Valley at the microcomputer company IMS Associates, Inc. in 1978, working in marketing and business development roles. He went on to work with Regis McKenna at Regis McKenna, Inc., working on the advertising accounts of Apple, Intel, and Microfocus.
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The Gigatron TTL is a retro-style 8-bit microcomputer, where the CPU is implemented by a set of TTL chips instead of a single microprocessor, imitating the hardware present in early arcades. Its target is the computing enthusiasts, for studying or hobby purposes.
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In colloquial usage, "microcomputer" has been largely supplanted by the term "personal computer" or "PC", which specifies a computer that has been designed to be used by one individual at a time, a term first coined in 1959."personal computer". OED Online. December 2013.
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MChess Pro is the name given to a chess playing computer program written by Martin Hirsch which won the World Microcomputer Chess Championship in 1995. The program is no longer under development and is no longer commercially available and therefore has largely historical significance only.
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Fig.1, TIM-100 workstation Fig.2, TIM-100 system The TIM-100 was a PTT teller microcomputer developed by Mihajlo Pupin Institute (Serbia) in 1985 (Ref.lit. #1). It was based on the Intel microprocessors types 80x86 and VLSI circuitry. RAM had capacity max.
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Daniel D. McCracken said "it is no exaggeration to suggest that WATFOR revolutionized the use of computers in education." At one point, more than 3,000 mini and mainframe computer licenses and over 100,000 microcomputer licenses were held worldwide for this family of software products.
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GBS Newbrain AD with a French keyboard. On display at the Musée Bolo, EPFL, Lausanne. View of the connectors of the same machine. The Grundy NewBrain was a microcomputer sold in the early 1980s by Grundy Business Systems Ltd of Teddington and Cambridge, England.
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In re Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc. Patent Litig., 982 F.2d 1527 (Fed. Cir. 1992) was a case decided in 1992 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the successor of the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals.
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Superman was also recognized as the longest-running video game character. His work on Superman drew interest from Cromemco. In 1980, Dunn developed Cromemco's SlideMaster software which was considered the first professional paint program for a microcomputer. SlideMaster used the company's Super Dazzler graphics board.
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Gary Arlen Kildall (; May 19, 1942 – July 11, 1994) was an American computer scientist and microcomputer entrepreneur who created the CP/M operating system and founded Digital Research, Inc. (DRI). Kildall was one of the first people to see microprocessors as fully capable computers, rather than equipment controllers, and to organize a company around this concept. He also co-hosted the PBS TV show Computer Chronicles. Although his career in computing spanned more than two decades, he is mainly remembered in connection with his development of the CP/M operating system, an early multi-platform microcomputer OS that has many parallels to the later MS-DOS used on the IBM PC.
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HDOS is an early microcomputer operating system, originally written for the Heathkit H8 computer system and later also available for the Heathkit H89 and Zenith Z-89 computers. The author was Heath Company employee Gordon Letwin, who later was an early employee of Microsoft and lead architect of OS/2. HDOS originally came with a limited set of system software tools, including an assembler, but many commercial and large set of freeware programs from HUG (Heath User Group) became available for it eventually. HDOS 2.0 is notable because it was one of the first microcomputer operating systems to use loadable device drivers to achieve a degree of device independence and extensibility.
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The VELA was designed to be connected to three different types of device, being a chart printer, an oscilloscope or a microcomputer. Connecting the VELA to a chart printer allowed the captured data to be printed directly from the VELA for analysis and making a permanent record of the data captured. Connecting the VELA to an oscilloscope allowed users to have a real- time view of the data the VELA was recording or a playback view of pre- existing captured data. When connected to a microcomputer, the data captured could be stored and manipulated using a variety of different software applications that were available for the VELA.
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The "Sideways" address space on the Acorn BBC Microcomputer, Electron and Master-series microcomputer was Acorn's bank switching implementation, providing for permanent system expansion in the days before hard disk drives or even floppy disk drives were commonplace. Filing systems, application and utility software, and drivers were made available as Sideways ROMs, and extra RAM could be fitted via the Sideways address space. The Advanced User Guide to the BBC Micro only refers to the Sideways address space as "Paged ROMs" because it predated the use of this address space for RAM expansion. The BBC B+, B+ 128 and BBC Master all featured Sideways RAM as standard.
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RDI Video Systems (Rick Dyer Industries) was a video game company founded by Rick Dyer originally as Advanced Microcomputer Systems, and was well known for its Laserdisc video games, beginning with the immensely popular Dragon's Lair. The company went bankrupt shortly after releasing the Halcyon gaming console.
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Modern Electronics was a hobbyist magazine published from October 1984 to March 1991. It became Computer Craft in April 1991 and the name changed again to MicroComputer Journal in January 1994. Modern Electronics, Inc. was owned by CQ Communications, Inc, the publishers of CQ Amateur Radio.
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As part of 1802 Retrocomputing hobbyist work, other computers have been built more recently (post-2000), including the Membership Card microcomputer kit that fits in an Altoids tin and the Spare Time Gizmos Elf 2000 (Elf 2K), among others. See Emulators and simulators for other systems.
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The International Paderborn Computer Chess Championship is an annual chess tournament for computer chess programs. It is organised yearly by the University of Paderborn. The first edition was played in 1991, the fifth edition is 1995 was also the 13th edition of the World Microcomputer Chess Championship.
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Target is almost certainly the first microcomputer game to be shown on national television. It appeared in late 1976 on The Tomorrow Show, mesmerizing the host Tom Snyder to the point where he had to be forced to stop playing it in order to finish the episode.
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The majority of the multimedia resources of the university can be found in the library. The library is well equipped by computers capable in playing various multimedia resources. Tien Chi Microcomputer Laboratory is situated on the ground floor of the library, providing computers for students' use.
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Measuring the human chest with structured lighting J.R.T. Lewis and T. Sopwith Pattern Recognition Letters Volume 4, Issue 5, October 1986, Pages 359-36 4\. J. R. T. Lewis, T. Sopwith: Three-dimensional surface measurement by microcomputer. Image Vision Comput. 4(3): 159-166 (1986) 5\.
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The subculture around such hackers is termed network hacker subculture, hacker scene, or computer underground. It initially developed in the context of phreaking during the 1960s and the microcomputer BBS scene of the 1980s. It is implicated with 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and the alt.2600 newsgroup.
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Electronic analog computers were used until digital computers came within reach for research: Wang Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Apple Inc., IBM PC (Personal Computer), Norsk Data, Atari, Osborne Computer Corporation, and Data General. Most of these innovative mini and microcomputer companies have discontinued their operation.
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Jupiter Mission 1999 is an action-adventure game written by Scott Lamb for the Atari 8-bit family and published by Avalon Hill Microcomputer Games in 1983. The game shipped on four floppy disks. It was followed by a sequel in 1984, Quest of the Space Beagle.
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BYTE called the Victor 9000 "an excellent microcomputer with an outstanding array of standard features". It praised the high-quality video and large array of software available from Victor, while criticizing the high price of peripherals compared to the many third-party options on the IBM PC.
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A huge number of ports were released that year, including numerous minicomputers, mainframes and practically every microcomputer ever developed. UnZip 5.41 (April 2000) was relicensed under Info-ZIP License. UnZip 5.50 (February 2002) adds support of Deflate64 (method 9) decompression. UnZip 6.0 adds support of "Zip64" .
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MIL also produced a series of early microcomputers using this chip, including the MIL CPS-1, which may be the earliest example of a microcomputer system that was shipped in completed form, as opposed to a kit that had to be assembled. Several other upgraded models followed.
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The Electronika BK is a series of 16-bit PDP-11-compatible fanless Soviet home computers developed under the Electronika brand by NPO Scientific Center, the leading Soviet microcomputer design team at the time. It was also the predecessor of the more powerful UKNC and DVK micros.
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The optimal amount of drive force control is calculated from sensor information obtained from CAN communications etc. to control the active front diff and the electronically-controlled coupling. Compared with the 2009 Outlander, Microcomputer performance has been enhanced and calculation speed and accuracy have been improved.
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The Sophisticated Operating System, or SOS , is the primary operating system of the Apple III computer. SOS was developed by Apple Computer and released in October 1980. In 1985, Steve Wozniak, while critical of the Apple III's hardware flaws, called SOS "the finest operating system on any microcomputer ever".
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Picture of Cromemco Dazzler (Board 1). First Microcomputer Color Graphics Interface. The Dazzler used over 70 MOS and TTL ICs, which required two cards to hold all the chips,Manual, pg. 3 "Board 1" held the analog circuits, while "Board 2" held the bus interface and digital logic.
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It specialised in technical and scientific computing. Among the services it provided were time-shared computer processing, facilities management, software development, microcomputer rental and sales. It was DEC's first customer for the PDP-6. Its first Director was Dennis Moore (1972–1979), followed by Alex Reid (1979–1991).
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PUPS/P3 is a cluster computing environment derived from the MSPS operating environment implemented on the BBC Microcomputer. The PUPS P3 environment has been used in the infrastructure of a number of scientific computing projects include the Daisy automated species identification system and a number of computational neuroscience projects.
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Uncommon for microcomputer chess programs of the era, Colossus had a full implementation of the rules of chess, including underpromotion, the fifty-move rule, draw by repetition, and draw by insufficient material. Colossus was also able to execute all the basic checkmates, including the difficult bishop and knight checkmate.
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Both gearboxes featured Hewland internals within a Lotus designed casing. Other notable innovations of the 98T included a two-stage ride height adjustment, water injection through the intercoolers, an early form of barge board (also present on the 97T), and an advanced (for the time) fuel consumption microcomputer.
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Applicants should have at least a bachelor's > degree and a year of assembly language experience. Contact Paul Allen at > (505) 262-1486, or write to them at 300 San Mateo NE, Albuquerque, NM 87108. > Microsoft is the leader in microcomputer systems programming. I've applied > myself, by the way.
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In May 1979, Jim Westwood, Sinclair's chief engineer, designed a new microcomputer based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor. Sinclair Instrument Ltd introduced the computer as the ZX80 in February 1980, as both a kit and ready-built. In November 1979, Science of Cambridge Ltd was renamed Sinclair Computers Ltd.
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Facit was sold to Electrolux in 1973. In 1983 it was again sold to Ericsson, and the production of a microcomputer was initiated. Over four years, the Facit home computer became popular in Sweden. It offered some innovative solutions with a version of BASIC as a programming language.
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The MK14 (Microcomputer Kit 14) was a computer kit sold by Science of Cambridge of the United Kingdom, first introduced in 1977 for UK£39.95. The price was very low for a complete computer system at the time, and Science of Cambridge eventually sold over fifteen thousand kits.
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IMS Associates, Inc., or IMSAI, was a microcomputer company, responsible for one of the earliest successes in personal computing, the IMSAI 8080. The company was founded in 1973 by William Millard and was based in San Leandro, California. Their first product launch was the IMSAI 8080 in 1975.
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An edit to the film, which according to Inman was made by Radzinsky, removed specific details of this incident. This event required the entire Swan station area to be sealed with a large amount of concrete "like Chernobyl" (according to Sayid and Daniel Faraday) to contain the dangerous energy. This caused a consistent build-up of electromagnetic energy, which resulted in a change of the station's focus: a two-member crew, replaced every 540 days, were instructed to enter a numeric code into a microcomputer terminal every 108 minutes. The station is equipped with a split-flap display timer, which is interfaced to a microcomputer terminal and connected to an alarm system.
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Around the same time, a Danish firm introduced the Comet, a very capable microcomputer for the time, which would be the first machine to run a version of what would look like the later COMAL releases. Christensen subsequently stepped back from COMAL development around 1980-81, which was handed over to groups including UniComal, started by Mogens Kjaer, who had written to Christensen with critiques of COMAL and subsequently ported it to the Commodore PET for release 0.14. At this time, Danish schools insisted that COMAL be available on any microcomputer they purchased. In the early 1980s, Apple Computer won a contract to supply Apple II computers running CP/M and COMAL to Irish secondary schools.
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He created CP/M the same year to enable the 8080 to control a floppy drive, combining for the first time all the essential components of a computer at the microcomputer scale. He demonstrated CP/M to Intel, but Intel had little interest and chose to market PL/M instead.
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In 1983, Ryan founded Softcom, Inc. to make Ethernet cards. When the company faced cash flow problems, Ryan sold Softcom to Hayes Microcomputer Products in 1984 and worked there as head of their West Coast division until 1988. Ryan departed Hayes Micro along with Jennette Symons, Jay Duncanson, and Steven Speckenbach.
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A 1982 NEC APC microcomputer In 1980, NEC created the first digital signal processor, the NEC µPD7710. NEC Semiconductors (UK) Ltd. was established in 1981, producing VLSIs and LSIs. NEC introduced the 8-bit PC-8800 series personal computer in 1981, followed by the 16-bit PC-9800 series in 1982.
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In the past Station Approach in New Barnet was the home of CompShop which produced the pioneering UK101 kit microcomputer. Public Houses in New Barnet include The Railway Tavern, The Railway Bell (Wetherspoons) The Builders Arms and The Lord Kitchener whilst Truth Lounge is a bar-restaurant with Caribbean themed menu.
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World Computer Speed Chess Championship is an annual event where computer chess engines compete against each other at blitz chess time controls. It is held in conjunction with the World Computer Chess Championship. Up to 2001, it was held in conjunction with the World Microcomputer Chess Championships and restricted to microcomputers.
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It was founded in 1983 to provide microcomputer software to the federal government of the United States. By 1986, it worked with local, state and federal government agencies. In 1996, it registered its URL and engaged in e-commerce. In 1994, it introduced the first browser-based government contract catalog.
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One of the two main rooms in the main building In 1914, over 500 books were sent to England to be rebound. The Library stacks became available to the public in 1917. In 1984, the library held its 85th birthday reception. During that year, the library set up its first microcomputer.
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In 1984, Gray founded the company Gray Data in Chicago, which provided data analysis research services and published reference cards for microcomputer software. He continues to work as a data analyst through his company Gray Consulting.Amir Alexander, "One Man’s Quest for SETI's Most Promising Signal," The Planetary Society, January 27, 2012.
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Development of Mathomatic was started in the year 1986 by George Gesslein II, as an experiment in computerized mathematics. It was originally written in Microsoft C for MS-DOS. Versions 1 and 2 were published by Dynacomp of Rochester, New York in 1987The Software catalog: Microcomputer. sGoogle Books (6 February 2007).
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Time Trek is a Star Trek computer game published by Personal Software in 1978. Two similar but unrelated games were published under this brand in 1978, one for the Commodore Pet by Brad Templeton and one programmed by Joshua Lavinsky for the TRS-80 4K Level I or Level II microcomputer.
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Initial residents of the technology park included GE, Scientific Atlanta (now part of Cisco Systems), and Hayes Microcomputer Products. In 1968, Duke established Peachtree Corners, Inc., a development corporation for the residential parts of the community. During the 1970s, Jim Cowart began to develop the neighborhoods that Duke had planned.
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This event had the first-ever microcomputer chess tournament, won by Sargon. The 3rd West Coast Computer Faire was held on November 3–5, 1978, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The 4th West Coast Computer Faire returned to San Francisco in May 1979 at Brooks Hall and Civic Auditorium.
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SV was also used for simulations of the HiMAT. Sarrafian reports that the test pilots found the visual display to be comparable to output of camera on board the RPV. The 1986 RC Aerochopper simulation by Ambrosia Microcomputer Products, Inc. used synthetic vision to aid aspiring RC aircraft pilots in learning to fly.
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The team developed their third generation smartglasses, which included an integrated microcomputer with a graphics processor, line of sight system, camera, audio system and memory storage. The computer was based on dedicated low power Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) hardware that could wirelessly interface with smartphones serving as a gateway to the internet.
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RISC iX is a discontinued Unix operating system designed to run on a series of workstations based on the Acorn Archimedes microcomputer. Heavily based on 4.3BSD, it was initially completed in 1988a year after Arthur but prior to RISC OS.Chris's Acorns: RISC iX It was introduced in the R140 workstation in 1989.
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Futrell was a tenured Associate Professor at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. She has also co-authored several books with her husband, including, The Well-Trained Computer: Designing Systematic Instructional Materials for the Classroom Microcomputer (1984), Teachers, Computers, and Curriculum: Microcomputers in the Classroom (1999), and Different Drummers: Nonconforming Thinkers in History (1999).
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He also founded Ingram Software; in 1985 it acquired Micro D and morphed into Ingram Micro Incorporated. It quickly became the largest distributor of microcomputer hardware and software in the world. Ingram also founded Ingram Entertainment, the largest wholesale distributor of pre-recorded videocassettes. Ingram served on the Board of Directors of Weyerhaeuser.
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Based on the 8-bit Intel 8080 Microprocessor, Wayne Green visited MITS in August 1975 and interviewed Ed Roberts. Article has several paragraphs on the design of the Altair 8800. the Altair is widely recognized as the spark that ignited the microcomputer revolution as the first commercially successful personal computer.Dorf, Richard C., ed.
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In the 1980s Progeni, working with Wellington Polytechnic, with finance from the Development Finance Corporation, developed the Poly microcomputer, which was exported to Australia and China. In 1988, Peace Software was founded, also a major exporter of New Zealand-developed software. In 1991 Binary Research was founded, and later sold to Symantec Corporation.
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Beta BASIC is a BASIC interpreter for the Sinclair Research ZX Spectrum microcomputer, written by Dr Andy Wright in 1983 and sold by his one-man software house BetaSoft. BetaSoft also produced a regular newsletter/magazine, BetaNews. Originally it started as a BASIC toolkit but over time it grew into a full replacement.
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Galaxy is a 1981 video game published by Avalon Hill and developed by Microcomputer Games for the Apple II, TRS-80, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore PET, Commodore 64, IBM PC compatibles, FM-7, and Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. It was originally published as Galactic Empires by Powersoft, Inc. in 1979.
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PolyMorphic Systems was a manufacturer of microcomputer boards and systems based on the S-100 bus. Their products included the Poly-88 and the System 8813. The company was incorporated in California in 1976 as Interactive Products Corporation d/b/a PolyMorphic Systems. It was initially based in Goleta, then Santa Barbara, California.
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Ishihara was remembered for his appearances in Seibu Keisatsu as Detective Jun Godai and Taiyō ni Hoero! as Detective Yu "Microcomputer" Mizuki, together with his uncle Yujiro Ishihara. He currently works as the regular weather forecaster on Fuji Television's evening FNN Super News program.FNN Super News official site Retrieved 6 July 2010.
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The ARM is widely used to this day, powering a wide variety of products like the iPhone. ARM processors also run the worlds fastest supercomputer, record set in June 2020 Fugaku ARM Super computer. The Micro is not to be confused with the BBC Micro Bit, another BBC microcomputer released in March 2016.
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Other companies found a niche market for replacements for legacy PDP-11 processors, disk subsystems, etc. By the late 1990s, not only DEC but most of the New England computer industry which had been built around minicomputers similar to the PDP-11 collapsed in the face of microcomputer- based workstations and servers.
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Sinclair formed another company, initially called Ablesdeal Ltd, in 1973. This changed name several times, eventually becoming Science of Cambridge Ltd in July 1977. In June 1978 Science of Cambridge launched a microcomputer kit, the MK14, based on the National SC/MP chip. By July 1978, a personal computer project was under way.
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Reindustrialization Or New Industrialization: Minutes of a Symposium, January 13, 1981, Part 3. National Academies, 1981. p. 53. The two companies also jointly established Advanced Micro Computers (AMC), located in Silicon Valley and in Germany, allowing AMD to enter the microcomputer development and manufacturing field,Rodengen, p. 60.ADVANCED MICRO COMPUTERS, INC. . CaliforniaFirm.us.
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The ZX8302 was a ULA integrated circuit designed for the Sinclair QL microcomputer. Also known as the QL's "Peripheral Chip", it interfaced the CPU to the Microdrives, QLAN local area network interface and RS-232 ports (transmit only) and also provided a real-time clock. The ZX8302 was IC23 on the QL motherboard.
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The Alles Machine consisted of three main parts; an LSI-11 microcomputer, the programmable sound generators, and a number of different input devices. The system was packaged into a large single unit, and weighed 300 pounds - the designers optimistically referred to it as being portable.Alles 1976, pg. 5 The microcomputer was supplied with two 8-inch floppy disk drives (from Heathkit, which sold their own LSI-11 machine, the H11) and an AT&T; color video terminal. It was connected to a customized analog-to-digital converter that sampled the inputs at 7 bit resolution 250 times a second. The input devices consisted of two 61-key piano keyboards, four 3-axis analog joysticks, a bank of 72 sliders, and various switches.
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One of the earliest role-playing video games on a microcomputer was Dungeon n Dragons, written by Peter Trefonas and published by CLOAD (1980). This early game, published for a TRS-80 Model 1, is just 16K long and includes a limited word parser command line, character generation, a store to purchase equipment, combat, traps to solve, and a dungeon to explore. Other contemporaneous CRPGs (Computer Role Playing Games) were Temple of Apshai, Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure and Akalabeth: World of Doom, the precursor to Ultima. Some early microcomputer RPGs (such as Telengard (1982) or Sword of Fargoal) were based on their mainframe counterparts, while others (such as Ultima or Wizardry, the most successful of the early CRPGs) were loose adaptations of D&D.
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In 1974, Roger Melen was visiting the New York editorial offices of Popular Electronics where he saw a prototype of the MITS Altair microcomputer. Melen was so impressed with this machine that he changed his return flight to California to go through Albuquerque, where he met with Ed Roberts, the president of MITS. At that meeting, Roberts encouraged Melen to develop add-on products for the Altair, beginning with the Cyclops digital camera that was slated to appear in the February 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. On returning to California, Melen and Garland formed a partnership to produce the Cyclops camera and future microcomputer products. They named the company “Cromemco” after the Stanford dorm (Crothers Memorial Hall) where they first began their collaboration.
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To do this, the Micromodems supplied their own DAA-like connector in the form of the FCC-approved "microcoupler", a small external box that connected to the internal modem card using a ribbon cable. In 1980 the company changed its name to Hayes Microcomputer Products, under which it operated for most of its history.
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The Netronics ELF II was an early microcomputer trainer kit featuring the RCA 1802 microprocessor, 256 bytes of RAM, DMA-based bitmap graphics, hexadecimal keypad, two digit hexadecimal LED display, a single "Q" LED, and 5 expansion slots. The system was developed and sold by Netronics Research and Development Limited in New Milford, CT, USA.
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After a heated argument, Wozniak threatened that Jobs should "go get himself another computer". They later decided to go with eight slots. The Apple II became one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products in the world. As Jobs became more successful with his new company, his relationship with Brennan grew more complex.
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In 1979, the launch of the VisiCalc spreadsheet (initially for the Apple II) first turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a business tool. After the 1981 release by IBM of its IBM PC, the term personal computer became generally used for microcomputers compatible with the IBM PC architecture (PC compatible).
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In the early 1980s, the name of the town of Kenilworth was used by one of the first generation of computer retailers, a company called Kenilworth Computers based near the Clock Tower, when it released a version of the Nascom microcomputer with the selling point that it was robust enough to be used by agriculture.
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The Bandai RX-78 is a Japanese 8-bit microcomputer manufactured by Bandai. It first appeared in 1983, and employed a SHARP LH0080A (Z80A clone) CPU. It ran at a clock speed of 4.1 MHz, and shipped with 30 KB of RAM. Its 27-color display had a maximum resolution of 192×184 pixels.
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The Time Independent Escape Sequence, or TIES, is a modem protocol standard invented to avoid a patent held by Hayes Microcomputer Products. TIES is an escape sequence that switches the modem from "data mode" to "command mode", allowing instructions to be sent to the modem to control it while still connected to the remote modem.
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After 1889 it was dismantled and its subsequent whereabouts are unknown. Mephisto was later used as the name of a top-line dedicated chess computer which won the World Microcomputer Chess Championship in the years 1985-1990. The name is now used by the consumer electronics company Saitek on its line of standalone chess computers.
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The PROGMOD processed the inputs and generated the patterns for display on the mandala. It was the first use of a microcomputer in a large permanent outdoor public sculpture. The Century of Light was installed in 1980 and continuously operated until it was destroyed in a bungled move by the City of Detroit in 2006.
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The system included joystick flight controls which would connect to an Amiga computer and display.Stern, D: "RC Aerochopper Owners Manual", Ambrosia Microcomputer Products, Inc., 1986 The software included a three-dimensional terrain database for the ground as well as some man-made objects. This database was basic, representing the terrain with relatively small numbers of polygons by today's standards.
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In addition to his work in microcomputer systems and color graphics, Dr. Melen has made significant technical contributions to the development of CCD image sensors, ultrasonic imaging systems, implantable cochlear devices, image processing technology, and vehicular information systems. He has been recognized as one of the most important inventors and innovators in the history of Silicon Valley.
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The Kildalls intended to establish the Digital Research brand and its product lines as synonymous with "microcomputer" in the consumer's mind, similar to what IBM and Microsoft together later successfully accomplished in making "personal computer" synonymous with their product offerings. Intergalactic Digital Research, Inc. was later renamed via a corporation change-of-name filing to Digital Research, Inc.
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Dorothy McEwen Kildall, often known as Dorothy McEwen, (1943–2005) was an American microcomputer industry pioneer. She was married to Gary Kildall and cofounded Digital Research, managing its marketing and daily operations. She was directly involved in IBM's famous unsuccessful attempt in 1980 to license CP/M for the IBM Personal Computer. They separated in 1983, and later divorced.
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Many microcomputer makes and models could run some version or derivation of the CP/M disk operating system. Eight-bit computers running CP/M 80 were built around an Intel 8080/8085, Zilog Z80, or compatible CPU. CP/M 86 ran on the Intel 8086 and 8088. Some computers were suitable for CP/M as delivered.
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Michael Rowan Hamilton John O'Regan OBE (born c. 1947) is a British businessman and the co-founder of RM plc. O'Regan graduated with an economics degree from Cambridge University. In 1973, with Mike Fischer (who had a physics degree from Oxford), O'Regan co-founded Research Machines, a British microcomputer and then software company for the educational market.
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The WriteHander,. a 12-key chord keyboard from NewO Company, appeared in 1978 issues of ROM Magazine, an early microcomputer applications magazine. Another early commercial model was the six-button Microwriter, designed by Cy Endfield and Chris Rainey, and first sold in 1980. Microwriting is the system of chord keying and is based on a set of mnemonics.
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Lifeboat Associates was a New York City company that was one of the largest microcomputer software distributors in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Lifeboat acted as an independent software broker marketing software to major hardware vendors such as Xerox, HP and Altos. As such Lifeboat Associates was instrumental in the founding of AutodeskWalker, John. (February, 1994).
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Scofray attended the St. Dominic's Catholic school in Adweso for his basic education in 1995. In January 1996 to December 1998, he attended Koforidua Senior High Technical School in Koforidua, Ghana. He attended City & Guilds Institute of London where he studied microcomputer technology and electrical-electronics engineering. He is a certified professional trainer by IAPPD United Kingdom.
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Cromemco CS-2 microcomputer with Super Dazzler in television broadcast control room. In 1979, Cromemco replaced the original Dazzler with the Super Dazzler. The Super Dazzler Interface (SDI) had 756 x 484 pixel resolution with the capability to display up to 4096 colors. Dedicated two-port memory cards were used for image storage for higher performance.
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Portal R2E CCMC was a portable microcomputer designed and marketed by the studies and developments department of the French firm R2E Micral and officially appeared in September 1980 at the Sicob show in Paris. The Osborne 1 was released eight months later, in April 1981. specializing in payroll and accounting. Several hundred examples were sold between 1980 and 1983.
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NAPLPS (North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax) is a graphics language for use originally with videotex and teletext services. NAPLPS was developed from the Telidon system developed in Canada, with a small number of additions from AT&T; Corporation. The basics of NAPLPS were later used as the basis for several other microcomputer-based graphics systems.
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The Wave Mate Bullet is notable because it represents CP/M machines at their apex. Small yet affordable machines which were quite powerful at the time with plentiful applications. Wave Mate, Inc. is a historically relevant company because one of the original microcomputer companies which released their first computer kit the Wave Mate Jupiter II in 1975.
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Telmac TMC-600 The Telmac TMC-600 was a Finnish microcomputer produced during the early 1980s starting in 1982. It was introduced in 1982 by Telercas, the Finnish importer of RCA microchips. Only 600 units were produced, making it very rare today. The TMC-600 was the only commercially available BASIC-based home computer designed and manufactured in Finland.tietokonemuseo.
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THEOS, which translates from Greek as "God", is an operating system which started out as OASIS, a microcomputer operating system for small computers that use the Z80 processor. When the operating system was launched for the IBM Personal Computer/AT in 1982, the decision was taken to change the name from OASIS to THEOS, short for THE Operating System.
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"David Levy and Monroe Newborn, More Chess and Computers: The Microcomputer Revolution, The Challenge Match, Computer Science Press, Potomac, Maryland, and Batsford, London, 1980, Preface. . International Master Edward Lasker stated in 1978, "My contention that computers cannot play like a master, I retract. They play absolutely alarmingly. I know, because I have lost games to 4.7.
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After the demise of Hayden Software, later chess programs were also released under the name Sargon, including Sargon IV (Spinnaker Software), Sargon V (Activision) and a CD-i title simply named Sargon Chess. The Spracklens concurrently wrote the engines for the dedicated chess computers produced by Fidelity Electronics, which won the first four World Microcomputer Chess Championships.
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The library offers many computerized services. The computerized integrated catalog, DYNIX, and the full MEDLINE service are available from home or office by telephone. A microcomputer lab is available for student and faculty use. Other services include interlibrary loans, photocopying, information and instructional services, and search capabilities to a large number of on-line and compact disc databases.
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VisiCalc is credited as the defining killer app in the microcomputer industry. During the first five years of operations, revenues doubled about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980, annual sales grew from $775,000 to $118 million. During this period the sole products of the company were the Apple II and its peripherals, accessories, and software.
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Cheetah is an extended play by British electronic musician Richard D. James, released under the pseudonym Aphex Twin on 8 July 2016 on Warp. The name is a reference to Cheetah Marketing, a British manufacturer of microcomputer peripherals and electronic musical instruments in the 1980s (such as the MS800 namechecked in two of the EP's track titles).
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It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. The MOSFET led to the development of microprocessors, memory chips, and digital telecommunication circuits. This led to the development of the personal computer (PC) in the 1970s, and the beginning of the microcomputer revolution and the Digital Revolution.
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It used a flattened CRT unlike Sinclair's previous portable televisions. The TV80 was a commercial failure selling only 15,000 units and not covering its development costs of £4m. ;Sinclair QL The Sinclair QL was announced in January 1984, priced at £399. Marketed as a more sophisticated 32-bit microcomputer for professional users, it used a Motorola 68008 processor.
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The calculators were very successful and sales topped one million dollars in 1973. A brutal calculator price war left the company deeply in debt by 1974. Roberts then developed the first commercially successful microcomputer, the Altair 8800, which was featured on the January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics. Hobbyists flooded MITS with orders for the $397 computer kit.
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Their first product was the Acorn Microcomputer (later called the System 1). In 1983, he co-founded Redwood Publishing with Michael Potter and Christopher Ward and they bought the Acorn User title. In 1985, he founded General Information Systems Ltd (GIS) and remains the director. In 2012, he announced his latest project for GIS, Care with Canary.
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Raima Inc. originally released RDM in 1984 and it was called db_VISTA. It was one of the first microcomputer network model database management systems designed exclusively for use with C language applications. A companion product called db_QUERY was introduced in 1986, which was the first SQL-like query and report writing utility for a network model database.
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The Cultural Revolution continued to severely stagnate technological development in the first half of the 1970s. Until the 1976 invention of the Cangjie input method, computing technologies lacked an efficient way of inputting Chinese characters into computers. The Cangjie method uses Chinese character radicals to construct characters. In 1977, the first microcomputer, the DJS-050 was developed.
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In video game systems, bank switching allowed larger games to be developed for play on existing consoles. Bank switching originated in minicomputer systems. Many modern microcontrollers and microprocessors use bank switching to manage random-access memory, non-volatile memory, input- output devices and system management registers in small embedded systems. The technique was common in 8-bit microcomputer systems.
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WinSingad is software for singing training. It started life as SINGAD, which stands for "SINGing Assessment and Development", running on a BBC Micro Howard, D.M., and Welch, G.F. (1989). "Microcomputer-based singing ability assessment and development", Applied Acoustics, 27, (2), 89-102. and it was designed for use in primary schools to develop and assess children's singing pitching skills.
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Voyager I: Sabotage of the Robot Ship is a computer game designed and programmed by William D. Volk, and published by the Microcomputer Games division of Avalon Hill. It was originally released for the Apple II in 1981, with later versions for the Atari 8-bit family, TRS-80 Color Computer, TRS-80, and Commodore PET.
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At that time it was not so clear the microcomputers will be the future and some experts believe that the microcomputers are mainly for games and home usage. It happened that in 1981 the first microcomputer in Eastern Europe called Imko II then (in 1982) called Pravetz 82 (with 8 bit processor) has been released in Bulgaria. This was Apple II compatible microcomputer and it came to life just after Apple II. This situation placed Bulgaria in the leadership role in microcomputers production not only in Eastern Europe but also in the Middle East and even in the Central Europe. A huge plants have been built exporting thousands of Pravetz 82 and later Pravetz 16 (with 8086/88 processor) to all Eastern bloc countries and to Arabic countries.
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The May 1977 issue featured a Floppy ROM containing a version of Tiny BASIC for the 6800. Interface Age, "published for the home computerist", was a computer magazine aimed at the early microcomputer and home computer market. Its first issue was published in August 1976 and the last one in September 1984. It had a technical focus for most of its print run.
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Removable media have become very common with microcomputer platforms. They allow programs and data to be transferred between machines without a physical connection. Common examples include USB mass storage (flash drives), memory cards, CD-ROMs, and DVDs. Utilities have therefore been developed to detect the presence and availability of a medium and then mount that medium without any user intervention.
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Before the microcomputer, a successful software program typically sold up to 1,000 units at $50,000–60,000 each. By the mid-1980s, personal computer software sold thousands of copies for $50–700 each. Companies like Microsoft, MicroPro, and Lotus Development had tens of millions of dollars in annual sales. They similarly dominated the European market with localized versions of already successful products.
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A later version came in a 52-pin plastic leaded chip carrier; this version provided a 22-bit address bus and could support of RAM. Very few computer systems used the 68008 as the main processor; the Sinclair QL microcomputer is the best known of these. However, the 68008 was popular in embedded systems. Motorola ended production of the 68008 in 1996.comp.sys.
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The RM Nimbus PC-186 was a 16-bit microcomputer introduced in 1985.RM Nimbus on oldcomputers.com It is one of a small number of computers based on the Intel 80186 processor, a version of the Intel 8086 (as used by the IBM PC) originally intended as a processor for embedded systems. It ran MS-DOS 3.1 but was not IBM PC compatible.
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RAM was quite small in the unexpanded systems (a few hundred bytes to a few kilobytes). By 1976 the number of pre-assembled machines was growing, and the 1977 introduction of the "Trinity" of Commodore PET, TRS-80 and Apple II generally marks the end of the "early" microcomputer era, and the advent of the consumer home computer era that followed.
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Potomac College Avoids Shutdown; State Officials Suspend Efforts to Close Troubled School in Rockville, The Washington Post, June 15, 1995. Retrieved from highbeam.com, June 3, 2014. The college was operated by the Potomac Education Foundation and offered working adults the opportunity to complete bachelor's degrees in management or microcomputer systems management while working full-time and completing projects on the job.
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The Intertec Superbrain was an all-in-one commercial microcomputer that was first sold by Intertec Data Systems Corp. of Columbia, South Carolina, USA in 1979. The machine ran the operating system CP/M and was somewhat unusual in that it used dual Z80 CPUs, the second being used as a disk controller. In 1983, the basic machine sold for about $2000.
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Clay Realtors Angel Fire, 416 F.3d 1195, 1199 n.2 (10th Cir. 2005); Stuart Weitzman, LLC v. Microcomputer Resources, Inc., 542 F.3d 859, 864 n.5 (11th Cir. 2008) ("courts ask whether the state law claim has extra elements that make it qualitatively different from a copyright infringement claim"); Sturdza v. United Arab Emirates, 281 F.3d 1287, 1304 (D.
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Micromation Inc. was as an early pioneer (1978–1983) in the design, manufacture and sale of microcomputer systems, circuit boards and peripherals. The company's products were built around early Intel and Zilog microprocessors, the S-100 bus and the CP/M and MP/M Operating System software from Digital Research. Micromation's headquarters and manufacturing plant were both located in San Francisco.
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The Altos 586 was a multi-user microcomputer intended for the business market. It was introduced by Altos Computer Systems in 1983. A configuration with 512 kB of RAM, an Intel 8086 processor, Microsoft Xenix, and 10 MB hard drive cost about US$8,000. 3Com offered this Altos 586 product as a file server for their IBM PC networking solution in spring 1983.
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"Project Assignments – Development". Memorandum, Informatics General Corporation, June 8, 1984. The overall goal was a product that could span across mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers. Applications could be built and tested in one environment, such as an IBM mainframe in a data center, and then run in another environment, such a minicomputer located in a regional location or a microcomputer located in the field.
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Technically and artistically, Bugaboo (The Flea) brought some novelties to the world of video games that have since been widely used. Among them we can highlight: \- It was the first to implement a user interface based on click time. \- It was the first microcomputer video game incorporating a Cutscene. \- He was one of the first to use full screen scroll.
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He is married to Dr. Sue Stacy, an educator who has taught at multiple universities and has authored several textbooks on microcomputer applications. She received her master's degree from the University of Missouri and her PhD from Georgia State University. In 2013 the two of them were jointly awarded the Outstanding Service Award from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
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Fowler was born and raised in Seabrook, New Hampshire. He joined the Army National Guard in 1987 and retired with the rank of staff sergeant. He earned an associate degree in criminal justice from McIntosh College. He later earned a certificate in microcomputer technology from Southern New Hampshire University and another in forensic science and crime scene investigation from Kaplan University.
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7, No. 4, 1993, pp. 757-773. # "An Improved Structural Approach for Automated Recognition of Handprinted Characters" (with P. S. P. Wang), International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 5, 1 and 2, 1991, pp. 97-121. # “A Microcomputer-Based Image Database Management System” (with B. E. Prasad, Hoo-min Toong, and Stuart Madnick), IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Vol.
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The adapter itself was mains powered with its own power switch matching the one on the BBC microcomputer. Connection to the computer was via a ribbon cable and the only other connector on the adapter was a female 75ohm TV aerial (in) connector. The adapter contained four manual tuning wheels to receive signals from four different broadcast channels. Rear view of the adapter.
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Taber was extremely supportive of women in engineering. When Taber retired, Purdue University dedicated the Margaret R. Taber Microcomputer Lab in her honor. In 1993, she established the Dr. Margaret R. Taber Scholarship for Women in Engineering to provide for outstanding women engineering students at the University of Akron. In 2007, she established a second scholarship fund for women in Electronic Engineering Technology.
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Benoit Thouin made improvements to the initial prototype over the subsequent year, and turned it into an operational system. After three years, METEO 1 had demonstrated the feasibility of microcomputer-based machine translation to the satisfaction of the Canadian government's Translation Bureau of Public Works and Government Services Canada. METEO 1 was formally adopted in 1981, replacing the junior translators in the workflow.
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The Cromemco Cyclops, introduced in 1975 by Cromemco, was the first commercial all-digital camera using a digital metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) image sensor. It was also the first digital camera to be interfaced to a microcomputer. The digital sensor for the camera was a modified 1kb dynamic RAM (DRAM) memory chip that offered a resolution of 32 × 32 pixels (0.001 megapixels).
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O'Conner worked for Cincinnati-based Intercomputer Communications Corporation (ICC), a microcomputer to mainframe inter-connectivity company. When ICC was acquired by Digital Communications Associates in 1992, O'Connor eventually became its Chief Technology Officer and a Vice President of Research and Development. O'Connor quit DCA in 1995. That year, O'Connor met Chris Klaus who had just started Internet Security Systems (ISS).
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Seagate developed the first 5.25-inch hard disk drive (HDD), the 5-megabyte ST-506, in 1980. They were a major supplier in the microcomputer market during the 1980s, especially after the introduction of the IBM XT in 1983. Today Seagate, along with its competitor Western Digital, dominates the HDD market. Much of their growth has come through their acquisition of competitors.
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Each Z-2 system was populated with Cromemco Octart interface cards, with each card supporting eight terminals on the trading floor. For ten years, from 1982 to 1992, all trades at the CME were processed by these systems. In 1992 the Cromemco systems were replaced by IBM PS/2 computers. Cromemco computers were the first microcomputer systems widely distributed in China.
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HULC is also easy to put on. It arrives folded in a small package, so soldiers just have to stretch out a leg and step into foot beds underneath the boot. Straps then wrap around the thighs, waist and shoulders. Sensors in the foot pads relay information to an onboard microcomputer that moves the hydraulic system to amplify and enhance the wearer's movement.
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Kilobaud Microcomputing estimated in 1980 that Tandy was selling three times as many computers as Apple Computer, with both companies ahead of Commodore. By 1981, InfoWorld described RadioShack as "the dominant supplier of small computers". Hundreds of small companies produced TRS-80 software and accessories, and Adam Osborne described Tandy as "the number-one microcomputer manufacturer" despite having "so few roots in microcomputing".
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Alphabet Zoo was produced by Dale Disharoon, a teacher from Chico, California. By early 1984 InfoWorld estimated that Spinnaker was the world's 16th-largest microcomputer-software company, with $10 million in 1983 sales. During the 1983-1988 time frame, Spinnaker consistently led the best seller charts for educational software. with Snooper Troops making the top ten list of bestselling games.
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The first-ever use of a credit card on the internet happened at GTSI in 1995. The company was founded in 1983 and sold technology parts and services to clients, primarily government, reselling more than 75,000 products. In 1996 GTSI was the largest reseller to the U.S. Government of microcomputer software and Unix hardware. Duggan began investing in GTSI in 1986.
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Raymond M. Holt is a computer designer and businessman in Silicon Valley. From 1968 to 1970, Holt developed his first microprocessor chip set for Garrett AiResearch's Central Air Data Computer for the F-14 Tomcat. His story of this design and development is presented in a podcast. He was co-founder with Manny Lemas of Microcomputer Associates, Incorporated,old-computers.
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Some of these were mainframe related, designed to allow programs running on those machines to translate between the variety of SQL's and provide a single common interface which could then be called by other mainframe or microcomputer programs. These solutions included IBM's Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA) and Apple Computer's Data Access Language. Much more common, however, were systems that ran entirely on microcomputers, including a complete protocol stack that included any required networking or file translation support. One of the early examples of such a system was Lotus Development's DataLens, initially known as Blueprint. Blueprint, developed for 1-2-3, supported a variety of data sources, including SQL/DS, DB2, FOCUS and a variety of similar mainframe systems, as well as microcomputer systems like dBase and the early Microsoft/Ashton-Tate efforts that would eventually develop into Microsoft SQL Server.
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Hayes Microcomputer Products was a U.S.-based manufacturer of modems. The company is well known for the Smartmodem, which introduced a control language for operating the functions of the modem via the serial interface, in contrast to manual operation with front-panel switches. This smart modem approach dramatically simplified and automated operation. Today almost all modems use a variant of the Hayes command set.
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Overhead projector "Polylux" Microcomputer teaching kit "Poly-Computer 880" VEB Polytechnik was a company from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) located in Chemnitz (then called Karl-Marx-Stadt). In the GDR, it was mainly known for producing overhead projectors, called Polylux. The company was founded in 1870 as Reißzeugrichter and manufactured drawing table tools. In 1874 the founder Emil Oskar Richter invented the bow compass.
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Creative Computing was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution. Published from October 1974 until December 1985, the magazine covered the spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format than the rather technically oriented Byte. The company published several books, the most successful being BASIC Computer Games, the first million-selling computer book. Their Best of Creative Computing collections were also popular.
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A Retrocomputing hobbyist computer, the RCA 1802-based Membership Card microcomputer kit, is designed to fit in an Altoids tin, and CMoy pocket headphone amplifiers often use the containers as an enclosure. Altoids tins have also been popular with outdoor enthusiasts for many years as first-aid or mini survival kit containers. A name for these kits is Bug-Out Altoids Tins, or BOATs.
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After the 1950s, the city's population began to decline slowly as families tended to be replaced by single people and young couples. In Cambridge Highlands, the technology company Bolt, Beranek, & Newman produced the first network router in 1969, and hosted the invention of computer-to-computer email in 1971. The 1980s brought a wave of high-technology startups. Those selling advanced minicomputers were overtaken by the microcomputer.
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Greentree's origins go back to the 1980s, when it was developing DOS-based accounting software under the brand name CBA. For 14 years, CBA was the most successful mid-range financial software solution, used on more than 12,000 sites across New Zealand and Australia. CBA was founded by Don Bowman and John Cowan in 1983. In less than a year, it became Australia's top microcomputer accounting software.
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The theme music to the programme was Kraftwerk's Computer World, taken from their 1981 album of the same name. The opening titles was an animation of an owl – the mascot (and logo) of the BBC Microcomputer system – flying into a domestic living room. The "owl" theme would be used on the two successor shows. The ending was Computer World 2, taken from the same album.
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There are 16 kB of on- chip embedded SRAM and an integrated DDR3 memory controller.Intel® Quark™ SoC X1000 (16K Cache, 400 MHz) Specifications, Intel A second Intel product that includes Quark core, the Intel Edison microcomputer, was presented in January 2014. It has a form factor close to the size of an SD card, and is capable of wireless networking using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
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The compiler was converted from ALGOL to XPL0 and was then able to compile itself and run on a microcomputer. XPL0 soon proved its worth in a variety of products based on the 6502. These embedded systems would otherwise have had their code written in assembly language, which is much more tedious to do. Boyle used XPL0 to write a disk operating system called Apex.
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Robert Frank Tinney (born November 22, 1947) is an American contemporary illustrator known for his monthly cover illustrations for the microcomputer publication Byte magazine spanning over a decade. In so doing, Tinney became one of the first artists to create a broad yet consistent artistic concept for the computing world, combining a specific artistic style with visual metaphor to showcase emerging trends in personal computing technology.
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Nanocomputer refers to a computer smaller than the microcomputer, which is smaller than the minicomputer. Microelectronic components that are at the core of all modern electronic devices employ semiconductor transistors. The term nanocomputer is increasingly used to refer to general computing devices of size comparable to a credit card. Modern Single-Board Computers such as the Raspberry Pi and Gumstix would fall under this classification.
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Socrates II is a chess program that, in 1993, won the 23rd North American Computer Chess Championship. It ran on an IBM PC. This was the first and only time that a stock microcomputer won this event, finishing ahead of past winners Cray Blitz and HiTech. The authors, Don Dailey and Larry Kaufman, renewed their collaboration twenty years later to create the Komodo chess engine.
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Mark Trueblood is an American engineer and astronomer. He pioneered the development of robotic telescopes, as the author of several articles and two books, including Microcomputer Control of Telescopes and Telescope Control, co-authored with Russell M. Genet. Trueblood worked on the Gemini Observatory. He is the owner and operator of Winer Observatory in Sonoita, Arizona, which is the site of several professional research projects.
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An integral part of the architecture was a 16 bit input mux that provided various condition bits from the ALUs such as zero, carry, overflow along with general purpose inputs. The microprocessor was used in the IMP-16P microcomputer. The IMP-16 was later superseded by National Semiconductor's PACE and INS8900 single-chip 16-bit microprocessors, which had a similar architecture but were not binary compatible.
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At Commodore, Peddle convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were a dead-end and that Commodore should explore the burgeoning microcomputer market instead. At first, they considered purchasing an existing design, and in September 1976 Peddle got a demonstration of Jobs and Wozniak's Apple II prototype. Jobs was offering to sell it to Commodore, but Commodore considered Jobs's offer too expensive.Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs, 2011.
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Ocean France had plans to develop Snow Bros. for various microcomputer and console platforms such as the Amstrad GX4000, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum in 1991 but neither conversion were officially released by Ocean Software. Like the Game Boy port, the Amiga version lacks multiplayer functionality due to gameplay reasons. A ROM image of the Amiga version was leaked online in 2006.
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On the Nascom 1 this gave rise to white flicker on the screen that was termed "snow". The International Nascom Microcomputer Club (INMC) published a "snow plough" design that reduced the effect by blanking the video when simultaneous access occurred. The Nascom 2 used a slightly different design but still allowed contention to occur, this time giving rise to black flicker (blanking) on the screen.
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Synex Systems Corporation, a subsidiary of Synex International Inc. (Symbol SXI, TSX) was formed in 1983 in an effort to develop software for the microcomputer market and was run by Synex International Vice President Murray Hendren until 1992.Hendren and Associates: Experience In 2002, Synex Systems was acquired by privately owned Lasata Software of Perth, Australia. In 2005, Lasata was acquired by UK based Systems Union.
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IBM, seeking to embrace the microcomputer revolution, devised its IBM Personal Computer (PC). Crucially, IBM developed the PC from third-party components that were available on the open market. The only impediment to another company duplicating the system's architecture was the proprietary BIOS software. Other companies, starting with Compaq, reverse engineered the BIOS and released PC compatible computers that soon became the dominant architecture.
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When information needs to be read, the utility decompresses the information. A disk compression utility overrides the standard operating system routines. Since all software applications access the hard disk using these routines, they continue to work after disk compression has been installed. Disk compression utilities were popular especially in the early 1990s, when microcomputer hard disks were still relatively small (20 to 80 megabytes).
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Extensive studies were done to optimize the cache sizes. Optimal values were found to depend greatly on the programming language used with Algol needing the smallest and Fortran and Cobol needing the largest cache sizes. In the early days of microcomputer technology, memory access was only slightly slower than register access. But since the 1980s the performance gap between processor and memory has been growing.
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This foreshadowed his personal computer work, where he became known as a savvy author of low-level system utilities and reference books. When the IBM PC made its debut in 1981, Norton was among the first to buy one. After he was laid off during an aerospace industry cutback, he took up microcomputer programming to make ends meet. One day he accidentally deleted a file.
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The Renault 18 also formed the basis for the "Renault Eve" research car. This experimental fuel efficient concept car, powered by a 1.1 L engine from the R5, featured then state-of-the-art microcomputer microprocessor, an array of specialized sensors, an electronically controlled carburetor, continuously variable automatic transmission, as well as aerodynamics and use of lightweight materials. The project was sponsored by the French government.
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The 8-bit machine had four serial ports, designated tty0 to tty3. These interfaces could operate either as V.24 or IFSS (Interface sternförmig seriell–20 mA current loop) signals. In addition the computer had a parallel port which allowed the connection of an EPROM burner. Another internal 32-bit parallel interface was used for the coupling the 8-bit to a 16-bit microcomputer card.
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The SVI-838, also known as X'press 16, is the last microcomputer produced by Spectravideo (at Hong Kong). Although it was a PC clone, it had the standard sound and video coprocessors of the MSX2, making it a hybrid system. The sales were unimpressive and it is now considered a collectible. With a SVI-811 adapter, the machine could run MSX1 programs in cartridge.
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Originally referred to as the Gluon, a National Semiconductor 32016 second processor solution was apparently planned for the BBC Micro and for other 8-bit microcomputers, with the BBC Micro version employing the Tube interface and offering a quarter of a megabyte of RAM, whereas the "Universal Gluon" would be connected to a microcomputer acting as a terminal using a serial or parallel interface, offer up to 1 MB of RAM, up to 5 MB of hard disk storage, and either a minimal operating system or Unix. The product that was eventually delivered is a sophisticated second processor expansion sometimes branded as "Acorn Cambridge Co-Processor" with an Acorn logo, and sometimes as "BBC Microcomputer System 32016 Second Processor" along with the BBC Micro's owl logo. The device uses the 32016 CPU and 32081 FPU running at 6 MHz. It runs the non-graphical Panos operating system.
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That is, until the public stops buying or something better comes along. Companies who believe that microcomputer games are the hula hoop of the 1980s only want to play Quick Profit." Bill Kunkel said in January 1983 that companies had "licensed everything that moves, walks, crawls, or tunnels beneath the earth. You have to wonder how tenuous the connection will be between the game and the movie Marathon Man.
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The R2C was the color version of the 2nd Z80-based microcomputer produced by Regency Systems of Champaign, Illinois, the first being the RC1. The RC1 had a high resolution display and dual 8-inch floppy disk drives. It was essentially a standalone PLATO environment, adapting the TUTOR language and environment. The company was founded by David Eades, a real-estate agency owner, and Paul Tenczar, creator of the TUTOR language.
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The Commodore 900 (also known as the C900, Z-8000, and Z-Machine) was a prototype microcomputer originally intended for business computing and, later, as an affordable UNIX workstation. It was to replace the aging PET/CBM family of personal computers that had found success in Europe as business machines. The project was initiated in 1983 by Commodore systems engineers Frank Hughes, Robert Russell, and Shiraz Shivji.Bagnall, Brian (2006).
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Mike David Fischer CBE is the co-founder of the computer company RM plc. Fischer graduated with a physics degree from Oxford University. In 1973, with Mike O'Regan (who had an economics degree from Cambridge), Fischer co-founded Research Machines, a British microcomputer and then software company for the educational market. He was CEO for 24 years and became a non-executive director and lifetime president in 1997.
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The villain Mad Thinker creates an artificial lifeform based on the research notes of Fantastic Four leader Mister Fantastic. A synthesis of ape DNA and unstable molecules incorporated into an almost indestructible body with a microcomputer and a solar-power source, the newly christened Awesome Android is directed against the Fantastic Four, although the superhero team defeats both the Android and the Thinker.Fantastic Four #15 (June 1963). Marvel Comics.
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In 1981 IBM entered the microcomputer market. The IBM PC was created by a small subdivision of the firm. It was unusual for an IBM product because it was largely sourced from outside component suppliers and was intended to run third-party operating systems and software. IBM published the technical specifications and schematics of the PC, which allowed third- party companies to produce compatible hardware, the so-called open architecture.
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Dr. Dobb's Journal (DDJ) was a monthly magazine published in the United States by UBM Technology Group, part of UBM. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers. When launched in 1976, DDJ was the first regular periodical focused on microcomputer software, rather than hardware. In its last years of publication, it was distributed as a PDF monthly, although the principal delivery of Dr. Dobb's content was through the magazine's website.
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Fox is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. At age eleven, he made his first 8 mm cartoon using stacks of discarded Flintstones cels he found in the trash bins behind Hanna-Barbera. He studied engineering at UCLA and Humanistic Psychology at Sonoma State University, where he received his bachelor's degree. Fox and his wife Annie co-founded Marin Computer Center in 1977 - the world’s first public-access microcomputer center.
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Mpact-2 is a 125 MHz vector-processing graphics, audio and video media processor, a second generation in the Mpact family of Chromatic Research media processors, which can be used only as a co-processor to the main Central Processing Unit (CPU) of a microcomputer. Hardware using the Mpact-2 uses OEM firmware to provide plug-and-play facility, and may be used with either a PCI or AGP bus.
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The FM-8 (Fujitsu Micro 8) is a personal computer developed and manufactured by Fujitsu in May 1981. It was Fujitsu's second microcomputer released to the public after the LKIT-8 kit computer, and the first in the "FM" series. The FM-8 would later be replaced by two new models in November 1982 – the FM-11, aimed at businesses and the FM-7 aimed at the mass market.
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About 1982, Cinematronics started releasing games which used raster display, such as Naughty Boy and Zzyzzyxx. During this time Cinematronics filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In 1983 Cinematronics released Dragon's Lair, one of the first laserdisc-based arcade games. In order to finish the project they partnered with Advanced Microcomputer Systems (later renamed RDI Video Systems), who later tried to sell a home version of the laser-disc machine.
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BASIC 8.0 filled in the gap. It came on floppy disk and ROM chip versions, and provided many graphics commands that were competitive with the C128's opposition in the high-end 8-bit microcomputer market. BASIC 8.0 was fully compatible with the various first-party RAM and video RAM expansion chips and cartridges, as well as mice and joysticks. In addition, it had basic 3D graphics commands.
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PolyMorphic Systems Poly-88 microcomputer chassis. With the release of their CPU card, PolyMorphic began selling complete systems. Their first was the Poly-88, housed in a 5-slot S100 chassis, with additional side-mounted S-100 connectors for the purpose of joining chassis together. This unit earned the nickname "orange toaster" due to its orange metal cover, and the fact that the S-100 cards generated noticeable heat.
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The design was targeted at the KIM-1 Microcomputer. The original TV Typewriter book cover shows an ASCII keyboard designed by Don Lancaster and sold by Southwest Technical Products. An early computer store chain, the Byte Shop, had the publisher add their logo to the covers and sold the TTL Cookbook and the TV Typewriter Cookbook in their stores. A later edition cover was designed for Radio Shack stores.
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Dragon's Lair began as a concept by Rick Dyer, president of Advanced Microcomputer Systems (which later became RDI Video Systems). A team of game designers created the characters and locations, then choreographed Dirk's movements as he encountered the monsters and obstacles in the castle. The art department at AMS created storyboards for each episode as a guide for the final animation. Dyer was inspired by the text game Adventure.
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Digital Research, Inc. (DR or DRI) was a company created by Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit systems like MP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, DOS Plus, DR DOS and GEM. It was the first large software company in the microcomputer world. Digital Research was originally based in Pacific Grove, California, later in Monterey, California.
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DisplayWrite (sometimes written as Displaywrite) was a word processor software application that IBM developed and marketed for the IBM PC and PCjr. It was among the company's first internally developed, commercially sold PC software. DisplayWrite's feature set was based on the IBM Displaywriter System, a dedicated microcomputer-based word processing machine.IBM DisplayWrite Because the two systems were so similar, an experienced Displaywriter user could start using DisplayWrite immediately.
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Harry T. Garland (born 1947) is a scientist, engineer, author, and entrepreneur who co-founded Cromemco Inc., one of the earliest and most successful microcomputer companies. He received the B.A. degree in mathematics from Kalamazoo College, and the Ph.D. degree in biophysics from Stanford University. Dr. Garland has been recognized as one of the most important innovators in the history of the development of personal computers in Silicon Valley.
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Closeup of IMSAI 8080 front panel IMSAI VDP-40 desktop computer of 1977-1979. Intel 8085, 32KB/64 kb RAM, 2x fdd 80/160 kb, S100 Bus. 2kb monitor ROM, 2kb Video ROM The IMSAI 8080 was an early microcomputer released in late 1975, based on the Intel 8080 and later 8085 and S-100 bus. It was a clone of its main competitor, the earlier MITS Altair 8800.
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The system contained a number of enhancements, notably tools to access DOS files directly on a DOS/FAT-partition, and an updated ADB debugger. The system came in two flavors: a 2-user version priced at $800, and an 8-user version at $1,000. There were no technical differences between the two. Confusingly, Venix 2.0 for the DEC PRO-380 microcomputer (Venix/PRO) was based "essentially" on System III.
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Dennis Allison is a lecturer at Stanford University, a position he has held since 1976. Allison was a founding member of the People's Computer Company. Allison in 1975 wrote a specification for a microcomputer interpreter for the BASIC programming language The ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) reprinted the Tiny Basic design notes from the January 1976 Tiny BASIC Journal. which became known as Tiny Basic.
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The French company R2E was formed by two former engineers of the Intertechnique company to sell their Intel 8008-based microcomputer design. The system was developed at the Institut national de la recherche agronomique to automate hygrometric measurements. The system ran at 500 kHz and included 16 kB of memory, and sold for 8500 Francs, about $1300US. A bus, called Pluribus, was introduced that allowed connection of up to 14 boards.
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1984: Apple Macintosh. In 1983 Apple Computer introduced the first mass-marketed microcomputer with a graphical user interface, the Lisa. The Lisa ran on a Motorola 68000 microprocessor and came equipped with 1 megabyte of RAM, a black-and-white monitor, dual 5¼-inch floppy disk drives and a 5 megabyte Profile hard drive. The Lisa's slow operating speed and high price (US$10,000), however, led to its commercial failure.
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One notable program available only for the Model 4 was marketed by Radio Shack as DoubleDuty. This is one of the first task-switching programs available for any microcomputer. It uses the upper 64KB of a 128KB machine to keep resident a second TRSDOS application, which can be switched instantly with another application loaded into the main 64KB. A third partition is available for TRSDOS library commands, such as DIR.
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Microcomputers fit well on or under desks or tables, so that they are within easy access of users. Bigger computers like minicomputers, mainframes, and supercomputers take up large cabinets or even dedicated rooms. A microcomputer comes equipped with at least one type of data storage, usually RAM. Although some microcomputers (particularly early 8-bit home micros) perform tasks using RAM alone, some form of secondary storage is normally desirable.
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Wang was born in 1978 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. In 1994, he completed all proof of elementary geometry proposition for the first time in high school, using a microcomputer with Wu’s elimination method. In 1996, he won a gold medal at the 8th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). Wang studied at Tsinghua University and earned Bachelor of Science and master's degrees in Computer Science and an EMBA degree there.
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Elk Cloner is one of the first known microcomputer viruses that spread "in the wild", i.e., outside the computer system or laboratory in which it was written. It attached itself to the Apple II operating system and spread by floppy disk. It was written around 1982 by programmer and entrepreneur Rich Skrenta as a 15-year-old high school student, originally as a joke, and put onto a game disk.
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The BBC Micro sold well—so much so that Acorn's profits rose from £3000 in 1979 to £8.6m in July 1983. In September 1983, CPU shares were liquidated and Acorn was floated on the Unlisted Securities Market as Acorn Computer Group plc, with Acorn Computers Ltd. as the microcomputer division. With a minimum tender price of 120p, the group came into existence with a market capitalisation of about £135 million.
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Born Roger Wilson, she was raised in Leeds, Yorkshire, by parents who were both teachers, her father specialising in English and her mother in physics. From 1975, she studied computer science and the Mathematical Tripos at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. In an Easter break from university, Wilson designed a microcomputer with a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor inspired by the earlier MK14, which was used to electronically control feed for cows.
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Bell's law of computer classes and class formation was first mentioned in 1970 with the introduction of the Digital Equipment PDP-11 mini to differentiate it from mainframes and the potentially emerging micros. The law was described in 1972 by Gordon Bell. The emergence and observation of a new, lower-priced microcomputer class based on the microprocessor stimulated the creation of the law that Bell described in articles and Bell's books.
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The advent of MIDI technology allows a single keystroke, control wheel motion, pedal movement, or command from a microcomputer to activate every device in the studio remotely and in synchrony, with each device responding according to conditions predetermined by the composer. MIDI instruments and software made powerful control of sophisticated instruments easily affordable by many studios and individuals. Acoustic sounds became reintegrated into studios via sampling and sampled-ROM-based instruments.
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The PC532 was a "home-brew" microcomputer design created by George Scolaro and Dave Rand in 1989-1990, based on the National Semiconductor NS32532 microprocessor (a member of the NS320xx series). Full hardware documentation for the design, including schematics and PAL programming data, was made freely available, and a short run (around 200) of motherboard PCBs were produced for hobbyists to populate and assemble into fully functional systems.
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SoCs comprise many execution units. These units must often send data and instructions back and forth. Because of this, all but the most trivial SoCs require communications subsystems. Originally, as with other microcomputer technologies, data bus architectures were used, but recently designs based on sparse intercommunication networks known as networks-on-chip (NoC) have risen to prominence and are forecast to overtake bus architectures for SoC design in the near future.
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On the business-focused CP/M computers which soon became widespread in small business environments, Microsoft BASIC (MBASIC) was one of the leading applications. In 1978, David Lien published the first edition of The BASIC Handbook: An Encyclopedia of the BASIC Computer Language, documenting keywords across over 78 different computers. By 1981, the second edition documented keywords from over 250 different computers, showcasing the explosive growth of the microcomputer era.
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In recent times, microcomputer programs are available that will balance a diet for many nutrients and assist with economic decisions. The basic nutrients required are crude protein, metabolizable energy, minerals, vitamins and water. The formulation procedure has both fixed and variable portions. Swine rations are generally based on a ground cereal grain as a carbohydrate source, soybean meal as a protein source, minerals like calcium and phosphorus are added, and vitamins.
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Advertised as "a microcomputer for everyone at a micro price ... a complete computer for $149.00 for 1K [RAM] kit" with optional 2K RAM, it was an unlicensed clone of the Sinclair ZX80 and had an identical, yet obfuscated copy of the ROM by means of a byteswap.Microace repair, detailing byte-swap Some time later, between 1980 and 1981, MicroAce settled with Sinclair and licensed the ROM of the ZX81.
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The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE696-1983 (withdrawn), is an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800. The S-100 bus was the first industry standard expansion bus for the microcomputer industry. S-100 computers, consisting of processor and peripheral cards, were produced by a number of manufacturers. The S-100 bus formed the basis for homebrew computers whose builders (e.g.
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The Sinclair ZX80 character set rendered in the system font. The ZX80 character set is the character encoding used by the Sinclair Research ZX80 microcomputer with its original 4K BASIC ROM. The encoding uses one byte per character for 256 code points. It has no relationship with previously established ones like ASCII or EBCDIC, but it is related though not identical to the character set of the successor ZX81.
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Lum's voice actress Fumi Hirano also released a cover album, Fumi no Lum Song, which was released on September 21, 1985. Many games have been produced based on the series. The first game to be released was a handheld electronic game, released by Bandai in 1982. Following it were microcomputer games, as well as , which was released by Jaleco for the Famicom on October 23, 1986, exclusively in Japan.
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Heathkit was a long-established player in the electronics market, making kits for products that had proven themselves in the market. Some of these were quite complex, including a color television.Joseph Arendt, "The Color Television That Dad Built" , 18 May 2008 In 1977 they decided to enter the microcomputer market, and designed the H8. The machine was announced in July 1977 and started selling that fall at a price of $379.
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MCM Model 70 microcomputer 1974 APL keyboard The original design resembled a desktop electronic calculator. Kutt's notes of the era showed his intent to use the cover and display from an extant calculator with a modified power supply, to include a small keyboard with 32 keys, and a display made of either 13 or 15 segmented LEDs. Kutt also created a company, Micro Computer Machines, which would later manufacture the devices.
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In addition to data processing, it also enabled the practical use of MOS transistors as memory cell storage elements, leading to the development of MOS semiconductor memory, which replaced earlier magnetic-core memory in computers. The MOSFET led to the microcomputer revolution, and became the driving force behind the computer revolution. The MOSFET is the most widely used transistor in computers, and is the fundamental building block of digital electronics.
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A December 1987 survey by the Commodore-dedicated magazine Compute!'s Gazette found that nearly half of respondents used GEOS. For many years, Commodore bundled GEOS with its redesigned and cost-reduced C64, the C64C. At its peak, GEOS was the third-most-popular microcomputer operating system in the world in terms of units shipped, trailing only MS-DOS and Mac OS (besides the original Commodore 64's KERNAL).
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Computer Gaming World in 1987 called Falcon "one of the most detailed and accurate flight simulators on the microcomputer market today." It reported that an F-16 pilot with the 474th Tactical Fighter Wing "gave it good marks for accuracy". Dragon gave the DOS version 5 out of 5 stars, and 4 out of 5 stars for the MS-DOS version. Compute! praised Falcons graphics, realism, and documentation.
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The Software Toolworks was founded by programmer Walt Bilofsky, who, after studying at Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), had worked for the Institute for Defense Analyses, as a programmer for RAND Corporation, and as a consultant. In 1979, he acquired and assembled a Heathkit H89 microcomputer; he found that the microcomputer lacked important software and thus began developing new software and ports of his own, including a fullscreen editor and a compiler for the C programming language entitled C/80, the latter based on Ron Cain's public-domain compiler Small-C. Bilofsky subsequently contacted the Heath Company, which made the Heathkit series of microcomputers, to have it market his software and, in response, was told that the operating system and the BASIC programming language Heathkit microcomputers came with were sufficient. He instead turned to advertise his software in BUSS, a Heathkit hobbyist newsletter, starting in 1980, quickly receiving orders for his software.
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In February 1976, NEC formed the Microcomputer Sales section in the Integrated Circuit division, and began to provide development environments for their microprocessors. However, they visited customers and explained, but it was difficult for them to understand how to use a microprocessor. At the same time, NEC received an order from a laboratory in the Yokosuka Communication Institute of NTT that they wanted an educational microcomputer product for their new employees. , a member of the section, proposed to his manager developing an educational kit. Goto mainly designed the TK-80, and did the detailed design work. Goto got an idea from a photo of the KIM-1. The KIM-1 can monitor and show the current address by the software, but the display disappears when the CPU is hanging. The TK-80 has the Dynamic Display using the 555 timer IC and interrupt the CPU, it can always show the current address. In addition, the TK-80 has a CMOS battery.
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Tandy Corporation's TRS-80 microcomputer did not have a disk drive or disk operating system at release. The first version of TRSDOS, by Randy Cook, was so buggy that others wrote alternatives, including NewDOS and LDOS. After disputes with Cook over ownership of the source code, Tandy hired Logical Systems, LDOS's developer, to continue TRSDOS development. TRSDOS 6, shipped with the TRS-80 Model 4 in 1983, is identical to LDOS 6.00.
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The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular ElectronicsCopyright catalogs at the Library of Congress. January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics was published on November 29, 1974. :File:Copyright_Popular_Electronics_1975.jpg and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines.
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Early personal computersgenerally called microcomputerswere often sold in a kit form and in limited volumes, and were of interest mostly to hobbyists and technicians. Minimal programming was done with toggle switches to enter instructions, and output was provided by front panel lamps. Practical use required adding peripherals such as keyboards, computer displays, disk drives, and printers. Micral N was the earliest commercial, non-kit microcomputer based on a microprocessor, the Intel 8008.
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The Sprinter (also called ZX-Sprinter) is a microcomputer made by Russian Peters Plus, Ltd.; it was the last model of ZX Spectrum produced in a factory. It's built using what the company calls a "Flex architecture". This uses an Altera PLD as part of the core logic, allowing the machine's hardware to be reconfigured on the fly for several ZX-Spectrum models' compatibility or its own enhanced native mode (hardly used).
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PC Magazine stated in June 1983 that Context MBA "still runs too slowly for a person accustomed to the speed of a microcomputer". It found the spreadsheet the best application of the suite, describing the database as "amazingly slow" and the text editor as "clumsy and confusing". The review concluded that Context MBA "fails in two areas ... UCSD p-System simply does not produce good code", and a confusing, heavily modal user interface.
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It was originally named the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory and located on what is now Lover's Point. In the 1980s, Pacific Grove was the site of the pioneering microcomputer software company Digital Research. Originally located in Gary Kildall's house on the corner of Lighthouse and Willow it later moved to offices on Central Ave. On October 12, 1997, John Denver died when he crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Pacific Grove in his personal plane.
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Peterson was ridiculed about his early programming years in a satirical article published by TheStreet.com in 2004. The article, which highlights Peterson's public biography as filled in a Quepasa proxy statement on April 23, 2004, was suspicious about believing that he was programming computers when he was ten years old. Nonetheless, Peterson is credited at this age as a contributor on the inside cover of a best selling microcomputer software book in 1983.
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Norpak created and sold hardware and software for NAPLPS development and display. TVOntario also developed NAPLPS content creation software. London, Ontario - based Cableshare used NAPLPS as the basis of touch-screen information kiosks for shopping malls, the flagship of which was deployed at Toronto's Eaton Centre. The system relied on an 8085-based microcomputer which drove several NAPLPS terminals fitted with touch screens, all communicating via Datapac to a back end database.
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The company was founded to expand the microcomputer products from Digicom, a company formed by Richard in 1978. Paul joined in 1979. The Digicom software programs ran on the CP/M operating system using the Intel 8080, 8085 and later the 8086, Zilog Z80 and the Z8000. The company's early products included Pascal/M, and ACT - a set of cross assemblers including one for the Atari (8080) and the Commodore Pet (6502).
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Princess Daphne was originally created by Rick Dyer's Advanced Microcomputer Systems (AMS, later RDI Video Systems) team, then completely redesigned by the ex-Disney artist and animator Don Bluth. Bluth took his inspiration from photographs from the producer Gary Goldman's collection of old issues of Playboy magazine, ultimately putting Daphne "in a very-revealing one piece 'thong' bathing suit with a sheer veil that partially covered her.""The making of... Dragon's Lair". Retro Gamer 24.
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The program was first constructed on a mainframe computer, and then transferred to a microcomputer for patron use. This program allowed a patron to search for children's books by subject and reading level. A sample search query might be a 3rd grader with a 6th grade reading level on the subject of clouds. Hines convened the first meeting of the American Society of Indexers (ASI, now American Society for Indexing) in 1968.
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The July 1974 issue of Radio-Electronics: "Build The Mark-8: Your Personal Minicomputer". The Mark-8 is a microcomputer design from 1974, based on the Intel 8008 CPU (which was the world's first 8-bit microprocessor). The Mark-8 was designed by Jonathan Titus, a Virginia Tech graduate student in Chemistry. After building the machine, Titus decided to share its design with the community and reached out to Radio-Electronics and Popular Electronics.
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EDN's 25th Annual Microprocessor/Microcontroller Directory; EDN; September 24, 1998. In 2002, Mitsubishi Electric and Hitachi agreed to merge their chip operations into a new $7 billion semiconductor company to be called Renesas Technology. The companies said they would both move their respective semiconductor operations to Renesas, including microcomputer, logic, analog, discrete devices, and memory (flash memory, SRAM, etc.) with the exception of DRAMs.Mitsubishi and Hitachi to merge chip businesses; EE Times; October 3, 2002.
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Harry Garland with the officers and directors of Cromemco in 1984. From left to right: Andy Procassini, Mike Ramelot, Roger Melen, Chuck Bush, Harry Garland, Glenn Penisten, John G. Linvill. Dr. Garland was president of Cromemco from its incorporation in 1976 until its sale in 1987. From the original Cyclops and Dazzler products the company developed a full line of microcomputer systems that were rated as the most reliable in the industry.
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Matchmaker.com originated from a bulletin board system created by Gregory Scott Smith in San Antonio, Texas in March 1983. It began as a dial-up system running on a single Apple II+ with a modem. Shortly afterwards, it was ported to a Microsoft Xenix–based Tandy 6000 microcomputer and re-written in MBASIC, and then re- written again in C by programmer Jon Boede. It was originally conceived as a pen-pal network for everyone.
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In April 1984, Acorn won the Queen's Award for Technology for the BBC Micro. The award paid special tribute to the BBC Micro's advanced design, and it commended Acorn "for the development of a microcomputer system with many innovative features". Principal creators of the BBC micro in 2008, some 26 years after its release In April 1982, Sinclair launched the ZX Spectrum. Curry conceived of the Electron as Acorn's sub-£200 competitor.
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199 In the mid-1980s, Grolier oversaw the creation of the Knowledge Exploration Series—a set of five microcomputer software programs that were designed to work with the 64K Apple computers. The set cost about $300 and contained ten manuals and five backup discs.Kister 1986 p.126 By 1993 the entire index was available on the Grolier Master Encyclopedia Index CD-ROM with those of the Academic American Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Americana.
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The Illinois Structural Health Monitoring Project also focuses on creating a software toolsuite that can simplify the development of other structural health monitoring devices. Currently, ISHMP has a wireless sensor network set up on the Jindo Bridge in South Korea. Each sensor board in the network uses real-time data to collect a multitude of different data, and then the microcomputer processes the data and determines the current state of the bridge.
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MIDI enables connections between digital musical instruments In 1980, a group of musicians and music merchants met to standardize an interface by which new instruments could communicate control instructions with other instruments and the prevalent microcomputer. This standard was dubbed MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). A paper was authored by Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits and proposed to the Audio Engineering Society in 1981. Then, in August 1983, the MIDI Specification 1.0 was finalized.
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These computers, sometimes called departmental computers were typified by the DEC VAX. In 1991, AT&T; Corporation briefly owned NCR. During the same period, companies found that servers based on microcomputer designs could be deployed at a fraction of the acquisition price and offer local users much greater control over their own systems given the IT policies and practices at that time. Terminals used for interacting with mainframe systems were gradually replaced by personal computers.
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1980s computer magazines skewed their content towards the hobbyist end of the then-microcomputer market, and used to contain type-in programs, but these have gone out of fashion. The first magazine devoted to this class of computers was Creative Computing. Byte was an influential technical journal that published until the 1990s. In 1983 an average of one new computer magazine appeared each week. By late that year more than 200 existed.
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It is used for athletic events, conventions, concerts, and convocation and commencement ceremonies. Robert A. Dempster Hall was built in 1996 and houses the Donald L. Harrison College of Business. Dempster Hall is a building featuring satellite technology for distance learning as well as microcomputer labs and numerous classrooms and lecture halls. It also houses the 400-seat John and Betty Glenn Auditorium named for two SEMO Alumni and longtime friends of the University.
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Lode Runner was released in mid-1983. The original microcomputer versions were for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, VIC-20, Commodore 64, and IBM PC. The VIC-20 version was released on cartridge, including the level editor. The Commodore 64 had both a disk and cartridge release, with the latter having 32 levels. The IBM version was originally on a self-booting disk; it is incompatible with video cards other than CGA.
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It was the first large software company in the microcomputer world. The term Digital ResearcherVitae, Digital Researcher event , an event focused on encouraging researchers to use technology to enhance research processes. was also used by UK researcher development organization Vitae to form an event for postgraduate researchers and research staff focusing on the use of technology by researchers for collaboration, information gathering, and dissemination. The event encouraged researchers to become digital researchers.
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B-1 Nuclear Bomber is a flight simulator developed by Avalon Hill and Microcomputer Games and released in 1980 for the Apple II and other computers.B-1 Nuclear Bomber for Apple II (1980), Moby Games The game is based on piloting a B-1 Lancer to its target and dropping a nuclear bomb.Two Games Of Strategy, Dale F. Brown, COMPUTE! ISSUE 49 / JUNE 1984 / PAGE 72 The USSR is one of the target countries.
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Trojan wavepacket evolution animation Classical simulation of the Trojan wavepacket on 1982 home ZX Spectrum microcomputer. The packet is approximated by the ensemble of points initially randomly localized within the peek of a Gaussian and moving according to the Newton equations. The ensemble stays localized. For the comparison the second simulation follows when the strength of the circularly polarized electric (rotating) field is equal to zero and the packet (points) fully spreads around the circle.
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In July 1977, the NEB increased its stake in Radionics to 73%. By June 1978 Sinclair Radionics was working on the NewBrain microcomputer project, which was later taken over by Newbury Laboratories. In May 1979, the NEB announced that it intended to sell Radionics' calculator and TV interests; they were bought by the ESL Bristol group (as Radionic Products Ltd.) and Binatone respectively. In July Clive Sinclair resigned with a £10,000 golden handshake.
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This equipment was used for early development work until the 8008 was available. Kutt hired programmer Gord Ramer, and the two began work on developing Kutt's concept. In May 1972, Kutt Systems received one of the earliest SIM8-01 kits. The team, now including hardware engineer José Laraya, software engineer André Arpin, and two APL programmers, Don Genner and Morgan Smyth, started to build what was then termed the M/C, for microcomputer.
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Around 1978 Elbit Systems in Israel developed a CP/M capable microcomputer named the DS2100. CP/M machines were readily available and Elbit needed something to differentiate their product from others. An agreement was made with MicroPro to develop a version of WordStar that supported both English and Hebrew input. The concept was revolutionary, as Hebrew is written right-to-left and all word processors of the time assumed left-to-right.
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Its creator Nishikado not only designed and programmed the game, but also did the artwork, engineered the arcade hardware, and put together a microcomputer from scratch. It was soon ported to the Atari 2600, becoming the first "killer app" and quadrupling the console's sales. At the same time, home computers appeared on the market, allowing individual programmers and hobbyists to develop games. This allowed hardware manufacturer and software manufacturers to act separately.
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His research has focussed on the development of analytical methods and computer models for simulating the structure of cities and regions. Early work involved aggregate land use transport models which are summarised in his first book Urban Modelling. After this early work, he focused on more visual representations of cities and their models and some of these were represented in his second book Microcomputer Graphics. With Paul Longley, he published Fractal Cities.
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Over the coming years, Thalheimer promoted products through magazine ads and catalog mailings. The Sharper Image regularly introduced new products to its line, and they were often seen as innovative. In the 1980s, Thalheimer introduced many products to the mass market, including the first cordless telephone. Other products included the first telephone answering machine, the first hand-held microcomputer, the first children's two-wheel Razor Scooter, and the Ionic Breeze Air Purifier.
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Commodore Power/Play was one of a pair of computer magazines published by Commodore Business Machines in the United States in support of their 8-bit home computer lines of the 1980s. The other was called Commodore Interface, changed to just Commodore in 1981, Commodore Microcomputer in 1983, and finally to Commodore Microcomputers in 1984 and for the rest of its run. The two magazines were published on an alternating, bimonthly schedule.
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The VP 616 had an RS-232 serial port and calculator keypad while the VP 606 removed the keypad. The VP 611 replaced the 616's serial port with an 8-bit parallel port, suitable for being feeding into a typical microcomputer keyboard controller like the one on most S-100 bus machines. The VP 601 removed the keypad from the 611. The 616 sold for $68, while the 601 was only $56.
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The family of 8-inch disks and drives increased over time and later versions could store up to 1.2 MB; many microcomputer applications did not need that much capacity on one disk, so a smaller size disk with lower-cost media and drives was feasible. The -inch drive succeeded the 8-inch size in many applications, and developed to about the same storage capacity as the original 8-inch size, using higher- density media and recording techniques.
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The Dazzler appeared on the front cover of the February 1976 issue of Popular Electronics. Melen and his team developed a series of other products culminating in the introduction of complete computer systems based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor, and later the Motorola 68000 processor. These systems were used for graphics generation in U.S. television stations, were widely deployed as Mission Planning Systems by the United States Air Force, and were the first microcomputer systems widely distributed in China.
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Bill assisted Intel with the MCS-8 kit and provided key input to the Intel 8080 instruction set, which helped make it useful for the industry and hobbyists. In the UK, a team at S. E. Laboratories Engineering (EMI) led by Tom Spink in 1972 built a microcomputer based on a pre-release sample of the 8008. Joe Hardman extended the chip with an external stack. This, among other things, gave it power-fail save and recovery.
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During the late 1990s increasingly high heat flux microcomputer CPUs spurred a threefold increase in the number of U.S. heat pipe patent applications. As heat pipes evolved from a specialized industrial heat transfer component to a consumer commodity most development and production moved from the U.S. to Asia. Modern CPU heat pipes are typically made of copper and use water as the working fluid. They are common in many consumer electronics like desktops, laptops, tablets, and high-end smartphones.
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Computing Today was a computer magazine published by Argus Specialist Publications, it was printed in the UK from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. It began life as a supplement to Electronics Today International for four issues and became an independent publication in March 1979. Some time after 1982 it bought out rival computing magazine Microcomputer Printout (formerly Printout) and the two magazines merged into one.Early UK Computer Magazines The magazine ceased publication in September 1985.
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HCL TalentCare is the fourth and latest venture of HCL Corporation. HCL Technologies began as the R&D; Division of HCL Enterprise, a company which was a contributor to the development and growth of the IT and computer industry in India. HCL Enterprise developed an indigenous microcomputer in 1978, and a networking OS and client-server architecture in 1983. On 12 November 1991, HCL Technologies was spun off as a separate unit to provide software services.
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Intel P8051 microcontroller The Intel MCS-51 (commonly termed 8051) is a single chip microcontroller (MCU) series developed by Intel in 1980 for use in embedded systems. The architect of the Intel MCS-51 instruction set was John H. Wharton.John Wharton: An Introduction to the Intel MCS-51 Single-Chip Microcomputer Family, Application Note AP-69, May 1980, Intel Corporation. Intel's original versions were popular in the 1980s and early 1990s and enhanced binary compatible derivatives remain popular today.
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By 1978 the company introduced a new main CPU card design, the model 500. This was primarily sold as part of their new Challenger microcomputer systems, but was also available in the Superboard II form. The base model Superboard was essentially the same card as the Challenger, complete with the keyboard, however other versions were available that split out the functionality into separate cards connected together along an 8-connector backplane using 48-pin Molex connectors.
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In keeping with his editorial interests and his requirements as a publishing scientist, Beutler also wrote the software for the first comprehensive bibliographic retrieval system used by publishing scientists.Beutler E. Reference Manager: A powerful microcomputer-based bibliographic retrieval system. Informatics in Pathol 1: 83–93, 1986 Later commercialized as Reference Manager, it is still in wide use today. He authored more than 800 publications, 19 books, and over 300 book chapters over a 55-year scientific career.
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The Home Computer Course () was a partwork magazine published by Orbis Publishing in the United Kingdom during 1983 and 1984, covering the subject of home computer technology. It ran for 24 weekly issues, before being succeeded by The Home Computer Advanced Course. Each issue contained articles on various topics, including computer hardware, software, computer applications, a "Questions and Answers" column, BASIC programming and an in-depth review of a contemporary microcomputer, with annotated exploded view photos of its internals.
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Trying to find a way to survive, REA Express became embroiled in extensive litigation with the railroads and the United Parcel Service, and tried to renegotiate contracts with the Brotherhood of Railway Workers' Union. In November 1975, REA Express terminated operations and filed for bankruptcy. During the railroad strike of October 1974, the first Altair 8800 microcomputer was lost. It had been shipped from Albuquerque to Popular Electronics magazine in New York via REA and never arrived.
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The TK95 microcomputer was the evolution of TK90X made in the 1980s, by Microdigital Eletronica, a company located at São Paulo, Brazil that manufactured some ZX81 clones before (TK82, TK82C, TK83 and TK85) and a ZX80 clone (TK80). The first version was launched in November 1986. This "evolution" was mostly "cosmetic" at the keyboard and whole ABS plastic case. The board is exactly the same as the TK90X and its 16 KB ROM has only minor differences.
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When it was presented to DEC's Operations Committee, the engineering side loved it but the sales side was worried it would cut into the sales of their existing lines. The decision ultimately fell to Ken Olsen, who finally stated that "I can't see any reason that anyone would want a computer of his own." With that, the project was dead. Frustrated, Ahl left DEC in 1974, and started Creative Computing, one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution.
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The metal–oxide–silicon field-effect transistor (MOSFET), also known as the MOS transistor, was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. The MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuit chips. The MOSFET later led to the microcomputer revolution, and became the driving force behind the computer revolution.
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LOOP, WHILE and UNTIL keywords were available for program control. Acornsoft also commissioned a book "LISP on the BBC Microcomputer", by Arthur Norman and Gillian Cattell, published in 1983. Arthur Norman was a lecturer in computer science at Cambridge University, and Gillian Cattell did research into LISP at Cambridge. The book was sold separately from the software and contained examples illustrating use of the Acornsoft specific features such as the VDU function allowing for machine-specific graphics capabilities.
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An Apple II with an external modem, designed primarily by Wozniak The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Wozniak (Jobs oversaw the development of the Apple II's unusual case and Rod Holt developed the unique power supply). It was introduced in 1977 at the West Coast Computer Faire by Jobs and Wozniak and was the first consumer product sold by Apple.
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A number of COM files in IBM PC DOS 1.0 A COM file is a type of simple executable file. On the Digital Equipment operating systems of the 1970s, `.COM` was used as a filename extension for text files containing commands to be issued to the operating system (similar to a batch file). With the introduction of CP/M (a microcomputer operating system), the type of files commonly associated with COM extension changed to that of executable files.
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Lotus was almost immediately successful, becoming the world's third largest microcomputer software company in 1983 with $53 million in sales in its first year, compared to its business plan forecast of $1 million in sales. Jerome Want says: :Under founder and CEO Mitch Kapor, Lotus was a company with few rules and fewer internal bureaucratic barriers.... Kapor decided that he was no longer suited to running a company, and [in 1986] he replaced himself with Jim Manzi.
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In 1972, Gary Kildall, an instructor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, began working at Intel as a consultant under the business name Microcomputer Applications Associates (MAA). By 1974, he had developed Control Program/Monitor, or CP/M, the first disk operating system for microcomputers. In 1974 he incorporated as Intergalactic Digital Research, with his wife handling the business side of the operation. The company soon began operating under its shortened name Digital Research.
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Cromemco systems became the systems of choice for broadcast television graphics, were widely deployed as Mission Planning Systems by the United States Air Force, and were the first microcomputer systems widely distributed in China. By 1980 Cromemco occupied 200,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing and office space in Mountain View, California, and In 1981 Inc. Magazine ranked Cromemco in the top 10 fastest growing privately held companies in the U.S. Garland achieved this growth without accepting any external equity financing.
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The Agat () was a series of 8-bit computers produced in the Soviet Union. It used the same MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor as Apple II and Commodore 64. Commissioned by the USSR Ministry of Radio, for many years it was a popular microcomputer in Soviet schools. First introduced at a Moscow trade fair in 1983, the Agat was primarily produced between 1984 and 1990, although a limited number of units may have been manufactured as late as 1993.
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Towards the end of 1987 Boeing announced its intention to leave the microcomputer software industry. Boeing Computer Services was sold off as an independent entity, Garrison Software Corp, to West German software distributors m+s Elektronik. However the deal fell through and BCS reverted to Boeing's control, where it was eventually merged with Boeing Information Services. Boeing Calc ceased development in 1988, with the final copies being sold off to employees at a discount price of $50.
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The invention in the late 1970s of local area networks (LANs), notably Ethernet, allowed PCs to communicate with each other (peer-to- peer) and with shared printers. As the microcomputer revolution continued, more robust versions of the same technology were used to produce microprocessor based servers that could also be linked to the LAN. This was facilitated by the development of server operating systems to run on the Intel architecture, including several versions of both Unix and Microsoft Windows.
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The Microtan 65 was intended as a general purpose microcomputer which could be used by laboratories, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM)s and the computer enthusiast, and it was designed with expandability in mind. In this way the customer could customise the system, be it as a specialised control system, as a learning tool, or as a general purpose computing device. Price of the Microtan 65 board in 1981 was £79.35 (inc. VAT) in kit form or £90.85 ready- assembled.
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Despite having planned the meeting for months, constantly redesigning the game and putting considerable time and money into the project, he went to the meeting on the wrong date and lost the opportunity. This event gave Snyder a creative burst of energy; within the week he had purchased a microcomputer, taught himself to program, and transformed the three- dimensional Personk into a piece of software for children with the assistance of a Radio Shack Model 1.
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For example, as noted below, inadvertent recursion of a subroutine produces defects that are difficult to trace to the subroutine in question. As design advances reduced the costs of logic and memory, the programmer's time became relatively more important. Subsequent computer designs emphasized ease of programming, typically using larger and more intuitive instruction sets.a phrase used in Section 1.1 of "Introduction to the Central Processing Unit (CPU)" of a 2007 document about a Texas Instruments microcomputer.
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This work led to Eastern Front (1941), which is widely considered one of the first wargames on a microcomputer to compete with traditional paper-n-pencil games in terms of depth. Eastern Front was initially published through the Atari Program Exchange, which was intended for user-written software. It was later moved to Atari's official product line. He followed this with Legionnaire, based on the same display engine but adding real-time instead of turn-based game play.
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Integer BASIC was unusual in supporting any length variable name (e.g., SUM, GAMEPOINTS, PLAYER2), provided it did not contain a reserved word. Keywords could not be used in variables in many early BASICs; "SCORE" would be interpreted as "SC" OR "E", where OR was a keyword. String variables are usually distinguished in many microcomputer dialects of BASIC by having $ suffixed to their name, and values are often identified as strings by being delimited by "double quotation marks".
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In 1979, Christopher Evans wrote a book about the oncoming microcomputer revolution, The Mighty Micro: The Impact of the Computer Revolution, which included predictions for the future up to the year 2000.Mars Hill Review. This book was also printed in the USA as The Micro Millennium (New York: The Viking Press, ). He subsequently scripted and presented for ATV a six-part television series based on this book and broadcast posthumously by ITV between October and December 1979.
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Racing games in general tend to drift toward the arcade side of reality, mainly due to hardware limitations, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. It is, however, untrue to say that there were no games considered simulations in their time. In 1984, Geoff Crammond, who later developed the Grandprix series (Known collectively as GPX to its fanbase), produced what is considered the first attempt at a racing simulator on a home system, REVS, released for the BBC Microcomputer.
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The 7400 series offered data-selectors, multiplexers, three-state buffers, memories, etc. in dual in-line packages with one-tenth inch spacing, making major system components and architecture evident to the naked eye. Starting in the 1980s, many minicomputers used VLSI circuits. At the launch of the MITS Altair 8800 in 1975, Radio Electronics magazine referred to the system as a "minicomputer", although the term microcomputer soon became usual for personal computers based on single-chip microprocessors.
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Historically, there are cases where nybble was used for a group of bits greater than 4. In the Apple II microcomputer line, much of the disk drive control and group-coded recording was implemented in software. Writing data to a disk was done by converting 256-byte pages into sets of 5-bit (later, 6-bit) nibbles and loading disk data required the reverse. Moreover, 1982 documentation for the Integrated Woz Machine refers consistently to an "8 bit nibble".
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The first microcomputer version of BASIC was co-written by Gates, Allen, and Monte Davidoff for their newly- formed company, Micro-Soft. This was released by MITS in punch tape format for the Altair 8800 shortly after the machine itself, immediately cementing BASIC as the primary language of early microcomputers. Members of the Homebrew Computer Club began circulating copies of the program, causing Gates to write his Open Letter to Hobbyists, complaining about this early example of software piracy.
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In its explanation of the delay, Nintendo claimed it needed more time for Nintendo 64 software to mature, and for third-party developers to produce games. Adrian Sfarti, a former engineer for SGI, attributed the delay to hardware problems; he claimed that the chips underperformed in testing and were being redesigned. In 1996, the Nintendo 64's software development kit was completely redesigned as the Windows-based Partner-N64 system, by Kyoto Microcomputer, Co. Ltd. of Japan.
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"There was a subsequent article in February's Popular Electronics and the MITS people knew the Altair was here to stay. During that month alone, over 1,000 mainframes were sold. Datamation, March 1975." "By the end of May, MITS had shipped over 2,500 Altair 8800's" The Altair sparked off such intense interest in the microcomputer world that a number of other companies jumped in to fill the sales backlog, building machines that were clones of the Altair.
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VisiCalc (for "visible calculator") was the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for the Apple II by VisiCorp. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool, prompting IBM to introduce the IBM PC two years later. VisiCalc is considered the Apple II's killer app. It sold over 700,000 copies in six years, and as many as 1 million copies over its history.
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Linutop 6 is the most powerful Linutop. The Linutop 6 microcomputer is in the form of a small fanless metal case with dimensions 9.5 x 9.1 x 3.6 cm (3,7 x 3,6 x 1,4in ) for a weight of 350 grams (12 oz) and an energy consumption of 14 Watts. On board, there is an Intel ATOM x5-Z8350 processor, a 2GB RAM and a 16GB flash memory. Connectors: HDMI, RJ-45 Ethernet, four USB 2.0, 5-volt power supply.
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P8000 running WEGA 3.1 EAM manufactured measuring instruments, rectifiers, relays, circuit breakers, vacuum switches, instrumentation and control engineering, electric meters, radios, and computers. EAW was the manufacturer of power system distance protection equipment in East Germany. The last consumer products were the EAW AUDIO 145 stereo radio cassette recorder, the SKR 701 stereo cassette recorder, and the P8000 16-bit microcomputer, based on the East German U8000 clone of the Zilog Z8000, running a Unix clone called WEGA.
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One popular use of CompuServe in the 1980s was file exchange, particularly pictures. Indeed, in 1985 it hosted perhaps the first online comic in the world, Witches and Stitches. CompuServe introduced a simple black-and-white image format known as RLE (run-length-encoding) to standardize the images so they could be shared among different microcomputer platforms. With the introduction of more powerful machines, universally supporting color, CompuServe introduced the much more capable GIF format, invented by Steve Wilhite.
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Early microcomputer systems like the Altair 8800 used a backplane for the processor and expansion cards. Backplanes are normally used in preference to cables because of their greater reliability. In a cabled system, the cables need to be flexed every time that a card is added or removed from the system; this flexing eventually causes mechanical failures. A backplane does not suffer from this problem, so its service life is limited only by the longevity of its connectors.
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Early microcomputer operating systems such as CP/M, DOS and classic Mac OS were designed for one user on one computer. Packet switching networks were developed to share hardware resources, such as a mainframe computer, a printer or a large and expensive hard disk. As local area network technology became available, two general approaches to handle sharing of resources on networks arose. Historically a network operating system was an operating system for a computer which implemented network capabilities.
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The CMG 6th Computer Olympiad took place at Ad Fundum of the Maastricht University in Maastricht, Netherlands from 18 August 2001 to 23 August 2001. As with each year's Computer Olympiad, computer programs competed against each other at a variety of games, including Amazons, chess, Chinese chess, GIPF, Lines of Action, and shogi. The chess competition of the Computer Olympiad was a special event, since it was adopted by the ICCA as the 18th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCC 2001).
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Large numbers of PDP-11/70s were deployed in telecommunications and industrial control applications. AT&T; Corporation became DEC's largest customer. RT-11 provided a practical real-time operating system in minimal memory, allowing the PDP-11 to continue DEC's critical role as a computer supplier for embedded systems. Historically, RT-11 also served as the inspiration for many microcomputer OS's, as these were generally being written by programmers who cut their teeth on one of the many PDP-11 models.
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"Daryl" (whose name is an acronym for "Data-Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform") (Barret Oliver) is an experiment in artificial intelligence, created by a government company called TASCOM. Although physically indistinguishable from an ordinary ten-year-old boy, his brain is actually a super-sophisticated microcomputer with several unique capabilities. These include exceptional reflexes, superhuman multitasking ability, and the ability to "hack" other computer systems. The D.A.R.Y.L. experiment was funded by the military, with the intention of producing a "super-soldier".
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The Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum is a small display of several hundred key items from the collection of computer hobbyist David G. Larsen. The Museum has been developed and maintained by the LCF Group (David & Gaynell Larsen and Dee Wallace) in Floyd, Virginia. The name of the museum comes from the Bugbooks and Blacksburg Continuing Education Books a, a series of instructional books created by the "Blacksburg Group" during the late 1970s & 80's. David was a part of the group.
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Dr. Melen served as Editor of Charge-Coupled Devices: Technology and Applications published by the IEEE Press. He is also author of two other technical books: Understanding IC Operational Amplifiers, and Understanding CMOS Integrated Circuits. His role as a pioneer in the microcomputer industry has been recognized in numerous books, and by his appearance in the 1996 PBS documentary, The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires. Dr. Melen has been awarded 50 patents by the U.S. Patent Office.
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Felix Hofmann was elected vice-chairman and ensured the vision of a progressive music service was not lost. Early active members also included Maria McGuane, David Stubbs, Rosalie Brookes, Alan Quirk, Sally-Ann Rozario and Lee Traynor. Also during this early period of 3PBS, enthusiasts who had an interest in microprocessors from Intel, Motorola, Signetics 2650, Fairchild F8, etc. were meeting at the Clayton campus of Monash University, Graham Thirkell's Optro premises and went on to form the Microcomputer Club of Melbourne (MICOM).
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UniSoft was founded on October 5, 1981, in Emeryville, California. Their original business was Unix development, and they were soon recognized as one of the early implementers of Unix for the emerging 16-bit microcomputer market. By 1989, they had completed over 225 Unix implementations on various hardware platforms, which was estimated to have been about 65% of all such ports. UniSoft's port of Version 7 Unix was the first operating system for Sun Microsystems' Sun-1 workstations and servers.
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LYS-16 was an early microcomputer based on the IMP-16 making it one of the first 16 bit microcomputers. It was designed and made by members of the Lysator academic computer club at Linköping University, Sweden It was introduced in April 1975 and the first computers were delivered in December the same year. Two batches were made by Lysator before the production was handed over to ATEW in Flen who continued to produce it until May 1978. About 1000 units were made.
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The Baron of Beef public house on Bridge Street The Baron of Beef is a pub in Bridge Street, Cambridge, England, owned by Bob Jones. Michael Peacock, columnist of the Town Crier, gave his former paper, the Daily Mirror, a story about Chris Curry and Clive Sinclair having a fight there.Ian Kitching, The Baron of Beef, Bridge Street. This was allegedly over Curry's decision to leave Sinclair to join Hermann Hauser to establish Acorn Computers in competition with Sinclair's ZX80 microcomputer.
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From 1990 to 1995, he was a member of the Board of Directors of Autodesk, Inc., one of the best-known publishers of computer-aided design (CAD) programs for microcomputers, with AutoCAD as its flagship product. At the time, it was one of the largest microcomputer software publishers, with a market cap sometimes near a billion dollars. His tenure there including presenting Autodesk's position opposing software patents, and chairing the Board's CEO Search Committee that found and selected Carol Bartz as its CEO.
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Gordon French, co-founder of the Homebrew Computer Club, photographed at the Living Computer Museum in 2013. He hosted the first meeting of the club in his garage, in March 1975. The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California, which met from March 1975 to December 1986. The club played an influential role in the development of the microcomputer revolution and the rise of that aspect of the Silicon Valley information technology industrial complex.
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Lewin, 1975. He expected his system to be used by a broad range of non-computer professionals and non-mathematicians who apply math to their fields. Konopasek recognized that the new personal computer was an ideal vehicle for bringing his concept to the masses and developed a version of his system for them in 1977.M. Konopasek and M. Kazmierczak, "A question answering system on mathematical models in microcomputer environments", in Proceedings of a Conference on Personal and Home Computers ed.
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The metal–oxide–silicon field-effect transistor (MOSFET, or MOS transistor) was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. The MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuit chips, leading to what is known as the computer revolution or microcomputer revolution. Time has seen significant improvements in the usability and effectiveness of computing technology.
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The company was founded in 1977 as Applied Microcomputer Systems (AMS), initially developing custom software for technical and scientific applications. In the early years of personal computers, AMS produced various other programming tools for technical professionals. In 1985, AMS began development of the HydroCAD Stormwater Modeling System as a response to growing hydrology requirements facing civil engineers. The program, ultimately introduced in 1986 for HP workstations, made it possible to conduct complex calculations on desktop computers rather than only on mainframes.
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Newark element14 markets and distributes electronic components and test equipment for engineers and maintenance professionals throughout the US, Canada and Mexico. Products include connectors, relays, switches, semiconductors, sensors, test equipment and tools from companies including Texas Instruments, 3M, Belden, Freescale and Honeywell, among others. Newark element14 is headquartered in Chicago, but its warehouse, used to serve customers throughout the Americas, is based in Gaffney, South Carolina. The company is one of only two U.S. distributors of the Raspberry Pi microcomputer.
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The development of the first Bulgarian microcomputer started back in 1979 at the Institute for technical cybernetics and robotics. The first working samples were manufactured in 1980. The abbreviation IMKO stands for "Individual Micro Computer". This model is an analogue of the Apple II Plus and only about 50 units were manufactured for testing purposes. Start of production: 1980. End of production: 1982. Processor: 6502, 1 MHz. Memory (RAM): 48KB (with the possibility to extend to 64KB). Memory (ROM): 12KB.
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Policy Memos 68–73 followed in early 1983, stating that none of the existing platforms had all the qualities needed to be truly universal. The idea of a new machine quickly gained currency, with the added bonus that it would help develop a local microcomputer industry. In order to make the new machine attractive, the Ministry agreed to fund up to 75% of the purchase price from their own budget. When the plan was first announced there was widespread concern among educators.
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Intel's Intellec development system could download code to the SDK boards. In addition, Intel sold a range of larger-scale development systems which ran their proprietary operating systems and hosted development tools assemblers and later compilers targeting their processors. These included the Microcomputer Development System (MDS), Personal Development System (PDS), In-Circuit Emulators (ICE), device programmers and so on. Most of these were rendered obsolete when the IBM PC became a de facto standard, and by other standardised technologies such as JTAG.
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He was awarded a United States patent for his color system in 1981, and later received similar patents from the United Kingdom and Canada. Skellings' system of organizing text on a color monitor led to the publication of a color authoring system entitled Electric Poet by International Business Machines Inc. in 1984 and a further product entitled Easy Street by McGraw-Hill. Electric Poet was distributed to English faculty at nine of the state universities in Florida along with an Apple microcomputer.
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A software bus is a software architecture model where a shared communication channel facilitates connections and communication between software modules. This makes software buses conceptually similar to the bus term used in computer hardware for interconnecting pathways. In the early microcomputer era of the 1970s, Digital Research's operating system CP/M was often described as a software bus. Lifeboat Associates, an early distributor of CP/M and later of MS-DOS software, had a whole product line named Software Bus.
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David Levy and Monroe Newborn, More Chess and Computers: The Microcomputer Revolution, The Challenge Match, Computer Science Press, Potomac, Maryland, and Batsford, London, 1980, pp. 10-30. . The computer scored a draw in game two after getting a completely winning position but being outplayed by Levy in the endgame, and a win in game four—the first computer victory against a human master—when Levy essayed the very sharp, dubious Latvian Gambit.David Levy, "Man Beats Machine!", Chess Life & Review, November 1978, pp.
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For a non-aware XMODEM implementation, this data would simply be ignored while it waited for the `SOH` to arrive, so the characters would not be echoed and the implementation could fall back to conventional XMODEM. With "aware" software, the file name could be used to save the file locally. Transfers could continue with another ``, each file is saved under the name being sent to the receiver. Jerry Pournelle in 1983 described MODEM7 as "probably the most popular microcomputer communications program in existence".
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SuperBASIC is an advanced variant of the BASIC programming language with many structured programming additions. It was developed at Sinclair Research by Jan Jones during the early 1980s. Originally SuperBASIC was intended as the BASIC interpreter for a home computer code-named SuperSpectrum, then under development. This project was later cancelled; however, SuperBASIC was subsequently included in the ROM firmware of the Sinclair QL microcomputer (announced in January 1984), also serving as the command line interpreter for the QL's QDOS operating system.
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InfoWorld in 1981 called the Model II "a well-designed, capable business system" that "overcomes several limitations of the Model I". Creative Computing in 1984 called it a "state-of-the-art business machine" that "might have taken the business market by storm had it not had a nameplate reading 'Radio Shack.'" BYTE in August 1984 described the TRS-80 16B as "a usable multiuser microcomputer system", but with a slow hard drive that might limit the computer to two users.
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Some unusual blocks contain complex circuitry, for example, a sound synthesiser in the Gakken EX-System or a microcomputer in the Gakken FX-System. Usually, a schematic representation of the block's contents is printed on its top. On the sides of each block are conductive metal strips, so that when two blocks are placed side-by-side, their metal strips touch allowing electricity to flow between them. A circuit is built by placing a configuration of denshi blocks in a two dimensional grid.
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Allume Systems was a software developer, founded in 1988 by David Schargel and Jonathan Kahn in New York City as Aladdin Systems to develop, publish and distribute software for personal computers. Allume was incorporated in January 1989. In April 2004, the company was acquired by PC software publisher International Microcomputer Software Inc. (IMSI). A few months later in July, the company was forced to change its name from Aladdin Systems as part of a settlement of a trademark lawsuit with Aladdin Knowledge Systems.
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Fred Harris is a British comedian and children's television presenter. Formerly a schoolteacher, he began his television career as a presenter of the BBC children's programme Play School, on which he appeared regularly between 1973 and 1988. During this time he was also a presenter on Ragtime and Chock- A-Block. During the rise of the microcomputer in the early 1980s he fronted several home computing BBC programmes, including Micro Live (which formed part of BBC's ongoing Computer Literacy Project).
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Sophie Mary Wilson (born 1957) is an English computer scientist, who helped design the BBC Micro and ARM architecture. Wilson first designed a microcomputer during a break from studies at Selwyn College, Cambridge. She subsequently joined Acorn Computers and was instrumental in designing the BBC Micro, including the BBC BASIC programming language whose development she led for the next 15 years. She first began designing the ARM reduced instruction set computer (RISC) in 1983, which entered production two years later.
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Acorn was chosen because the microcomputer system was to be expandable and growth-oriented. It also had the attraction of appearing before "Apple Computer" in a telephone directory. March 1979 price list Around this time, CPU and Andy Hopper set up Orbis Ltd. to commercialise the Cambridge Ring networking system Hopper had worked on for his PhD, but it was soon decided to bring him into CPU as a director because he could promote CPU's interests at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.
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Microtex 666 was an Australian Prestel-based Videotex system that operated from 1986 to 1989. The service was accessed through a text based dialup service from Telecom Australia (later Telstra Australia) known as Viatel. Microtex 666 was dedicated to microcomputer enthusiasts and included a large software download library, a semi-realtime online chat, and a 1000-user massively multiuser game known as the Great Galactic Conflict. It was owned and founded by Sean Howard, and promoted through Australian Personal Computer magazine.
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This was also standard operating procedure for early microcomputer and home computer systems. Malware, running as over-privileged code, can use this privilege to subvert the system. Almost all currently popular operating systems, and also many scripting applications allow code too many privileges, usually in the sense that when a user executes code, the system allows that code all rights of that user. This makes users vulnerable to malware in the form of e-mail attachments, which may or may not be disguised.
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MITS hired Allen, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with him at MITS in November 1975. Allen named their partnership "Micro-Soft", a combination of "microcomputer" and "software", and their first office was in Albuquerque. The first employee Gates and Allen hired was their high school collaborator Ric Weiland. They dropped the hyphen within a year and officially registered the trade name "Microsoft" with the Secretary of the State of New Mexico on November 26, 1976.
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Requiring only a 5 V supply and a quartz crystal or an RC network, the MC6875 provides buffered 2 phase clock outputs… $3.75 in 1000 piece quantities from Motorola Linear Products Another project was incorporating 128 bytes of RAM and the clock generator on a single 11,000-transistor chip. The MC6802 microprocessor was released in March 1977. The companion MC6846 chip had 2048 byte ROM, an 8-bit bidirectional port and a programmable timer. This was a two-chip microcomputer.
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String variables are usually distinguished in many microcomputer dialects by having $ suffixed to their name, and values are often identified as strings by being delimited by "double quotation marks". Arrays in BASIC could contain integers, floating point or string variables. Some dialects of BASIC supported matrices and matrix operations, useful for the solution of sets of simultaneous linear algebraic equations. These dialects would directly support matrix operations such as assignment, addition, multiplication (of compatible matrix types), and evaluation of a determinant.
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Laurant Weill, whose first name is sometimes spelled 'Laurent' is an entrepreneur and a pioneer of the microcomputer and video game industry in France and later on new interactive digital experiences. In 1983 he co-founded with Marc Bayle the first French videogame company, Loriciel, which has quickly become one of the leading publishers of video games for personal computers in France. He participated in the creation of many companies such as Loriciel, Microids, Evolution, Broderbund France. In 1994 Weill founded Visiware.
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Soon after the introduction of the H89, Heathkit was purchased by Zenith to enter the microcomputer market.Sol Libes, "BYTE News..." in BYTE, Volume 4 Number 11, November 1979, pg. 81 They continued sales of the H89 with their own labeling on the front as the Zenith Z89. Eventually, Zenith Data Systems (Heathkit plus the computer division of Zenith) was purchased by Bull HN (CII Bull, Honeywell and Nippon Electric) because they needed a US maker of microcomputers to comply with government purchase requirements.
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The last major version, the Nova 4, was released in 1978. During this period the Nova generated 20% annual growth rates for the company, becoming a star in the business community and generating US$ 100 million in sales in 1975. In 1977, DG launched a 16-bit microcomputer called the microNOVA to poor commercial success. The Nova series played a very important role as instruction-set inspiration to Charles P. Thacker and others at Xerox PARC during their construction of the Xerox Alto.
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In 1995, while going through a difficult time in his life, he threw away almost all of his projects, including the documentation and five prototypes of the Galaksija microcomputer. In 1999, Voja Antonić created a logic analyzer, probe, serial interface receiver and frequency counter device based on Microchip Technology PIC16F84 microcontroller. It eventually became Microchip's Application Note 689 (AN689) but was subsequently removed. Microchip explained that Yugoslavia was facing an embargo from the USA, making it impossible to promote his technology worldwide.
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BVRP was started in 1984 by "Bruno Vanryb and Roger Politis, sound engineers." The company's first offering was a modem-based business phone number service, "a database program called Directory." When their Paris-based company partnered with Hayes Microcomputer Products they increased their range beyond Paris and France "to 62 other countries." Vanryb claimed that French venture capital companies "prefer to invest in bigger companies, they don't like startups" so he turned to U.S. sources, leading to AvanQuest and VCOM.
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Decisions for implementing additional protection features are normally based on the existence of a reasonable ratio between cost/benefit of the safeguard and sensitivity/value of the assets to be protected. Risk assessments may vary from an informal review of a small scale microcomputer installation to a more formal and fully documented analysis (i. e., risk analysis) of a large scale computer installation. Risk assessment methodologies may vary from qualitative or quantitative approaches to any combination of these two approaches.
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Programmable power supplies A programmable power supply is one that allows remote control of its operation through an analog input or digital interface such as RS232 or GPIB. Controlled properties may include voltage, current, and in the case of AC output power supplies, frequency. They are used in a wide variety of applications, including automated equipment testing, crystal growth monitoring, semiconductor fabrication, and x-ray generators. Programmable power supplies typically employ an integral microcomputer to control and monitor power supply operation.
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This industry never matured; the technological gap between Brazil and the rest of the world actually widened, while the protected industries merely copied low-end foreign computers and sold them at inflated prices.Luzio, Eduardo (1996.) The microcomputer industry in Brazil: the case of a protected high-technology industry. Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing. In addition, countries that put up barriers to imports will often face retaliatory barriers to their exports, potentially hurting the same industries that infant industry protection is intended to help.
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Using digital scientific probes and sensors that collect real-time temperature, motion, gas pressure, light and other data and display it for analysis on laptops and hand-held devices has been a focus of the Concord Consortium since its founding. Robert Tinker used such probeware in the 1980s when he designed a microcomputer-based real-time temperature data grapher for education. Concord Consortium research has shown the effectiveness of sensors and handhelds in elementary and middle school inquiry-based science units.
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In 1979 at the University of Hamburg, motivated and supported by his advisor Frieder Schwenkel, Alexander Reinefeld designed the chess program Murks, partly implemented in microcode for an Interdata M85 minicomputer. Reinefeld claimed that world chess champion Mikhail Botvinnik played against Murks during his visit. In 1980/81, a team of four students, Manfred Allers, Dirk Hauschildt, Dieter Steinwender and Alexander Reinefeld, ported Murks to a Motorola 68000 microprocessor, then dubbed MicroMurks. They built their own MC68000 microcomputer from scratch.
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A P8000 running WEGA 3.1 The P8000 is a microcomputer system developed in 1987 by the VEB Elektro-Apparate-Werke Berlin-Treptow „Friedrich Ebert“ (EAW) in the German Democratic Republic (DDR, East Germany). It consisted of an 8-bit and a 16-bit microprocessor and a Winchester disk controller. It was intended as a universal programming and development system for multi-user/multi-task applications. The initial list price of the P8000 was 172,125 East German marks (around 860,000–1.7 million DM).
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An artificial society is an agent-based computational model for computer simulation in social analysis. It is mostly connected to the themes of complex systems, emergence, the Monte Carlo method, computational sociology, multi- agent systems, and evolutionary programming. While the concept was simple, actually realizing this conceptual point took a while. Complex mathematical models have been, and are, common; deceivingly simple models only have their roots in the late forties, and took the advent of the microcomputer to really get up to speed.
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The development of the MOSFET led to a revolution in electronics technology, called the MOS revolution or MOSFET revolution, fuelling the technological and economic growth of the early semiconductor industry. The impact of the MOSFET became commercially significant from the late 1960s onwards. This led to a revolution in the electronics industry, which has since impacted daily life in almost every way. The invention of the MOSFET has been cited as the birth of modern electronics and was central to the microcomputer revolution.
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Supreme Ruler Ultimate was developed and published by BattleGoat Studios on Steam (software). The game uses the proprietary BattleGoat Game Engine that has been used and updated since the release of the original Supreme Ruler 2010 game in 2005. The Supreme Ruler games series is a modern update of the original Supreme Ruler game first released for the TRS-80 microcomputer in 1982. Game developer George Geczy created the original game and has been the technical lead and primary programmer in each of the modern game releases.
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The original TRS-80 Micro Computer System (later known as the Model I to distinguish it from successors) was launched in 1977 and, alongside the Apple II and Commodore PET, was one of the earliest mass- produced personal computers. The line won popularity with hobbyists, home users, and small-businesses. The Model I included a full-stroke QWERTY keyboard, floating-point BASIC, a monitor, and a starting price of US$600. By 1979, the TRS-80 had the largest selection of software in the microcomputer market.
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MECC offered computer training to teachers and administrators, and 10 consortium consultants traveled throughout the state assisting school districts. MECC developed hundreds of microcomputer educational programs, many converted from the time-sharing original; by 1979 some MECC programs for the Apple II could be downloaded from the timesharing system. MECC distributed The Oregon Trail and others in its library to Minnesota schools for free, and charged others $10 to $20 for diskettes, each containing several programs. By July 1981 it had 29 software packages available.
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For instance, the standard included a line-continuation character, but chose the ampersand, , which was also used for string concatenation. Using these in a single line could lead to very confusing code. By this time, the release of the first microcomputer systems in 1975 had quickly led to the introduction of Altair BASIC, the first version of what would soon be known as Microsoft BASIC. MS BASIC was patterned on BASIC-PLUS, and thus ultimately the Fifth Edition, but lacked indenting, MAT, and other features.
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After purchasing his first microcomputer in 1977, Bollinger became involved in the seminal stages of computer-driven technical analysis. Computer technology allowed Bollinger to develop Group Power, an industry group ranking system that shows developing trends in industry groups and sectors. Over the years the service evolved, the underlying structure becoming a proprietary equal-weighted industry group structure and delivery via the Internet allowed ever more complex analytics. In 1996 Bollinger recognized the potential of the Internet for financial analysis and began the programming for equitytrader.com.
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When a user picks up their phone, the concentrator produces the dial tone. When the user dials, it reads the tones. Once the user has completed dialing, the concentrator's microcomputer sends the dialing data to the central switch, which allocates a time slot for the dialing phone on the wire pairs that pass through the concentrator and through the switch. After the central switch tells the concentrator which time slot to use, the concentrator "opens" a time-slot on the loop to a local phone.
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Ithaca Intersystems was a microcomputer manufacturer in the 1970s and 1980s, located in Ithaca, New York. The early years drew on engineering talent from Cornell University when the founders worked in a small rented space in the Collegtown neighborhood adjacent to the university campus. They initially produced the Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1 S-100 bus, Z80-based computer. As a large commercial success, the company moved to larger spaces outside of town, and designed and produced a larger system, the Zilog Z8002-based DPS-8000.
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This allowed the system to support multiple users without sacrificing performance. Most other multi-user systems of the day used a single CPU to run applications for multiple users which resulted in lower performance. Micromation built and sold thousands of computer systems in the U.S, Canada, Europe, South America and Australia before going out of business in 1985. Like most of the early microcomputer companies, Micromation was not able to adapt to the changing marketplace following the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981.
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68K/OS was a computer operating system developed by GST Computer Systems for the Sinclair QL microcomputer. It was commissioned by Sinclair Research in February 1983. However, after the official launch of the QL in January 1984, 68K/OS was rejected, and production QLs shipped with Sinclair's own Qdos operating system. GST later released 68K/OS as an alternative to Qdos, in the form of an EPROM expansion card, and also planned to use it on single-board computers based on the QL's hardware.
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SARGON was introduced at the 1978 West Coast Computer Faire where it won the first computer chess tournament held strictly for microcomputers, with a score of 5–0. This success encouraged the authors to seek financial income by selling the program directly to customers. Since magnetic media were not widely available at the time, the authors placed an advert in Byte magazine selling for $15 photocopied listings that would work in any Z80-based microcomputer. Availability of the source code allowed porting to other machines.
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The SMP80/08, however, did not have a commercial release. After the first general- purpose microprocessor, the Intel 8080, was announced in April 1974, Sord announced the SMP80/x, the first microcomputer to use the 8080, in May 1974. Virtually all early microcomputers were essentially boxes with lights and switches; one had to read and understand binary numbers and machine language to program and use them (the Datapoint 2200 was a striking exception, bearing a modern design based on a monitor, keyboard, and tape and disk drives).
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Rainbow 100 floor model and software packages The Rainbow 100 was a microcomputer introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1982. This desktop unit had a monitor similar to the VT220 in a dual-CPU box with both Zilog Z80 and Intel 8088 CPUs. The Rainbow 100 was a triple-use machine: VT100 mode (industry standard terminal for interacting with DEC's own VAX), 8-bit CP/M mode (using the Z80), and 16-bit CP/M-86 or MS-DOS mode using the 8088.
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DEC VT180 The VT180 is a personal computer produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) of Maynard, Massachusetts. Introduced in early 1982, the CP/M-based VT180 was DEC's entry-level microcomputer. "VT180" is the unofficial name for the combination of the VT100 computer terminal and VT18X option. The VT18X includes a 2 MHz Zilog Z80 microprocessor and 64K RAM on two circuit boards that fit inside the terminal, and two external 5.25-inch floppy disk drives with room for two more in an external enclosure.
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Micro Cornucopia, sometimes shortened to Micro C, was a 1980s magazine for microcomputer hobbyists and enthusiasts. It was published in Bend, Oregon by former Tektronix engineer David J. Thompson. The magazine, originally conceived as a newsletter for users of the Ferguson Big Board (a single-board CP/M computer), was published bi-monthly beginning in July 1981. It soon expanded its coverage to other board-level computers, the Kaypro computer, and general hobbyist/experimental computing, with special interest areas being robotics, interfacing, embedded systems and programming languages.
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In computing, the Tube was the expansion interface and architecture of the BBC Microcomputer System which allowed the BBC Micro to communicate with a second processor, or coprocessor. Under the Tube architecture, the coprocessor would run the application software for the user, whilst the Micro (acting as a host) provided all I/O functions, such as screen display, keyboard and storage devices management. A coprocessor unit could be coldplugged into any BBC Micro with a disk interface (whose ROM contained the necessary host software) and used immediately.
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HAMURABI). A BASIC interpreter is an interpreter that enables users to enter and run programs in the BASIC language and was, for the first part of the microcomputer era, the default application that computers would launch. Users were expected to use the BASIC interpreter to type in programs or to load programs from storage (initially cassette tapes than floppy disks). BASIC interpreters are of historical importance. Microsoft’s first product for sale was a BASIC interpreter (Altair BASIC), which paved the way for the company's success.
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Hejlsberg was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and studied Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. While at the university in 1980, he began writing programs for the Nascom microcomputer, including a Pascal compiler which was initially marketed as the Blue Label Software Pascal for the Nascom-2. However, he soon rewrote it for CP/M and DOS, marketing it first as Compas Pascal and later as PolyPascal. Later the product was licensed to Borland, and integrated into an IDE to become the Turbo Pascal system.
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In the 1970s disk and digital tape devices were too expensive for some early microcomputer users. An inexpensive basic data storage system was devised that used common audio cassette tape. When the system needed to write data, the user was notified to press "RECORD" on the cassette recorder, then press "RETURN" on the keyboard to notify the system that the cassette recorder was recording. The system wrote a sound to provide time synchronization, then modulated sounds that encoded a prefix, the data, a checksum and a suffix.
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In computing, Interactive System Productivity Facility (ISPF) is a software product for many historic IBM mainframe operating systems and currently the z/OS and z/VM operating systems that run on IBM mainframes. It includes a screen editor, the user interface of which was emulated by some microcomputer editors sold commercially starting in the late 1980s, including SPF/PC. ISPF primarily provides an IBM 3270 terminal interface with a set of panels. Each panel may include menus and dialogs to run tools on the underlying environment, e.g.
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The 1100/60 introduced a new feature to the line: the CPUs used microcode that was loaded during the booting process. The booting process was controlled by a microcomputer (called the "SSP" - "System Support Processor") that ran from 8-inch floppy disks. The microcode was stored on these disks. The system included an optional (extra-cost) set of additions to the instruction set (referred to as the Extended Instruction Set or EIS), which contained features to enhance the execution of COBOL programs, when appropriately compiled.
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Further studies on Cochrane tested the possibility of amnesia patients to learn information that was more complex than information acquired with priming. Researchers also examined if patients could learn information applicable to completing daily tasks. One study showed that Cochrane could learn vocabulary associated with operating a desktop computer; further studies revealed that Cochrane could actually learn commands related to computers to the extent that he was able to perform basic programming tasks on a microcomputer. Cochrane's learning of this more complex information, however, was hyperspecific.
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Basic design-guidelines for controlling access to the computer room were therefore devised. During the boom of the microcomputer industry, and especially during the 1980s, users started to deploy computers everywhere, in many cases with little or no care about operating requirements. However, as information technology (IT) operations started to grow in complexity, organizations grew aware of the need to control IT resources. The advent of Unix from the early 1970s led to the subsequent proliferation of freely available Linux-compatible PC operating- systems during the 1990s.
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After its release, it drew an underground following from media theorists to computer hackers. In his book Tools for Thought, Howard Rheingold calls Computer Lib "the best-selling underground manifesto of the microcomputer revolution." It has since been referred to as "the most influential book in the history of computational media", as well as "the most important book in the history of new media" in The New Media Reader. One of the most widely adopted ideas from Computer Lib was Ted Nelson's "chunk-style" hypertext.
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Microsoft MACRO-80 (often shortened to M80) is a relocatable macro assembler for Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80 microcomputer systems.Microsoft MACRO-8O ASSEMBLER CP/M Version Software Reference Manual for HEATH/ZENITH 8-bit digital computer systems (1981) The complete MACRO-80 package includes the MACRO-80 Assembler, the LINK-80 Linking Loader, and the CREF-80 Cross Reference Facility. The LIB-80 Library Manager is included in CP/M versions only.Microsoft Utility Software Manual (1979) The list price at the time was $200.
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The Intellecs have resident monitors stored in ROMs. They also included an assembler, linker, and debugger, as well as the ability to act as an in-circuit emulator. Additionally, a PL/M compiler, cross-assembler and simulator were available, which allowed writing programs in a higher-level language than assembly. FORTRAN compilers were also available. The Intellec 8 supported a Teletype operating at 110 baud, a high speed punched paper tape readerIntel Microcomputer Peripherals: imm8-90 Intellec 8 High Speed Paper Tape Reader Google Docs.
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The company flourished into the 1980s as a United States Federal defense contractor with particular success as a designer and manufacturer of "Identification Friend or Foe" (IFF) military detection and identification systems. During the 1970s, as an outgrowth of its defense work, Hazeltine Corp. developed the Hazeltine Terminal, "Hazeltine H1500 Video Display Terminal Reference Manual", Hazeltine Corporation, July 1977 an early monochrome smart terminal. Several improved models followed, including the popular Hazeltine 1500, which found use in the emerging microcomputer market in the late 1970s.
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Tangerine Computer SystemsThe choice of the company's name, Tangerine, was inspired by the success of the-then already famous (in the computer business world) Apple Computer. was a British microcomputer company founded in 1979 by Dr. Paul Johnson, Mark Rainer and Nigel Penton Tilbury in St. Ives, Cambridgeshire. The very first product was the successful TAN1648 VDU kit which received much acclaim in the technical press. The home computer market was beginning to move, albeit slowly, and it was essential to establish a presence.
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Ross did not have a 64-bit SPARC microprocessor and was at a disadvantage as a result. Combined with the creation of Ross Microcomputer earlier in the year, which incurred restructuring and other costs, they began to lose money. An effort to regain the company's competitiveness was active at the time, and it involved developing a new 64-bit microprocessor code-named Viper. Fujitsu provided the initial funding for the project, and also agreed to provide Ross Technology with a loan so it could continue operating.
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Bell's law of computer classesBell, G., "Bell’s Law for the Birth and Death of Computer Classes", Communications of the ACM, January 2008, Vol 51, No. 1, pp 86–94. was first described in 1972 with the emergence of a new, lower priced microcomputer class based on the microprocessor. Established market class computers are introduced at a constant price with increasing functionality and performance. Technology advances in semiconductors, storage, interfaces and networks enable a new computer class (platform) to form about every decade to serve a new need.
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Sales exceeded IBM's expectations by as much as 800%, shipping 40,000 PCs a month at one point. The company estimated that 50 to 70% of PCs sold in retail stores went to the home. In 1983 they sold more than 750,000 machines, while DEC, a competitor whose success among others had spurred them to enter the market, had sold only 69,000 machines in that period. Software support from the industry grew instantly, with the IBM nearly instantly becoming the primary target for most microcomputer software development.
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Motorola generally described it as a 16-bit processor. The combination of high performance, large (16 megabytes or 224 bytes) memory space and fairly low cost made it the most popular CPU design of its class. The Apple Lisa and Macintosh designs made use of the 68000, as did a host of other designs in the mid-1980s, including the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. The world's first single-chip fully 32-bit microprocessor, with 32-bit data paths, 32-bit buses, and 32-bit addresses, was the AT&T; Bell Labs BELLMAC-32A, with first samples in 1980, and general production in 1982. After the divestiture of AT&T; in 1984, it was renamed the WE 32000 (WE for Western Electric), and had two follow-on generations, the WE 32100 and WE 32200. These microprocessors were used in the AT&T; 3B5 and 3B15 minicomputers; in the 3B2, the world's first desktop super microcomputer; in the "Companion", the world's first 32-bit laptop computer; and in "Alexander", the world's first book-sized super microcomputer, featuring ROM-pack memory cartridges similar to today's gaming consoles.
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Those who required real RAM-like performance and non-volatility typically have had to use conventional RAM devices and a battery backup. For example, IBM PC's and successors beginning with the IBM PC AT used nonvolatile BIOS memory, often called CMOS RAM or parameter RAM, and this was a common solution in other early microcomputer systems like the original Apple Macintosh, which used a small amount of memory powered by a battery for storing basic setup information like the selected boot volume. (The original IBM PC and PC XT instead used DIP switches to represent up to 24 bits of system configuration data; DIP or similar switches are another, primitive type of programmable ROM device that was widely used in the 1970s and 1980s for very small amounts of data-- typically no more than 8 bytes.) Before industry standardization on the IBM PC architecture, some other microcomputer models used battery-backed RAM more extensively: for example, in the TRS-80 Model 100/Tandy 102, all of the main memory (8 KB minimum, 32 KB maximum) is battery-backed SRAM. Also, in the 1990s many video game software cartridges (e.g.
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Maximum design speed of the Co-Co trucks is 170 km/h. The cab design incorporates a 25° inclination for streamlining. The locomotive microcomputer control system consists of constant power excitation control, cooling, anti-wheel slip transfer control, fault diagnosis display, with full power to test the resistance of dynamic braking system functions, and electro- pneumatic braking system. The DF11 can haul a passenger train (about 12 cars) up to the maximum balancing speed of on straight track; or a train (about 20 cars) to a maximum balancing speed of .
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The period from the late 1960s through today has seen rapid changes in technology from the microcomputer and networking to the internet and with these changes came some major events that change IT auditing forever. The formation and rise in popularity of the Internet and E-commerce have had significant influences on the growth of IT audit. The Internet influences the lives of most of the world and is a place of increased business, entertainment and crime. IT auditing helps organizations and individuals on the Internet find security while helping commerce and communications to flourish.
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The 5th Computer Olympiad took place at Alexandra Palace, the West Hall in London, UK from 21 August 2000 to 25 August 2000. After an eight-year hiatus, it was revived by bringing it into the Mind Sports Olympiad. The computer programs competed against each other at a variety of games, including Amazons, awari, chess, Go, Hex, Lines of Action, and shogi. The chess competition of the Computer Olympiad was a special event, since it was adopted by the ICCA as the 17th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCC 2000).
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The COSMAC ELF continues to be a popular educational microcomputer construction project to the present time, and several newer designs have been based on it. The design principles of the 1802 - large, general purpose register file and a limited set of instructions that execute in few cycles - presaged the RISC design philosophy. The 1802 has been called "the grandfather of RISC." The 1802's load mode is unique, and along with RCA's radiation-hardened Silicon on Sapphire process was instrumental in the selection of the 1802 processor for several space probes and space-based instruments.
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Michael Tomczyk Michael S. Tomczyk was responsible for guiding the development and launch of the Commodore VIC-20, the first microcomputer to sell one million units; and for his early role as a pioneer in telecomputing. The VIC-20 was the first affordable, full-featured color computer and the first home computer to be sold in KMart and other mass market outlets. He has been called the "marketing father" of the home computer. During his career, Tomczyk has been a technology developer, corporate executive, consultant and academic director.
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Tandy Corporation released several computer product lines starting in 1977, under both TRS-80 and Tandy branding. TRS-80 was a brand associated with several desktop microcomputer lines sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. It was first used on the original TRS-80 (later known as the Model I), one of the earliest mass-produced personal computers. However, Tandy later used the TRS-80 name on a number of different computer lines, many of which were technically unrelated to (and incompatible with) the original Model I and its replacements.
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Steam Link, implemented as both hardware and software solutions, enables the streaming of Steam content from a personal computer or a Steam Machine wirelessly to a mobile device or other monitor. Steam link was originally released as a hardware device along with the debut of Steam Machines in November 2015. Valve discontinued the Steam Link in November 2018, in favor of supporting its software-based Steam Link application for mobile devices and smart televisions, as well as providing Steam Link as a software package for the Raspberry Pi microcomputer.
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Lancaster is a writer and engineer, who authored multiple project articles for computer and electronics magazines of the 1970s, including Popular Electronics, Radio Electronics, Dr. Dobb's Journal, 73 Magazine, and Byte. He has written books on electronics, computers, and entrepreneurship, both commercially published and self-published. An early project was his "TV Typewriter" dumb terminal. This design was accepted by early microcomputer users as it used an ordinary television set for the display, and could be built with around US $200 in parts, at a time when commercial terminals were selling for over US $1,000.
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Back of the April 1980 issue, with a parody of other computer magazines By August 1975 the magazine had 2,500 subscribers. In January, the Altair 8800 had been announced and Ahl began looking for new authors who could write for the exploding microcomputer market. By 1976 the content was roughly split between the education and microcomputing market. At that point, the magazine started actively looking for advertisers and the November/December 1976 issue was the first to be printed on coated paper rather than newsprint to provide better quality ads.
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The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems's (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer, which inspired Allen to suggest that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device. Gates called MITS and claimed that he had a working interpreter, and MITS requested a demonstration. Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter, and it worked flawlessly when they demonstrated it to MITS in March 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC.
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The Commodore version cannot be transferred without the audio cassette intermediate, and Computer and Video Games recommended that Commodore users listen to a sample of another cassette-based Commodore game on speakers and to adjust the recording volume for The Thompson Twins Adventure to match it. Data transfer is a delicate procedure that can be disrupted by background noise, scratches, and other audio-fidelity problems. In some cases it may be necessary to re-record the game data more than once at different recording levels to correctly transfer it to the microcomputer.
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SBASIC allowed any statement, so for instance `IF X < 5 THEN X=X+1`. This basic expansion to the `IF...THEN`, pioneered in 1972 with BASIC- PLUS, was already widely supported by most variety of BASICs by this point, including microcomputer versions that were being released at this time. On top of this, SBASIC added block-oriented `IF` by placing the `THEN` on a separate line and then ending the block with `CONTINUE`. On top of this, SBASIC added the `SELECT CASE` mechanism that survives to this day in VB.net.
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The third stage began in the early 1980s by a research group at Central Institute for the Deaf headed up by faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis MO. This group created the first full digital wearable hearing aid. Engebretson, AM, Popelka, GR, Morley, RE, Niemoeller, AF, and Heidbreder, AF: A digital hearing aid and computer-based fitting procedure. Hearing Instruments 1986; 37(2): 8-14 Popelka, GR: Computer assisted hearing aid fitting, in Microcomputer Applications in Rehabilitation of Communication Disorders, M.L. Grossfeld and C.A. Grossfeld, Editors. 1986, Aspen Publishing: Rockville, Maryland.
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The use of Copyleft; All Wrongs Reserved in 1976 Li-Chen Wang (born 1935) is an American computer engineer, best known for his Palo Alto Tiny BASIC for Intel 8080-based microcomputers. He was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club and made significant contributions to the software for early microcomputer systems from Tandy Corporation and Cromemco. He made early use of the word copyleft, in Palo Alto Tiny BASIC's distribution notice "@COPYLEFT ALL WRONGS RESERVED" in June 1976. (NB. Source code begins with the following six lines.
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Michigan State University Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by Michigan State University. It is located south of the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing, Michigan (USA), near the corner of Forest Rd and College Rd. It has a Cassegrain telescope in its single dome. Built by Boller and Chivens, the Michigan State University telescope was commissioned in 1969 and entered regular operation in 1970. In 1974, what was at the time a state-of-the-art Raytheon Microcomputer was installed to function as a data gathering and control system.
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After working seven years at IBM, in 1981 Umang Gupta joined Oracle Corporation as their 17th employee and served as vice president and general manager of the Microcomputer Products Division through 1984. He is credited with writing the first business plan for the company. Umang has also been an active investor and advisor to a number of Silicon Valley start-up companies including serving on the Board of Trustees of Mosaix, a publicly held call- center systems company from 1997 to 1999 until its sale to Lucent Technologies.
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One of the most popular BBS applications for the TI-99/4A in the early to mid 1980s was aptly named TIBBS (Texas Instruments Bulletin Board System). TIBBS was purported to be the first BBS written to run on the TI-99/4A microcomputer. Its author, Ralph Fowler of Atlanta, Georgia, began the program because he was told by TI's engineers that the machine was not powerful enough to support a BBS. Approximately 200 copies of the application were officially licensed by Fowler and many TIBBS systems popped up around the World.
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Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) further reduced cost for mass-produced minicomputers, and mapped peripherals into the memory bus, so that the input and output devices appeared to be memory locations. This was implemented in the Unibus of the PDP-11 around 1969. Early microcomputer bus systems were essentially a passive backplane connected directly or through buffer amplifiers to the pins of the CPU. Memory and other devices would be added to the bus using the same address and data pins as the CPU itself used, connected in parallel.
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The protocol became a de facto data communications standard for transferring files between dissimilar computer systems, and by the early 1990s it could convert multilingual character encodings. Kermit software has been used in many countries, for tasks ranging from simple student assignments to solving compatibility problems aboard the International Space Station.International Space Station Incorporates Kermit (December 2003) It was ported to a wide variety of mainframe, minicomputer and microcomputer systems down to handhelds and electronic pocket calculators. Most versions had a user interface based on the original TOPS-20 Kermit.
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The Commodore Amiga (1985), with its wavetable and sample-based sound synthesis, distanced the concept of microcomputer music away from plain chip-synthesized sounds. Amiga tracker music software, beginning from Karsten Obarski's Ultimate Soundtracker (1987), inspired great numbers of computer enthusiasts to create computer music. As an offshoot of the burgeoning tracker music culture, a type of tracker music reminiscent of Commodore 64 SID music was born. This type of music came to be called "chiptunes" (referring to Amiga's chip memory, the part of memory that custom chips can access).
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The following year, Paul Castrucci of IBM filed an American patent titled "Information Card" in May 1971. In 1974 Roland Moreno patented a secured memory card later dubbed the "smart card". In 1976, Jürgen Dethloff introduced the known element (called "the secret") to identify gate user as of USP 4105156. In 1977, Michel Ugon from Honeywell Bull invented the first microprocessor smart card with two chips: one microprocessor and one memory, and in 1978, he patented the self-programmable one-chip microcomputer (SPOM) that defines the necessary architecture to program the chip.
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RS-232 / Current loop converter For serial communications, a current loop is a communication interface that uses current instead of voltage for signaling. Current loops can be used over moderately long distances (tens of kilometres), and can be interfaced with optically isolated links. There are a variety of such systems, but one based on a 20 mA current level was used by the Teletype Model 33 and was particularly common on minicomputers and early microcomputer which used these as computer terminals. As a result, most computer terminals also supported this standard into the 1980s.
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It became easier for a business to justify buying a microcomputer than it had been even a year or two before, and easiest of all to justify buying the IBM Personal Computer. Since the PC architecture was well documented in IBM's manuals, and PC DOS was designed to be similar to earlier CP/M operating system, the PC soon had thousands of different third-party add-in cards and software packages available. This made the PC the preferred option for many, since the PC supported the hardware and software they needed.
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In June 1984, Kurtzig announced that she was shutting down ASK Micro, at a cost of $1 million, and auctioning off the rights to Accounting Plus. ASK also failed at rescaling MANMAN to run on personal computers. Of the company's failings in the emerging personal computer market, Kurtzig told BusinessWeek, "We have our fingerprints all over the murder weapon" that killed Software Dimensions. ASK never truly found its footing in the microcomputer market, and struggled to keep its market share from being eroded by competitors who offered similar solutions on smaller platforms.
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He had no interest in the game, but felt he could win the pool by processing the post-game statistics found in newspapers. In order to do this, he started looking for a database system and, by chance, came across the documentation for JPLDIS. He used this as the basis for a port to PTDOS on his kit-built IMSAI 8080 microcomputer, and called the resulting system Vulcan (after Mr. Spock on Star Trek). It was later ported to CP/M when that system became almost universal in the S-100 bus market.
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Opened in 1977 in Marin County, CA, the Marin Computer Center was the world's first public access microcomputer center. The non-profit company was co- created by David Fox (later to become one of Lucasfilm Games' founding members) and Annie Fox an author. MCC (as it was known) initially featured the Atari 2600, an Equinox 100, 9 Processor Technology Sol 20 computers (S-100 bus systems), the Radio Shack Model I and the Commodore PET. In addition to providing computer access to the public it had classes on the programming language BASIC.
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The later articles included a variety of peripherals, allowing the computer to interface to a keypad, octal display, paper tape loader, paper tape puncher, printer, keyboard, music player, teleprinter, magnetic tape recorder and alphanumeric display. The articles were collected into a book,EDUC-8 An Educational Microcomputer System For The Home Constructor and College Student, by Jamieson Rowe published by Electronics Australia where additional information was published detailing how to expand the number of I/O ports to 256, adding up to 32KB of additional memory, and using the computer to control various switches.
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MOS 0261, Geographic intelligence specialist is an entry level primary MOS. Geographic intelligence specialists collect, analyze, process, and disseminate geophysical data. They perform precision ground control survey operations to provide the positional data required for various weapons delivery and C3 systems, construct and revise military maps and charts, conduct geodetic, topographic, and hydrographic survey operations, and analyze terrain and hydrography as a functional aspect of military intelligence. Equipment utilized includes survey and mapping instrumentation such as the theodolites, electronic and satellite positioning equipment, and microcomputer based mapping equipment.
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However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialised applications. The metal–oxide–silicon field-effect transistor (MOSFET, or MOS transistor) was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. The MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuit chips, leading to what is known as the computer revolution or microcomputer revolution.
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The name changed from Computer Shack to ComputerLand in this July 1977 advertisement. ComputerLand was a widespread chain of retail computer stores during the early years of the microcomputer revolution, and was one of the outlets (along with Computer City and Sears) chosen to introduce the IBM PC in 1981. The first ComputerLand opened in 1976, and the chain eventually included about 800 stores by 1985. After this time the rapid commoditization of the PC led to the company's downfall, with most of the retail locations closing by 1990.
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Prior to the advent of the Bank Street Writer, most word processors ran on networked minicomputers. The most popular word processor for the personal computer was Apple Writer, which (prior to the version II release) operated in Apple's text mode where all text consisted of uppercase letters. Apple Writer used a black-on-white character to represent an actual capital letter. Microcomputer word processors of the early 1980s typically had no menus; so to perform basic functions such as copying and pasting, a writer had to type a series of keystrokes.
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The Software Toolworks (commonly abbreviated as Toolworks) was an American software and video game developer based in Novato, California. The company was founded by Walt Bilofsky in 1980 out of his Sherman Oaks garage, which he converted into an office, to develop software for the Heathkit H89 microcomputer. It quickly expanded into video games, releasing Airport and MyChess in 1980; other notable games include Chessmaster 2000, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, and Mario Is Missing!. Toolworks merged with its distributor, Software Country, in 1986 and, after going public in 1988, acquired IntelliCreations, DS Technologies, and Mindscape.
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Beyond supporting the BLAST protocol, it enabled use of the competing XMODEM, encrypted and transmitted data using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and had "versions for about a hundred different micros, minis, and mainframes". Like Columbia University's Kermit software, CRG's BLAST-II also provided a scripting language. CRG was recognized as one of the 100 largest microcomputer software companies in the United States, and it was ultimately acquired by modem manufacturer U.S. Robotics in 1990, and which company continued to develop and sell BLAST products.Soft•letter Staff (April 4, 1985, Vol.
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It was based on Owl LISP written by Mike Gardner of Owl Computers, which he published for the Apple II in 1979. Acornsoft licensed it from Owl Computers in 1981 and developed it for the Acorn Atom and BBC Microcomputer. The supplied LISP workspace image containing commonly used built-in functions and constants was 3K in size, although this could be deleted if not needed by the user to free up more memory. Supported datatypes included nested lists, 16-bit signed integers and strings up to 127 characters in length.
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The Educator 64, also known as the PET 64 and Model 4064, was a microcomputer made by Commodore Business Machines in 1983. It was sold to schools as a replacement for aging Commodore PET systems. Schools were reluctant to adopt the Commodore 64 "breadbox" design due to theft or vandalism of the smaller, more exposed components. The 4064 designation followed in line with the PET's 4008, 4016 and 4032 models as a 64 KB 40-column model. The internals of the Educator 64 were refurbished Commodore 64 motherboards and monochromatic green monitors.
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The game became one of the network's most popular programs, with thousands of players monthly. Rawitsch published the source code of The Oregon Trail, written in BASIC 3.1 for the CDC Cyber 70/73-26, in Creative Computings May–June 1978 issue. That year MECC began encouraging schools to adopt the Apple II microcomputer. John Cook adapted the game for the Apple II, and it appeared on A.P.P.L.E.'s PDS Disk series No. 108. A further version called Oregon Trail 2 was adapted in June 1978 by J.P. O'Malley.
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In multivariate statistics, principal response curves (PRC) are used for analysis of treatment effects in experiments with a repeated measures design.ter Braak, Cajo J.F. & Šmilauer, Petr (2012). Canoco reference manual and user´s guide: software for ordination (version 5.0), p 292\. Microcomputer Power, Ithaca, NY. First developed as a special form of redundancy analysis, PRC allow temporal trends in control treatments to be corrected for, which allows the user to estimate the effects of the treatment levels without them being hidden by the overall changes in the system.
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PMI-80 board The PMI-80 was a single-board microcomputer produced by Tesla Piešťany, Czechoslovakia, since 1982. It was based on the MHB 8080A CPU (a Tesla clone of the Intel 8080), clocked at 1.111 MHz. Instead of a raster graphic display output and classical keyboard, it had a calculator-style nine- digit seven-segment red LED display and a 25-key calculator-type keypad with hexadecimal and function keys (including hardware REset and Interrupt). The PMI-80 had 1 KiB of ROM (expandable to 2 KiB) and fixed 1 KiB of RWM.
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YS MegaBasic is a BASIC programming language interpreter for the 1982 Sinclair Research ZX Spectrum microcomputer, written by Mike Leaman.Your Spectrum:YS MegaBasic, Issue 8, October 1984 When loaded it left the user 22K of usable memory. YS MegaBasic allowed keywords to be spelled out letter-for-letter, which was quicker if the user had fitted a full-size full-travel keyboard to their machine, a very popular modification for serious users. This also removed the necessity for memorising the sometimes arcane key combinations necessary to enter less-commonly-used BASIC keywords.
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IBM then published Electric Poet along with Comma Cat, and called Skellings' system "the best of the best" in computer-assisted teaching programs. IBM later appointed Edmund Skellings as one the twelve IBM Consulting scholars in the entire nation in 1989 and received a grant to establish a Florida Writers Network to connect three universities creative writing programs. In 1986, Skellings designed and implemented a microcomputer information system for The Florida House of Representatives and its district offices. The system was the first large scale legislative implementation of a token-ring network.
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At the time there were no VAX microcomputers. When VAXELN was well under way, Cutler spearheaded the next project, the MicroVAX I--the first VAX microcomputer. Although it was a low-volume product compared with the New England-developed MicroVAX II, the MicroVAX I demonstrated the set of architectural decisions needed to support a single- board implementation of the VAX computer family, and it also provided a platform for embedded applications written in VAXELN. The VAXELN team made the decision, for the first release, to use the Pascal language as its system programming language.
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Dragon's Lair is an interactive film LaserDisc video game developed by Advanced Microcomputer Systems and published by Cinematronics in 1983, as the first game in the Dragon's Lair series. In the game, the protagonist Dirk the Daring is a knight attempting to rescue Princess Daphne from the evil dragon Singe who has locked the princess in the foul wizard Mordroc's castle. It featured animation by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth. Most other games of the era represented the character as a sprite, which consisted of a series of pixels displayed in succession.
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In 1982 ACT released their first microcomputer, built by another company but marketed under the ACT brand. In America it was a moderate success. Later in 1982 ACT signed a deal with Victor to distribute the "Victor 9000" as the ACT "Sirius 1" in the UK and Europe. The £2754 "Sirius 1" ran MS-DOS but was not hardware- compatible with the IBM PC. The Sirius 1 became the most popular 16-bit business computer in Europe, especially in Britain and Germany, while IBM delayed the release of the PC there.
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This list of computer size categories attempts to list commonly used categories of computer by the physical size of the device and its chassis or case, in descending order of size. One generation's "supercomputer" is the next generation's "mainframe", and a "PDA" does not have the same set of functions as a "laptop", but the list still has value, as it provides a ranked categorization of devices. It also ranks some more obscure computer sizes. There are different sizes like-mini computers, microcomputer, mainframe computer and super computer.
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Early microcomputer buses like S-100 were often just connections to the pins of the microprocessor and to the power rails. This meant that a change in the computer's architecture generally led to a new bus as well. Looking to avoid such problems in the future, NuBus was designed to be independent of the processor, its general architecture and any details of its I/O handling. Among its many advanced features for the era, NuBus used a 32-bit backplane when 8- or 16-bit busses were common.
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In a parallel development Digital Research also produced a selection of programming language compilers and interpreters for their OS-supported platforms, including C, Pascal, COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/I, PL/M, CBASIC, BASIC, and Logo. They also produced a microcomputer version of the GKS graphics standard (related to NAPLPS) called GSX, and later used this as the basis of their GEM GUI. Less known are their application programs, limited largely to the GSX- based DR DRAW, Dr. Halo for DOS and a small suite of GUI programs for GEM.
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The first commercial microcomputer to feature expansion slots was the Micral N, in 1973. The first company to establish a de facto standard was Altair with the Altair 8800, developed 1974–1975, which later became a multi-manufacturer standard, the S-100 bus. Many of these computers were also passive backplane designs, where all elements of the computer, (processor, memory, and I/O) plugged into a card cage which passively distributed signals and power between the cards. Proprietary bus implementations for systems such as the Apple II co-existed with multi-manufacturer standards.
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The Spracklens made significant improvements on the original program and released Sargon II. Sargon 2.5, sold as a ROM module for the Chafitz Modular Game System, was identical to Sargon II but incorporated pondering. It received a 1641 rating at the Paul Masson tournament in June–July 1979, and 1736 at the San Jose City College Open in January 1980. Sargon 3.0 finished in seventh place at the October 1979 North American Computer Chess Championship. The competition had improved, but 3.0 drew against Cray Blitz and easily defeated Mychess, its main microcomputer rival.
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The Compukit UK101 microcomputer (1979) is a kit clone of the Ohio Scientific Superboard II single-board computer, with a few enhancements for the UK market - notably replacing the 24×24 (add guardband kit to give 32×32) screen display with a more useful 48×16 layout working at UK video frequencies. The video output is black and white with 256 characters generated by a two kilobyte ROM. It has no bit-mapped graphics capability. The video is output through a UHF modulator, designed to connect to a TV set.
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A microcomputer used as an embedded control system may have no human-readable input and output devices. "Personal computer" may be used generically or may denote an IBM PC compatible machine. The Commodore 64 was one of the most popular microcomputers of its era, and is the best-selling model of home computer of all time. The abbreviation micro was common during the 1970s and 1980s,Proof of "micro" as a once-common term: (i) Direct reference: Graham Kibble-White, "Stand by for a Data-Blast", Off the Telly.
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Of the early "box of switches"-type microcomputers, the MITS Altair 8800 (1975) was arguably the most famous. Most of these simple, early microcomputers were sold as electronic kits—bags full of loose components which the buyer had to solder together before the system could be used. Microcomputer module LSI-11/2 The period from about 1971 to 1976 is sometimes called the first generation of microcomputers. Many companies such as DEC, National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments offered their microcomputers for use in terminal control, peripheral device interface control and industrial machine control.
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Supreme Ruler The Great War was developed and published by BattleGoat Studios on Steam (software). The game uses the proprietary BattleGoat Game Engine that has been used and updated since the release of the original Supreme Ruler 2010 game in 2005. The Supreme Ruler games series is a modern update of the original Supreme Ruler game first released for the TRS-80 microcomputer in 1982. Game developer George Geczy created the original game and has been the technical lead and primary programmer in each of the modern game releases.
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Panafacom MN1610 In April 1975, Panafacom announced the 16-bit single-chip microprocessor, the Panafacom L-16A (MN1610). NEC released the TK-80 microcomputer evaluation kit in 1976, and it became popular among computer enthusiasts and hobbyists in Japan. Panafacom also released the Panafacom Lkit-16 in March 1977 to popularize the MN1610. The Panafacom C-15 is an industrial personal computer using the MN1610 processor, announced in Japan in May 1978. It cost ¥700,000 () with 16 KB of RAM, flat keyboard, monochrome display and cassette tape recorder.
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The metal–oxide–silicon field- effect transistor (MOSFET), also known as the MOS transistor, was invented by Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. With its high scalability, and much lower power consumption and higher density than bipolar junction transistors, the MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuits. The MOSFET later led to the microcomputer revolution, and became the driving force behind the computer revolution.
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Since the 1990s, panoramic photos have been available on the Advanced Photo System (APS) film. APS was developed by several of the major film manufacturers to provide a film with different formats and computerized options available, though APS panoramas were created using a mask in panorama-capable cameras, far less desirable than a true panoramic camera, which achieves its effect through a wider film format. APS has become less popular and has been discontinued. The advent of the microcomputer and digital photography has led to the rise of digital prints.
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Like today's trend of mobile devices from personal computers, in 1984 for the first time estimated sales of desktop computers ($11.6 billion) exceeded mainframe computers ($11.4 billion). IBM received the vast majority of mainframe revenue. From 1991 to 1996, AT&T; Corporation briefly owned NCR, one of the major original mainframe producers. During the same period, companies found that servers based on microcomputer designs could be deployed at a fraction of the acquisition price and offer local users much greater control over their own systems given the IT policies and practices at that time.
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This was the standard operating procedure for early microcomputer and home computer systems, where there was no distinction between an administrator or root, and a regular user of the system. In some systems, non-administrator users are over-privileged by design, in the sense that they are allowed to modify internal structures of the system. In some environments, users are over-privileged because they have been inappropriately granted administrator or equivalent status. Some systems allow code executed by a user to access all rights of that user, which is known as over-privileged code.
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"Ashton-Tate Plans to Acquire Multimate In Bid to Strengthen Software Position" By JOHN MARCOM JR., The Wall Street Journal; Jul 30, 1985; pg. 4 an Ashton-Tate press release called the acquisition "the largest ever in the microcomputer software industry". Other MultiMate products included foreign language versions of the software (i.e., "MultiTexto" in Spanish), a hardware interface card for file-transfer with Wang systems and versions of MultiMate for different PC clone MS-DOS computers, and for use on Novell, 3COM and IBM's PC Token Ring networks.
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The Osborne 1 is the first commercially successful portable microcomputer, released on April 3, 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. It weighs 10.7 kg (24.5 lb), cost US$1,795, and runs the CP/M 2.2 operating system. It is powered from a wall socket, as it has no on-board battery, but it is still classed as a portable device since it can be hand-carried when packed. The computer shipped with a large bundle of software that was almost equivalent in value to the machine itself, a practice adopted by other CP/M computer vendors.
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The 300 baud Smartmodem led to an initial wave of early BBS systems. A key innovation required for the popularization of the BBS was the Smartmodem manufactured by Hayes Microcomputer Products. Internal modems like the ones used by CBBS and similar early systems were usable, but generally expensive due to the manufacturer having to make a different modem for every computer platform they wanted to target. They were also limited to those computers with internal expansion, and could not be used with other useful platforms like video terminals.
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Block diagram of a M6800 microcomputer system Motorola did not chronicle the development of the 6800 microprocessor the way that Intel did for their microprocessors. In 2008 the Computer History Museum interviewed four members of the 6800 microprocessor design team. Their recollections can be confirmed and expanded by magazine and journal articles written at the time. The Motorola microprocessor project began in 1971 with a team composed of designer Tom Bennett, engineering director Jeff LaVell, product marketer Link Young and systems designers Mike Wiles, Gene Schriber and Doug Powell.
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An early advertisement for the Motorola's M6800 family microcomputer system The March 7, 1974 issue of Electronics had a two-page story on the Motorola MC6800 microprocessor along with the MC6820 Peripheral Interface Adapter, the MC6850 communications interface adapter, the MCM6810 128 byte RAM and the MCM6830 1024 byte ROM.The article used MC6830 for 128 byte RAM and MC6816 for the 1024 byte ROM. Motorola memory chips used MCM as a prefix. This was followed by an eight-page article in the April 18, 1974 issue, written by the Motorola design team.
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At its peak, it was the second largest employer in Massachusetts, after the state government. The rapid rise of the business microcomputer in the late 1980s, and especially the introduction of powerful 32-bit systems in the 1990s, quickly eroded the value of DEC's systems. DEC's last major attempt to find a space in the rapidly changing market was the DEC Alpha 64-bit RISC instruction set architecture. DEC initially started work on Alpha as a way to re-implement their VAX series, but also employed it in a range of high-performance workstations.
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The Kleincomputer KC compact The ' ("" - which means "small computer" - being a rather literal German translation of the English "microcomputer") is a clone of the Amstrad CPC built by East Germany's ' in October 1989. Although the machine included various substitutes and emulations of an Amstrad CPC's hardware, the machine is largely compatible with Amstrad CPC software. It is equipped with 64 KB memory and a CPC6128's firmware customized to the modified hardware, including an unmodified copy of Locomotive BASIC 1.1. The KC compact is the last 8-bit computer produced in East Germany.
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Locomotive BASIC on the Amstrad CPC 464 Like most home computers at the time, the CPC has its OS and a BASIC interpreter built in as ROM. It uses Locomotive BASIC - an improved version of Locomotive Software's Z80 BASIC for the BBC Microcomputer co-processor board. It is particularly notable for providing easy access to the machine's video and audio resources in contrast to the POKE commands required on generic Microsoft implementations. Other unusual features include timed event handling with the AFTER and EVERY commands, and text-based windowing.
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Under state rules, other students that reside in the district, who attend a private school, a charter school or are home schooled are eligible to participate in this program. In 2010, Governor Edward Rendell eliminated the grants to students, from the Commonwealth, due to a state budget crisis. Cambria Heights School District received a grant of $4,147 in 2010-11 for the program. At Cambria Heights most dual enrollment courses (with the exception of Microcomputer Applications, Visual Basic Programming, and Anatomy and Physiology I and II) have a weighted credit value of 1.1.
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These companies were forced to refer to the system as the "Altair bus", and wanted another name in order to avoid referring to their competitor when describing their own system. The "S-100" name, short for "Standard 100", was coined by Harry Garland and Roger Melen, co-founders of Cromemco. While on a flight to attend the Atlantic City PC '76 microcomputer conference in August 1976, they shared the cabin with Bob Marsh and Lee Felsenstein of Processor Technology. Melen went over to them to convince them to adopt the same name.
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The Futurebus+ standards development politics got so complicated that the IEEE 896 committee split from the IEEE Microcomputer Standards Committee and formed the IEEE Bus Architecture Standards Committee (BASC). In the end very little use of Futurebus was attempted. The decade-long performance gap they gave the system had evaporated in the decade-long standards process, and conventional local bus systems like PCI were close in performance terms. Meanwhile, the VME ecosystem had evolved to such a degree that it continues to be used today, another decade on.
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Eagle Computer of Los Gatos, California, was an early microcomputer manufacturing company. Spun off from Audio-Visual Laboratories (AVL), it first sold a line of popular CP/M computers which were highly praised in the computer magazines of the day. After the IBM PC was launched, Eagle produced the Eagle 1600 series, which ran MS-DOS but were not true clones. When it became evident that the buying public wanted actual clones of the IBM PC, even if a non-clone had better features, Eagle responded with a line of clones, including a portable.
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True hermaphroditic connectors should not be confused with mixed gender connectors, which are described elsewhere in this article. Another closely related type is the stackable connector for electronics, which typically has male pins on one surface, and complementary female sockets on the opposite surface, allowing multiple units to be stacked up like plastic milk crates. Examples of this include stackable banana plugs, and interconnect cables specified for the IEEE-488 instrumentation bus. Stackable mezzanine bus connectors are used on some modular microcomputer accessory boards for systems such as the Arduino add-on daughterboards called "shields".
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"Marcian E. (Ted) Hoff ", Inventors Hall of Fame, invent.org Development of the silicon-gate design methodology and the actual chip design was done by Federico Faggin,Faggin F., Shima M., Hoff M. E. Jr., Feeney H., Mazor S. The MCS-4 – An LSI Microcomputer System, presented by Faggin at the IEEE 1972 Region Six ConferenceFaggin F., and Hoff M. E. Jr. Standard Parts And Custom Design Merge In A Four-Chip Processor Kit. Electronics Magazine, April 24, 1972 who also led the project during 1970-1971. Inventors Hall of Fame, invent.
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The Acorn Microcomputer (later to be called the System 1) was launched as the first product of a new company, Acorn Computers Ltd, founded in March 1979. Curry said that they "chose the word Acorn because it was going to be an expanding and growth-oriented system". After becoming a millionaire as a result of Acorn's success with the BBC Micro project, in 1983 Curry co-founded Redwood Publishing with Michael Potter (former publisher of advertising trade weekly Campaign) and Christopher Ward (former editor of Daily Express newspaper). The company bought the Acorn User title.
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This early work brought him into contact with Tony Hoare and Iann Barron: one of the founders of Inmos. When Inmos was formed in 1978, May joined to work on microcomputer architecture, becoming lead architect of the transputer and designer of the associated programming language Occam. This extended his earlier work and was also influenced by Tony Hoare, who was at the time working on CSP and acting as a consultant to Inmos. The prototype of the transputer was called the Simple 42 and was completed in 1982.
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In 1969, together with his wife, Millard started a software publisher company called Systems Dynamics, which went bankrupt in 1972. In 1973, Millard founded IMS Associates, which is most famous for IMSAI 8080 microcomputer first shipped in late 1975. By 1977, IMSAI's product line included printers, terminals, floppy diskettes and software. To finance rapidly growing operations, IMSAI pledged 20% of its stock as convertible note in exchange for $250,000 from investment firm Marriner & Co. In 1976, in partnership with John Martin-Musumeci, IMS launched a successful computer reseller franchise ComputerLand.
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Panafacom, a conglomerate formed by Japanese companies Fujitsu, Fuji Electric, and Matsushita, introduced the MN1610, a commercial 16-bit microprocessor.PANAFACOM Lkit-16, Information Processing Society of Japan According to Fujitsu, it was "the world's first 16-bit microcomputer on a single chip". The Intel 8080 was the basis for the 16-bit Intel 8086, which is a direct ancestor to today's ubiquitous x86 family (including Pentium and Core i7). Every instruction of the 8080 has a direct equivalent in the large x86 instruction set, although the opcode values are different in the latter.
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That year's conference also featured a Saturday breakout session, titled "THE IBM PERSONAL COMPUTER", with eight talks delivered in a three-hour period. One of these was (as listed in the program): P.C. — It's Impact on the MicroComputer Industry Bill Gates, President Microsoft 10800 N.E. 8th #819 Bellevue, WA 98004 At its peak, all available spaces for exhibits were rented out, including the balcony of Civic Auditorium, and the hallway to the restrooms in Brooks Hall (where Bob Wallace ("Quicksoft") introduced "PC- Write"). The 8th West Coast Computer Faire was held March 18–20, 1983.
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HP Vectra was a line of business-oriented personal computers manufactured by Hewlett-Packard. It was introduced in October 1985 as HP's first IBM- compatible PC. Hewlett-Packard, which originally made its name through selling test equipment, made its move into the computing field in 1967 with HP 1000/2100 minicomputers. Further minicomputer and terminal products followed in the coming years, and in 1983, the company finally released a microcomputer, the HP 150 series. It only lasted two years before HP embraced the IBM PC standard with the Vectra line.
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John Alexander Coll was a British computer specialist. While teaching physics at Oundle school he built a number of computers and was involved in Micro Users in Secondary Education (MUSE). He helped write the functional description for the BBC Computer and played an important role in convincing senior management at the BBC that it could be done. He later wrote the BBC Microcomputer User Guide which was supplied by Acorn Computers with the BBC Micro and appeared regularly on the television programmes Making the Most of the Micro and Micro Live which featured the computer.
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The PDP-11/73KDJ11-A CPU Module User's Guide, Digital Equipment CorporationChapter 4, Microcomputer Products Handbook, Digital Equipment Corporation 1985. (strictly speaking, the MicroPDP-11/73) was the third generation of the PDP-11 series of 16-bit minicomputers produced by Digital Equipment Corporation to use LSI processors. Introduced in 1983, this system used the DEC J-11 chip set and the Q-Bus, with a clock speed of 15.2 MHz. The 11/73 (also known as the KDJ11A) is a dual height module with on board bootstrap, cache and bus interface.
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The 77-68 was designed by Tim Moore and was offered for sale by Bear Microcomputer Systems of Newbury, Berkshire, England from June 1977., ASIN: B001P844K8 It was among the first, if not the first, of British home computers and was featured in the launch edition of Personal Computer World magazine in February 1978. The Newbear 77-68 was both a home computer and a homebuilt computer, since it was designed to not only be used at home (hence a home computer), but also be assembled at home by its owner (hence a homebuilt computer).
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HRH Princess Anne officially opened Systime's new £20 million facility on 27 June 1983. Founder and managing director John Gow is alongside her. In September 1981, Gow announced an ambitious three-year, £46 million expansion plan for Systime, including the building of a second large facility in Leeds, with some of the funding to come from the European Investment Bank and various government grants. The second facility was to enter the microcomputer business for small businesses and, in a first for Systime, would not rely upon DEC components.
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In 1985, Dale Heatherington was issued a patent entitled "Modem with Improved Escape Sequence Mechanism to Prevent Escape in Response to Random Occurrence of Escape Character in Transmitted Data," and the patent was assigned to Hayes Microcomputer Products. When other companies began marketing modems that made use of infringing technologies, Hayes asked for licensing fees. The infringing companies then filed suit, claiming that Hayes's patent was invalid because it did not meet the disclosure requirements of 35 U.S.C §112 because the patent did not contain a description of the firmware on the modem.
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The STD bus system was more adaptable to various applications than the contemporary computer buses of the mid-1980s, because it could use servo control cards along with a fully programmable computer for mathematical operations. In applications for running an astronomical observatory, the large industrial base of cards, and the system's expandability, made the system desirable for use in a photometry lab to control the telescope as well as do the data logging and computations required.The STD Bus and other microcomputer buses for photometrists. By Russell M. Genet and Douglass J. Sauer.
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Synertek SYM-1 single board computer Synertek, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer founded in 1973. The initial founding group consisted of Bob Schreiner (from Fairchild), Dan Floyd, Zvi Grinfas, Jack Balletto, and Gunnar Wetlesen. The manufacturing technology was MOS/LSI. Initial products included custom designed devices, as well as a line of standard products (static RAMs, ROMs, dynamic and static shift registers) and then, sometime before 1979, second sourced versions of MOS Technology's successful 6502 8-bit microprocessor, and the (less successful) Philips/Signetics 2650 processor and Zilog Z8 microcomputer.
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Les Solomon, whose Popular Electronics magazine launched the Altair, felt a low-cost smart terminal would be highly desirable in the rapidly expanding microcomputer market. In December 1975, Solomon traveled to Phoenix to meet with Don Lancaster to ask about using his TV Typewriter as a video display in a terminal. Lancaster seemed interested, so Solomon took him to Albuquerque to meet Roberts. The two immediately began arguing when Lancaster criticized the design of the Altair and suggested changes to better support expansion cards, demands that Roberts flatly refused.
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In 2015 the foundation unveiled the Raspberry Pi Zero. This version of the microcomputer had a significantly reduced form factor and a lower price, launching at £4/$5. The new model features a 1 GHz, single-core CPU; 512 MiB RAM, USB and mini HDMI ports, micro USB power, and a HAT-compatible 40-pin header as well as composite video and reset headers . As a fully functioning Linux system the Raspberry Pi Zero's 1 GHz processor is comparable to the middle of the road for the Intel Pentium 3 architecture (450 MHz to 1.4 GHz), a standard in 2000.
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When a DEC research group demonstrated two prototype microcomputers in 1974—before the debut of the MITS Altair—Olsen chose to not proceed with the project. The company similarly rejected another personal computer proposal in 1977. At the time these systems were of limited utility, and Olsen famously derided them in 1977, stating "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."Olsen later claimed he was referring to home automation, see "Ken Olsen" Unsurprisingly, DEC did not put much effort into the microcomputer area in the early days of the market.
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The desktop computer power supply changes alternating current from a wall socket of mains electricity to low-voltage direct current to operate the processor and peripheral devices. Several direct-current voltages are required, and they must be regulated with some accuracy to provide stable operation of the computer. A power supply rail or voltage rail refers to a single voltage provided by a power supply unit (PSU). First-generation microcomputer and home computer power supply units used a heavy step-down transformer and a linear power supply, as used, in for example, the Commodore PET introduced in 1977.
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In 1982, Atlanta actor and art cinema operator George Ellis (known to many in the area as TV host Bestoink Dooley) was looking for another, larger theater location to exhibit films. His Film Forum locations in Ansley and Buckhead had been popular among Atlanta film buffs for years. After finding that the Little Five Points Partnership needed a tenant for the Euclid, Ellis recruited his friend Glenn Sirkis (a former Hayes Microcomputer Products executive) as an investor in the project. They started a renovation of the then 42-year-old building which would eventually cost $250,000.
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When Alpha Micro released their MC68000 based microcomputer, Absoft expanded their offerings to Motorola and the Macintosh. The availability of MD68000-based machines made 32-bit Unix viable on small machines, and Absoft offered Fortran compilers for Unix machines by Data General, HP, Sun Microsystems, Tektronix, and others. In 1985 Microsoft licensed MacFortran, which consisted of a native ANSI FORTRAN 77 compiler and graphical debugger. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft contracted with Absoft to develop Microsoft Fortran for Macintosh, and a Microsoft BASIC compiler that was 100% syntax compatible with the existing Microsoft BASIC interpreter on the Macintosh.
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The 801 architecture was used in a variety of IBM devices, including channel controllers for their S/370 mainframes (such as the IBM 3090), various networking devices, and eventually the IBM 9370 mainframe core itself. The original version of the 801 architecture was the basis for the architecture of the IBM ROMP microprocessor used in the IBM RT PC workstation computer and several experimental computers from IBM Research. In the early 1980s the lessons learned on the 801 were put back into the new America Project, which led to the IBM POWER architecture and the RS/6000 deskside scientific microcomputer.
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A continuing feature was Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar, a column in which electronic engineer Steve Ciarcia described small projects to modify or attach to a computer (later spun off to become the magazine Circuit Cellar, focusing on embedded computer applications). Significant articles in this period included the "Kansas City" standard for data storage on audio tape, insertion of disk drives into S-100 computers, publication of source code for various computer languages (Tiny C, BASIC, assemblers), and coverage of the first microcomputer operating system, CP/M. Byte ran Microsoft's first advertisement (as "Micro- Soft") to sell a BASIC interpreter for 8080-based computers.
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This was followed by the Intel 8080, and then the hugely successful Intel x86 family. One of the first teams to build a complete system around the 8008 was Bill Pentz' team at California State University, Sacramento. The Sac State 8008 was possibly the first true microcomputer, with a disk operating system built with IBM Basic assembly language in PROM, all driving a color display, hard drive, keyboard, modem, audio/paper tape reader and printer. The project started in the spring of 1972, and with key help from Tektronix the system was fully functional a year later.
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Box of MCN 5¼-inch diskettes The Microcomputer Club Nederland (MCN) was a Dutch computer club which was founded by Vendex in the mid-1980s. De eeuw van de computer - De geschiedenis van de informatietechnologie in Nederland by Adrienne van den Bogaard (editor), Harry Lintsen, Frank Veraart and Onno de Wit (2008), p.171 (Google Books) The club was centered on the computer departments of the Vroom & Dreesmann department store and the Dixons electronics stores, which sold home computers such as the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and MSX computers. Later they also sold IBM PC compatibles under the brand name Vendex.
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Lotus was almost immediately successful, becoming the world's third largest microcomputer software company in 1983 with $53 million in sales in its first year, compared to its business plan forecast of $1 million in sales. In 1982 Jim Manzi — a graduate of Colgate University and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy — came to Lotus as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, and became an employee four months later. In October 1984 he was named president, and in April 1986 he was appointed CEO, succeeding Kapor. In July of that same year he also became Chairman of the Board.
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Wren was the major brand name for a series of 5.25-inch hard disks produced by Control Data Corporation (CDC) for the microcomputer market during the 1980s. The brand evolved through seven major versions, I through VII, using custom attachments but later adapting SCSI and IDE. Other brands included the Elite 5.25-inch 5,400 RPM drives, the Swift 3.5-inch series and the relatively rare Sabre 8-inch drives. Wren was a major brand during the 1980s, especially in the high-end market where its 5,400 RPM voice-coil–based technology gave them a performance edge.
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WMSR was an affiliate of The Mutual Broadcasting System, and a member of N.A.B. FM Power was increased to 30,000 Watts E.R.P. in 1979, and the automation was upgraded to Harris 9002 microcomputer control. Some of the original air personalities were: Chuck Rigney, Joe Sullivan, Dale Hendrix, Creed Crowder, Roy Wood, Martha Grider, Jim Vernon, Ken Burger, Jim Gilmore, Johnny Hill, Jim Wegner, Murray Chumley, Russ Daniel, Roger Dotson, Libby St John, Don Aaron, Gary Beaty, Fritz Niggeler and Vernon Bogle. Engineers were Bill Spraggins and Norman "Sarge" Reynolds. Football/Basketball Sports Director was Winston Wallace.
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Club members John Draper ("Captain Crunch"), Lee Felsenstein, and Roger Melen. Most of the members were hobbyists but had an electronic engineering or computer programming background. They came to the meetings to talk about the Altair 8800, to review other technical topics, and to exchange schematics and programming tips. From the ranks of this club came the founders of many microcomputer companies, including Steve Wozniak (Apple Computer), Harry Garland and Roger Melen (Cromemco), Thomas "Todd" Fischer, IMSAI Division, Fischer-Freitas Company, George Morrow (Morrow Designs), Paul Terrell (Byte Shop), Adam Osborne (Osborne Computer), and Bob Marsh (Processor Technology).
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Flying Shark was converted to multiple platforms by various third-party developers including the Commodore 64 (1987), ZX Spectrum (1987), Amiga (1988), Amstrad CPC (1988), Atari ST (1988), Nintendo Entertainment System (1989), MS-DOS (1989), X68000 (1991) and the FM Towns (1993). Most of the microcomputer ports were only released in Europe or North America. Two version were developed for the Commodore 64; one for Europe and another for North America. The NES version, which was a North American exclusive, is notable for being the one of early soundtrack composed by Tim Follin on the system.
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By the early 1980s, the chaos and incompatibility that was rife in the early microcomputer market had given way to a smaller number of de facto industry standards, including the S-100 bus, CP/M, the Apple II, Microsoft BASIC in read-only memory (ROM), and the inch floppy drive. No single firm controlled the industry, and fierce competition ensured that innovation in both hardware and software was the rule rather than the exception. Microsoft Windows and Intel processors gained ascendance and their ongoing alliance gave them market dominance."Microsoft Alliance With Intel Shows Age", Wall Street Journal, Jan 4, 2011.
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Amstrad CPC 464 on display at the Living Computer Museum complete with games for public use The CPC 464 was the first personal home computer built by Amstrad in 1984. It was one of the bestselling and best produced microcomputers, with more than 2 million units sold in Europe. The British microcomputer boom had already peaked before Amstrad announced the CPC 464 (which stood for Colour Personal Computer) which they then released a mere 9 months later. Amstrad was known for cheap hi-fi products but had not broken into the home computer market until the CPC 464.
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In 1987, Ted Uhlemann started SDF on an Apple IIe microcomputer running "Magic City Micro-BBS" under ProDOS. The system was run as a "Japanese Anime SIG" known as the SDF-1. In 1989, Uhlemann and Stephen Jones operated SDF very briefly as a DragCit Citadel BBS before attempting to use an Intel x86 UNIX clone called Coherent. Unhappy with the restrictive menu driven structure of existing BBS systems, Uhlemann, Jones and Daniel Finster created a UNIX System V BBS in 1990, initially running on an i386 system, which later became an AT&T; 3B2/400 and 500, and joined the lonestar.
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The EDUC-8, pronounced "educate", was an early microcomputer kit published by Electronics Australia in a series of articles starting in August 1974 and continuing to August 1975. Electronics Australia initially believed that it was the first such kit, but later discovered that Radio-Electronics had just beaten it with their Mark-8 by one month. However, Electronics Australia staff believed that their TTL design was superior to the Mark-8, as it did not require the purchase of an expensive microprocessor chip. The EDUC-8 was an 8 bit bit-serial design with 256 bytes of RAM.
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The Pascal MicroEngine was a series of microcomputer products manufactured by Western Digital from 1979 through the mid-1980s, designed specifically to run the UCSD p-System efficiently.Pascal "Cast in silicon" By Western Digital, InfoWorld, 11 Dec 1978, Page 2, ...under the trademarked name "Pascal Microengine," will be priced at $2995...First units are expected to be available in January, 1979... Compared to other microcomputers, which ran a machine language p-code interpreter, the Pascal Microengine had its interpreter implemented in microcode. So, p-code was, effectively, its native machine language. The most common programming language used on the p-System is Pascal.
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The company used to have close ties with IBM since the former's inception, but the unexpected success of its new product would lead to the two companies recasting their relationship, where they would continue to sell each other's operating products until 1993. After the fiscal year of 1990, Microsoft reported revenues of US$1.18 billion, with $337 million appearing in the fourth quarter. This annual statistic is up from $803.5 million in fiscal 1989, and it made Microsoft the first microcomputer software company to reach the $1 billion mark in one year. Microsoft officials attributed the results to the sales of Windows 3.0.
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Like many early microcomputer projects of the era, the Dazzler was originally announced as a self-built kit in Popular Electronics. In order to "kick start" construction, they offered kits including a circuit board and the required parts, which the user would then assemble on their own. This led to sales of completely assembled Dazzler systems, which became the only way to purchase the product some time after. Sales were so fruitful that Melen and Garland formed Cromemco to sell the Dazzler and their other Altair add-ons, selecting a name based on Crothers Memorial Hall, their residence while attending Stanford.
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Other influential or typical software companies begun in the early 1960s included Advanced Computer Techniques, Automatic Data Processing, Applied Data Research, and Informatics General. The computer/hardware makers started bundling operating systems, systems software and programming environments with their machines. When Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) brought a relatively low-priced microcomputer to market, it brought computing within the reach of many more companies and universities worldwide, and it spawned great innovation in terms of new, powerful programming languages and methodologies. New software was built for microcomputers, so other manufacturers including IBM, followed DEC's example quickly, resulting in the IBM AS/400 amongst others.
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XPL0 is a computer programming language that is essentially a cross between Pascal and C. It was created in 1976 by Peter J. R. Boyle who wanted a high- level language for his microcomputer and wanted something more sophisticated than BASIC, which was the dominant language for personal computers at the time. XPL0 is based on PL/0, an example compiler in the book Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs by Niklaus Wirth. The first XPL0 compiler was written in ALGOL. It generated instructions for a pseudo-machine that was implemented as an interpreter on a Digital Group computer based on the 6502 microprocessor.
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In 1977, Nishikado began developing Space Invaders, which he created entirely on his own. In addition to designing and programming the game, he also did the artwork and sounds, and engineered the game's arcade hardware, putting together a microcomputer from scratch. Following its release in 1978, Space Invaders went on to become his most successful video game. It is frequently cited as the "first" or "original" in the shoot 'em up genre.Game Genres: Shmups, Professor Jim Whitehead, January 29, 2007, Accessed June 17, 2008Bielby, Matt, "The Complete YS Guide to Shoot 'Em Ups", Your Sinclair, July, 1990 (issue 55), p.
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Robotic telescopes were first developed by astronomers after electromechanical interfaces to computers became common at observatories. Early examples were expensive, had limited capabilities, and included a large number of unique subsystems, both in hardware and software. This contributed to a lack of progress in the development of robotic telescopes early in their history. By the early 1980s, with the availability of cheap computers, several viable robotic telescope projects were conceived, and a few were developed. The 1985 book, Microcomputer Control of Telescopes, by Mark Trueblood and Russell M. Genet, was a landmark engineering study in the field.
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By this time, over 600 machines were running Unix in some form. Version 7 Unix, the last version of Research Unix to be released widely, was released in 1979. In Version 7, the number of system calls was only around 50, although later Unix and Unix-like systems would add many more: A microprocessor port of Unix, to the LSI-11, was completed in 1978, and an Intel 8086 version was reported to be "in progress" the same year. The first microcomputer versions of Unix, and Unix-like operating systems like Whitesmiths' Idris, appeared in the late 1970s.
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Xenix is a discontinued version of the Unix operating system for various microcomputer platforms, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T; Corporation in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually replaced it with SCO UNIX (now known as SCO OpenServer). In the mid-to-late 1980s, Xenix was the most common Unix variant, measured according to the number of machines on which it was installed. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said at Unix Expo in 1996 that, for a long time, Microsoft had the highest-volume AT&T; Unix license.
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According to a brief history of the company, which ran as an advertisement on their 10th anniversary, Altos Computer Systems was started by Dave Jackson in 1977 when he designed a single-board microcomputer in a room he rented on Stevens Creek Boulevard. According to this account, the company bootstrapped itself with profitable sales from the beginning, with a revenue of $260,000 in the first year. Jackson named the company after Los Altos Hills, California, where he lived. In an interview from May 1979, the company's vice-president Roger Vass described the Altos' strategy at the time as selling OEM computer systems.
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Theodore Christian "Ted" Hines (September 9, 1926 - June 25, 1983) was a Washington, D.C.-born pioneer in the use of microcomputers and microcomputer programs in libraries. He attended undergraduate school at George Washington University and received his Masters of Library Science (MLS) in 1958 and a PhD in 1960 both from Rutgers University. He began his career as a children's librarian, and later became a professor of Library Science at Rutgers, followed by Columbia University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. With his wife, Lois Winkel, he designed an indexing program called the Children’s Media Databank.
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In the mid-1980s, following the success of their isometric Filmation game engine behind titles like Knight Lore, the Stampers founded a separate company: Rare Designs of the Future, later shortened to Rare. While Ultimate was built for the British home microcomputer market, Rare was founded with an eye toward the burgeoning Japanese video game console market, having been apprised of Nintendo by their Japanese arcade industry contacts. Nintendo initially rebuffed the brothers' interest in 1983, which led Chris Stamper to study the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) hardware for six months. The brothers flew to Kyoto to present software samples to Nintendo executives.
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The MITS Altair computer, which launched the microcomputer industry, was introduced in January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. That same issue carried an article by Garland and Melen on solid-state image sensors. The following month they, together with their Stanford colleague Terry Walker, published the design of the world's first completely digital solid-state camera in Popular Electronics, and began work on developing an interface to connect the camera (which they called the “Cyclops”), to the MITS Altair computer. MITS introduced the Cyclops Camera as a peripheral for the Altair Computer in January 1976.
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The COSMAC VIP (1977) was an early microcomputer that was aimed at video games. Essentially, it was a COSMAC ELF with a supplementary CDP1861/CDP1864 video display chip. For a price of US$275, it could be purchased from RCA by mail order. It came in kit form, and had to be assembled. Its dimensions were 22 x 28 cm, and it had a RCA 1802 processor; along with a crystal clock operating at 1.76 MHz. It had 2 KB (2048 bytes) of RAM, which could be expanded to 4 KB on board, and 32 KB via an expansion slot.
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The Tangerine Microtan 65 (sometimes abbreviated M65) is a 6502 based single board microcomputer, first sold in 1979, which could be expanded into, what was for its day, a comprehensive and powerful system. The design became the basis for what later became the ORIC ATMOS and later computers, which has similar keyboard addressing and tape I/O as in the Microtan 65. The Microtan 65 has a single step function that can be used for debugging at the hardware level. The computer was available as ready-built boards or as kits consisting of board and components requiring soldering together.
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The company was founded by Joel Billings, a wargame enthusiast, who in summer 1979 saw the possibility of using the new home computers such as the TRS-80 for wargames. While unsuccessfully approaching Avalon Hill and Automated Simulations to publish wargames, he hired programmers John Lyons, who wrote Computer Bismarck—later claimed to have been the first "serious wargame" published for a microcomputer"Titans of the Computer Gaming World", Computer Gaming World, March 1988, p.36.—and Ed Williger, who wrote Computer Ambush. Both games were written in BASIC as were many of SSI's early games.
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The earlier separate dialers had this capability, but only at the cost of a separate port, which a microcomputer might not have available. Another solution would have been to use a separate set of "command pins" dedicated to sending and receiving commands, another could have used a signal pin indicating that the modem should interpret incoming data as a command. Both of these had hardware support in the RS-232 standard. However, many implementations of the RS-232 port on microcomputers were extremely basic, and some eliminated many of these pins as a cost saving measure.
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A call centre has an open workspace for call centre agents, with work stations that include a computer and display for each agent and connected to an inbound/outbound call management system, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputer/servers and LANs. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the centre are linked through a set of new technologies called computer telephony integration. The contact centre is a central point from which all customer contacts are managed.
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This list of early third generation computers, tabulates those computers using monolithic integrated circuits (ICs) as their primary logic elements, starting from small-scale integration CPUs (SSI) to large-scale integration CPUs (LSI). Computers primarily using ICs first came into use about 1961 for military use. With the availability of reliable low cost ICs in the mid 1960s commercial third generation computers using ICs started to appear. The fourth generation computers began with the shipment of CPS-1, the first commercial microprocessor microcomputer in 1972 and for the purposes of this list marks the end of the "early" third generation computer era.
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The Acorn Microcomputer, later renamed the Acorn System 1, was designed by Sophie Wilson (then Roger Wilson). It was a semi-professional system aimed at engineering and laboratory users, but its price was low enough, at around GB£80, to appeal to the more serious enthusiast as well. It was a very small machine built on two cards, one with an LED display, keypad, and cassette interface (the circuitry to the left of the keypad), and the other with the rest of the computer (including the CPU). Almost all CPU signals were accessible via a Eurocard connector.
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Twenty-five percent of the light from the lens' central image was siphoned through a semi-transparent reflex mirror and reflected off a piggy-backed secondary mirror to the AF module. In the module, beam splitter mirrors sent the light to fall on a two row, segmented, linear metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) silicon sensor. A microcomputer analyzed the sensor's subject contrast readings. Modern AF SLRs use similar, though much evolved, AF hardware; however, their AF software no longer analyze contrast. To autofocus, the AF function had to be switched ON on both the ME F and 35 mm–70 mm AF Zoom lens.
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That said, there was one system, the Apple II, that was one of the first to use a feature of the data-bus logic of the 6502 processor to implement a very early interleaving time slot mechanism to eliminate this problem. The BBC Microcomputer used 4 MHz RAM with a 2 MHz 6502 in order to interleave video accesses with CPU accesses. Most other systems used a much simpler approach, and the TRS-80's video logic was so primitive that it simply did not have any bus arbitration at all. The CPU had access to the video memory at all times.
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Small-C is both a subset of the C programming language, suitable for resource- limited microcomputers and embedded systems, and an implementation of that subset. Originally valuable as an early compiler for microcomputer systems available during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the implementation has also been useful as an example simple enough for teaching purposes. The original compiler, written in Small-C for the Intel 8080 by Ron Cain, appeared in the May 1980 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia. James E. Hendrix improved and extended the original compiler, and wrote The Small-C Handbook.
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The CPT 8000 was the company's first microcomputer product, exhibited in spring of 1976. It was a self-contained desktop machine with two 8 inch floppy diskette drives, a movable keyboard, and a full-page vertically oriented CRT display with black characters on a white background, for a view of text on paper. It was promoted as familiar and easy to use for those experienced with typewriters. The CPT 8000 had dual-window editing, where text was assembled in an upper window from text entered at the keyboard or from one or more files brought successively into the lower window.
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The Xerox Alto portrait display Portrait mode was first used on the Xerox Alto computer, which was considered technologically well ahead of its time when the system was first developed. Xerox product marketers did not understand how revolutionary the system was, and the portrait display faded away while common landscape-display televisions were appropriated for use as an inexpensive early microcomputer display. The IBM DisplayWriter had a portrait monitor and keyboard with large backspace key, as it was designed for use in word processing instead of spreadsheets. Lanier, Wang, and CPT also made competing dedicated word processing computers with portrait modes.
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" The word processing, spreadsheet, and other bundled software alone was worth $1,500; as InfoWorld stated in an April 1981 front-page article on the new computer after listing the included software, "In case you think the price printed above was a mistake, we'll repeat it: $1795". West Coast Computer Faire attendees stated, InfoWorld said, that the Osborne 1 "represented an advancement of the price/performance ratio for microcomputers". Adam Osborne agreed but emphasized the price, stating that its performance was "merely adequate": "It is not the fastest microcomputer, it doesn't have huge amounts of disk storage space, and it is not especially expandable.
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Computer Gaming World stated that Dark Castle was "the best arcade game I've seen for the Macintosh, and perhaps the best I've seen on any microcomputer, ever". The reviewer praised the sound and graphics, stating that he did not know that the Macintosh was capable of animations of such quality. He concluded that Dark Castle "is filled with lots of little touches that show it's one of the first steps toward what Silicon Beach likes to call 'interactive cartoons'." BYTE compared the game to Lode Runner, writing "There's nothing new about the basic concept, but the execution is impressive".
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The Micro-Professor MPF-I, introduced in 1981 by Multitech (which, in 1987, changed its name to Acer), was the first branded computer product from Multitech and probably one of the world's longest selling computers. The MPF-I, specifically designed to teach the fundamentals of machine code and assembly language, is a simple and easy to use training system for the Zilog Z80 microprocessor. The MPF-I does not look like a typical Microcomputer. It is enclosed in a vacuum formed plastic book case often used to store a copy of a language textbook, two audio cassettes, and a training manual.
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The LINK 480Z was an 8-bit microcomputer produced by Research Machines Limited in Oxford, England, during the early 1980s. The 480Z used a Z80 microprocessor with up to 256 KB of bank-switched RAM. The system could be used as a stand- alone unit with cassette-based storage and the BASIC programming language run from ROM, or it could boot CP/NOS (a network version of CP/M) over a local area network from a file server. When fitted with an optional external floppy disk drive the system could boot the CP/M operating system directly.
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A third-party serial interface card for the Apple II that required cutting and soldering to reconfigure. The user would cut the wire traces between the thinly connected ⧓ triangles at X1 and X3 and solder across the unconnected ◀▶ pads at X2 and X4 located at the center of the card. Once done, reverting the modification was more difficult. Some early microcomputer peripheral devices required the end user physically to cut some wires and solder together others in order to make configuration changes; such changes were intended to be largely permanent for the life of the hardware.
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In his thesis of May 1976, called “A versatile computer generated dynamic flight display”, he displayed a model of the flight of an aircraft on a computer screen. With this, Artwick proved that it was possible to use the 6800 microprocessor, the first available microcomputer, to handle the graphics and calculations of the specifications needed to produce real-time flight simulation. After establishing Sublogic in 1977, Artwick took his thesis one step further by developing the first flight simulator program for the Apple II, which was based on the 6502 microprocessor. He followed up the simulator with a Radio Shack TRS-80 version.
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A blue plaque commemorating Willie Rushton in Mornington Crescent station Finchley Central and Mornington Crescent have been played as a play-by-mail pastime, and in the 1980s were played by post in a number of play-by-mail magazines. One format involved a series of elimination rounds, with everyone except the winner of the current round going forward onto the next. A "type-in" computer version of the game for the BBC Microcomputer was included in the April 1985 edition of The Micro User. Mornington Crescent can now be played online, in the spirit of the radio series.
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Format Publications published Format magazine, a newsletter for Sinclair ZX Spectrum and SAM Coupé users. Run by Bob Brenchley, it sprang from the ashes of INDUG, originally the Independent DISCiPLE User Group but later renamed to the Independent User Group to reflect a move towards a less specialist audience. INDUG was set up as a user group for owners of the Miles Gordon Technology DISCiPLE and later PlusD floppy disk interfaces for the ZX Spectrum computer. In its later years it expanded to cover MGT's SAM Coupé enhanced Spectrum-compatible microcomputer and later still to home microcomputing in general - especially 8-bit machines.
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Research is being heavily done in the areas of MEMS, photonics, and digital image processing. The original engineering building offers multiple computer labs, a microcomputer lab, a lab with Sun Microsystems computers for a course in digital systems design, and two labs for students in practical, hands-on courses. The original building serves as the location for the mechanical engineering faculty offices as well. According to the master plan of UTSA, the university is expecting to receive another large engineering building, and new research facilities located on the east side of the campus by the year 2030.
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In 1974 Ahl left DEC to start Creative Computing magazine. He re-acquired the rights to the book from DEC and re- published under the name BASIC Computer Games. It was around this time that the first hobbyist microcomputers started appearing in 1975, and it became quite popular with these owners. The release of the "1977 Trinity" machines (Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80) was soon followed by a great many new competing microcomputer platforms featuring BASIC, along with the userbase to go with them, and demand for the book led to a second edition in 1978.
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Finding it inconvenient to share control after the NEB became involved in Radionics, Sinclair encouraged Chris Curry, who had been working for Radionics since 1966, to leave and get Sinclair Instrument up and running. Sinclair Instrument developed the "Wrist Calculator" to generate cash, which soon became a commercial success selling in surprising figures. In July 1977 Sinclair Instrument Ltd was renamed to Science of Cambridge Ltd. Around about the same time Ian Williamson showed Chris Curry a prototype microcomputer based around a National Semiconductor SC/MP microprocessor and some parts taken from an earlier Sinclair calculator.
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This was known as "vendor lock-in", which helped guarantee future sales, even though the customers detested it. With the change in software development, combined with new generations of commodity processors that could match the performance of low-end minicomputers, lock-in was no longer working. When forced to make a decision, it was often cheaper for the users to simply throw out all of their existing machinery and buy a microcomputer product instead. If this was not the case at present, it certainly appeared it would be within a generation or two of Moore's law.
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The company was taken public by Robertson, Stephens & Company on 7 November 1995, but Fujitsu kept a controlling interest in the company and continued to control the Board of Directors. Sun Microsystems also took a 10% interest in the company and was allowed to name a director as well. In February 1996, Ross Technology formed Ross Microcomputer in Sonoma, California to produce workstations and servers for value-added resellers (VARs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)."Ross Aims To Energize SPARC World With Entry Into Systems Business" Their first product, the hyperStation, was known since the division's creation and was introduced in June 1996.
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Cromemco was a Mountain View, California microcomputer company known for its high-end Z80-based S-100 bus computers and peripherals in the early days of the personal computer revolution. The company began as a partnership in 1974 between Harry Garland and Roger Melen, two Stanford Ph.D. students. The company was named for their residence at Stanford University (Crothers Memorial, a Stanford dormitory reserved for engineering graduate students). Cromemco was incorporated in 1976 and their first products were the Cromemco Cyclops digital camera, and the Cromemco Dazzler color graphics interface - both groundbreaking at the time - before they moved on to making computer systems.
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Cromemco was known for its engineering excellence, design creativity, and outstanding system reliability. “If they hired you into their R&D; Department, they gave you an office and a computer and asked you what you wanted to do” recalls Roger Sippl, an early Cromemco employee. Cromemco’s engineering firsts for microcomputer systems include the first digital camera (the Cyclops Camera), the first color graphics card (the Cromemco Dazzler), the first programmable storage (the Bytesaver), the first memory bank switching, and the first Unix-like operating system (Cromix). Cromemco drew on engineering talent from Stanford University, the Homebrew Computer Club, and even its own distributors.
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The Nova influenced the design of both the Xerox Alto (1973) and Apple I (1976) computers, and its architecture was the basis for the Computervision CGP (Computervision Graphics Processor) series. Its external design has been reported to be the direct inspiration for the front panel of the MITS Altair (1975) microcomputer. Data General followed up on the success of the original Nova with a series of faster designs. The Eclipse family of systems was later introduced with an extended upwardly compatible instruction set, and the MV-series further extended the Eclipse into a 32-bit architecture to compete with the DEC VAX.
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Computer Gaming Worlds Bob Proctor in 1988 agreed that Computer Bismarck contributed to SSI's success, commenting that the title earned the company a good profit. He also stated that it encouraged game enthusiasts to submit their own games to SSI, which he believed helped further the company's success. Describing it as the first "serious wargame for a microcomputer", Proctor credited Computer Bismarck with helping to legitimize war games and computer games in general. He stated that the professional packaging demonstrated SSI's seriousness to produce quality products; prior to Computer Bismarck, most computer games were packaged in zipper storage bags.
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Computerized version of the Avalon Hill classic, Squad Leader The genre of wargame video games is derived from earlier forms of wargames. The games thematically represent the wargame hobby, although they tend to be less realistic in order to increase accessibility for more casual players. The amount of realism varies between games as game designers balance an accurate simulation with playability. The wargaming community saw the possibilities of computer gaming early and made attempts to break into the market, notably Avalon Hill's Microcomputer Games line, which began in 1980 and covered a variety of topics, including adaptations of some of their wargames.
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In 1978, Brinch Hansen became the first computer scientist awarded the Doctor Technices degree, the highest academic distinction within engineering and technological science in Denmark, for the work documented in The Architecture of Concurrent Programs. Later in 1978, Brinch Hansen published the Distributed Processes language concept, proposing the use of remote procedure calls to synchronize processes running across a microcomputer network. Also in 1978, L. J. Sevins and Steve Goings from Mostek visited Brinch Hansen at USC, where he outlined a low-cost multiprocessor architecture. Mostek began a project to implement such a multiprocessor, with Brinch Hansen working as a consultant.
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AT&T;, then Lucent, and now Alcatel-Lucent, are the vendor of the SPARC-based and Solaris-OEM package ATT3bem (which lives on Solaris SPARC in /opt/ATT3bem). This is a full 3B21D emulator (known as the 3B21E, the system behind the Very Compact Digital eXchange, or VCDX) which is meant to provide a production environment to the Administrative Module (AM) portion of the 5ESS switch. There are parts of the 5ESS that are not part of the 3B21D microcomputer at all: SMs and CMs. Under the emulator the workstation is referred to as the 'AW' (Administrative Workstation).
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Since their release in 1979, the 8-bit family normally shipped with a version of Atari BASIC on a ROM cartridge, or built into the internal ROMs on later machines. This version of BASIC had a number of custom commands that allowed partial access to the system's advanced features like graphics and sound. It was notoriously slow, appearing at the very bottom of the list of microcomputer BASICs in the original version of David Ahl's Creative Computing benchmark. The poor performance of the official Atari BASIC led to a market for 3rd party BASIC interpreters with better performance or more commands.
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Modern high-end processors like the Intel Core i9 and AMD Ryzen Threadripper series, along with various Intel Xeons support quad-channel memory. In March 2010, AMD released Socket G34 and Magny- Cours Opteron 6100 series processors with support for quad-channel memory. In 2006, Intel released chipsets that support quad-channel memory for its LGA771 platform. and later in 2011 for its LGA2011 platform.. Microcomputer chipsets with even more channels were designed; for example, the chipset in the AlphaStation 600 (1995) supports eight-channel memory, but the backplane of the machine limited operation to four channels..
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Embedsky Mini-PC E8 is a postcard sized (100 mm x 65 mm) single-board computer, developed by Guangzhou Embedsky Computer Tech Company. It features a 32-bit microcomputer processor, as well as many peripheral interfaces similar to personal computers such as power connector, audio interfaces, both VGA and HDMI outputs, a network port, and USB interfaces for connecting WiFi and Bluetooth dongles, a keyboard, and a mouse. It uses A8 kernel, 1 GHz frequency, a built-in SGX540 graphics processor, a 512MB DDR2 storage, and 4GB eMMC FLASH memory. Most notably, it supports Android 4.0.
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IBM Personal Computer The original IBM PC was the most influential microcomputer to use the 8088. It used a clock frequency of 4.77 MHz (4/3 the NTSC colorburst frequency). Some of IBM's engineers and other employees wanted to use the IBM 801 processor, some would have preferred the new Motorola 68000, while others argued for a small and simple microprocessor, such as the MOS Technology 6502 or Zilog Z80, which had been used in earlier personal computers. However, IBM already had a history of using Intel chips in its products and had also acquired the rights to manufacture the 8086 family.
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The microcomputer revolution in the late 1970s and early 1980s helped to revive CAI development and jumpstart development of ITS systems. Personal computers such as the Apple 2, Commodore PET, and TRS-80 reduced the resources required to own computers and by 1981, 50% of US schools were using computers (Chambers & Sprecher, 1983). Several CAI projects utilized the Apple 2 as a system to deliver CAI programs in high schools and universities including the British Columbia Project and California State University Project in 1981. The early 1980s would also see Intelligent Computer-Assisted Instruction (ICAI) and ITS goals diverge from their roots in CAI.
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Joseph A. Weisbecker (September 4, 1932 – November 15, 1990) was an early microprocessor and microcomputer researcher, as well as a gifted writer and designer of toys and games. He was a recipient of the David Sarnoff award for outstanding technical achievement, recipient of IEEE Computer magazine's "Best Paper" award, as well as several RCA lab awards for his work. His designs include the RCA 1800 and 1802 processors, the 1861 PIXIE graphics chip, the RCA Microtutor, the COSMAC ELF, RCA Studio II, and COSMAC VIP computers. His daughter Joyce Weisbecker took to programming his prototypes, becoming the first female video game designer in the process.
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CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations and were migrated to 16-bit processors. The combination of CP/M and S-100 bus computers was loosely patterned on the MITS Altair, an early standard in the microcomputer industry. This computer platform was widely used in business through the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s.
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Byte (stylized as BYTE) was an American microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage. "Byte magazine, the leading publication serving the homebrew market ..." Whereas many magazines were dedicated to specific systems or the home or business users' perspective, Byte covered developments in the entire field of "small computers and software," and sometimes other computing fields such as supercomputers and high-reliability computing. Coverage was in-depth with much technical detail, rather than user-oriented. Byte started in 1975, shortly after the first personal computers appeared as kits advertised in the back of electronics magazines.
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In 1965 Barron left Elliott Automation to become Founder and Managing Director of Computer Technology Limited, where the Modular One range of computer systems was developed. In the mid-1970s he formed a new company, Microcomputer Analysis Ltd, which offered consultancy on microprocessors to the semiconductor industry. This brought him into contact with two eminent American semiconductor specialists, Richard Petritz and Paul Schroeder, and in 1978 the triumvirate founded Inmos International PLC, which produced the innovative transputer, and led to the development of SpaceWire. Barron was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society (DFBCS) in 1986 and was appointed CBE in the 1994 New Year Honours.
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Chatt's supposed quick investigation runs into a snag however, when his shuttle is delayed and he has to stay on base for a few more days. During his stay, Chatt interviews station staff Dr. Fayn, Dr. Vilken, Roger Olken, Myna Symmine and eventually Magus Canter. The interview is for the most part inconclusive but it is revealed that the project staff are all equipped with SynCore Symbiotes, a microcomputer implanted into the brain to augment its calculation powers. Magus, the station's maintenance worker, also reveals that not far from the SATIN research site lies the wreckage of S.S. Majestic, the infamous space ship that was lost and never found.
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The Alles Machine was highly influential within the industry, but the cost of implementation was so high that it was some time before machines based on its principles were available at a price point most musicians could afford. Crumar of Italy and Music Technologies' of New York collaborated to form Digital Keyboards in an effort to re-package the Alles Machine. The result was a smaller two-part system, with a Z-80-based microcomputer and disk drives as one unit, and a single keyboard and limited set of input sliders as the second unit. Known as the Crumar General Development System, or GDS, it was released in 1980 for $30,000.
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Susan Lammers, "How it Started - JPLDIS: How Came The Idea", The History of FoxPro While working at JPL as a contractor, C. Wayne Ratliff entered the office football pool. He had no interest in the game, but felt he could win the pool by processing the post-game statistics found in newspapers. In order to do this, he turned his attention to a database system and, by chance, came across the documentation for JPLDIS. He used this as the basis for a port to PTDOS on his kit-built IMSAI 8080 microcomputer, and called the resulting system Vulcan (after Mr. Spock on Star Trek).
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In 1975, Michael Shrayer had moved to California after 20 years as a New York filmmaker. Enjoying assembling electronic kits, he purchased and assembled a MITS Altair 8800 computer, then modified a public domain assembler program for the Processor Technology Sol-20. Fellow computer hobbyists wanted to buy Shrayer's ESP-1 software, giving him an unexpected and lucrative new business. Having never heard of a "word processor", Shrayer nonetheless believed that he should be able to use his computer, instead of a typewriter, to write documentation for his program, and thus wrote another program--the first word processor for a microcomputer--with which to do so.
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From 1968 through the mid-1970s Warren worked as a freelance minicomputer programmer and computer consultant, operating under the name, Frelan Associates (for "free land"), creating assembler-level real-time data-acquisition and process-control programs for biomedical research at Stanford Medical Center, and control programs for various high-tech companies around Silicon Valley. In those years, he also chaired the Association for Computing Machinery's regional chapters of SIGPLAN, SIGMICRO and the San Francisco Peninsula ACM. In 1977, Warren co- founded the West Coast Computer Faire which, for a half-dozen years, was the largest public microcomputer convention in the world. He was its self-titled "Faire Chaircreature," organizing eight conventions.
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If a pixel has more than one channel, the channels are interleaved when using packed pixel organization. Packed pixel displays were common on early microcomputer system that shared a single main memory for both the central processing unit (CPU) and display driver. In such systems, memory was normally accessed a byte at a time, so by packing the display system could read out several pixels worth of data in a single read operation. Packed pixel is one of two major ways to organize graphics data in memory, the other being planar organization, where each pixel is made of individual bits stored in their own plane.
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ZKJ-5 is a CDS developed by the 709th Institute to replace all previous CDS on major surface combatants of PLAN. The general designer of ZKJ-5 was Zhang Zihe (张子鹤), head of the 709th Research Institute of the 7th Academy of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation. Other important figures in ZKJ-5 program included program engineers Li Shuyun (李淑云) and Hu Bin (胡彬). Zhang Zihe pioneered the design of incorporating microcomputer/PC to the system, which was almost rejected when first proposed because it was the first attempt in China, but eventually the idea was accepted and proved successful.
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Tallgrass Technologies Corporation was the first manufacturer to offer a hard disk drive product for the IBM PC. Tallgrass was a Kansas City based microcomputer hardware and software company founded in December 1980 by David M. Allen. The hard disk drive product was initially sold in Computerland stores, alongside the original IBM PC. Tallgrass added tape-backup systems to its product line in 1982. Tallgrass was significant in the history of the PC because IBM shipped its PCs for almost two years without any hard-drive option. The IBM name attracted the makers of larger, professional software products that required a hard-drive's speed and capacity.
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Built in 1995, the FAA Norfolk Air Traffic Control Tower stands high. Operated and managed by the Federal Aviation Administration, the Norfolk Tower handles about 1,100 aircraft per day, 24 hours per day and 365 days per year. Radar coverage is provided by the ASR-9 terminal system with a six-level weather detection capability. Also available for use is an Enhanced Target Generator (ETG) lab with two radar scopes to accomplish training objectives, as well as the IDS4 system, a specialized microcomputer network system designed to distribute and display both static and real-time data regarding weather and other rapidly changing critical information to air traffic controllers.
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With the onset of the AI winter and the early beginnings of the microcomputer revolution, which would sweep away the minicomputer and workstation makers, cheaper desktop PCs soon could run Lisp programs even faster than Lisp machines, with no use of special purpose hardware. Their high profit margin hardware business eliminated, most Lisp machine makers had gone out of business by the early 90s, leaving only software based firms like Lucid Inc. or hardware makers who had switched to software and services to avoid the crash. , besides Xerox, Symbolics is the only Lisp machine firm still operating, selling the Open Genera Lisp machine software environment and the Macsyma computer algebra system.
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Roy A. Allan, A Bibliography of the Personal Computer [electronic resource]: the Books and Periodical Articles, Allan Publishing – 2006, p. 73 Also in 1973 Hewlett Packard introduced fully BASIC programmable microcomputers that fit entirely on top of a desk, including a keyboard, a small one-line display, and printer. The Wang 2200 microcomputer of 1973 had a full-size cathode ray tube (CRT) and cassette tape storage. These were generally expensive specialized computers sold for business or scientific uses. Altair 8800 computer 1974 saw the introduction of what is considered by many to be the first true "personal computer", the Altair 8800 created by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS).
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Noting the obscurity of its 1982 release, BYTE in January 1983 called the System 9000 "IBM's 'Secret' Computer" and stated that it was "in its quiet way, one of the most exciting new arrivals on today's microcomputer scene". The magazine speculated that with some changes it would be "a natural candidate for a business or general-purpose computer". A later review by a member of Brandeis University's chemistry department criticized several aspects of the hardware and software, but praised the sophisticated BASIC and IBM's customer service. The reviewer concluded that "the CS-9000 is a very fast and powerful laboratory computer [that is] very affordable".
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The game brought forth with it the power of the microprocessor, as well as a cult phenomenon impact which had only been felt up to that point by Atari's Pong. Following Space Invaders, Atari's Asteroids and Namco's Pac-Man further solidified the strength of the Golden Age. Other opinions place this period's beginning in the late 1970s, when color arcade games became more prevalent and video arcades themselves started appearing outside of their traditional bowling alley and bar locales, through to its ending in the mid-1980s. The golden age of arcade games largely coincided with, and partly fueled, the second generation of game consoles and the microcomputer revolution.
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Computer Gaming World in 1993 praised Stunt Islands graphics, ease of use, editing features, and variety of aircraft, concluding that "it represents the future of simulation products [and] also a step toward a future where films can be created completely on the microcomputer". That year the magazine gave it a Special Award for Innovation, and nominated it for Simulation Game of the Year. The game also received a Critics Choice Award for Best Consumer Product from the Software Publishers Association, and was nominated for an award at the 1993 Game Developers Conference. In 1994, PC Gamer UK named Stunt Island the 45th best computer game of all time.
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Unfortunately, each of the many different brands of minicomputers had to stand on its own because there was no software and very little hardware compatibility between the brands. When the first general purpose microprocessor was introduced in 1974 it immediately began chipping away at the low end of the computer market, replacing embedded minicomputers in many industrial devices. This process accelerated in 1977 with the introduction of the first commodity-like microcomputer, the Apple II. With the development of the VisiCalc application in 1979, microcomputers broke out of the factory and began entering office suites in large quantities, but still through the back door.
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Shuster soldered the HEScom cables in his garage and wrote HESlister, a print utility for BASIC programs, that he ported from a TRS-80 Model I to the PET, to the VIC, and later to the IBM PC. HESware published OMNIWRITER, a word processor for the Commodore 64. Game writers Lawrence Holland and Ron Gilbert, later to be famous for their work at LucasArts, started their careers at HES. By early 1984 InfoWorld reported that HES was tied with Broderbund as the world's tenth-largest microcomputer-software company and largest entertainment- software company, with $13 million in 1983 sales. In October 1984, HES filed for bankruptcy.
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Ellis Batten “Bo” Page Ed.D. (April 29, 1924 – May 17, 2005)Potts, Monica (2005, May 23). Ellis Page, 81, Developer of Computerized Grading, obit in the New York Times, A.N.Marquis, Who’s Who in America"Ellis Page, Computer Grading Developer, Dies". UConn Advance, July 18, 2005 is widely acknowledged as the father of automated essay scoring, a multi-disciplinary field exploring computer evaluation and scoring of student writing, particularly essays. Page’s development of and pioneering work with Project Essay Grade (PEG) software in the mid-1960s set the stage for the practical application of computer essay scoring technology following the microcomputer revolution of the 1990s.
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VisiCalc, the earliest generally agreed-upon example of a killer application One of the first recognized examples of a killer application is generally agreed to be the VisiCalc spreadsheet for the Apple II series.D.J. Power, A Brief History of Spreadsheets, DSSResources.COM, v3.6, 30 August 2004 Because it was not available on other computers for 12 months, people spent $100 for the software first, then $2,000 to $10,000 on the Apple computer they needed to run it. BYTE wrote in 1980, "VisiCalc is the first program available on a microcomputer that has been responsible for sales of entire systems", while Creative Computings VisiCalc review was subtitled "reason enough for owning a computer".
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Colossus Chess 4.0 on Commodore 64 Colossus Chess 4.0 on Commodore 64 (3D chessboard) Bryant started Colossus Chess in 1983, using his White Knight Mk 11 program, winner of the 1983 European Microcomputer Chess Championship, as a basis. It was developed on an Apple II, but was first commercially released for Commodore 64 as Colossus Chess 2.0 (CDS Micro Systems, 1984). A number of releases for 8-bit microcomputers followed. Version 3.0 was released in 1984 for the Atari 8-bit family of computers (published by English Software), followed by 4.0 in 1985 which was released on most formats of the day (published by CDS).
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Digital Research developed CP/M-86 as an alternative to MS-DOS and it was made available through IBM in early 1982. The company later created an MS-DOS clone with advanced features called DR DOS, which pressured Microsoft to further improve its own DOS. The competition between MS-DOS and DR DOS is one of the more controversial chapters of microcomputer history. Microsoft offered better licensing terms to any computer manufacturer that committed to selling MS-DOS with every system they shipped, making it uneconomical for them to offer systems with another OS, since the manufacturer would still be required to pay a license fee to Microsoft for that system.
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This dramatically reduced the leakage current of the finished capacitors. This first solid electrolyte manganese dioxide had 10 times better conductivity than all other types of non-solid electrolyte capacitors. In the style of tantalum pearls, they soon found wide use in radio and new television devices. Conductivity of non-solid and solid used electrolytes In 1971, Intel launched its first microcomputer (the MCS 4) and 1972 Hewlett Packard launched one of the first pocket calculators (the HP 35).ComputerposterK. Lischka, Spiegel 27.09.2007, 40 Jahre Elektro-Addierer: Der erste Taschenrechner wog 1,5 Kilo, The requirements for capacitors increased, especially the demand for lower losses.
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Unlike most other business simulations, it does not involve making actual economic decisions or managing stores of resources. Rather, the player must manage the trajectory of their character's career at a single fictional corporation, MMC (Mighty Microcomputer Corporation), by making a series of on-the-job and managerial decisions while navigating office politics, evading blame for bad outcomes, and gaining support in different roles throughout the company. The game presents the player with situations and problems which must be solved by choosing from multiple choices. After a series of questions the game evaluates the player's performance resulting in either a career advancement option or getting fired from the company.
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He has also contributed to education research by developing an Interdisciplinary Microcomputer-Based Teaching and Learning Platform for the Howard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and was showcased in the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Assessment (CETLA). In addition, he has developed Earth and Space Science Education curricula for the Earth System Science Education in the 21st Century (ESSE21) USRA program. He spearheaded the successful proposal to include Howard University as part of the USRA Consortium. He organized a Nobel Laureate Symposium on November 10, 2010 in which Dr. Douglas Osheroff, 1996 Nobel Laureate in Physics, was the invited speaker.
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The history of the personal computer as a mass-market consumer electronic device began with the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time-sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals. After the development of the microprocessor, individual personal computers were low enough in cost that they eventually became affordable consumer goods. Early personal computers – generally called microcomputers – were sold often in electronic kit form and in limited numbers, and were of interest mostly to hobbyists and technicians.
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Monitors, keyboards and other devices for input and output may be integrated or separate. Computer memory in the form of RAM, and at least one other less volatile, memory storage device are usually combined with the CPU on a system bus in one unit. Other devices that make up a complete microcomputer system include batteries, a power supply unit, a keyboard and various input/output devices used to convey information to and from a human operator (printers, monitors, human interface devices). Microcomputers are designed to serve only one user at a time, although they can often be modified with software or hardware to concurrently serve more than one user.
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This was the first time that a program running on a consumer level microcomputer defeated the mainframes that had previously dominated this event. In 1998, Fritz 5 was released including a Friend mode which would cause the engine to adjust its strength of play over the course of a game based on the level the opponent appeared to be playing. Fritz 5.32 was released soon after replacing the 16 bit architecture with a 32 bit one. In 2002, Deep Fritz drew the Brains in Bahrain match against Vladimir Kramnik 4–4. Fritz 7, which was released that year, included the ability to play on the Playchess server.
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Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He was best known for co- founding Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which helped spark the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, later making Microsoft the world's largest personal computer software company. Allen was ranked as the 44th-wealthiest person in the world by Forbes in 2018, with an estimated net worth of $20.3 billion at the time of his death. Allen left active operations at Microsoft in early 1983 after a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, remaining on its board as vice chairman.
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In July 1981 Xerox announced the Xerox Star, an advanced workstation computer featuring a graphical user interface, and by that point it was a well known "secret" that Apple Computer was working on a low-cost computer with a GUI that would later be released as the Apple Lisa. Personal Software's president, Terry Opdendyk, knew of a two-man team in Texas that was working on a GUI, and arranged for Scott Warren and Dennis Abbe to visit Personal Software's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. They demonstrated a version of the Smalltalk programming language running on the TRS-80 microcomputer, a seriously underpowered machine for the task. Personal Software was extremely impressed.
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Gupta served as chief scientist and vice president for the development of VCN ExecuVision, the first presentation graphics program. The company, Visual Communications Network also pioneered the development of clip art for the IBM personal computer. At MIT, Gupta led a team of researchers to develop technology to automatically read handwritten information on checks and proposed a nationwide check clearance system, allowing the electronic clearance of printed, typed, and handwritten checks.. This innovation is manifested in the Check 21 system in the U.S. and in similar approaches in Singapore, and Brazil. Gupta and his colleagues also developed the first microcomputer-based image database management system.
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Space Ace is a LaserDisc video game produced by Bluth Group, Cinematronics and Advanced Microcomputer Systems (later renamed RDI Video Systems). It was unveiled in October 1983, just four months after the Dragon's Lair game, then released in Spring 1984, and like its predecessor featured film-quality animation played back from a LaserDisc. The gameplay is similar to Dragon's Lair, requiring the player to move the joystick or press the fire button at key moments in the animated sequences to govern the hero's actions. There is also the occasional option to either temporarily have the character transform into his adult form or remain as a boy with different styles of challenge.
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This method of operation worked satisfactorily in the 1960s and early 1970s, when modems were generally used to connect dumb devices like computer terminals (dialling out) with smart mainframe computers (answering). However, the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s led to the introduction of low-cost modems and the idea of a semi-dedicated point-to-point link was no longer appropriate. There were potentially thousands of users who might want to dial any of the other thousands of users, and the only solution at the time was to make the user dial manually. The computer industry needed a way to tell the modem what number to dial through software.
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TurboCAD was first sold in the United States by Milan Systems of America in late 1986, marketed as a stand- alone title for $99 and a bundle with the IMSI (International Microcomputer Software, IncCan TurboCAD Get Respect?) mouse for $149. Both companies shared distribution responsibilities for the bundle. In 1990, IMSI released its self- developed version of TurboCAD, version 2 for DOS. IMSI had licensed the source code from the original developers, Pink Software, and programmer Kurt Diesch fixed bugs and added output support, as well as increased functionality to compete with other CAD programs under $500 – Generic CADD, Drafix and Design CAD 2D.
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This Acorn machine was based around a 16-bit 65SC816 CPU, 128 KB RAM, expandable to 512 KB, plus additional battery-backed RAM. It had a new multi-tasking OS, had 4x internal ROM sockets, and shipped with 'View' based software. It also had an attached telephone, communications software and auto-answer/auto-dial modem.Communicator details Communicator details In February 1986, Acorn announced that it was ceasing US sales operations, and sold its remaining US BBC Microcomputers for $1.25M to a Texas company, 'Basic', which was a subsidiary of Datum, the Mexican manufacturer of the Spanish version of the BBC Microcomputer (with modified Spanish keyboards for the South American market).
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On 25 July 1961, Clive Sinclair founded Sinclair Radionics to develop and sell electronic devices such as calculators. The failure of the Black Watch wristwatch and the calculator market's move from LEDs to LCDs led to financial problems, and Sinclair approached government body the National Enterprise Board (NEB) for help. After losing control of the company to the NEB, Sinclair encouraged Chris Curry to leave Radionics and get Science of Cambridge (SoC—an early name for Sinclair Research) up and running. In June 1978, SoC launched a microcomputer kit, the Mk 14, that Curry wanted to develop further, but Sinclair could not be persuaded so Curry resigned.
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Also included were six 7-segment LEDs (similar to those on a pocket calculator) and a 24-key calculator-type keypad. Many of the pins of the I/O portions of the 6530s were connected to two connectors on the edge of the board, where they could be used as a serial system for driving a Teletype Model 33 ASR and paper tape reader/punch). One of these connectors also doubled as the power supply connector, and included analog lines that could be attached to a cassette tape recorder. Earlier microcomputer systems such as the MITS Altair used a series of switches on the front of the machine to enter data.
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One of the first shows booked at the new exhibition space was the 1958 American Medical Association convention. For that show, Wallace Laboratories had commissioned artist Salvador Dali for an eye-catching piece to promote its new tranquilizer, Miltown. The result, Crisalida, a long walk-through cocoon-shaped gallery made from parachute silk intended to display the journey from anxiety to calm, made headlines nationally, including coverage in Time. During its operating history, Brooks Hall became home to events such as the Harvest Festival, the San Francisco Gift Show, and the West Coast Computer Faire, credited as the first microcomputer convention, which drew 12,700 visitors its first year (1977).
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Through this period, Macs had about 2 to 3 times as many clients connected to the Internet as any other platform, despite the relatively small overall microcomputer market share. As the world quickly moved to IP for both LAN and WAN uses, Apple was faced with maintaining two increasingly outdated code bases on an ever-wider group of machines as well as the introduction of the PowerPC based machines. This led to the Open Transport efforts, which re-implemented both MacTCP and AppleTalk on an entirely new code base adapted from the Unix standard STREAMS. Early versions had problems and did not become stable for some time.
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That same year, a similar game was launched for the Bally Astrocade as Checkmate. The first known personal computer version, titled Worm, was programmed in 1978 by Peter Trefonas of the US on the TRS-80, and published by CLOAD magazine in the same year. This was followed shortly afterwards with versions from the same author for the Commodore PET and Apple II. A microcomputer clone of the Hustle arcade game, itself a clone of Blockade, was written by Peter Trefonas in 1979 and published by CLOAD. An authorized version of Hustle was published by Milton Bradley for the TI-99/4A in 1980.
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As these programs became more common in the late 1980s several companies set up services that would accept the shows on diskette and create slides using a film recorder or print transparencies. In the 1990s dedicated LCD-based screens that could be placed on the projectors started to replace the transparencies, and by the late 1990s they had almost all been replaced by video projectors. The first commercial computer software specifically intended for creating WYSIWYG presentations was developed at Hewlett Packard in 1979 and called BRUNO and later HP-Draw. The first microcomputer-based presentation software was Cromemco's Slidemaster, developed by John F. Dunn and released by Cromemco in 1981.
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Gates of Zendocon started its development before any Atari Lynx hardware existed. Gates of Zendocon was written by Peter Engelbrite when he worked at Epyx as games developer and programmer. He also worked on Atari 2600 conversion of other titles from the company such as California Games, Summer Games and Winter Games. In an online interview with website The Atari Times, Engelbrite recounted about the development process of the game, stating that work on the project began before functional Atari Lynx hardware existed and wrote an emulator of the console on the Apple II 8-bit microcomputer, setting up the system's graphical data structures but displaying the sprites as ASCII text.
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Treviranus graduated from University of Toronto in 1981 with a B.Sc. in Occupational Therapy. In 1994, she earned a M.A. in Special Education from University of Toronto; she continues to pursue post graduate work at University College Dublin, Ireland. At the beginning of her career, for the first personal computers – the Apple II Plus, the Tandy Model 100, the Texas Instruments computers, and later the Commodore 64 and Vic 20 – Treviranus designed alternative access systems for people with disabilities. She was assisted by experts at the University of Washington, the National Research Council Rehabilitation Technology Unit and the Microcomputer Application Program at the Hugh MacMillan Centre.
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The Intel hex format was originally designed for Intel's Intellec Microcomputer Development Systems (MDS) in 1973 in order to load and execute programs from paper tape in order to replace the "paper- intensive" BNPF/BPNF format. Also, it served the purpose of easing the data transmission from customers to Intel for ROM production. The format was used to program (E)PROMs via paper tapes (in Intellec Hex Paper Tape Format) or to control punched card-controlled EPROM programmers (through the Intellec Hex Computer Punched Card Format). Since 1975, it was also utilized by the MCS Series II floppy-disk based ISIS-II systems, using the file extension HEX.
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In retrospect, the nicely performing MV series was too little, too late. At a time when DG invested its last dollar into the dying minicomputer segment, the microcomputer was rapidly making inroads to the lower-end market segment, and the introduction of the first workstations wiped out all 16-bit machines, once DG's best customer segment. While the MV series did stop the erosion of DG's customer base, this now smaller base was no longer large enough to allow DG to develop their next generation. DG had also changed their marketing to focus on direct sales to Fortune 100 companies and thus alienated many resellers.
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He also managed Intel's business with IBM, served as general manager of both the Peripheral Components Operation and the Folsom Microcomputer Division, where he was responsible for the company's chipset operations, and served as a technical assistant to then- Intel president Andrew Grove. Otellini was appointed an operating group vice president in 1988, elected as an Intel corporate officer in 1991, made senior vice president in 1993, and promoted to executive vice president in 1996. In 2002, he was elected to the board of directors and became president and Chief Operating Officer at the company. On May 18, 2005 he replaced Craig Barrett as the new CEO of Intel.
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Cromemco advertisement on Page 1 of Byte Magazine, September 1976 The collaboration that was to become Cromemco began in 1970 when Harry Garland and Roger Melen, graduate students at Stanford University, began working on a series of articles for Popular Electronics magazine. These articles described construction projects for the electronic hobbyist. Since it was sometimes difficult for the hobbyist to find the needed parts for these projects, Garland and Melen licensed third-party suppliers to provide kits of parts. A kit for one of these projects, an “Op Amp Tester”, was sold by a company called MITS which would later launch a revolutionary microcomputer on the cover of Popular Electronics.
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Cromemco production line of CS-250 computers for USAF Mission Support System (1986) In 1981, a study was commissioned by the United States Air Force Systems Command to select a microcomputer for the Theater Air Control System (TACS). From a field of 149 microcomputers the Final Technical Report concluded that “the equipment offered by Cromemco is the most responsive to the general selection criteria.” In the years following this study the United States Air Force became a major customer for Cromemco computers. Cromemco developed a special version of the CS-200 computer (called the CS-250) to meet the requirements of the Air Force's Mission Support System (MSS).
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During this time, Microsoft was in the midst of developing their Jet database system. Jet combined three primary subsystems; an ISAM-based database engine (also named Jet, confusingly), a C-based interface allowing applications to access that data, and a selection of driver dynamic-link libraries (DLL) that allowed the same C interface to redirect input and output to other ISAM-based databases, like Paradox and xBase. Jet allowed using one set of calls to access common microcomputer databases in a fashion similar to Blueprint, by then renamed DataLens. However, Jet did not use SQL; like DataLens, the interface was in C and consisted of data structures and function calls.
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After his graduation he found it frustrating that the new microcomputer technology had not solved an age-old problem: how choreographers could record their work in written form. He created the DOM system on an Apple II computer in 1981, which allowed choreographers to use a simple system of codes to enter their work. The resulting dance movements were then performed by a figure on screen. In 1982 Intellivision game design director Don Daglow (also a Pomona College graduate) recruited Dombrower to join Mattel to work on a new kind of baseball game that for the first time would feature large on-screen animated figures and multiple camera angles.
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After earning a PhD in comparative literature, Kleinhans found temporary teaching jobs at Chicago State University (fall 1974–fall 1975) and Northeastern Illinois University (winter 1976–winter 1977). In spring 1977, Northwestern University's Radio/Television/Film Department hired him to teach courses on contemporary film theory and experimental film. In fall of that year, he started a tenure-track line at Northwestern as an assistant professor and taught "introductory courses in microcomputer graphics, photography, film and video making, media literacy, popular culture; [and] advanced courses in production in aesthetics, film/tv theory, mass culture theory, experimental film and video, Latin America media." He also shepherded over 40 dissertations.
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In the 1970s, the language was picked up by microcomputer manufacturers of the era to be used as both a simple ROM embedded programming language as well as a quasi operating system for input/output control. In the early 1980s, the language was picked up by Microsoft and expanded significantly beyond its original intent into their "Visual Basic" language/platform that was sold throughout the 1990s as a "rapid application development" (RAD) tool for Windows programming. It competed directly against other RAD tools of the 1990s such as PowerBuilder. Even though Visual Basic was a successful development platform, it was discontinued after its 6th version (VB6) when Microsoft introduced the .
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Seymour I. Rubinstein was an employee of early microcomputer company IMSAI, where he negotiated software contracts with Digital Research and Microsoft. After leaving IMSAI, Rubinstein planned to start his own software company that would sell through the new network of retail computer stores. He founded MicroPro International Corporation in September 1978 and hired John Robbins Barnaby as programmer, who wrote a word processor, WordMaster, and a sorting program, SuperSort, in Intel 8080 assembly language. After Rubinstein obtained a report that discussed the abilities of contemporary standalone word processors from IBM, Xerox, and Wang Laboratories, Barnaby enhanced WordMaster with similar features and support for the CP/M operating system.
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The Thorn Microsystems unit utilized a single chip microcomputer from Intel, a professionally fabricated double sided printed circuit board with plated through holes, large BCD thumbwheel switches, and rugged solid state bipolar output circuitry (no electromechanical relay). The Thorn Microsystems design reduced parts count to "one chip" and one power transistor substantially reduced PCB (printed circuit board) solder interconnections for a significant enhancement in reliability. The firmware embedded within the Intel microcontroller chip performed all the timing and control functions required of the delay box with quartz crystal digital accuracy. Many new TTL and CMOS glue logic designs continued appearing on the market for several more years.
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Later the machines were only available factory-assembled. The machines were widely respected for their speed, configurability, durability, and reliability. The Z-2 was a Z80–based microcomputer system that was introduced in 1977. The original Z-2 in kit form included a ZPU-K Z80 CPU card, S-100 bus motherboard, all-metal rack-mount chassis and dust case, card socket and card guide; the assembled form included a complete set of sockets and card guides, and a cooling fan. The Z-2 series was capable of supporting up to 21 S-100 boards and could be configured with any of the boards supplied by Cromemco.
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An extensive line of upgrades and add-on hardware peripherals for the TRS-80 was developed and marketed by Tandy/RadioShack. The basic system can be expanded with up to 48 KB of RAM (in 16 KB increments), and up to four floppy disk drives and/or hard disk drives. Tandy/RadioShack provided full-service support including upgrade, repair, and training services in their thousands of stores worldwide. By 1979, the TRS-80 had the largest selection of software in the microcomputer market. Until 1982, the TRS-80 was the best-selling PC line, outselling the Apple II series by a factor of five according to one analysis.
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Super-80 computer logic board (reverse side) The Super-80 was based on the Zilog Z80 8-bit microprocessor. As standard, it had 16 kB of dynamic RAM in the form of eight 4116 RAM chips. RAM could be expanded to 32 kB or 48 kB through the addition of rows of eight 4116 RAM chips. The computer was assembled on a single double-sided printed circuit board. The board was supplied in a light cardboard sleeve that appeared to be an LP record sleeve, having the words "Dick Smith Super 80 Microcomputer Kit Printed Circuit Board" and the part number "Cat H-8402" printed along the spine.
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In 1980, Johnson-Davies completed a PhD and then went on to join the computer company Acorn. Acorn had developed the BBC Microcomputer, the basis for a computer literacy project which was run by the BBC. Johnson-Davies was the founder and managing director of Acornsoft, which published computer games such as the groundbreaking Elite, computer languages and the View business software range by Mark Colton. In 1986 he left Acorn and set up Human Computer Interface, which has worked for a number of high-tech clients including Hitachi Europe and Royal Mail. He then went on to create a Macintosh-based program which helps identify clients’ typefaces.
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The Apple IIGS (styled as IIGS), the fifth and most powerful of the Apple II family, is a 16-bit personal computer produced by Apple Computer, Inc. While featuring the Macintosh look and feel, and resolution and color similar to the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, it remains compatible with earlier Apple II models. The "GS" in the name stands for "Graphics and Sound," referring to its enhanced multimedia hardware, especially its state-of-the-art audio. The microcomputer is a radical departure from any previous Apple II, with its 16-bit 65C816 microprocessor, direct access to megabytes of random-access memory (RAM), and mouse.
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Wayne Green, the creator of many magazines such as 73, founded 80 Microcomputing as a spinoff of his Kilobaud Microcomputing solely for Tandy Corporation's Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I microcomputer. Like his other magazines it encouraged readers to submit articles and reviews. A 1980 advertisement for the magazine promised that it would "tell you the truth … the good things about the TRS-80 and the not so good" because "Wayne Green has never been one to mince words". By 1982 80 Micro was the third largest magazine in terms of obtaining advertising, selling 152,000 issues; Information Intelligence, Online Libraries, and Microcomputers, Volumes 1-2.
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The mechanical teleprinter was replaced by a "glass tty", a keyboard and screen emulating the teleprinter. "Smart" terminals permitted additional functions, such as cursor movement over the entire screen, or local editing of data on the terminal for transmission to the computer. As the microcomputer revolution replaced the traditionalminicomputer + terminalstime sharing architecture, hardware terminals were replaced by terminal emulators — PC software that interpreted terminal signals sent through the PC's serial ports. These were typically used to interface an organization's new PC's with their existing mini- or mainframe computers, or to connect PC to PC. Some of these PCs were running Bulletin Board System software.
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The first motherboard arrived 45 days after the project started, and the first cases and power supplies about 15 days after that. By this point it was clear the system was a usable microcomputer on its own, but "the decision was made to soft-pedal the fact until the last possible moment. Once published, all the fuss possible was to be made about its general-purpose nature; but until it actually saw print, it was to be treated first as a terminal." As the machine increasingly expanded in power, Felsenstein suggested the name "Sol", because they were including "the wisdom of Solomon" in the system.
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These clusters are an example of a fractal. In 2D these fractals exhibit a dimension of approximately 1.71 for free particles that are unrestricted by a lattice, however computer simulation of DLA on a lattice will change the fractal dimension slightly for a DLA in the same embedding dimension. Some variations are also observed depending on the geometry of the growth, whether it be from a single point radially outward or from a plane or line for example. Two examples of aggregates generated using a microcomputer by allowing random walkers to adhere to an aggregate (originally (i) a straight line consisting of 1300 particles and (ii) one particle at center) are shown on the right.
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In 1980 the FS1 Flight Simulator by Bruce Artwick for the Apple II microcomputer introduced recreational uses of synthetic vision. HiMAT Remotely Piloted Aircraft Cockpit with Synhthetic Vision Display NASA used synthetic vision for remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs), such as the High Maneuvability Aerial Testbed or HiMAT. According to the report by NASA, the aircraft was flown by a pilot in a remote cockpit, and control signals up-linked from the flight controls in the remote cockpit on the ground to the aircraft, and aircraft telemetry downlinked to the remote cockpit displays (see photo). The remote cockpit could be configured with either nose camera video or with a 3D synthetic vision display.
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In 1977, the Heathkit H11 was announced; a PDP-11 in kit form. At the beginning of the 1980s, DEC built the VT180 (codenamed "Robin"), which was a VT100 terminal with an added Z80-based microcomputer running CP/M, but this product was initially available only to DEC employees. It was only after IBM had successfully launched the IBM PC in 1981 that DEC responded with their own systems. In 1982, DEC introduced not one, but three incompatible machines which were each tied to different proprietary architectures. The first, the DEC Professional, was based on the PDP-11/23 (and later, the 11/73) running the RSX-11M+ derived, but menu-driven, P/OS ("Professional Operating System").
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An early microcomputer power supply was either fully on or off, controlled by the mechanical line-voltage switch, and energy saving low-power idle modes were not a design consideration of early computer power supplies. These power supplies were generally not capable of power saving modes such as standby or "soft off", or scheduled turn-on power controls. Due to the always-on design, in the event of a short circuit, either a fuse would blow, or a switched-mode supply would repeatedly cut the power, wait a brief period of time, and attempt to restart. For some power supplies the repeated restarting is audible as a quiet rapid chirping or ticking emitted from the device.
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North Star Computers Inc. (later styled as NorthStar) was an American computer company based in Berkeley, California existing between June 1976 NorthStar catalog from August 1976 (when according to popular rumor it was formed as "Kentucky Fried Computers") and 1984. Originally a mail order business for IMSAI computers, it soon developed into a major player in the early microcomputer market, becoming first known for their low-cost floppy disk system for S-100 bus machines, and later for their own S-100 bus computers running either the CP/M operating system or North Star's own proprietary operating system, NSDOS. North Star BASIC was a common dialect of the popular BASIC programming language.
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Around this time, an independent submission to publish a game called Jumpman came through and was a big hit for Epyx. The success of Jumpman made Epyx a lot of money, so Michael Katz had the capital to create a merger between Epyx and Starpath, bringing Starpath's programmers and hardware engineers under the same company. Michael Katz left Epyx in 1984 after being hired away by Atari Corporation as their President of Entertainment Electronics Division (and later, became the President of Sega of America), and was replaced by Gilbert Freeman (no relation to Jon Freeman). By early 1984, InfoWorld estimated that Epyx was the world's 16th-largest microcomputer-software company, with $10 million in 1983 sales.
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The Altair 8800, which began the personal computer revolution, was introduced in January 1975 with no hardware or software support for floppy disk or hard disk storage. When Paul Allen travelled to the MITS factory in Albuquerque, New Mexico to demonstrate what would become Microsoft BASIC, he brought with him a punched paper tape of the code that he and Bill Gates had developed. According to Allen, the 7168 byte program took 7 minutes to load from a Teletype Model 33 paper tape reader. To reduce the time required to load software, and to support a more convenient storage medium than paper tape, Cromemco developed the first programmable solid-state storage system for the Altair microcomputer.
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In computer science, an interpreter is a computer program that directly executes instructions written in a programming or scripting language, without requiring them previously to have been compiled into a machine language program. An interpreter generally uses one of the following strategies for program execution: # Parse the source code and perform its behavior directly; # Translate source code into some efficient intermediate representation and immediately execute this; # Explicitly execute stored precompiled codeIn this sense, the CPU is also an interpreter, of machine instructions. made by a compiler which is part of the interpreter system. Early versions of Lisp programming language and minicomputer and microcomputer BASIC dialects would be examples of the first type.
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Shredder is a commercial chess engine and graphical user interface (GUI) developed in Germany by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen in 1993. Shredder won the World Microcomputer Chess Championship in 1996 and 2000, the World Computer Chess Championship in 1999 and 2003, the World Computer Speed Chess Championship in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2007, and the World Chess Software Championship in 2010. One of the features of the Shredder engine is that it can be set to play at different Elo rating levels from beginner to master level. The Shredder GUI will estimate your Elo rating based on your games, and adjust its strength in future games to give you a chance of winning.
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This led to rapid growth of online services with large file libraries, which in turn gave more reason to own a modem. The rapid update of modems led to a similar rapid increase in BBS use. The introduction of microcomputer systems with internal expansion slots made small internal modems practical. This led to a series of popular modems for the S-100 bus and Apple II computers that could directly dial out, answer incoming calls, and hang up entirely from software, the basic requirements of a bulletin board system (BBS). The seminal CBBS for instance was created on an S-100 machine with a Hayes internal modem, and a number of similar systems followed.
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Eventually, the manual method was modified so that a match could be notated in-match at courtside directly into a microcomputer. This work was then extended to examine the patterns of play of male squash players at recreational, county and elite levels, thus creating empirical models of performance, although the principles of data stabilisation were not thoroughly understood at the time. This form of empirical modelling of tactical profiles is fundamental to a large amount of the published work in notational analysis. By comparing the patterns of play of successful and unsuccessful teams or players in elite competitions, world cup competitions, for example, enables the definition of those performance indicators that differentiate between the two groups.
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Although the Altair spawned an entire business, another side effect it had was to demonstrate that the microprocessor had so reduced the cost and complexity of building a microcomputer that anyone with an interest could build their own. Many such hobbyists met and traded notes at the meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club (HCC) in Silicon Valley. Although the HCC was relatively short-lived, its influence on the development of the modern PC was enormous. Members of the group complained that microcomputers would never become commonplace if they still had to be built up, from parts like the original Altair, or even in terms of assembling the various add-ons that turned the machine into a useful system.
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In 1978, she joined Acorn Computers Ltd, after designing a device to prevent cigarette lighter sparks triggering payouts on fruit machines. Her computer design was used by Chris Curry and Hermann Hauser to build the Acorn Micro-Computer, the first of a long line of computers sold by the company. In July 1981, Wilson extended the Acorn Atom's BASIC programming language dialect into an improved version for the Acorn Proton, a microcomputer that enabled Acorn to win the contract with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for their ambitious computer education project. Hauser employed a deception, telling both Wilson and colleague Steve Furber that the other had agreed a prototype could be built within a week.
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Pedro Antonio Valdes-Sosa (born March 12, 1950 in Chicago, Illinois, United States), is the General Vice-Director for Research of the Cuban Neurosciences Center, which he cofounded in 1990. He is also Member of the Editorial Boards of the following journals: Neuroimage, Medicc, Audiology and Neurotology, PLosOne Frontiers, Neuroimage and Brain Connectivity. His work includes statistical analysis of electrophysiological measurements, neuroimaging (fMRI, EEG and MEG tomography), nonlinear dynamical modeling of brain functions and Software and electrophysiological equipment development. Valdes-Sosa initiated work with quantitative electrophysiology in 1969 with the first Cuban microcomputer, co-founding CNEURO in 1990, an institution which has changed health indicators in his country as well as in others.
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In order to compete on systems sales Novell Data Systems planned a program to link more than one microcomputer to operate together. The former ERI employees Drew Major, Dale Neibaur and Kyle Powell, known as the SuperSet Software group, were hired to this task. At ERI, Fairclough, Major, Neibaur and Powell had worked on government contracts for the Intelligent Systems Technology Project, and thereby gained an important insight into the ARPANET and related technologies, ideas which would become crucial to the foundation of Novell. Novell retained some hardware products even after NetWare became a success; here, a Novell NE2000 16-bit ISA 10Base-2 Ethernet card from 1990 The Safeguard board then ordered Musser to shut Novell down.
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Correspondence from the editorial director of Popular Electronics magazine, dated July 25, 1974, regarding publishing a cover story on the "CYCLOPS" camera project The Cyclops Camera was developed by Terry Walker, Harry Garland, and Roger Melen, and introduced as a hobbyist construction project in the February 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. One month earlier the MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer had been introduced in this same magazine. Les Solomon, technical editor of Popular Electronics, saw the value of interfacing the Cyclops to the Altair, and put Roger Melen (co-developer of the Cyclops) in contact with Ed Roberts (president of MITS) to discuss a collaboration. Roger Melen met with Ed Roberts at MITS headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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Many company or brand names are portmanteaus, including Microsoft, a portmanteau of microcomputer and software; the cheese Cambozola combines a similar rind to Camembert with the same mold used to make Gorgonzola; passenger rail company Amtrak, a portmanteau of America and track; Velcro, a portmanteau of the French velours (velvet) and crochet (hook); Verizon, a portmanteau of veritas (Latin for truth) and horizon; and ComEd (a Chicago-area electric utility company), a portmanteau of Commonwealth and Edison. Jeoportmanteau! is a recurring category on the American television quiz show Jeopardy!. The category's name is itself a portmanteau of the words Jeopardy and portmanteau. Responses in the category are portmanteaus constructed by fitting two words together.
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The MOSFET forms the basis of modern electronics, and is the basic element in most modern electronic equipment. It is the most widely used semiconductor device in the world, and the most widely manufactured device in history, with an estimated 13sextillion MOS transistors manufactured as of 2018. The MOSFET is central to the microelectronics revolution, silicon revolution, and microcomputer revolution, and is the fundamental building block of modern digital electronics during the Digital Revolution, information revolution and Information Age. It is used in a wide variety of electronics applications, such as computers, synthesizers, communications technology, smartphones, Internet infrastructure, digital telecommunication systems, video games, pocket calculators, and digital wristwatches, among many other uses.
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The Epson QX-10 is a microcomputer running CP/M or TPM-III (CP/M-80 compatible) which was introduced in 1983. It was based on a Zilog Z80 microprocessor, running at 4 MHz, provided up to 256 KB of RAM organized in four switchable banks, and included a separate graphics processor chip (µPD7220) manufactured by NEC to provide advanced graphics capabilities. In the USA and Canada, two versions were launched; a basic CP/M configuration with 64 KB RAM and the HASCI configuration with 256 KB RAM and the special HASCI keyboard to be used with the bundled application suite, called Valdocs. The European and Japanese versions were like the CP/M configurations.
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PC/IX for the IBM PC running in a virtual machine Although observers in the early 1980s expected that IBM would choose Microsoft Xenix or a version from AT&T; Corporation as the Unix for its microcomputer, PC/IX was the first Unix implementation for the IBM PC XT available directly from IBM. According to Bob Blake, the PC/IX product manager for IBM, their "primary objective was to make a credible Unix system - [...] not try to 'IBM-ize' the product. PC-IX is System III Unix." PC/IX was not however the first Unix port to the XT. Venix/86 preceded PC/IX by about a year, although it was based on the older Version 7 Unix.
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The 3P+S Input/Output Module was an S-100 expansion card introduced to the microcomputer market by Processor Technology. It supplied three parallel ports and one serial port, the latter of which conformed to the RS-232C standard. One of the three parallel ports was dedicated to interfacing with the host computer over the S-100 bus, while the other two were available for general use. An Altair 8800 equipped with a 3P+S could use one of the parallel ports to accept input from a keyboard and another to output to a TV Typewriter, allowing the user to construct an all-in-one machine that did not need an external computer terminal to work.
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In July 1977, the company was renamed to Science of Cambridge Ltd. Around the same time Ian Williamson showed Curry a prototype computer based around a National Semiconductor SC/MP and some parts scavenged from a Sinclair Cambridge calculator. Curry was impressed and encouraged Sinclair to adopt this as a product; an agreement was reached with Williamson but no contract was ever signed: Nat Semi had offered to redesign the project so that it used only their components and they also offered to manufacture the boards. Curry took Nat Semi up on its offer and in June 1978 Science of Cambridge launched a microcomputer kit (marketed as the MK14) based around the National SC/MP chip.
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The aim of this project was to protect against software piracy. However, the application of computers to cryptography in general dates back to the 1940s and Bletchley Park, where the Colossus computer was used to break the encryption used by German High Command during World War II. The use of computers to encrypt, however, came later. In particular, until the development of the integrated circuit, of which the first was produced in 1960, computers were impractical for encryption, since, in comparison to the portable form factor of the Enigma machine, computers of the era took the space of an entire building. It was only with the development of the microcomputer that computer encryption became feasible, outside of niche applications.
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Process virtual machines were a popular approach to implementing early microcomputer software, including Tiny BASIC and adventure games, from one-off implementations such as Pyramid 2000 to a general-purpose engine like Infocom's z-machine, which Graham Nelson argues is "possibly the most portable virtual machine ever created". Significant advances occurred in the implementation of Smalltalk-80, particularly the Deutsch/Schiffmann implementation which pushed just-in-time (JIT) compilation forward as an implementation approach that uses process virtual machine. Later notable Smalltalk VMs were VisualWorks, the Squeak Virtual Machine, and Strongtalk. A related language that produced a lot of virtual machine innovation was the Self programming language, which pioneered adaptive optimization and generational garbage collection.
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Tandy had 11 million customers that might buy a microcomputer, but it would be much more expensive than the median price of a RadioShack product, and a great risk for the very conservative company. Executives feared losing money as Sears did with Cartrivision, and many opposed the project; one executive told French, "Don't waste my time—we can't sell computers." As the popularity of CB radio—at one point comprising more than 20% of RadioShack's sales—declined, however, the company sought new products. In December 1976 French and Leininger received official approval for the project but were told to emphasize cost savings; for example, leaving out lowercase characters saved US$1.50 in components and reduced the retail price by .
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He taught physics at Keil School and then at Oundle School where he was also head of Electronics and was also a tutor at Laxton House. At Oundle he learnt to program the school's Data General Nova 2 computer alongside a number of pupils, built a Motorola 6800 based microcomputer from scratch, designing and etching the printed circuit boards personally and then purchased and built a kit SWTPC 6800-based computer which was made available to the pupils. His relationship with SWTPC's UK operation helped many former pupils gain gap-year and full-time jobs and a foothold into the computer industry. He was also active with the organisation 'Micro Users in Secondary Education (MUSE)'.
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Born in Amsterdam, De Hond studied human geography at the University of Amsterdam, obtaining a degree in 1971. He worked for the university, as assistant with the Sociaal Geografisch Instituut, but became a project leader for Interview-NSS in 1973. He founded Cebeon with Hedy d'Ancona in 1975, a market research firm targeting the non-profit sector, which he left in 1980 to become a director at Interview-NSS, later a commissioner until 1999. Starting in the mid-80s, De Hond started doing consultancy work for various companies, including Vendex (for which he led the computer department Microcomputer Club Nederland (MCN) of the Vroom & Dreesmann department store and the Dixons electricals store in the 1980s), ITT and Wegener.
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Before the VDM-1 was launched in late 1975, the only way to program the Altair was through its front-panel switches and LED lamps, or by purchasing a serial card and using a terminal of some sort. This was typically a Model 33, which still cost $1,500 if available. Normally the teletypes were not available Teletype Corporation typically sold them only to large commercial customers, which led to a thriving market for broken-down machines that could be repaired and sold into the microcomputer market. Ed Roberts, who had developed the Altair, eventually arranged a deal with Teletype to supply refurbished Model 33s to MITS customers who had bought an Altair.
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A common solution in such situations is to design a boot loader that works as a program belonging to the standard OS that hijacks the system and loads the alternative OS. This technique was used by Apple for its A/UX Unix implementation and copied by various freeware operating systems and BeOS Personal Edition 5. Some machines, like the Atari ST microcomputer, were "instant-on", with the operating system executing from a ROM. Retrieval of the OS from secondary or tertiary store was thus eliminated as one of the characteristic operations for bootstrapping. To allow system customizations, accessories, and other support software to be loaded automatically, the Atari's floppy drive was read for additional components during the boot process.
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By 1982 two programs played at Master level and three were slightly weaker. The sudden improvement without a theoretical breakthrough surprised humans, who did not expect that Belle's ability to examine 100,000 positions a second—about eight plies—would be sufficient. The Spracklens, creators of the successful microcomputer program Sargon, estimated that 90% of the improvement came from faster evaluation speed and only 10% from improved evaluations. New Scientist stated in 1982 that computers "play terrible chess ... clumsy, inefficient, diffuse, and just plain ugly", but humans lost to them by making "horrible blunders, astonishing lapses, incomprehensible oversights, gross miscalculations, and the like" much more often than they realized; "in short, computers win primarily through their ability to find and exploit miscalculations in human initiatives".
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SPC was established in 1980 by three former Hewlett-Packard employees, Fred Gibbons, Janelle Bedke, and John Page, with an eye to producing packaged software for personal computers like the Apple II. The first application to be launched was the "Personal Filing System" (PFS), a simple database program for Apple II computers. With the advent of the IBM PC the following year, though, the company quickly shifted focus to the burgeoning DOS-based desktop computer market, which also included a fast- growing number of IBM PC-compatible computers. The Apple II PFS product eventually led to the "pfs:" series of products for DOS. By early 1984, InfoWorld estimated that SPC was the world's ninth-largest microcomputer- software company, with $14 million in 1983 sales.
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So for a given room, say room 10, the game can store the exits in slot 10 in the EXIT array, the name of the room, "docking bay", in slot 10 in the NAME array, a longer description, "in the docking bay, the ship sits in the center", in slot 10 of the DESC array, and any items in that location in slot 10 of the ITEM array. If the user picks up an item it is removed from slot 10 of ITEM, and can be added to any other slot if the user drops that item in another location. These concepts were widely copied in the early microcomputer field, and can be found almost verbatim in many other adventures of the era, including Survival.
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From the age of 11, Seifert spent summers and Christmas holidays in San Rafael, California with his father, who immigrated to the United States and founded the microcomputer products firm Sun-Flex Company, which was later sold to Xidex Corporation. There, his father co-invented an anti-glare device for computer terminals, which was awarded United States Patent number 4,253,737 in 1981.Thomsen and Brennan, United States Patent 4,253,737, "Anti-Glare device for a computer terminal display tube", March 1981 It was during the first summer holiday with his father that Seifert became interested in computers and wrote his first computer program. At age 15, with the help of a friend and his mother, Seifert started his first IT company, Danbyte, which imported computer disks to Bornholm.
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The company got its start in the microcomputer arena by producing a series of BASIC programming language interpreters for the burgeoning S-100 bus computer market. Their first product was Cromemco 16k BASIC, which, as the name implies, was intended to run on Cromemco Z-series Z80-based computers with 16 kB of RAM. As machines shipped with ever-increasing amounts of RAM, due largely to the replacement of SRAM with the much denser DRAM in the mid-1970s, SMI further expanded their version as the 26 kB Cromemco Structured BASIC, while a cut-down 12 kB version was released as CP/A Business BASIC. At the time they were written, Microsoft BASIC was widespread but not as universal as it would be by the early 1980s.
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At the beginning of the 1990s, microcomputer software technology and culinary arts were added to the trade program, while 2006 brought the end to the electronics program. In February 2005, a $45 million expansion/renovation project was begun, to include a new three-story shop wing including a larger expanded art room and three learning labs; the new culinary arts kitchen, bakery, and public restaurant; and new academic classrooms, gym, locker rooms, fitness center administration/guidance/support services, and athletic fields. The new facilities opened in time for the start of the 2007-2008 school year. The computer-aided drafting and design program will soon be making a cooperative program with Hamilton Sundstrand, a division of the United Technologies Corporation.
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Ian McNaught- Davis (known as 'Mac') was once again the anchorman but Chris Serle and Gill Nevill were absent, instead various experts were brought in as required to demonstrate some of the more technical aspects of the microcomputers and their uses. John Coll was the main technical 'bod' (he had also written the User Guide for the BBC Micro along with other manuals) and Ian Trackman also featured - he wrote most of the software that was used for demonstrating certain features of the microcomputer, not only for this series but also The Computer Programme and Computers in Control. The programme also featured location reports to demonstrate various practical and business uses of microcomputers. The title and incidental music was by Roger Limb of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
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SDS BASIC, also known as CP-V BASIC, Batch BASIC or Sigma BASIC depending on the version, is a BASIC programming language compiler for Scientific Data Systems's (SDS) Sigma series mainframe computers, originally released in 1967. Xerox purchased SDS in 1969 and began rebranding it as Xerox Data Systems, and finally just Xerox, at which time the language became known as Xerox BASIC. The original versions did not include support for string variables, although this was added for the version running under the CP-V operating system when it was released in 1971. The string library allowed manipulation of strings using array slicing syntax, similar to the system found in HP Time-Shared BASIC and a number of microcomputer BASICs like Integer BASIC and Atari BASIC.
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The following year, the Archives is a part of an NEH-funded study of the use of computers in archival settings; one result of which is MARS (the Microcomputer Archives and Records Management System). 1982 Dr. Ellen Garrison joins the Archives as its second director. She coordinates a second major outreach program for the Archives titled “Tennessee’s Mountain Heritage.” This series of three radio shows, based on materials from the Archives’ holdings, provides an overview of various aspects of the social history and folklore of southern Appalachia. It airs on three separate Sunday evenings on the WETS radio station in May of 1983. 1984 ETSU receives a grant from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) to establish the Center of Excellence for Appalachian Studies and Services (CASS).
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The COSMAC was unique among early 8-bit processors in that it had been explicitly designed for microcomputer use; other designs of the era were invariably aimed at the embedded processor space, and those that had been designed for computer use were generally more complex systems, and often 16-bit. Although the COSMAC had been designed for computer use, RCA's slow market entry and undersupported attempts in this market ultimately failed and other processors like the MOS 6502 and Zilog Z80 would ultimately dominate this market. Ironically, COSMAC would ultimately find great success in the embedded market, because its CMOS design allowed it to work at lower power. By the late 1970s it was widely used in many industrial settings, and especially aerospace.
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Flexi discs or Soundsheets were often provided by music publishers to their customers, frequently school band and orchestra directors, marching band and drum corps leaders and others, with their printed catalogs of sheet music. The director could then hear a sample recording of the piece as they looked at an excerpt from the musical score. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when computer programs and other binary data were often stored on audio cassettes, a number of microcomputer hobbyist magazines published "flexible program sheets" under various trademarked names including "Floppy ROM", "Flexisoft", and "Discoflex". These bound-in thin plastic 33 RPM audio recordings stored computer data such as video game programs that would be played on a turntable and dubbed onto a cassette.
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A Subject Index to Current Literature, By Australian Public Affairs Information Service, p. 27, Your Computer, , N/001.6405/YOU, The Federal Publishing Company, 180 Bourke Road, Alexandria NSW 2015 The monthly magazine's final issue was May/June 1997., The computer/IT magazine market has experienced a shakeout with Australian Consolidated Press announcing the closure of two of its computer titles and three other titles from different publishers...In addition, Federal Publishing is believed to have closed Your Computer magazine The first editor of the magazine was Les Bell. The articles in Your Computer catered for beginners to computing, through to highly technical programming techniques, industry updates, resources, user group and microcomputer-specific columns, and published many special features of Australian technology companies.
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Tandy offered multi-user word processing (Scripsit 16),"Radio Shack release multiuser software", Page 11, April 9, 1984, InfoWorld, "...released two multiuser software packages for its powerful Model 16 microcomputer system....and Scripsit word-processing programs...The Model 16 can accommodate up to six users..." spreadsheet (Multiplan), and a 3GL "database" (Profile 16, later upgraded to filePro 16+), as well as an accounting suite with optional COBOL source for customization. RM-COBOL, BASIC, and C were available for programming, with Unify and Informix offered as relational databases. A kernel modification kit was also available. TRS-Xenix was notable for being a master/slave implementation, with all I/O being performed by the Z80 while all processing was done within the otherwise I/O-free 68000 subsystem.
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He went on to found Control Video Corporation, which ultimately evolved into AOL. Reader's Digest had high expectations for The Source, and established for the company its own purpose- built installation of Prime minicomputers in McLean, Virginia. However, subscriber numbers were slow to build, and (unlike the leaner set-up at rival CompuServe) this facility became an expensive and under-used overhead to maintain. Losses continued to mount, and chief executives came and went. Rumors abounded of an impending sale, but eventually Control Data Corporation put up $5 million in 1983 in return for stock options, and came in as an operating partner. As the microcomputer boom continued, subscriptions reached a peak of 80,000 members, but later fell back (compared to 500,000 at CompuServe by 1989).
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Trip Hawkins created a clone of the Strat-o-Matic paper and dice-based football simulation game as a teenager. The game was unsuccessful due to its complexity, and he hoped to one day delegate its rules to a computer. At Harvard College, where Hawkins played football for the Crimson, he wrote a football simulation for the PDP-11 minicomputer which, he later said, predicted that the Miami Dolphins would defeat the Minnesota Vikings 23–6 (actually 24–7) in the 1974 Super Bowl. After founding Electronic Arts in 1982—"The real reason that I founded [it] was because I wanted to make computerized versions of games like Strat-O- Matic", Hawkins later said—the company began designing a microcomputer football game.
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System/360 Model 91 front panel IBM 1620 front panel Altair 8800 microcomputer front panel A CDC 6600 system console, a reaction to the "blinkenlights" front panel A front panel was used on early electronic computers to display and allow the alteration of the state of the machine's internal registers and memory. The front panel usually consisted of arrays of indicator lamps, digit and symbol displays, toggle switches, dials, and push buttons mounted on a sheet metal face plate. In early machines, CRTs might also be present (as an oscilloscope, or, for example, to mirror the contents of Williams-Kilburn tube memory). Prior to the development of CRT system consoles, many computers such as the IBM 1620 had console typewriters.
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The first implementation of APL using recognizable APL symbols was APL\360 which ran on the IBM System/360, and was completed in November 1966 though at that time remained in use only within IBM. In 1973 its implementors, Larry Breed, Dick Lathwell and Roger Moore, were awarded the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). It was given "for their work in the design and implementation of APL\360, setting new standards in simplicity, efficiency, reliability and response time for interactive systems." In 1975, the IBM 5100 microcomputer offered APL\360 as one of two built-in ROM-based interpreted languages for the computer, complete with a keyboard and display that supported all the special symbols used in the language.
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When Turner brought Inbar to the Culver City, California corporate headquarters of Ashton-Tate to be trained, the offices were so crowded that the only space available for Inbar was a small desk beside a large photocopier, with no phone line; the offices were so crowded that when Turner needed to conduct a confidential meeting, he would have it standing up in the nearby restroom. With the growing popularity of ever-larger hard drives on personal computers, dBASE II turned out to be a huge seller. For its time, dBASE was extremely advanced. It was one of the first database products that ran on a microcomputer, and its programming environment (the dBASE language) allowed it to be used to build a wide variety of custom applications.
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After receiving approval from the Ministry of Public Health in 1986, the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine (CAPM) began to establish a nationwide microcomputer communication network. The purpose was to link all the country's provincial centers of health and epidemic prevention in an effort to improve the system for preventing epidemics. After a year was spent establishing and modifying the system, a network that connected the capitals of 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities began operating in 1987. The primary function of the network was to collect data on the morbidity and mortality associated with reportable communicable diseases, to obtain information on outbreaks of other types of disease, and to provide monthly and annual reports to local and national health authorities.
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Amiga 3000 running a two-line BBS Unlike modern websites and online services that are typically hosted by third-party companies in commercial data centers, BBS computers (especially for smaller boards) were typically operated from the SysOp's home. As such, access could be unreliable, and in many cases, only one user could be on the system at a time. Only larger BBSes with multiple phone lines using specialized hardware, multitasking software, or a LAN connecting multiple computers, could host multiple simultaneous users. The first BBSes used homebrew software, quite often written or customized by the SysOps themselves, running on early S-100 bus microcomputer systems such as the Altair 8800, IMSAI 8080 and Cromemco under the CP/M operating system.
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The Intel 8085 ("eighty-eighty-five") is an 8-bit microprocessor produced by Intel and introduced in March 1976. It is a software-binary compatible with the more-famous Intel 8080 with only two minor instructions added to support its added interrupt and serial input/output features. However, it requires less support circuitry, allowing simpler and less expensive microcomputer systems to be built. The "5" in the part number highlighted the fact that the 8085 uses a single +5-volt (V) power supply by using depletion-mode transistors, rather than requiring the +5 V, −5 V and +12 V supplies needed by the 8080. This capability matched that of the competing Z80, a popular 8080-derived CPU introduced the year before.
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Original On-Line Systems logo Sierra Entertainment was founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems in Simi Valley, California, by Ken and Roberta Williams. Ken Williams, a programmer for IBM, bought an Apple II microcomputer which he planned to use to develop a Fortran compiler for the Apple II. At the time, his wife Roberta Williams, was playing text adventures on the Apple II. Dissatisfied with the text-only format, she realized that the graphics display capability of the Apple II could enhance the adventure gaming experience. After initial success, On-Line Systems was renamed Sierra On-Line in 1982, and the company moved to Oakhurst, California. The "Sierra" name was taken from the Sierra Nevada that Oakhurst was located next to.
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The Network element is an Ethernet hub and a wifi hotspot. The two elements can be linked via Ethernet, wifi or High-Speed Networking Over the Mains. The telephony offer via the Freebox offers various services such as free calls between Freebox subscribers and towards the fixed numbers in Metropolitan France, and also free over 100 foreign countries (USA, Canada, UK, Spain, China, India, South America, etc.). According to Alexandre Archambault from Free, the Freebox is "nothing other than the return to the fundamentals of the DSL", whose initial objective was "to connect via a single support several types of terminals, therefore several types of services: telephone (telephony), microcomputer (Internet access), television set (television transmission, video on demand, pay per view...), hi-fi system (radios, etc.)".
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The concept of IECC was developed at the Railway Technical Centre in Derby during the 1980s, and in particular the initial software for ARS and SSI. A contract for the development of an operational standard system was let in January 1987 to CAP Group, including the supply of a complete system for Yoker (Glasgow) and the ARS for the Waterloo area. This was the first time a software house became involved in railway signalling after competing against the main incumbent suppliers of GEC-General Signal and Westinghouse Signals Ltd. The solution used off-the-shelf microcomputer technology (Motorola 68000 microprocessors and VME Bus) to host the sub-systems of IECC in high availability configurations linked via a duplicated Nine Tiles Superlink local area network.
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Francois Bertrand was the sole programmer of Fight for Life during its entire development cycle, which lasted a year and a half. Francois Yves Bertrand first entered into the video game industry with the TRS-80 microcomputer during his high school period, writing a text-based adventure game for it as his very first title, with Bertrand later buying an Acorn Atom computer and he would continue working with computers manufactured by Acorn Computers. Several years later, Bertrand joined French developer Sisteme and worked on titles from the label such as Ballarena and Erotictac. He would also later form his own game development company in France, Eterna, developing and publishing several titles for the Acorn line of home computers such as Blaston.
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Portal laptop The portable micro computer the "Portal" of the French company R2E Micral CCMC officially appeared in September 1980 at the Sicob show in Paris. The Portal was a portable microcomputer designed and marketed by the studies and developments department of the French firm R2E Micral in 1980 at the request of the company CCMC specializing in payroll and accounting. It was based on an Intel 8085 processor, 8-bit, clocked at 2 MHz. It was equipped with a central 64K byte RAM, a keyboard with 58 alphanumeric keys and 11 numeric keys (in separate blocks), a 32-character screen, a floppy disk (capacity - 140,000 characters), a thermal printer (speed - 28 characters/second), an asynchronous channel, a synchronous channel, and a 220-volt power supply.
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A TN3270 client running on Windows A 3270 Emulator is a terminal emulator that duplicates the functions of an IBM 3270 mainframe computer terminal on a PC or similar microcomputer. As the original 3270 series terminals were connected to the host computer through a display controller (cluster controller) using coaxial cable, emulators originally required channel (rare), coax or synchronous communication adapter cards to be installed in the PC. Today, many emulators communicate with the mainframe computer through a TN3270 server using the TN3270 () variant of the Telnet ()protocol common on TCP/IP networks including the Internet, so special hardware is no longer required on machines with Internet access. Several vendors offered both coax and communications attached 3270 emulators and TN3270 clients as part of the same product.
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Heathkit's H8 is an Intel 8080A-based microcomputer sold in kit form starting in 1977. The H8 was similar to the S-100 bus computers of the era, and like those machines was often used with the CP/M operating system on floppy disk. The main difference between the H8 and S-100 machines was the bus; the H8 used a 50-pin bus design that was smaller, more robust and better engineered electrically. The machine also included a bootstrap ROM that made it easier to start up, including code for running basic input/output and allowing input through a front-mounted octal keypad and front panel display instead of the binary switches and lights used on machines like the Altair 8800.
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In 1980, a group of musicians and music merchants met to standardize an interface that new instruments could use to communicate control instructions with other instruments and computers. This standard was dubbed Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) and resulted from a collaboration between leading manufacturers, initially Sequential Circuits, Oberheim, Roland—and later, other participants that included Yamaha, Korg, and Kawai.. A paper was authored by Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits and proposed to the Audio Engineering Society in 1981. Then, in August 1983, the MIDI Specification 1.0 was finalized. MIDI technology allows a single keystroke, control wheel motion, pedal movement, or command from a microcomputer to activate every device in the studio remotely and in synchrony, with each device responding according to conditions predetermined by the composer.
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The TK95 microcomputer was the evolution of the TK90X made in the second half of the 1980s by Microdigital Eletronica, a company located at São Paulo, Brazil that manufactured some ZX81 clones before (TK82, TK82C, TK83 and TK85) and a ZX80 clone (TK80). The first version was launched in November 1986. The case was redesigned (copied from the Commodore Plus/4) and the keyboard was said to be "semi-professional" (according to the Brazilian manufacturer), with the some additional commands that did not exist in the ZX Spectrums (for characters defined by the user UDG), and more compatibility with the original ZX Spectrum (some games did not run on the TK90X but ran well on the TK95). There was a version with 48 kilobytes of RAM.
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Tandy/RadioShack TRS80 Model I PCB Tandy/RadioShack TRS80 Model I Rear Panel Connectors Tandy/RadioShack TRS80 Model I Level II ROM Upgrade PCB The Model I combines the mainboard and keyboard into one unit, which became a design trend in the 8-bit microcomputer era, although the Model I has a separate power supply unit. It uses a Zilog Z80 processor clocked at 1.78 MHz (later models shipped with a Z80A). The initial Level I machines shipped in late 1977-early 1978 have only 4k of RAM. After the Expansion Interface and Level II BASIC were introduced in mid-1978, RAM configurations of 16k and up were offered (the first 16k was in the Model I itself and the remaining RAM in the EI).
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The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their RadioShack stores. The name is an abbreviation of Tandy/RadioShack, Z80 microprocessor. It is one of the earliest mass-produced and mass-marketed retail home computers. The TRS-80 has a full-stroke QWERTY keyboard, the Zilog Z80 processor (rather than the more common Intel 8080), 4 KB DRAM standard memory (when many 8-bit computers shipped with only 1 KB RAM), small size and desk footprint, floating-point Level I BASIC language interpreter in ROM, 64-character per line video monitor, and a starting price of US$600 (equivalent to US$ in ).
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With David Allen, he was then asked by the British Broadcasting Corporation to help draw up the functional description for a computer which would be used as part of a television series to teach computer literacy. Of John, of the team at the BBC said "It was John’s drive, determination and sheer brilliance that really pulled the whole thing off". He later wrote the BBC Microcomputer User Guide with David Allen which was supplied by Acorn Computers with the BBC Micro, he appeared regularly on the television programmes Making the Most of the Micro and Micro Live and wrote many articles for Personal Computer World during its early year. John also invested his time in people and he wanted to realize the potential in people.
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The idea was that Apple couldn't get the drives to work and would be forced to go back and purchase more expensive SA-400s. The Disk II was very successful for Apple, being the cheapest floppy disk system ever sold up to that point and immensely profitable for the company, in addition to having nearly 20% more storage space than standard FM drives. For a while, the only direct competitor in the microcomputer industry was the TRS-80 Model I, which had used only standard FM storage for 85k. Both the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64's disk drives' throughputs were much slower than the Disk II's 15 KB/s, seriously affecting their ability to compete in the business market.
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Power Factor originally began as a project for the Atari ST under the name Red Ace and was being developed by Red Rat Software. In two interviews, programmer Tony Goacher recounted about the development process of the game, stating its development started after obtaining an Atari 1040ST microcomputer from Red Rat and that Psygnosis' Barbarian was a main source of inspiration for the project. As a fan of futuristic titles, Goacher came with the idea of creating an action-adventure game and after presenting the project to Red Rat, they approved it and was titled as such after the company. However, despite nearly reaching completion, the original version was left unreleased due to internal issues at the company and its eventual closure.
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Wayne Green, the editor and publisher of kilobaud, had been the publisher of BYTE magazine, (another influential microcomputer magazine of the time) where he published the first four issues in his own office. But one day in November 1975 Wayne came to work, and found that his ex-wife and the rest of the Byte magazine staff had moved out of his office and had taken the January issue with them.Green: a shade ahead of the market Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management Articles, January 1985 Consequently, the January 1976 issue had Virginia Green listed as publisher instead of Wayne Green. Wayne was not happy with this development, so he left Byte to start a new magazine to compete with the fledgling Byte.
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Eskom successfully used PLM (PLATO learning management) and simulations to train power plant operators, South African Airways (SAA) used PLATO simulations for cabin attendant training, and there were a number of other large companies as well that were exploring the use of PLATO. The South African subsidiary of CDC invested heavily in the development of an entire secondary school curriculum (SASSC) on PLATO, but unfortunately as the curriculum was nearing the final stages of completion, CDC began to falter in South Africa—partly because of financial problems back home, partly because of growing opposition in the United States to doing business in South Africa, and partly due to the rapidly evolving microcomputer, a paradigm shift that CDC failed to recognize.
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Rod M. Brock's business card Seattle Computer Products (SCP) was a Tukwila, Washington, microcomputer hardware company which was one of the first manufacturers of computer systems based on the 16-bit Intel 8086 processor. SCP began shipping its first S-100 bus 8086 CPU boards to customers in November 1979, about 21 months before IBM introduced its Personal Computer which was based on the slower 8088 and introduced the 8-bit ISA bus. SCP shipped an operating system for that hardware about a year before the release of the PC, which was modified by Microsoft for the PC and renamed IBM PC DOS. SCP was staffed partly by high-school students from nearby communities who soldered and assembled the computers.
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The Amstrad CPC 464 personal microcomputer In 1980, Amstrad went public trading on the London Stock Exchange, and doubled in size each year during the early '80s. Amstrad began marketing its own home computers in an attempt to capture the market from Commodore and Sinclair, with the Amstrad CPC range in 1984. The CPC 464 was launched in the UK, Ireland, France, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Spain and Italy. It was followed by the CPC 664 and CPC 6128 models. Later "Plus" variants of the 464 and 6128, launched in 1990, increased their functionality slightly. Amstrad PCW8512 word processor In 1985, the popular Amstrad PCW range was introduced, which were principally word processors, complete with printer, running the LocoScript word processing program.
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Another early single-chip 16-bit microprocessor was TI's TMS 9900, which was also compatible with their TI-990 line of minicomputers. The 9900 was used in the TI 990/4 minicomputer, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A home computer, and the TM990 line of OEM microcomputer boards. The chip was packaged in a large ceramic 64-pin DIP package, while most 8-bit microprocessors such as the Intel 8080 used the more common, smaller, and less expensive plastic 40-pin DIP. A follow-on chip, the TMS 9980, was designed to compete with the Intel 8080, had the full TI 990 16-bit instruction set, used a plastic 40-pin package, moved data 8 bits at a time, but could only address 16 KB. A third chip, the TMS 9995, was a new design.
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Commercial applications of thermal printers include filling station pumps, information kiosks, point of sale systems, voucher printers in slot machines, print on demand labels for shipping and products, and for recording live rhythm strips on hospital cardiac monitors. Many popular microcomputer systems from the late 1970s and early 1980s had first-party and aftermarket thermal printers available for them - such as the Atari 822 printer for the Atari 8-bit systems, the Apple Silentype for the Apple II and the Alphacom 32 for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and ZX81. They often used unusually-sized supplies (10CM wide rolls for the Alphacom 32 for instance) and were often used for making permanent records of information in the computer (graphics, program listings etc.), rather than for correspondence. Through the 1990s many fax machines used thermal printing technology.
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One of the early executives was Andrew 'Flip' Filipowski, who later founded Platinum Technology, Inc.. Another was Robert Goldman who became the CEO of several public software companies including AICorp. Jon Nackerud was a co- founder of Relational Technology, Inc., formed to commercialize the Ingres database management system. Prior to becoming a public company in 1978, the company's name was changed to Cullinane Database Systems, Inc. The company changed its name again to Cullinet Software in 1983, partly because John Cullinane wanted to distance his name from the personal connection to the business when he turned the company over to Bob Goldman, and also in a nod to the importance of computer networking (as evidenced by the company's simultaneous acquisition of Computer Pictures, whose microcomputer-based desktop system linked to IDMS data).
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In 1983, he sold the Faire to Prentice-Hall, "for 100% down; nothin' to pay". To promote the Computer Faires and circulate news and gossip about the then-infant microcomputer industry, he founded and edited the first free tabloid newspaper about microcomputing, the irregular Silicon Gulch Gazette (SGG), published from issue #0 in February, 1977, through issue #43, in January, 1986, with one issue named Business Systems Journal. Beginning in 1978, Warren created and published the Intelligent Machines Journal (IMJ, which is also Pig Latin for "Jim"), the first subscription news periodical about microcomputing, published as a tabloid newspaper, with Tom Williams as its founding Editor. Warren sold IMJ in late 1979, to Patrick McGovern, the founder of the International Data Group and numerous computer periodicals worldwide, notably including Computerworld.
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They both were interested in maintaining a regular, open forum for people to get together to work on making computers more accessible to everyone.John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said () The first meeting of the club was held on March 5, 1975 in French's garage in Menlo Park, San Mateo County, California, on the occasion of the arrival in the area of the first MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer, a unit sent for review by People's Computer Company. Steve Wozniak credits that first meeting as the inspiration to design the Apple I. The next few meetings were held at a large home in Atherton, California, which had been used as a preschool. Subsequent meetings were held at an auditorium at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), until 1978, when meetings moved to the Stanford Medical School.
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In 1987, the Harper-McGinnis Wing was added to St. Thomas Hall to house the Physics and Electronics Engineering department. Funded by the University's Second Cornerstone campaign, the Harper-McGinnis Wing is a two-floor addition that contained offices and laboratories for physics, electrical engineering, and computing sciences. At the time of its opening, it contained several cutting edge research laboratories, including a modern and atomic physical lab, an optics and electronics lab, a microprocessor lab, an electricity and magnetism lab, a very large system integration (VLSI) lab, a microcomputer lab, and a computer assisted design lab. The Harper-McGinnis Wing was dedicated in recognition of physics professors Joseph P. Harper, Ph.D., the chairman of the physics department, and Eugene A. McGinnis, Ph.D, a long-time physics professor at the University.
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SMS 300 - Early 1976 SMS 300 Back Side showing separate power regulator 8X300 pinout The 8X300 is a microprocessor produced and marketed by Signetics starting 1976 as a second source for the SMS 300 by Scientific Micro Systems, Inc.8X300 Design Guide, Signetics Corporation November 1980, DSPG document 80-102Fast 8-bit bipolar microprocessor, David Edwards, ELECTRONICS Australia, March 1978Signetics /SMS 300 Pact, Microcomputer Digest vol. 2, No. 11, May 1976 Although SMS developed the SMS 300 / 8X300 products, Signetics was the sole manufacturer of this product line. In 1978 Signetics purchased the rights to the SMS300 series and renamed the SMS300 to 8X300 It was designed to be a fast microcontroller and signal processor, and because of this differs considerably from conventional NMOS logic microprocessors of the time.
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If the trainer was successfully assembled, the owner could trade it, along with another $10, for the company's "OSI 400 Superboard System", a fully developed single-board microcomputer that could run with either the 6502 or the Motorola 6800. The bare boards were available for as little as $29, or in a variety of kit versions with more or less of the parts needed to build it out. It could support up to eight National Semiconductor 2102 SRAM memory chips for 1024 bytes (1 KB) of RAM, 512 bytes of ROM, an ACIA serial interface chip for RS-232C or a 20 mA current loop interface for a teleprinter, a PIA for 16-parallel I/O lines, and a power supply. Adding a terminal or teletype completed the system.
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InfoWorld in 1984 praised Flight Simulator II for the Apple as "a complicated but exhilarating game ... Bruce Artwick has really done it all", and stated that it was superior to Microsoft's version. Roy Wagner reviewed and compared Solo Flight and Flight Simulator II for Computer Gaming World, and stated that "This program is outstanding and certainly one of the best examples of excellent programming, documentation, and a full use of the capabilities of a microcomputer." II Computing listed it ninth on the magazine's list of top Apple II games as of late 1985, based on sales and market-share data, and it was Sublogic's best- selling Commodore game as of late 1987. In 1996, Computer Gaming World declared Flight Simulator II the 79th-best computer game ever released.
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The player must additionally evade Nine-Tailed Fox soldiers deployed to recapture the SCPs, as they have been ordered to target and kill any stray Class-D personnel. Later in the game, the player encounters SCP-079, a malicious artificial intelligence inhabiting a microcomputer, and learns that it caused the power outage when several Chaos Insurgency spies gave it control over the facility, resulting in the foundation being busy recontaining it. From here SCP-079 will propose that the player reactivates the door control system, allowing SCP-079 to regain control over the doors, in exchange for helping the player escape the facility. If the player re- activates the door control system, SCP-079 will open the doors to two different exits, Gate A and B. From here 4 different endings can be reached.
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In the first version of INTERNIST-I (completed in 1974) the computer program “treated the physician as unable to solve a diagnostic problem,” or as a “passive observer” who merely performed data entry. Miller and his collaborators came to see this function as a liability in the 1980s, referring to INTERNIST-I derisively as an example of the outmoded “Greek Oracle” model for medical expert systems. In the mid-1980s INTERNIST-I was succeeded by a powerful microcomputer-based consultant developed at the University of Pittsburgh called Quick Medical Reference (QMR). QMR, meant to rectify the technical and philosophical deficiencies of INTERNIST-I, still remained dependent on many of the same algorithms developed for INTERNIST-I, and the systems are often referred to together as INTERNIST-I/QMR.
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Sales of Visi/Answer were much slower than Informatics had anticipated. Instead of seeing the sort of short sales cycle that one would anticipate with PC products, potential customers viewed the link as a strategic decision and Informatics saw the same kind of long sales cycles they were used to encountering with their mainframe products. By 1985 the Answer product line was continuing to experience high costs and disappointing sales. In general, Informatics was one of a number of successful mainframe-based software companies that failed to do well in the microcomputer market, either because they did not see that market as being worth the effort or because the high-volume, low-price nature of that domain was the opposite of the low- volume, high-price environment they were used to.
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Over the next seven years, the phrase had gained enough recognition that Byte magazine referred to its readers in its first edition as "[in] the personal computing field", and Creative Computing defined the personal computer as a "non-(time)shared system containing sufficient processing power and storage capabilities to satisfy the needs of an individual user." In 1977, three new pre-assembled small computers hit the markets which Byte would refer to as the "1977 Trinity" of personal computing. The Apple II and the PET 2001 were advertised as personal computers, while the TRS-80 was described as a microcomputer used for household tasks including "personal financial management". By 1979, over half a million microcomputers were sold and the youth of the day had a new concept of the personal computer.
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Nova Mutum is a regional industrial qualification center; the municipality has a Senai unit that offers more than four thousand places in professional education courses in the areas of Food and Beverage, Construction, Management, Health, Safety at Work, Information Technology and Automotive. Besides Nova Mutum, they are also attended from the municipalities: Alto Paraguay, Arenápolis, Diamantino, Nortelândia, Nova Maryland, Nova Maringa, Santa Rita do Trivelato, St. Alphonsus and Sao Jose do Rio Claro. The unit is the most modern and sustainable in the State, being a reference point in architecture, design and sustainability, with a total area of that includes computer labs, microcomputer maintenance, cutting and sewing, baking, electrical and automation, maintenance, mechanical and machine shop. It has 20 classrooms, a library, environment for mobile actions, auditorium, canteen and cafeteria.
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The Acorn Eurocard systems were a series of modular microcomputer systems based on rack-mounted Eurocards developed by Acorn Computers from 1979 to 1982, aimed primarily at industrial and laboratory use, but also home enthusiasts. The experience gained in developing this modular system strongly influenced the design of Acorn's first all-in-one home computer, the Acorn Atom, released in March 1980; and also much of the circuitry in its successor, the BBC Micro, first shown in late 1981. Acorn's final rack-based machine was the System 5, released in late 1982. The Eurocard business was then sold on to one of its principal resellers, Control Universal Ltd, which continued to develop various cards for industrial use based on the Acorn-standard bus during the 1980s, but ultimately went into receivership in 1989.
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Conductivity of non-solid and solid electrolytes The first solid electrolyte of manganese dioxide developed 1952 for tantalum capacitors had a conductivity 10 times better than all other types of non-solid electrolytes. It also influenced the development of aluminum electrolytic capacitors. In 1964 the first aluminum electrolytic capacitors with solid electrolyte SAL electrolytic capacitor came on the market, developed by Philips.J.Both, Valvo, SAL contra Tantal, Zuverlässige Technologien im Wettstreit, nachrichten elektronik 35, 1981 With the beginning of digitalization, Intel launched in 1971 its first microcomputer, MCS 4, and in 1972 Hewlett Packard launched one of the first pocket calculators, HP 35.K. Lischka, Spiegel 27.09.2007, 40 Jahre Elektro- Addierer: Der erste Taschenrechner wog 1,5 Kilo, The requirements for capacitors increased in terms of lowering the equivalent series resistance (ESR) for bypass and decoupling capacitors.
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Adam Osborne stated in April 1981 that "the microcomputer industry abounds with horror stories describing the way Commodore treats its dealers and its customers." Many in the industry believed rumors in late 1983 that Commodore would discontinue the 64 despite its great success because they disliked the company's business practices, including poor treatment of dealers and introducing new computers incompatible with existing ones. One dealer said "It's too unsettling to be one of their dealers and not know where you stand with them." After Tramiel's departure, another journalist wrote that he "had never been able to establish very good relations with computer dealers ... computer retailers have accused Commodore of treating them as harshly as if they were suppliers or competitors, and as a result, many have become disenchanted with Commodore and dropped the product line".
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Established in 1981 by the brothers George and Tomas Kovari (whose initials were the TK of the domestic computers line made by the company), its first product was the TK80, a clone of the British microcomputer Sinclair ZX80. The company reached its height around 1985, with the launching of the TK90X (clone of the ZX Spectrum) and the TK-2000 II, a personal computer partially compatible (at Applesoft BASIC level) with the Apple II+. At this time, it had approximately 400 employees in three plants (two in São Paulo and one in the Zona Franca de Manaus) and more than 700 peddlers spread for all Brazil. Although the logo of the company is identical to the earlier Microdigital Ltd of the United Kingdom the company is not related.
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Volk graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979 with a BA in Physics and Astronomy. He later carried out graduate work in Physics and Computer Engineering at The University of New Hampshire. From there he moved to Avalon Hill Game Co. where he started the quality assurance division for the Microcomputer Game Division at Avalon Hill. from 1979-1982 where he created the games "Conflict 2500", "Voyager 1" and "Controller" In 1983, he left Avalon Hill Game Co. and was employed by Rising Star where he created the "ValDraw CAD" (computer aided drafting) system for QX10 & Z80 personal computers and later became the Vice President of Development of Aegis Development where he authored some of the first Mac games, "The Pyramid of Peril" and "Mac Challenger" in 1984-1985.
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WordStar was the first microcomputer word processor to offer mail merge and textual WYSIWYG. Barnaby left the company in March 1980, but due to WordStar's sophistication, the company's extensive sales and marketing efforts, and bundling deals with Osborne and other computer makers, MicroPro's sales grew from $500,000 in 1979 to $72 million in fiscal year 1984, surpassing earlier market leader Electric Pencil. By May 1983 BYTE magazine called WordStar "without a doubt the best-known and probably the most widely used personal computer word-processing program". The company released WordStar 3.3 in June 1983; the 650,000 cumulative copies of WordStar for the IBM PC and other computers sold by that fall was more than double that of the second most-popular word processor, and that year MicroPro had 10% of the personal computer software market.
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Since 2009, Sentinel has offered a machine described as a "word processor", but it is more accurately a highly specialised microcomputer used for accounting and publishing.StarLux Illumination catalog Word processing was one of the earliest applications for the personal computer in office productivity, and was the most widely used application on personal computers until the World Wide Web rose to prominence in the mid-1990s. Although the early word processors evolved to use tag-based markup for document formatting, most modern word processors take advantage of a graphical user interface providing some form of what-you-see-is-what-you-get ("WYSIWYG") editing. Most are powerful systems consisting of one or more programs that can produce a combination of images, graphics and text, the latter handled with type-setting capability.
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It was a long way from being a mass-market product. Its very name – MK standing for "Microcomputer Kit" – was indicative of its origins as a product developed by, and for, hobbyists. It had no screen but instead used an LED segment display (though Science of Cambridge did produce an add-on module allowing it to be hooked up to a UHF TV); it had no case, consisting of an exposed circuit board; it had no built-in storage capabilities and only 256 bytes of memory; and input was via a 20-key hexadecimal keyboard.MK14 advertisement (1978) Despite the limitations of the machine it sold a respectable 10–15,000 units; by comparison, the much more expensive Apple II had only sold 9,000 units in the United States, a much bigger market, in 1978.
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Bank select switch on Cromemco memory board was used to map the memory into one or more of 8 distinct 64 KB banks. Processors with 16-bit addressing (8080, Z80, 6502, 6809, etc.) commonly used in early video game consoles and home computers can directly address only 64 KB. Systems with more memory had to divide the address space into a number of blocks that could be dynamically mapped into parts of a larger address space. Bank switching was used to achieve this larger address space by organizing memory into separate banks of up to 64 KB each. Blocks of various sizes were switched in and out via bank select registers or similar mechanisms. Cromemco was the first microcomputer manufacturer to use bank switching, supporting 8 banks of 64 KB in its systems.
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Atari proposed to IBM in 1980 that it act as original equipment manufacturer for an IBM microcomputer, a potential solution to IBM's known inability to move quickly to meet a rapidly changing market. The idea of acquiring Atari was considered, but rejected in favor of a proposal by Lowe that by forming an independent internal working group and abandoning all traditional IBM methods, a design could be delivered within a year, and a prototype within 30 days. The prototype worked poorly, but was presented with a detailed business plan which proposed that the new computer have an open architecture, use non-proprietary components and software, and be sold through retail stores, all contrary to IBM practice. It also estimated sales of 220,000 computers over three years, more than IBM's entire installed base.
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Abrash first bought a microcomputer while doing postgraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Before getting into technical writing, Abrash was a game programmer in the early days of the IBM PC. His first commercial game was a clone of Space Invaders published by Datamost in 1982 as Space Strike. He co-authored several PC games with Dan Illowsky, who had previously written the successful Pac-Man clone Snack Attack for the Apple II. Abrash and Illowsky worked together on the Galaxian-like Cosmic Crusader (1982), maze game Snack Attack II (1982), and platform game Big Top (1983). After working at Microsoft on graphics and assembly code for Windows NT 3.1, he returned to the video game industry in the mid-1990s to work on Quake for id Software.
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DigiBarn Friends: Allan Lundell The primary focus of the museum's collection is on the birth and evolution of personal, interactive computing, starting with the LINC (1962), considered by some to be the first true personal computer, and leading on up through the homebrew microcomputer revolution of the 1970s, the propagation of personal computing to homes and businesses in the 1980s and the spread of networked computing in the 1990s. The Digibarn does have a few large machines on display such as a Cray-1 supercomputer. One notable point is that a large number of the Digibarn artifacts are available to visitors in a hands-on fashion; allowing them to boot up, load software and interact with the machines. The museum is open to visitors by appointment only and is generally closed in the rainy winter months.
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The Altair also inspired the software development efforts of Paul Allen and his high school friend Bill Gates who developed a BASIC interpreter for the Altair, and then formed Microsoft. The MITS Altair 8800 effectively created a new industry of microcomputers and computer kits, with many others following, such as a wave of small business computers in the late 1970s based on the Intel 8080, Zilog Z80 and Intel 8085 microprocessor chips. Most ran the CP/M-80 operating system developed by Gary Kildall at Digital Research. CP/M-80 was the first popular microcomputer operating system to be used by many different hardware vendors, and many software packages were written for it, such as WordStar and dBase II. Many hobbyists during the mid-1970s designed their own systems, with various degrees of success, and sometimes banded together to ease the job.
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's arcade game Asteroids existed for personal computers. The magazine stated in December 1982 that that year "few games broke new ground in either design or format ... If the public really likes an idea, it is milked for all it's worth, and numerous clones of a different color soon crowd the shelves. That is, until the public stops buying or something better comes along. Companies who believe that microcomputer games are the hula hoop of the 1980s only want to play Quick Profit". The degree of cloning was so great that in 1981, Atari warned in full-page advertisements "Piracy: This Game is Over", stating that the company "will protect its rights by vigorously enforcing [its] copyrights and by taking appropriate action against unauthorized entities who reproduce or adapt substantial copies of ATARI games", like a home-computer clone.
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SCAMP emulated an IBM 1130 minicomputer in order to run APL/1130. In 1973, APL was generally available only on mainframe computers, and most desktop sized microcomputers such as the Wang 2200 or HP 9800 offered only BASIC. Because SCAMP was the first to emulate APL/1130 performance on a portable, single user computer, PC Magazine in 1983 designated SCAMP a "revolutionary concept" and "the world's first personal computer".PC Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 6, November 1983, ‘'SCAMP: The Missing Link in the PC's Past?‘’ This seminal, single user portable computer now resides in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.. Successful demonstrations of the 1973 SCAMP prototype led to the IBM 5100 portable microcomputer launched in 1975 with the ability to be programmed in both APL and BASIC for engineers, analysts, statisticians, and other business problem- solvers.
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Less than 20,000 lines of code almost all in C composed the Unix kernel as of 1983, and more than 75% was not machine-dependent. By that year Unix or a Unix-like system was available for at least 16 different processors and architectures from about 60 vendors; BYTE noted that computer companies "may support other [operating] systems, but a Unix implementation always happens to be available", and that DEC and IBM supported Unix as an alternative to their proprietary operating systems. Microcomputer Unix became commercially available in 1980, when Onyx Systems released its Zilog Z8000-based C8002 and Microsoft announced its first Unix for 16-bit microcomputers called Xenix, which the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) ported to the 8086 processor in 1983. Other companies began to offer commercial versions of Unix for their own minicomputers and workstations.
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In electronics, a jiffy is the period of an alternating current power cycle, 1/60 or 1/50 of a second in most mains power supplies. In computing, a jiffy was originally the time between two ticks of the system timer interrupt. It is not an absolute time interval unit, since its duration depends on the clock interrupt frequency of the particular hardware platform. Early microcomputer systems such as the Commodore 64 and many game consoles (which use televisions as a display device) commonly synchronize the system interrupt timer with the vertical frequency of the local television standard, either 59.94 Hz with NTSC systems, or 50.0 Hz with most PAL systems. Jiffy values for various Linux versions and platforms have typically varied between about 1 ms and 10 ms, with 10 ms reported as an increasingly common standard in the Jargon File.
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In this respect, it is pre-dated by the 1973 MCM/70, among others, but the Sphere included a full-sized display that these generally lacked. When Byte Magazine did its annual history of the computer, it always included Sphere 1, showing that prior microcomputers lacked the user I/O interface built into the Sphere I. The Sphere 1 also included a keyboard-operated reset feature consisting of two keys wired in series that sent a reset signal to the CPU triggering a hard reboot. Wise considered this to be the first keyboard activated reset -- a predecessor to the now-common Control-Alt-Delete combination.Vintage Sphere Computer at the "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum", 2013-03-10 It is not clear how many systems were sold; production models were sent to computer stores, but the company disappeared shortly thereafter.
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Atari's management decided to change their work to a home computer system instead. Their knowledge of the home market through the VCS resulted in machines that were almost indestructible and just as easy to use as a games machine—simply plug in a cartridge and go. The new machines were first introduced as the Atari 400 and 800 in 1978, but production problems prevented widespread sales until the next year. With a trio of custom graphics and sound co-processors and a 6502 CPU clocked ~80% faster than most competitors, the Atari machines had capabilities that no other microcomputer could match. In spite of a promising start with about 600,000 sold by 1981, they were unable to compete effectively with Commodore's introduction of the Commodore 64 in 1982, and only about 2 million machines were produced by the end of their production run.
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The system uses a 16-bit Western Design Center 65816 chip rather than the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 or variants, which were used by virtually all of Acorn's previous microcomputer products. 128 KB or 512 KB RAM could be fitted, expandable to 1024 KB. For display capabilities, it employs the "Aberdeen" ULA originally developed for the Electron (reputed to be the largest ULA or gate array ever developed at that time) and supported a monochrome version of Teletext using software emulation for access to services such as Prestel. Full-colour teletext was supported using an additional expansion board. The Centre for Computing History notes that an example of the machine in their possession does not contain a Ferranti-manufactured ULA, indicating that a Mietec IC with an Acorn part number of 0252,602 could possibly be a ULA from another source.
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Since true CDP "backup write operations are executed at the level of the basic input/output system (BIOS) of the microcomputer in such a manner that normal use of the computer is unaffected", true CDP backup must in practice be run in conjunction with a virtual machine or equivalent—ruling it out for ordinary personal backup applications. It is therefore discussed in the "Enterprise client-server backup" article, rather than in the "Backup" article. Some solutions marketed as continuous data protection may only allow restores at fixed intervals such as 15 minutes or one hour or 24 hours, because they automatically take incremental backups at those intervals. Such "near- CDP"—short for near-continuous data protection—schemes are not universally recognized as true continuous data protection, as they do not provide the ability to restore to any point in time.
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Rockwell International—who second-sourced the 6502, along with Synertek—released their own microcomputer in one board in 1978, the AIM 65. The AIM included a full ASCII keyboard, a 20-character 14-segment alphanumeric LED display, and a small cash register-like printer. A debug monitor was provided as standard firmware for the AIM, and users could also purchase optional ROM chips with an assembler and a Microsoft BASIC interpreter to choose from. Finally, there was the Synertek SYM-1 variant, which could be said to be a machine halfway between the KIM and the AIM; it had the KIM's small display, and a simple membrane keyboard of 29 keys (hex digits and control keys only), but provided AIM-standard expansion interfaces and true RS-232 (voltage level as well as current loop mode supported).
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Only a single 5-volt power supply is needed, like competing processors and unlike the 8080. The 8085 uses approximately 6,500 transistors.The history of the microcomputer-invention and evolution, S Mazor - Proceedings of the IEEE, 1995 The 8085 incorporates the functions of the 8224 (clock generator) and the 8228 (system controller) on chip, increasing the level of integration. A downside compared to similar contemporary designs (such as the Z80) is the fact that the buses require demultiplexing; however, address latches in the Intel 8155, 8355, and 8755 memory chips allow a direct interface, so an 8085 along with these chips is almost a complete system. The 8085 has extensions to support new interrupts, with three maskable vectored interrupts (RST 7.5, RST 6.5 and RST 5.5), one non-maskable interrupt (TRAP), and one externally serviced interrupt (INTR).
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The Quill was generally very well received by the computer press at the time of its release. Micro Adventurer described it as "a product [...] to revolutionise the whole microcomputer scene" and rated it "10 out of 10", while Computer and Video Games described it as "worth every penny of the £14.95 price tag", while CRASH said it was "almost ludicrously underpriced for what it does and, more importantly, what it allows others to do." Sinclair User were somewhat initially less enthusiastic, saying "no package, even if it is brilliant in the production of games using the sausage machine technique, will provide an answer to properly machine-coded and original games", although later in 1984 they said "The Quill produces programs on a par with handwritten commercial programs". The Quill was awarded "Best Utility" in the CRASH Readers Awards 1984.
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Portal laptop in September 1980 at the SICOB show in PARIS The portable micro computer the "Portal" of the French company R2E Micral CCMC officially appeared in September 1980 at the Sicob show in Paris. The Portal was a portable microcomputer designed and marketed by the studies and developments department of the French firm R2E Micral in 1980 at the request of the company CCMC specializing in payroll and accounting. The Portal was based on an intel 8085 processor, 8-bit, clocked at 2 MHz. It was equipped with a central 64 KB RAM, a keyboard with 58 alpha numeric keys and 11 numeric keys (separate blocks), a 32-character screen, a floppy disk: capacity = 140 000 characters, of a thermal printer: speed = 28 characters / sec, an asynchronous channel, a synchronous channel, a 220 V power supply.
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The new owner was Microware LP. Microware initially produced a version of BASIC and a real-time kernel for the Motorola 6800 processor, and was asked by Motorola to develop what turned into BASIC09 for the then-new Motorola 6809 processor. Having written BASIC09, they decided it needed an operating system underlying it, and they created the first version of OS-9. OS-9 was ported to the 68000 family of processors and, after being rewritten mostly in C, to the Intel 80x86, PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, and some of the Hitachi SuperH (SH) series processors. Initially, in the days of the SS-50 bus and SS-50C bus systems such as SWTPC, Gimix, and Smoke Signal Broadcasting, OS-9 was used more as a general purpose microcomputer operating system and had a large, active hobbyist-user population.
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Application of a Professional 350 in a university department — a consumer's report, in: Proceedings Digital Equipment Computer Users Society. Amsterdam, p. 368. In addition, a new user would have to learn an awkward, slow, and inflexible menu-based user interface which appeared to be radically different from PC DOS or CP/M, which were more commonly used on the 8080- and 8088-based microcomputers of the time. A second offering, the DECmate II was the latest version of the PDP-8-based word processors, but not really suited to general computing, nor competitive with Wang Laboratories' popular word processing equipment. DEC Rainbow 100, floor-mounted The most popular early DEC microcomputer was the dual-processor (Z80 and 8088) Rainbow 100, which ran the 8-bit CP/M operating system on the Z80 and the 16-bit CP/M-86 operating system on the Intel 8088 processor.
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The Micro User (titled BBC Micro User in the first three issues) was a British specialist magazine catering to users of the BBC Microcomputer series, Acorn Electron, Acorn Archimedes and, to a limited extent, the Cambridge Z88. It had a comprehensive mix of reviews of games, application software, and the latest Acorn computers; type-in programs (duplicated on a "cover disk" which was available separately), a correspondence page offering help with computer problems, and approachable technical articles on programming and the BBC Micro's internals. The magazine hosted the long-running Body Building series by Mike Cook, in which each article introduced a small electronics project that could be built and connected to one of the BBC Micro's I/O ports. The project could be ordered in kit form or fully assembled, or the reader could source the parts and design as the articles contained a circuit diagram.
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1980 – First online presence as GRI Gerenciador de Redes Itautec "Itautec Network Services Provider" and Banktec mainframes. 1981 – Central agency of Itaú is founded, including an automation system developed by Itautec. 1982 – Bank of Brazil installs GRI and Banktec 1985 – PC/XT microcomputer launched 1986 – Itautec installs the first compact Automated teller machine 1989 – GRIP (Gerenciamento de Redes Itautec para PC "Itautec Network Management for PCs") is launched 1990 – Launch of first Notebook computer, IS 386 Note 1994 – Itautec launches a second- generation ATM in Brazil 1995 – First version of Banktec Multicanal in Banco Itaú Argentina 2001 – First ATMs exported to United States/Europe 2002 – Itautec acquires technology from NMD for DelaRue, and installs the first WEB system in Banco Itaú Buen Ayre. 2009 – Itautec ranks in the 24th position in Fintech ranking, that lists the world's largest IT providers. 2011 – Itautec debuts world’s first touchless 3D ATM.
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Microsoft Corporation ( ) is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft ranked No. 21 in the 2020 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; it was the world's largest software maker by revenue as of 2016 and is considered one of the domestic Big Five technology companies. Microsoft (the word being a portmanteau of "microcomputer software") was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800.
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While 32- and 64-bit processors are more prominent in modern consumer electronics, 4-bit CPUs can be bought online at down to $0.18 (in bulk for 10000 units, a minimum order over $3), however 20 non- obsolete 8-bit CPUs can be bought for $1.80 ($0.09 per unit), a fraction of the 4-bit price, and even a single modern 32-bit microcontroller can be bought for $0.24 so it's unclear if 4-bit CPUs are still used for anything else than for replacement parts. For example, one bicycle computer specifies that it uses a "4 bit 1-chip microcomputer". Other typical uses include coffee makers, infrared remote controls, and security alarms. , most PC motherboards, especially laptop motherboards, use a 4-bit LPC bus (introduced in 1998) to connect the southbridge to the motherboard firmware flash ROM (UEFI or BIOS) and the Super I/O chip.
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When Microsoft announced Windows 1.0 in November 1983, International Business Machines (IBM), Microsoft's important partner in popularizing MS-DOS for the IBM PC, notably did not announce support for the forthcoming window environment. IBM determined that the microcomputer market needed a multitasking environment. When it released TopView in 1985, the press speculated that the software was the start of IBM's plan to increase its control over the IBM PC (even though IBM published the specifications publicly) by creating a proprietary operating system for it, similar to what IBM had offered for years on its larger computers. TopView also allowed IBM to serve customers who were surprised that the new IBM AT did not come with an operating system able to use the hardware multitasking and protected mode features of the new 80286 CPU, as DOS and most applications were still running in 8086/8088 real mode.
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VT55 Programmer's Manual, DEC, 1977 The VT125 added an implementation of the byte-efficient Remote Graphic Instruction Set, ReGIS, which used custom ANSI codes to send the graphics commands to the terminal, rather than requiring the terminal to be set to a separate graphics mode like the VT105. The VT100 form factor left significant room in the case for expansion, and DEC used this to produce several all-in-one stand-alone minicomputer systems. The VT103 included a cardcage and 4×4 (8-slot) Q-Bus backplane, sufficient to configure a small LSI-11 system within the case,VT103 LSI-11 Video Terminal User's Guide (Digital Equipment Corporation, 1979) and supported an optional dual TU58 DECtape II block addressable cartridge tape drive which behaves like a very slow disk drive. The VT180 (codenamed "Robin") added a single-board microcomputer using a Zilog Z80 to run CP/M.
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Founded in 1979 in St. Louis, Missouri by Arne Roestel, the company entered the market with the first computerized water phantom system (a scanner for measuring radiation fields as used in hospitals for radiation therapy) while developing and building computers using the all new multi-tasking microprocessor technology. The company name “Multidata” reflected this focus and its founder’s mission to develop the industry’s first desktop computer for microcomputer-controlled instrumentation. In 1982, the company introduced the first software-driven scanning system (CDS-III Clinical Dosimetry System, for film and water based scanning), obsoleting the external controller hardware previously required to interface with scanning instrumentation. The company collaborated to make radiation field datasets scanned with the dosimetry system compatible for use with the Memorial Sloan Kettering treatment dose calculation service, a project which later evolved into its first own radiation treatment planning software, RTP-123, released in 1987.
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Leonard Maltin gave it a mixed review calling it "Fail Safe for the Pac-Man Generation" and "Entertaining to a point". He concluded, "Incidentally, it's easy to see why this was so popular with kids: most of the adults in the film are boobs." Computer Gaming World stated that "Wargames is plausible enough to intrigue and terrifying enough to excite ... [it] makes one think, as well as feel, all the way", raised several moral questions about technology and society, and recommended the film to "Computer hobbyists of all kinds". Softline described the film as being "completely original"; unlike other computer-related films like Tron that "could (and do) exist in substantially the same form with some other plot", WarGames "could not exist if the microcomputer did not exist ... It takes the micro and telecommunications as a given—part of the middle-class American landscape".
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Single-board microcontrollers appeared in the late 1970s, when the appearance of early microprocessors, such as the 6502 and the Z80, made it practical to build an entire controller on a single board, as well as affordable to dedicate a computer to a relatively minor task. In March 1976, Intel announced a single-board computer product that integrated all of the support components required for their 8080 microprocessor, along with 1 kilobyte of RAM, 4 kilobytes of user-programmable ROM, and 48 lines of parallel digital I/O with line drivers. The board also offered expansion through a bus connector, but could be used without an expansion card cage when applications did not require additional hardware. Software development for this system was hosted on Intel's Intellec MDS microcomputer development system; this provided assembler and PL/M support, and permitted in-circuit emulation for debugging.
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The Mega II is a custom chip from Apple Computer that is essentially an entire Apple II computer-on-a-chip. At least three products from Apple made use of the chip between 1986 and 1995. It was most predominantly used in the Apple IIGS microcomputer, and an updated version, called the "Gemini" chip, was later used in the Apple IIe Card for the Macintosh LC. This custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) integrated most of the circuitry from earlier Apple II models onto one 84-pin PLCC integrated circuit, drastically simplifying design and cost for Apple. The Mega II contained the functional equivalent of an entire Apple IIe computer (sans processor), which, combined with the 65C02 processor, plus ROM and RAM, provided full support for legacy (8-bit) Apple II software in the Macintosh LC. The result was one of the earliest single chip examples of full system hardware emulation.
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Its major innovation was that it created the first widely available computer product which was able to sample analog signals at one million samples per second and store the resulting data to disk continuously. Given the technology available at the time—Motorola 68000 series CPUs of only a few megahertz in speed and slow disk drives—this product represented quite a technological achievement. The MASSCOMP MC-500 is a 68000-based microcomputer running a real-time variant of the Unix operating system. For a small company, MASSCOMP incorporated a number of ambitious and innovative projects in addition to Real-Time Unix, including their own C and Fortran compiler, a block diagram language known as "Laboratory Workbench" that allowed visual programming of real time systems to connect real-time analog inputs and outputs to signal processing operations and interactive virtual instruments for data display, and their own high level graphics subsystem.
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The AIDS software also presented to the user an end user license agreement, some of which read: : If you install [this] on a microcomputer... : then under terms of this license you agree to pay PC Cyborg Corporation in full for the cost of leasing these programs... : In the case of your breach of this license agreement, PC Cyborg reserves the right to take legal action necessary to recover any outstanding debts payable to PC Cyborg Corporation and to use program mechanisms to ensure termination of your use... : These program mechanisms will adversely affect other program applications... : You are hereby advised of the most serious consequences of your failure to abide by the terms of this license agreement; your conscience may haunt you for the rest of your life... : and your [PC] will stop functioning normally... : You are strictly prohibited from sharing [this product] with others... AIDS is considered to be an early example of a class of malware known as "ransomware".
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Richard Thomas Russell is the creator of the BBC BASIC for Windows programming language and the author of the Z80 and MS-DOS versions of BBC BASIC.Barry Collins, BBC Basic: the people's language,PC Pro, September 2006, pp140-141, ISSN 1355-4603Douglas J Mounter,The BBC BASIC (Z80) Reference Manual for the Z88, February 1989, Doug Mounter and Richard Russell,BBC BASIC (Z80) Reference Manual for the Tatung Einstein, 1984, He was educated at Gravesend Grammar School and Hertford College, Oxford graduating with a degree in physics in 1973. The same year he began work at the BBC as a design engineer. During his career with the BBC he was involved with several high-profile projects including the BBC Microcomputer John Coll, BBC Micro User Guide, British Broadcasting Corporation 1982, page 2, Carol Atack, , Acorn User, October 1988, ISSN 0263-7456 and the BBC Domesday Project.Andy Finney, The BBC Domesday Project, 2007 (bottom of page) He retired from the BBC in 2006.
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The "Big Three" computers of 1977: from left to right, the Commodore PET (PET 2001 model shown), the standard Apple II (with two Disk II drives) and the TRS-80 Model I. The advent of the microprocessor and solid- state memory made home computing affordable. Early hobby microcomputer systems such as the Altair 8800 and Apple I introduced around 1975 marked the release of low-cost 8-bit processor chips, which had sufficient computing power to be of interest to hobby and experimental users. By 1977 pre-assembled systems such as the Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80 (later dubbed the "1977 Trinity" by Byte Magazine) began the era of mass-market home computers; much less effort was required to obtain an operating computer, and applications such as games, word processing, and spreadsheets began to proliferate. Distinct from computers used in homes, small business systems were typically based on CP/M, until IBM introduced the IBM-PC, which was quickly adopted.
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Scripsit's main menu An alternate disk-only version named Superscripsit was available with spellchecking for some platforms, specifically the Model I, Model III, and Model 4.Word Processing And Data Management, Page 52, 14 Dec 1981, New York Magazine, ...Super SCRIPSIT word- processing program ($199, Model III), which rivals the features of $10,000 office word-processing machines. Radio Shack's SCRIPSIT Dictionary ($149) contains the spellings of over 60,000 commonly used words... This version basically matches the functionally of the normal Scripsit for disk-based platforms such as the Model II, Model 12, and Model 16."Radio Shack release multiuser software", Page 11, April 9, 1984, InfoWorld, "...released two multiuser software packages for its powerful Model 16 microcomputer system....and Scripsit word-processing programs...The Model 16 can accommodate up to six users..." Some additional features such as boilerplating and integration with Profile, Tandy's database program for all of their TRS-80 platforms, are available for the disk versions.
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"An Investigation of the validity, reliability, and acceptance by children of a microcomputer administration of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) ," As computer-human technology improves, future PPVT e-assessments research may include use of visual tracking computer interface such as wearable eye tracking glasses "Eye tracking gives Rett Syndrome patients a voice,"Davis, John (2011). "Eye- Tracking Devices Help Disabled Use Computers," so that disabled adults can respond to PPVT test items by scanning the visual field and fixing their eye gaze on the visual item they select. Future PPVT e-assessment research could integrate the human nervous system with e-administration of the PPVT. The human nervous system e-assessment would involve assessment of the P300 (P3) wave event related potential (ERP) between visual picture test items and the picture word comparing and contrasting the correct pairing of the word and picture against incorrect pairing of words and pictures.
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AST Screen Print Logo on custom chip. AST's original business was the manufacture and marketing of a broad range of microcomputer expansion cards, later focusing on higher-density replacements for the standard I/O cards in the IBM PC. A typical AST multifunction card of the mid-1980s would have an RS-232 serial port, a parallel printer port, a battery-backed clock/calendar (the original IBM PC did not have one), a game port, and 384 KB of DRAM (added to the 256 KB on the motherboard to reach the full complement of 640 KB) - marketed under the product name 'SixPakPlus'. A similar expansion card was produced for the 8-bit Apple II, named the AST Multi I/O, which offered a serial and parallel interface, plus a battery-backed clock/calendar. In 1987 AST produced a pair of expansions cards for the Apple IIGS computer: The RamStakPlus, a dual RAM/ROM memory expansion card; and the AST Vision Plus, a real-time video capture card.
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These included a "black phosphor" computer monitor, and a programming language with all the worst features of BASIC and COBOL, called BASBOL. The fictional company's flagship product was the TLS-8E, a computer which was sold with a factory-applied coating of oxidation on its peripheral edge card connectors ("to protect them from electricity"), a 5-inch "sloppy" disk drive, and a keyboard that eschewed the familiar QWERTY array for a 16-key matrix that included a TBA (To Be Announced) key. According to Busch, the operation was founded by one "Scott Nolan Hollerith" (after Adventure programmer Scott Adams, Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, and computer pioneer Herman Hollerith). S.N. Hollerith, it was said, graduated from the University of California at Phoenix in 1970 with a degree in Slide Rule Design, and quickly built KTI into a multi-thousand-dollar empire on a foundation of selling maintenance upgrades for DROSS-DOS 8E, a microcomputer operating system that was a subset of CP/M.
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The introductory advertisement for the KIM-1 microcomputer, April 1976 The KIM-1 consisted of a single printed circuit board with all the components on one side. It included three main ICs; the MCS6502 CPU, and two MCS6530 Peripheral Interface/Memory Devices. Each MCS6530 comprises a mask programmable 1024 x 8 ROM, a 64 x 8 RAM, two 8 bit bi-directional ports, and a programmable interval timer. The KIM-1 brochure said "1 K BYTE RAM" but it actually had 1152 bytes. The memory was composed of eight 6102 static RAMs (1024 x 1 bits) and the two 64 byte RAMs of the MCS6530s. In the 1970s memory sizes were expressed in several ways. Semiconductor manufacturers would use a precise memory size such as 2048 by 8 and sometimes state the number of bits (16384). Mini and mainframe computers had various memory widths (8 bits to over 36 bits) so manufacturers would use the term "words", such as 4K words.
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CPT Corporation was founded in 1971 by Dean Scheff in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with co-founders James Wienhold and Richard Eichhorn. CPT first designed, manufactured, and marketed the CPT 4200, a dual-cassette-tape machine that controlled a modified IBM Selectric typewriter to support text editing and word processing. The CPT 4200 was followed in 1976 by the CPT VM (Visual Memory), a partial-page display-screen dual-cassette-tape unit, and shortly thereafter by the CPT 8000, a full-page display dual-diskette desktop microcomputer that drove stand-alone daisy wheel printers. Subsequent products included (1) variants on the 8000 series; (2) the CPT 6000 series, which had a lower capacity, smaller screen, and was less expensive; (3) the CPT 9000 series, which had a larger capacity and could run IBM personal computer software; (4) the CPT Phoenix series, which had a graphical capabilities; (5) CPT PT, a software-only reduced version that ran on IBM personal computers and clones; and (6) other related products.
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In February 1984 BYTE described how "the personal computer market seems to be shadowed under a cloud of compatibility: the drive to be compatible with the IBM Personal Computer family has assumed near-fetish proportions", which it stated was "inevitable in the light of the phenomenal market acceptance of the IBM PC". The magazine cited the announcement by North Star in fall 1983 of its first PC-compatible microcomputer. Founded in 1976, North Star had long been successful with 8-bit S-100 bus products, and had introduced proprietary 16-bit products, but now the company acknowledged that the IBM PC had become a "standard", one which North Star needed to follow. BYTE described the announcement as representative of the great impact IBM had made on the industry: The magazine expressed concern that "IBM's burgeoning influence in the PC community is stifling innovation because so many other companies are mimicking Big Blue".
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The 1977 Apple II, shown here with two Disk II floppy disk drives and a 1980s-era Apple Monitor II. The Apple II series (trademarked with square brackets as "Apple ][" and rendered on later models as "Apple //") is a family of home computers, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.), and launched in 1977 with the original Apple II. In terms of ease of use, features, and expandability, the Apple II was a major advancement over its predecessor, the Apple I, a limited-production bare circuit board computer for electronics hobbyists. Through 1988, a number of models were introduced, with the most popular, the Apple IIe, remaining relatively unchanged into the 1990s. A 16-bit model with much more advanced graphics and sound, the Apple IIGS, was added in 1986. While compatible with earlier Apple II systems, the IIGS had significantly different hardware, more in league with the Atari ST and Amiga.
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The 1801 series CPUs were a family of 16-bit Soviet microprocessors based on the indigenous Elektronika NC microarchitecture cores, but binary compatible with DEC's PDP-11 machines. First released in 1980, various models and variants of the series were among the most popular Soviet microprocessors and dominated embedded systems and military applications of the 1980s. They were also used in widely different areas such as graphing calculators (Elektronika MK-85) and industrial CNCs (Elektronika NC series), but arguably their most well-known use was in several Soviet general-purpose mini- and microcomputer designs like the SM EVM, DVK, UKNC, and BK families. Due to being the CPU of the popular Elektronika BK home computer, used in its late years as a demo machine, as well as the DVK micros that often offered a first glimpse into the UNIX world, this processor achieved something of a cult status among Soviet and then Russian programmers.
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The first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II. The first semiconductor transistors in the late 1940s were followed by the silicon-based MOSFET (MOS transistor) and monolithic integrated circuit (IC) chip technologies in the late 1950s, leading to the microprocessor and the microcomputer revolution in the 1970s. The speed, power and versatility of computers have been increasing dramatically ever since then, with MOS transistor counts increasing at a rapid pace (as predicted by Moore's law), leading to the Digital Revolution during the late 20th to early 21st centuries. Conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element, typically a central processing unit (CPU) in the form of a metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) microprocessor, along with some type of computer memory, typically MOS semiconductor memory chips. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing and control unit can change the order of operations in response to stored information.
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That year MECC began encouraging schools to adopt the Apple II microcomputer, purchasing large amounts at a discount and reselling them to schools. MECC began converting several of their products to run on microcomputers, and John Cook adapted the game for the Apple II; though the text-based gameplay remained largely the same, he added a display of the player's position along the trail on a map between rounds, and replaced the typing in the hunting and attack minigame with a graphical version in which a deer or attacker moves across the screen and the player presses a key to fire at it. A version for the Atari 8-bit family, again titled The Oregon Trail, was released in 1982. The Apple II version was included under the name Oregon as part of MECC's Elementary series, distributed to Minnesota schools for free and for profit to schools outside of the state, on Elementary Volume 6 in 1980.
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The 1970s and 1980s were also a time when physicists and mathematicians were attempting to model and analyze how simple component units, such as atoms, give rise to global properties, such as complex material properties at low temperatures, in magnetic materials, and within turbulent flows. Using cellular automata, scientists were able to specify systems consisting of a grid of cells in which each cell only occupied some finite states and changes between states were solely governed by the states of immediate neighbors. Along with advances in artificial intelligence and microcomputer power, these methods contributed to the development of "chaos theory" and "complexity theory" which, in turn, renewed interest in understanding complex physical and social systems across disciplinary boundaries. Research organizations explicitly dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of complexity were also founded in this era: the Santa Fe Institute was established in 1984 by scientists based at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the BACH group at the University of Michigan likewise started in the mid-1980s.
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GDC 2016. He, along with Erich and Max Schaefer, were responsible for the development of Gordo 106 on the Atari Lynx. David Brevik was first introduced to the video game industry during his childhood with the Atari VCS that his father Colin brought into their household and with the Apple II Plus microcomputer one of his teachers kept at his classroom for use with his students, with some of his favorite video games being fantasy-themed titles such as Atari's Adventure and On-Line Systems' Wizard and the Princess, as he was a fan of the fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. In 1979, his father brought home the Apple II Plus computer and Brevik began to garner interest in developing games, learning by himself how to write code and refining his skills, eventually managing to create small programs during his high school period and started having aspirations to devote himself making games as a career.
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Successful demonstrations of the 1973 SCAMP prototype led to the first commercial IBM 5100 portable microcomputer launched in 1975. The product incorporated an IBM PALM processor, CRT, full function keyboard and the ability to be programmed in both APL and BASIC for engineers, analysts, statisticians and other business problem-solvers. (IBM provided different models of the 5100 supporting only BASIC, only APL, or both selectable by a physical switch on the front panel.)This author learned this from an original IBM document for operators of the 5100 but does not recall the title of the document. IBM referred to its PALM processor as a microprocessor, though they used that term to mean a processor that executes microcode to implement a higher-level instruction set, rather than its conventional definition of a complete processor on a single silicon integrated circuit; the PALM processor was a large circuit board populated with over a dozen chips.
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Atkinson, P, (2013) DELETE: A Design History of Computer Vapourware , London: Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 62-3, 66-8, 70, 73-4, 76-9, 86-8, 90-1, 138, 140 His work included a human-centered design model in 1973 to complement the IBM engineering prototype of SCAMP SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable), a prototype name for an IBM advanced microcomputer made in 1973 dubbed by PC Magazine as "the world's first personal computer".Friedl, Paul J., "SCAMP: The Missing Link in the PCs Past", PC Magazine, PC 2, No. 6, November, 1983, pp.190-7 Examples of Hardy's advanced PC concepts are published in the book: DELETE: A Design History of Computer VapourwareAtkinson, P, (2013) DELETE: A Design History of Computer Vapourware , London: Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 62-3, 66-8, 70, 73-4, 76-9, 86-8, 90-1, 138, 140 As corporate head of the IBM Design Program,Aldersey-Williams, H., (1992) World Design: Nationalism and Globalism in Design, New York: Rizzoli, pp.
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"The Autodesk File". Fourmi Lab. Retrieved 2013-08-27 and also financed the creation of PC Magazine. Lifeboat was founded in 1976Programmers Paradise Inc., Form 10-K, for the fiscal year ended December 31, 1996 or 1977 by Larry Alkoff and Tony Gold.Lifeboat Associates Rescues Alien Hardware, Intelligent Machines Journal, December 11, 1978 By mid-1981 the company had same-name affiliates in England, Switzerland, France, Germany, Japan and Oakland, California.Lifeboat Launches Offices in CA, Japan, InfoWorld, May 25, 1981 PC Magazine in 1982 wrote that Lifeboat "has published and marketed more CP/M application programs on more 8-bit machines than anyone in the world", and in 1983 InfoWorld said that Lifeboat was the largest publisher of microcomputer software in the world.Does corporate America need CP/M?, InfoWorld, August 15, 1983 Lifeboat Associates successfully combined many roles, including publisher and distributor, and actively solicited authors for software products that met its standards.A New Factor in Software Distribution, Computerworld, Sep 27, 1982As an author this might be your most important line.
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The game was copied to several of the early minicomputer installations in American academic institutions after its initial release, making it potentially the first video game to be available outside a single research institute. Spacewar was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and was widely recreated on other minicomputer and mainframe computers of the time, later migrating to early microcomputer systems. Early computer scientist Alan Kay noted in 1972 that "the game of Spacewar blossoms spontaneously wherever there is a graphics display connected to a computer," and contributor Martin Graetz recalled in 1981 that as the game initially spread it could be found on "just about any research computer that had a programmable CRT". Although the game was widespread for the era, it was still very limited in its direct reach: the PDP-1 was priced at and only 55 were ever sold, most without a monitor, which prohibited the original Spacewar or any game of the time from reaching beyond a narrow, academic audience.
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The title page of the assembly language code that produced Altair BASIC, developed by Allen, Gates, and Monte Davidoff, with two early Microsoft business cards showing Gates as president and Allen as vice president Allen and Gates formed Microsoft in 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and began marketing a BASIC programming language interpreter, with their first employee being high school friend and collaborator Ric Weiland. Allen came up with the name of "Micro-Soft", a combination of "microcomputer" and "software". Microsoft committed to delivering a disk operating system (DOS) to IBM for the original IBM PC in 1980, although they had not yet developed one, and Allen spearheaded a deal for Microsoft to purchase QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) written by Tim Paterson who was employed at Seattle Computer Products.MS-DOS paternity suit settled The RegisterMicrosoft co-founder Paul Allen dies at 65 after a battle with cancer Business Insider As a result of this transaction, Microsoft secured a contract to supply the DOS that ran on IBM's PC line and led to Allen's and Gates' wealth and success.
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Two Hitachi 68HC000 CPUs being used on an arcade-game PCB At its introduction, the 68000 was first used in high-priced systems, including multiuser microcomputers like the WICAT 150, early Alpha Microsystems computers, Sage II / IV, Tandy 6000 / TRS-80 Model 16, and Fortune 32:16; single-user workstations such as Hewlett-Packard's HP 9000 Series 200 systems, the first Apollo/Domain systems, Sun Microsystems' Sun-1, and the Corvus Concept; and graphics terminals like Digital Equipment Corporation's VAXstation 100 and Silicon Graphics' IRIS 1000 and 1200. Unix systems rapidly moved to the more capable later generations of the 68k line, which remained popular in that market throughout the 1980s. By the mid-1980s, falling production cost made the 68000 viable for use in personal and home computers, starting with the Apple Lisa and Macintosh, and followed by the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, and Sharp X68000. On the other hand, the Sinclair QL microcomputer was the most commercially important utilisation of the 68008, along with its derivatives, such as the ICL One Per Desk business terminal.
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Electrocop began development prior to the existence of any functional Atari Lynx hardware. Electrocop was conceived by Greg Omi when he worked at Epyx as games developer and programmer alongside Chuck Sommerville. In an online interview with website The Atari Times, Omi recounted about the development process of the game, stating that work on the project began before any functional Atari Lynx hardware existed and the team were working on an emulator of the console on the Amiga microcomputer at a slow frame rate, in addition of also using a video camera to scan the image in order to test how the graphics would look like once the hardware was finalized, although an early revision of the Lynx capable of displaying raster graphics was made later during development. Omi also stated that he initially had a lack of knowledge of 3D computer graphics and matrices, as he needed a graphical perspective for his project and consulted Blue Lightning programmer Stephen Landrum in how to write it, as the system could not perform sprite rotation.
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As a result, some DOS programs would no longer work. To maintain compatibility with the PC and XT behavior, the AT included an A20 line gate (Gate A20) that made memory addresses on the AT wrap around to low memory as they would have on an 8088 processor. This gate could be controlled, initially through the keyboard controller, to allow running programs which were designed for this to access an additional 65,520 bytes (64 KiB of memory in real mode. At boot time, the BIOS first enables A20 when counting and testing all of the system's memory, and disables it before transferring control to the operating system. Enabling the A20 line is one of the first steps a protected mode x86 operating system does in the bootup process, often before control has been passed onto the kernel from the bootstrap (in the case of Linux, for example). The high memory area (HMA) is the RAM area consisting of the first 64 KiB, minus 16 bytes, of the extended memory on an IBM PC/AT or compatible microcomputer. Originally, the logic gate was a gate connected to the Intel 8042 keyboard controller. Controlling it was a relatively slow process.
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By 1982, microcomputer chess programs could evaluate up to 1,500 moves a second and were as strong as mainframe chess programs of five years earlier, able to defeat almost all players. While only able to look ahead one or two plies more than at their debut in the mid-1970s, doing so improved their play more than experts expected; seemingly minor improvements "appear to have allowed the crossing of a psychological threshold, after which a rich harvest of human error becomes accessible", New Scientist wrote. While reviewing SPOC in 1984, BYTE wrote that "Computers—mainframes, minis, and micros—tend to play ugly, inelegant chess", but noted Robert Byrne's statement that "tactically they are freer from error than the average human player". The magazine described SPOC as a "state-of- the-art chess program" for the IBM PC with a "surprisingly high" level of play, and estimated its USCF rating as 1700 (Class B). At the 1982 North American Computer Chess Championship, Monroe Newborn predicted that a chess program could become world champion within five years; tournament director and International Master Michael Valvo predicted ten years; the Spracklens predicted 15; Ken Thompson predicted more than 20; and others predicted that it would never happen.
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Nett Warrior followed the Land Warrior system, which was deployed to Iraq in spring 2007 and then later to Afghanistan after the program had been cut in Army budgets. Land Warrior allowed combat leaders to track the locations of their men and view maps and other tactical information through a small helmet-mounted computer screen, featured a microcomputer processor for storing maps, mission- specific imagery, and graphics, used a navigation system to track the subordinate leaders' positions which appeared as icons on a digital map, and had a digital voice and text radio to send e-mails and talk to others wearing the system. Originally named the Ground Soldier System, its name was changed to Nett Warrior on 14 June 2010 (also the Army's 235th birthday) after then- lieutenant Robert B. Nett who was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1944 during World War II. The name was chosen because the system is designed to connect soldiers with the Army's tactical network, and program officials wanted it to be named after a maneuver leader.Ground Soldier System renamed for MoH recipient - Armytimes.com, 14 June 2010 The first increment of Nett Warrior was introduced at the Network Integration Evaluation 11.2 assessment in spring 2011.
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Yuen began his career in 1973 as an instructor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Kasetsart University, where he has since continued working. He began working on software development for microcomputers in 1978, and worked on natural language processing algorithms from 1980. He and his team demonstrated the first interactive text editor for the Thai language in 1981, and released Thai Easy Writer, the first Thai word processing application, the following year... Yuen was among the proponents for the creation of a standard Thai language system for computers (over twenty had become available by 1984), and vice-chaired the committee for the development of the TIS 620-2529 character set and its subsequent version, TIS 620-2533.. The Microcomputer Research Laboratory, which Yuen was head of, also developed the Thai Kernel System, a hardware- independent system designed to promote system-intercompatibility for Thai- language application development, in 1990, but this failed to gain a user base as it lost ground to the expanding Microsoft Windows systems.. In his research, Yuen pioneered the utilization of dictionary databases for Thai word splitting and machine translation, created the first Thai language thesaurus. and developed word and sentence reconstruction methods for use in spell checking applications, among other things.
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In 1968 computer systems were brought in connection with communication and the potential way of working together when not at the same place by Dr. J. C. R. Licklider, head of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In his article “The Computer as a Communication Device” he envisioned the idea that there should be a way of “facilitating communication among people without bringing them together in one place” , which eventually led to ARPANET, commercial time-sharing systems and finally the Internet. When the Microcomputer was invented in 1970, everyone learned about office automation, which led to the first collaborative software called Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) that allowed to do surveys, threaded replies and group-structured approaches. In 1991 educator C. A. Ellis came up with the definition of the term "groupware" as “computer- based systems that support groups of people engaged in a common task (or goal) and that provide an interface to a shared environment” . Paul Wilson then shaped the term “Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). He described it as “a generic term which combines the understanding of the way people work in groups with the enabling technologies of computer networking, and associated hardware, software, services, and techniques”.
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