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August 12th, 1981
Decisions, decisions. Do I wear the blue shirt with the white tie or the white shirt with the blue?
While I was agonising over this earth shaking choice, IBM executives quietly decided to go ahead with the introduction of the IBM Personal Computer, sure that they could sell around 100,000 units to hobbyists in the States. The IBM PC, incidentally, was the brainchild of Bill Lowe, director of IBM's Entry Level Systems Laboratory at Boca Raton, Florida
The design of the IBM PC resulted in many functions that were decentralised and incorporated as "plug-in" modules, such as video, memory, and I/O ports. This created a huge peripheral market and perhaps more importantly, an "open" understanding of the hardware and bus architecture. While most competitors utilised the 8088, there were some manufacturers that could provide significantly improved performance through the use of the Intel 8086 and 80186 microprocessors. Also, the more specialised manufacturing capabilities of "clone" manufacturers could result in more savings to the customer.
This article will, as briefly as possible, detail the changes in architecture and power of the PC from those earliest days to the current technology, as it relates to Intel ® based computers.
First, a nod towards the other pioneers who helped create history…
1975
Altair MITS produced the first personal computer - in kit form. Soldering iron optional.
However, some claim that the 12-bit LINC (Laboratory INstruments Computer) was the first 'personal computer'. Developed at MIT (Lincoln Labs) in 1963 using DEC components, it inspired DEC to design its own PDP-8 in 1965, also considered an early 'personal computer').
The Altair 8800 advert - as it appeared in IEEE Computer 1975:
The age of the affordable computer.
MITS announces the dawning of the Altair 8800 Computer. A lot of brain power at a price that's bound to create love and understanding. To say nothing of excitement.
The Altair 8800 uses a parallel, 8-bit processor (the Intel 8080) with a 16-bit address. It has 78 basic machine instructions with variances over 200 instructions. It can directly address up to 65K bytes of memory and it is fast. Very fast. The Altair 8800's basic instruction cycle time is 2 microseconds. Combine this speed and power with Altair's flexibility (it can directly address 256 input and 256 output devices) and you have a computer that's competitive with most mini's on the market today.
The basic Altair 8800 Computer includes the CPU, front panel control board, front panel lights and switches, power supply (enough to power any additional cards), and expander board (with room for 3 extra cards) all enclosed in a handsome, aluminium case. Up to 16 cards can be added inside the main case.
Options now available include 4K dynamic memory cards, 1K static memory cards, parallel I/O cards, three serial I/O cards (TTL, R232, and TTY), octal to binary computer terminal, 32 character alpha-numeric display terminal, ASCII keyboard, audio tape interface, 4 channel storage scope (for testing), and expander cards.
Options under development include a floppy disc system, CRT terminal, line printer, floating point processor, vectored interrupt (8 levels), PROM programmer, direct memory access controller and much more.
PRICE Altair 8800 Computer: $439.00* kit $621.00* assembled
Prices and specifications subject to change without notice (That bits not changed in 25 years J Paul)
For more information or our free Altair Systems, Catalogue phone or write: MITS, 6328 Linn N.E.,
Albuquerque, N.M. 87108, 505/265-7553.
*In quantities of 1 (one). Substantial OEM discounts available. [Picture of computer, with switches and lights]
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1977
Commodore Pet and Apple ][, both using the Motorola 6502. TRS 80 also appeared in this year, based on the Zilog Z80
1980's
UK leads the world in adopting home computers…
Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81 (using Zilog Z80, Z81 chips), BBC (with Motorola 6502) & Dragon (with Motorola 6809)
1990's
Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, sporting the Motorola 68000 and bringing computers to the masses, albeit largely sold on the back of games like "Lemmings"
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