1915 1968 1972 1977 1978 1979

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1915
month unknown - Computers - Some history and background #1
By Darwyn F. Kelley Computer Historian

What is the difference between a Computer and a Calculator? One the most satisfactory definition states, "An automatic computer is a machine that manipulates symbols in accordance with given rules in a predetermined and self-directed manner.." The most significant word here undoubtedly is "self directed". Any calculating device whether it be an abacus or an adding machine must be other-directed, that is, man directed.

An automatic computer, however has the ability to accept data and then work upon that data

according to a preset program without human intervention, although human beings must, of course, devise the program which controls the automatic manipulation of the data. Regardless whether the computer is one of the special-purpose types for solving engineering and scientific problems or a general-purpose computer manufactured in large quantities, the principle remains the same. How did computers come into being and why did anyone want to build one in the first place? Starting from crude methods of piling stones to represent numbers and proceeding hrough such ingenious devices as the abacus, he has long been in pursuit of improved calculating methods. He has always been limited however, by the state of technology in the times in which he lived. As long ago as the 1820's Charles Babbage, in England made a "difference engine"., which was sound in principle, but which unfortunately was very unreliable due to the availability of only crudely machined parts. The first true computer to be manufactured in any quantities was Ford Instrument Computer in 1915. A mechanical analog device. The Ford Computer was a marvel of gear trains, linkages, and differentials. It was difficult to keep in adjustment and very complicated to manufacture, but it did the job it was intended to do- find and keep the range for naval guns. In 1930, the first general-purpose computer was built at MIT under the direction of Dr. Vannever Bush. It to was a mechanical monster, but it could be disconnected and reconnected to solve different equations. All of these devices were analog. That is they operated on real inputs such as voltages or the rotation of gears and they produced real outputs, such as training of the guns of a main battery. Analog computers have both advantages and disadvantages. They produce almost instantaneous output, but since they act upon analogies to numbers rather than on numbers themselves, their output is never perfectly accurate. They can be used to train a gun but not to calculate a payroll. In 1939, a major breakthrough occurred when Dr. Howard Aiken of Harvard completed the basic plans for asequential, digital, electromechanical computer. This computer was an unwieldy conglomeration of office calculating devices, but it embodied two impo

rtant concepts. First, it operated on real numbers, rather than on analogs of numbers, and, second it had the ability to make decisions. That is, it could compare two numbers when a partial result had been obtained and then follow one of two paths for further computation, depending upon the result of the comparison. All computers operate on this principle today. Dr. Aiken's machine was still an electromechanical device and naturally was subject to failure through wear and tear and had such commonplace troubles as simply getting dirty. Also there were obvious physical limitation on the speeds which it could be operated. The next major breakthrough came in 1946, when the first all-electronic, digital sequential computer was delivered. It was many times faster and far more reliable than any mechanical computer could be. It was an invention ofJ. Presper Eckert and Dr. John Mauchly, who later formed a company which eventually became, the UNIVAC Division of Sperry Rand. The name of this first Electronic Computer was ENIAC. (Acronym for :Electronic Numeric Integrated Automatic Computer). It was the father of all modern electronic computers. Next, in rapid succession came BINAC, the first computer with serial logic;Univac I , the first commercial computer, the Univac 1103A, the first computer to use core storage, the Univac Solid State, the first all Solid State Computer to be offered commercially, The Univac LARC, the world's most powerful computer at that time.

month unknown - Computers - Some history and background #2

By Darwyn F. Kelley Computer Historian

ENIAC The World's First Electronic Computer

The ENIAC computer, pictured above was installed ,at Aberdeen Proving Grounds , Aberdeen, Maryland. It weighed nearly 30 tons and occupied 15,000 square feet of floor space. ENIAC contained more than 19,000 vacuum tubes which were used to perform 5,000 additions per second. .As one might expect, making ENIAC function was a tedious task. Operators used plug boards and wires to program the desires operations and entered the numbers used in calculations by turning a series of dials until they corresponded to the correct digits. By today's standards, ENIAC was slow, but it was 60 times faster than the mechanical differential analyzer which it replaced and at that time this was a large advance. ENIAC led the computer field during the period 1949 through 1952when it served as the main computer workhouse for the solution of scientific problems of the Nation. It was the major instrument for the computation of all ballistic tables for the U.S. Army and Air Force. As a Sperry Univac, Senior System Engineer, assigned to the Univac installation at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in1957. ENIAC was delivered to the Ballistics Research Laboratory, (BRL) in 1946, therefore I missed this installation but did have many discussions with the personnel that used to work on this first amazing computer. It actually was not used to solve "Knotty Nuclear Problems" , but actually computed firing tables for the White Sands missile range. BRL also had many firsts., EDVAC and ORDVAC Computers were very powerful military computers which replaced ENIAC. Around 1958/1959 BRL decided to build a very advanced Scientific Computer. BRLESC. (BRL Electronic Scientific Computer). This was a very expensive and powerful computer but it did contain vacuum tubes at the time when all commercial computers were switching to solid state devices. This computer was made obsolete by Solid

State Technology. BINAC The next machine produced by the Eckert & Mauchly team was Binac, special-purpose computer, Only one was built. Binac embodied four important advances, however: it used serial instead of parallel logic; it was the first computer to be internally programmed; it was the first computer to use magnetic tape; and it was the first computer to use solid state elements. Internal programming eliminated the time-consuming and tedious task of changing a problem by connecting external cables. In parallel-logic systems, if one wishes to add two 3 digit numbers, one provides three add circuits, one for each column. In a serial machine, the columns are added one at a time, sequentially. This arrangement eliminates many parts and, of course, when the number of parts goes down so does the cost. Binac's use of Magnetic tape was limited to small reels. Small as it was, however, this 2 inch reel was the forerunner of the complex tape input and storage systems. In part, Binac achieved the speed necessary to the successful operation of a serial machine by the use of crystal diodes instead of vacuum tubes for switches.

All sequential machines really are giant switching networks. Vacuum tubes still were used for amplification, but this first use of crystal diodes, as long ago as 1948, foreshadowed today's all solid-state machines with their greatly increased speeds and greatly reduced size, power and cooling requirements, and costs. A solid state component uses the flow of electrons through a solid material. After Binac, new developments came thick and fast. The memory utilized in Binac was mercury tank memory. The design of this storage device was based on the very simple fact that an electrical pulse could be converted to a sound pulse (by means of piezo-electric quartz crystal and that this sound crystal would travel at relative low speed through a body of mercury. When it came out the other end, it could be reconverted to an electrical pulse by another crystal, amplified, and sent back into the tank. The net result was that the "bit" of information kept circulating until such time until called for by the computers circuitry. Mercury

Delay Memory was also utilized in the Univac I Computer.

month unknown - Computers - Some history and background #3

By Darwyn F. Kelley Computer Historian

UNIVAC 1

One of the largest factors in the success of UNIVAC I was the revolutionary input-output equipment offered with it. All input to the computer and output from it was by means of magnetic tape. The magnetic tapes were prepared off-line by a Unityper and information from them was printed out (also offline) by a Uniprinter. A keyboard and a typewriter were also

provided with UNIVAC I for getting information into and out of the computer, but these generally were used in the course of checking out programs and rarely during the actual computer run. The Uniservo I was for communication and intermediate storage between the input-output devices and the computer. The magnetic tape was recorded at 120 digits per inch and could move past the read-write heads at 100 inches per second. Since Mylar tape had not been invented and the other alternative was acetate film, (which was very unstable), Univac choose to use metallic tape. Uniservo used small tape reels because they each weighed 25 lbs, but were very reliable. Also vacuum buffering was not yet invented so the buffering technique was to use elaborate rubber bands. Before long, the Card-To-Tape Converter was added to the input-output array. It read punched cards and converted the data into pulses on magnetic tape ate the rate of 240 cards per minute. A single standard reel of tape could hold as many as 4000 punched cards. A new High Speed printer was introduced which read magnetic tape and printed at 600 lines per minute. Newer High-Speed Printers operated at about 720 lines per minute but technology at that time limited printer speeds to 720 line per minute. Improvement in Technology was an ongoing process. The Unityper II, occupied 2 cubic feet instead of 20. Besides costing less to begin width it costs less to maintain. Uniservo II tapes moved at the same speed as the Uniservo I tapes- 100 inches per second but they were effectively twice as fast because twice as much information was recorded per inch.

UNIVAC File Computer Remington Rand, through its acquisitions of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) in February 1950 and Engineering Associates (ERA) in December 1951 became the leading (and for a brief time the only) computer vendor in the world. Remington Rand decided to market a medium -scale computer to be called the UNIVAC File Computer. As its name indicated the File Computer was intended to provide access to data files stores on magnetic drums. This was very

unusual for that time. Most computers read in data records from punched cards, paper tape or magnetic tape, process them back out to cards or tape, but they had no provision for long term on-line storage of data. The original File Computer had a 1,070 word drum, a memory that had twelve 6-bit digits or characters per word. The computer performed decimal arithmetic on numbers represented in Excess-3(XS-3) code. In XS-3, each decimal digit was represented by a binary value three higher, that is, 0 by 000011, 1 by 000100, etc. There were also codes for letters and special characters, such as 0101100 for A, 010101 for B and so on. The 1070-word drum which had an average access time of 2.5 milliseconds, was for storage of data actually being worked on by the program. General storage data was provided by from one to ten 15,000 word drums, whose average access time was 17 milliseconds. It was possible to have a processor which did tape

sorting and collating, separately from the central processor. Besides doing the usual sort of batch work, the File Computer could provide interactive access to the stored data via one to ten terminals, which were called "input-output devices", An inputoutput device consisted of an inquiry typewriter, a punched card unit(using either 80 or 90 column punched cards), a paper type unit, a printer, and an optional Magnetic Tape drive. The input-output devices could operate independently from the Central Processing complex and perform input-output operations while the processor was doing something else. The File Computer Model 1 was built in 1957. It has twenty words of core storage, a tiny amount, but enough to provide for some internal programming capability, It allowed for a combination of internal and plug board instructions in the same operation, There were 27 instructions in the internal instruction set, including the arithmetic, comparison, jumps, suppression of left zeros, test for input from I/O station, and transfer to the plug board. The plug board had 19 operations, one of which transfer of control to the program memory. The memory instructions were twelve-digits in length, the last three specified the instruction code, while the others comprised three three-digit storage addresses. A field upgrade was later available which replaced the main memory drum with 1740 words of core memory this upgrade increased the operating speed by a factor of 3.6.

Eastern Airlines used a File Computer for their reservation system. In 1957 Eastern and the St. Paul engineering staff developed a terminal device, called an agent set, for use on the File Computer, which had a keyboard and push-button matrix for selection of the function to be performed. A demonstration of the agent set took place in August 1957, but the reservation system did not start running until September 1958. The system covered nine cities (Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Houston, New Orleans, New York-Newark, Philadelphia and Washington) and within two months was processing one transaction per second. Northwest Airlines started using this reservation system in November 1959 and Capitol Airlines followed in early 1960. Douglas Aircraft Company was the largest user of File Computers, with 7 installations. Other users of the File Computer included the C&P Telephone Co., Western Electric, Michigan Bell, First National City Bank, various Army and Marine Corp bases. (The photos above were taken by this writer in 1958 at Edgewood Army Chemical Center, Edgewood, Maryland) A series of development delays meant that the File Computers were delivered toward the end of the vacuum-tube generation of computer hardware. Transistor (second generation) computers began appearing in quantity in 1960 and 1961. These new Solid State computers made vacuum-tube computers such as the File Computer obsolete.

month unknown - Computers - Some history and background #4

By Darwyn F. Kelley Computer Historian

SOLID STATE TECHNOLOGY In 1952, Univac engineers developed a magnetic amplifier which they later trademarked under the name of Ferractor. Each of these tiny components could do the work of a vacuum tube and do it better with greater reliability. Their operating life was much longer. The obvious next step was to build a computer utilizing Ferractor magnetic amplifiers instead or using vacuum tubes. In1956 such a computer, the first of its kind, was delivered to the Air Research Center at Cambridge, Mass. A Solid State Computer naturally was much easier to maintain then the older vacuum computers. The technique of using Ferractor Amplifiers, together with miniaturized circuit elements such as resistors and capacitors were mounted on printed circuit boards . This was a revolutionary system. Two or three of these printed circuit boards replaced vacuum tube chassis. Instead of tracing a fault within the chassis, one would simply remove the faulty

board from the rack and replace it with a new one. A simple procedure today but bear in mind we are talking in the 1950-1960 time frames. The commercial version of this System was called the UVIVAC Solid State Computer. The first one installed in the Dresdner Bank in Hanover Germany, in 1956. This was the first delivery of an all solid state computer, to a commercial user anywhere in the world. Over 300 were installed and this writer was the lead Univac System Representative at the Bethlehem Steel Works in Baltimore, MD. (1960) The Solid State Computer was very interesting and fun to program. The main memory in the Solid State Computer was a 5000 word rotating drum. Generally high speed drums were very efficient and reliable but had one major flaw, one had to consider rotating latency when searching this device. You had to plan on when the drum, with your data , was under the read write heads. This latency problem did slow down your access time. A better solution was core memory. In the 1950's there was such a device in the laboratory stage of development. This was coincident-current memory, made of tiny solid state toroids, physically something like the Ferractor Magnetic Amplifiers, but with different properties. These toroids could be magnetized in one of two directions, and the direction of magnetization could be used logically in the computer circuitry to represent the on or off-or the one or zero-state of the first vacuum tube memories. Reversal of the direction of magnetization is accomplished by means of electrical pulses transmitted over wires threaded through the toroids. Core storage worked so well it became main storage for the computer itself. The UNIVAC 1103A Scientific Computerwas the first computer to have such a memory. The UNIVAC 1107 Computer was the first to use thin film storage for the ultra-high speed portion of its memory. NEW CONCEPTS IN LOGICAL DESIGN

The discussion so far has dealt largely with improvements in the hardware, but there are other approaches to increasing the efficiency and general usefulness of a computer. One is to take a look at the logic of the machine itself, and this is what was done with the LARC. LARC is the first system to employ what was called multi-level logic. That is, instead of thinking of the system as device in which data enters the memory through input and is acted upon serially, with the results becoming available serially through output media, the desi

gners thought of a system where many things could be happening simultaneously, even including the running of more than one program at a time. LARC actually used a second computer, called the Processor, to control traffic in and out of the main computer, the Arithmetic Unit. This freed the Arithmetic Unit for useful work 90 per cent of the time. Even the secondary LARC Computer, the Processor, is freed of many housekeeping chores by the use of input-output synchronizers for control of the peripheral equipment. Since the Processor has arithmetic circuitry, it is feasible to run a business data-processing problem on the Processor while the Arithmetic Unit, that is, the main computer, is working on a lengthy scientific problem. There was no physical limitations on the number of input-output channels available. The LARC core storage could store up to 97,500 computer words. More important than its size, however is the fact that a memory is modular and that the modules may be accessed independently. LARC could do all these things simultaneously: Compute, accept information from the console, read from two tapes, write on two tapes, read from three drums, write on two drums, read 450 cards per minute, operate two high speed printers on line, and operate two electronic page recorders on line. LARC was more than a fantastic piece of Hardware. A the time it was built and performancetested, it could handle systems of equations of a magnitude beyond the reach of any other

computer. Two of the systems were delivered in 1960, the first at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, operated by the University of California for the Atomic Energy Commission and the second, to the Navy's David Taylor Model Basin, Washington, DC. In passing the acceptance tests required by the Laboratory and the Model Basin, LARC, turned in some remarkable records. In the first performance test in April 1960, the Arithmetic Unit performed about 28 billion operations in two days. In every respect, the system performed beyond the demands of all the most stringent test ever devised for a computer. The severity of the test was due in part to the fact that the Lawrence Radiation Lab people who devised it were already among the most sophisticated computer users in the business.

month unknown - Computers - Some history and background #5

By Darwyn F. Kelley Computer Historian NEW CONCEPTS IN USAGE In 1960 most conventional business data processing was serial, that is, the data was gathered, stored, and then processed in batches. The application had to be completed before any particular item of information was available for review. Many applications needed to have "Real Time" access, I.E. Inventory, Payroll etc. One of the most pressing application at this time was Airline Reservations, also online banking. As stated before, in the File Computer

section of this report System was installed.

, a basic Airline Reservation

Late in 1960, Univac announced the first computer to be designed specifically for real-time applications. The Univac 490 Real Time Computer. This new computer could be connected to any telephone or telephone extension in the continental United States. It could also be connected so as to be addressable by any teletype or telegraph system in the U.S. A single input-output channel could handle as many as 4096 remote points, and one system was installed in 1960 1400 remote points. A much improved UNISET had been developed for this new computer. It included a keyboard allowing the ticket agent to enter the passenger's name and telephone number. Printouts initiated by the computer for reconfirmation or cancellation. The Uniset was equally adaptable for inventory control. The Unisaver was specifically designed for use in Savings Bank, branches. The customer's passbook was slipped into the Unisaver. Such information as account number, last balance etc. was then updated. SIGNIFICANCE OF REAL TIME PROCESSING Real-time data processing was the most important breakthrough in computer technology since the Univac I made automatic data processing available for business purposes. The Univac Real-Time System made it possible for the first time for management to monitor the course of actual events continuously, to compare this course with expected trends, and to correct to meet the up-to-date minute situation. I FEEL VERY FORTUNATE... I feel very fortunate that my career with Remington Rand, which later became Sperry Univac ,spanned the years 1954-1966. Being involved in this amazing transformation from punched card accounting , Unit Record equipment, to electro-mechanical calculators, to Vacuum tube computers, to Solid State Computers and finally to advanced Real-time and Multi-Tasking computers was very exciting. As a Programmer with Remington Rand/Sperry Rand and than a Senior System Analyst allowed me to be involved with some interesting accounts. I have written this paper outlining Remington Rand's major computer achievements from 1946 -1961. To me this was the most

exciting years of this new computer era. Listed below are some of the Major Univac firsts: ENIAC First all electronic digital Computer UNIVAC I First Commercial Computer UNIVAC 1103A First Computer to use Core Memory UNIVAC Solid State First All Solid State Computer to be offered commercially LARC The World's most powerful scientific system UNIVAC 1107 First Thin Film Memory Computer UNIVAC 490 First Real-Time Computer UNIVAC File Computer First Random Access Computer. If we look back and realize that Eniac was delivered in 1946 and this report encompasses the years -1946-1961, only 15 years, the progress made at that time was almost incredible. There other first not previously mentioned in this report related to Operational Software. Eniac was programmed by the utilization of plug-in cables to control the operations of the computer. Binac was the first internally programmed computer. Univac I was also internally programmed. The method used to program these first computers was the manipulation of bits. (0's and 1's). The terminology for this method of programming was, "machine language coding." Dr. GRACE HOPPER Dr. Grace Hopper a world renowned mathematician, joined the Eckert-Mauchly Corporation in 1949. Her best-known contribution to computing during this period was the invention, in 1953, of the first compiler, the intermediate program that translates English language instructions into the language of the target computer. She did this, she said, because she was "lazy" and hoped that "the programmer may return to being a mathematician." She named this Compiler, FLOWMATIC. She never again held only one job at a time. She went back and forth among institutions in the military, private industry, business, and academe, and in all these places she was regarded as one of the most incisive strategic "futurists" in the world of computing. Hopper remained associated with Eckert-Mauchly and its successors (Remington-Rand, Sperry-Rand, and Univac) until her official "retirement" in 1971. Her work on compilers and on making machines understand ordinary language instructions led ultimately to the development of the business language COBOL. Hopper's work also foreshadowed or embodied enormous numbers of developments that are still the very bones of digital computing: subroutines, formula translation, relative addressing, the linking loader, code optimization, and symbolic manipulation. At her death, she was an active consultant for Digital.

She was briefly retired from the Naval Reserve in 1966, but was called to active duty the next year to take charge of the Navy's standardization of COBOL and other languages. In December 1983, she was promoted to the

rank of commodore in a White House ceremony. Two years later, here rank was raised to rear Admiral, so she became Admiral Hopper. Throughout her life, it was her service to her country of which she was most proud. She died on New Year's Day in 1992 and, appropriately, was buried with full Naval honors at Arlington National Cemetery. I had the honor of working with Dr. Grace Hopper during my early days with Remington Rand and eventually renewed our acquaintance during a visit to the Pentagon in 1977. At that time she was housed in the pentagon and we worked together obtaining small Univac test computers for her Navy Research Lab. We had many discussions about the old days. She loved to tell the story about how the phrase "Debug" came about. One evening during the compilation of a program the Univac I had a power failure. As the Service Technicians were locating the cause of this power failure they came upon a rather large moth that had got into the circuitry and shorted out the power. Thus there was a bug in the hardware. They needed to "DEBUG" the circuitry! She actually coined the phrase DEBUG. Where would we be without this famous phrase?

1968
DECEMBER - The Mother of All Demos

Back in 1968, one man had a vision. This vision regarded sharing informations. The computer revolution gave the user a massive strength but very little was done to help people to work together. Mouse, hyperlinks and email where shown that day by Doug Engelbart and his researchers at Stanford during a 90 minute presentation. But most of all the desire for open exchange of informations fueled the demonstration. And that desire is still alive today as it needs to be fulfilled. Internet and the Open Source movement embodies part of what he wanted to demonstrate. Many GUI's concept were shown, as the mouse pointer, copy and paste functions, hierarchical organization of data. We can say that many Xerox PARC studies start probably from here... Still that day he talked about the ARPAnet project in which a few computers were linked on a network and that with a certain bandwidth he might present his demo from another town (yes net conference!)

1972
APRIL - 8008 microprocessor released by Intel.

Intel 8008 processor The Intel 8008 was an early byte-oriented microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and introduced in April 1972. Originally known as the 1201, the chip was commissioned by Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) to implement an instruction set designed for their Datapoint 2200 programmable terminal. As the chip was delayed and did not meet CTC's performance goals, the 2200 ended up using CTC's own TTL based CPU instead. An agreement permitted Intel to market the chip to other customers after Seiko expressed an interest in using it for a calculator. History CTC formed in San Antonio in 1968 under the direction of Austin O. "Gus" Roche and Phil Ray, both NASA engineers. Roche, in particular, was primarily interested in producing a desktop computer. However, given the immaturity of the market, the company's business plan mentioned only a ASR-33 Teletype replacement, which shipped as the Datapoint 3300. The case, designed by John "Jack" Frassanito, was deliberately designed to fit in the same space as an IBM Selectric typewriter, and used a video screen shaped to be the same aspect ratio as the IBM 029 punch card terminal. Although commercially successful, the 3300 had ongoing heat problems due to the amount of circuitry packed into such a small space. In order to address the heating and other issues, a re-design started that featured all of the internal circuitry reimplemented on a single chip. Looking for a company able to produce their chip design, Roche turned to Intel, then primarily a vendor of memory chips. Roche met with Bob Noyce, who expressed concern with the concept; Frassanito

recalls that "Noyce said it was an intriguing idea, and that Intel could do it, but it would be a dumb move. He said that if you have a computer chip, you can only sell one chip per computer, while with memory, you can sell hundreds of chips per computer." Another major concern was that Intel's existing customer base purchased their memory chips for use with their own processor designs; if Intel introduced their own processor they might be seen as a competitor, and their customers might look elsewhere for memory. Nevertheless, Noyce agreed to a $50,000 development contract in early 1970. Texas Instruments (TI) was also brought in as a second supplier. TI was able to quickly make samples of the 1201 based on Intel drawings, but these proved to be buggy and were rejected. Intel's own versions were delayed. CTC decided to re-implement the new version of the terminal using discrete TTL instead of a single CPU. The new system was released as the Datapoint 2200 in the spring 1970, with their first sale to General Mills on 25 May 1970. CTC paused development of the 1201 after the 2200 was released, as it was no longer needed. Six months later, Seiko approached Intel expressing an interest in using the 1201 in a scientific calculator, likely after seeing the success of the simpler Intel 4004 used by Busicom in their business calculators. A small re-design followed, expanding from a 16-pin to 18-pin design, and the new 1210 was delivered to CTC in late 1971. By that point CTC had once again moved on, this time to the Datapoint 2200 II, which was faster and included a hard drive. The 1201 was no longer powerful enough for the new model. CTC voted to end their involvement with the 1201, leaving the design's intellectual property to Intel instead of paying the $50,000 contract. Intel renamed it the 8008, and put it in their catalog in April 1972 priced at $120. Intel's initial worries about their existing customer base leaving them proved unfounded, and the 8008 went on to be a commercially successful design. This was followed by the Intel 8080, and then the hugely successful Intel x86 family. Design Implemented in 10 m silicon-gate enhancement load PMOS, initial versions of the 8008 ran at 0.5 MHz, later increased in the 8008-1 to 0.8 MHz. Instructions took between 3 and 11 cycles: register-register loads and ALU operations took 5T (10s at 0.5 MHz), register-memory 8T (16s), while (taken) calls and jumps took 11 cycles (22s). The 8008 was a little slower in terms of instructions per second (45,000 to 100,000) [1] than the 4-bit Intel 4004 and Intel 4040, but the fact that the 8008 processed data eight bits at a time and could access significantly more RAM still gave it a significant speed advantage in most applications. The 8008 had 3,500 transistors. The subsequent Intel 8080 and 8085 CPUs were also heavily based on the same basic design; even the x86 architecture (originally a non-strict extension of the 8085) loosely resembles the original Datapoint 2200 design (every instruction of the 8008's instruction set has a direct equivalent in the 8080's larger instruction set and Intel Core 2's even larger instruction set, although the opcode values are different in all three). The chip (limited by its 18 pin DIP packaging) had a single 8-bit bus and required a significant amount of external support logic. For example, the 14-bit address, which could access "16 K x 8 bits of memory"[4], needed to be latched by some of this logic into an external Memory Address Register (MAR). The 8008 could access 8 input ports and 24 output ports. For controller and CRT terminal use this was an acceptable design, but it was too difficult to use for most other tasks. A few early computer designs were based on it, but most would use the later and greatly improved Intel 8080 instead. The 8008 family is also referred to as the MCS-8.

Datapoint 2200 computer

1977
MAY - Apple II, first deliveries

The Apple II system is really available and delivered for $1295. The system was introduced in April at the West Coast Computer Fair, just after the Apple Computer Company was incorporated and Apple employees move from Jobs' garage to an office in Cupertino, California. Apple logo is designed by Rob Janoff. The first Apple II advert is designed too (picture). Apple Computers wil be the first company to advertise for a personal computer in general public magazines. The Apple 1 production is stopped ten months after its introduction. 175 Apple 1 kits had been sold for $549 each to only one customer, Paul Terrell, manager of the Byte Shop chain, who sold them for $666.

MAY - The Z80-A becomes available in production quantities

THE Z80-A BECOMES AVAILABLE IN PRODUCTION QUANTITIES (MAY 1977)

At its new manufacturing facilities in Cupertino, Zilog announced the manufacture of the Z80-A in February 24 1977. The Z80-A has a standard clock rate of 4 Mhz. which is made possible by a new technology developped by Zilog. Single quantity prices are $65 for the ceramic package and $59 for the plastic version. According to Zilog, the Z80-A is considered to be the fastest standard microprocessor. Its instructions cycle is 1 s, and its throughput is 60% above the one of the Z80. From now, it becomes available in production quantities for computer manufacturers. The standard Z80 at a clock rate of 2.5 Mhz. wil be

continued at a reduced price.

JUNE - Commodore introduces the PET

The PET 2001 (Personal Electronic Transactor) was the first computer unit ready to plug in to a mains supply and use. This concept, added to a futuristic design, caused an enormous sensation at The 1977 Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. In fact, a first PET model was presented during the January CES, but it never worked properly. The PET was the first computer sold by Jack Tramiel. A legend says that, one day, Chuck Peddle, the designer of the 6502 microprocessor, accosted him in a corridor and asked him to forget hand held calculators and think about a desktop computer. Tramiel said, "Build it" and Chuck built the PET computer based on the 6502 microprocessor!

The PET name would be used only until the 4000 series as Philips, the owner of the registered PET name, would require Commodore to use a different name. Commodore would choose the CBM logo for the later systems. Original sale price of the 4 KB PET was $495. Several hundred orders later, the price would go to $595 for the 4 KB version and $795 for the 8 KB. Several thousand orders later Jack Tramiel decided to double the price and to market the computer in Europe. The sales won't weaken. Within a few months, many dealers wanted to sell the PET. But Tramiel dictated his terms: To pay cash on order and wait for the computers for about five months, to have a clean credit history and good retail and service departments. While being very demanding with the dealer network, Tramiel approached the big retail chain stores, and within a few weeks, the dealers were in direct competition with the household names. The PET system would become the father of a large family of PET/CBM computers including the 2000, 4000, 8000 series, then the 500, 600 and 700 series in 1983.

JUNE - Lear-Siegler introduces the ADM-3A Video Display Terminal (VDT)

Did you know each time you visit the Old-computers home page, you see a Lear-Siegler ADM-3A terminal... displaying a READY message and a blinking cursor... The ADM-3A was one of the first affordable serial display terminals manufactered by Lear-Siegler, Inc of Anaheim California. Why ADM? Nobody knows, maybe American Dream Machine or Awful Dumb Monitor or Advanced Display Module or, more seriously, Anaheim Division, Manufacturing... Why 3A? We know... Because this version quickly replaced a previous one, called ADM-3, which only displayed upper-case letters. The 3A version did not display upper-case letters, but an optional chip set allows them to be displayed The product was originally sold in assembled form for $1,195. A kit version would appear few months later, at $995. It could be ordered with a white, green, or amber tube background colour. The ADM-3A quickly met with great success thanks to its reliability and low price. Some models were also manufactured with a graphics add-on card of about the same size as its motherboard. With that card installed, the terminal emulated Tectronix 4014 graphics quite well. The setup of this 'Dumb machine' (as Lear Siegler advertised) was done using... 32 dip switches (!) located at the left of the keyboard. Among them, 11 was used for the communication rate (from 75 to 19200 bauds), others for parity, display configuration, character set, etc. Thanks to Sebastien Richter and his website for the system image.

JULY - Atari reveals its new VCS video game console

A new generation of games was born in the summer of 1977, a new concept revolutionizing leisure will let small leading and foreseeing companies make billions of dollars. Although the Atari VCS is not the first video game console ever, it will become a star while beginning in November of 1977. Millions of young players will hold it as mankinds best invention ever. The first console idea was developed in 1975 by Atari and Warner Bros, its parent company. Initially the console was set to come with an integrated ROM game, but at the last minute, Atari preferred a cartridge version. This game was Combat. Most importantly, this first cartridge will allow console owners to wait a few months for the release of new games. A first series of 8 will be followed later by many, among them, the famous Space Invaders, a title giving Atari global success and will cash in more then $100 millions. In two years, Atari sold more than 25 million consoles and earn $5 billion in sales, mostly from cartridges and optional accessories. Many third companies will also encounter success, such as Namco and its Pacman. In 1982, the VCS becomes 2600 until Atari is sold in 1984, followed by new versions 5200 and 7800. However, the 2600 continued to be produced and new games will appear until 1991. The VCS/2600 console thus lived for 14 years, a record longevity never equaled since by any console or computer. Thanks to the Albert's Museum for the picture.

JULY - First Texas Instruments TI-57 sales

The TI-57, TI-58 and TI-59 programmable calculators were revealed to the public in May of 1977. Sales of the TI-57 started in July, and in August for the TI-58 and 59 (as we will see next month). It will become the most sold programmable calculator in the world. Though inexpensive ($80), the TI-57 is a technological prowess. It is the only programmable calculator with all functions centralized in a single integrated circuit. A low consumption MOS/LSI circuit does the work of 30,000 transistors. It features a 4 bits microprocessor, 50 program steps in RAM and a ROM command software. A new coding method allows to save in one programming step up to three keys entries (as in : Inv-2ndcos). All these characteristics are largely inspired by Hewlett Packard's latest products, HP being Texas Instrument's largest competitor in this area. The TI-57 will also be sold through Radio Shack under the name of EC-4000. TI-57 production will end in 1982.

AUGUST - TRS-80 Model 1 now available

The TRS-80 availability was announced at a press conference held in New-York city on August 3, 1977. Deliveries started two weeks later. Two versions were initially sold: the keyboard/computer alone for $399 or the full version with display and cassette storage unit for $599. The system featured a 4 KB Level 1 Basic and 4 KB of RAM. Radio Shack managers were very cautious about the most expensive item they never sold. They planed to sell about 600 to 1000 systems in the first year... but they received more than 10,000 orders in the first month! The systems have been manufactured in Fort Worth and Austin factories. As several bugs weren't solved when the first machines were delivered, the TRS-80 was nicknamed "Trash 80". Despite these birth problems, the TRS-80 became instantly a great success thanks to the Radio Shack strong distribution channel and to the 56 service centers. Steve Leininger and Don French, the inventors of the TRS-80 quickly replaced the poor Level I Basic (that didn't allowed to save a program on tape!) with a 12 KB level 2 version. They also released memory extensions, an expansion interface and a floppy disc unit... Actually, every Level 1/4K owners upgraded their system to a Level 2/16K+ version. The Model 1 became the ancestor of a large family of TRS computers. It was discontinued in 1981 because it never met the American FCC's Radio Frequency Interference rules.

SEPTEMBER - Bally Professional Arcade is announced

In September 1977, Bally, the famous pinball tables manufacturer, announced shortly after the Atari 2600, the Bally Professional Arcade. The first versions were shipped in early 1978 for $299. This video game system featured a Z80 processor, three built-in games (Gunfight, Checkmate, Scribbler), a calculator with numeric keypad and up to four controllers that were a unique combination of joystick and paddle, which resembled the grip of a revolver. Furthermore, a BASIC cartridge gave this system the ability to save programs to a cassette tape. For about 6 months, it was thus the world's cheapest computer. Even though is was slightly superior to the competition (Atari VCS), the unit was too expensive and the sales remainded at a low level. In 1982, Bally withdrew the system and sold the rights to Astrovision Inc., a group of users who had enjoyed the system. The console was then reintroduced as the Bally Computer System. The same year, the company changed its name - and the system name to Astrocade. After that, Astrocade tried to keep the system alive and marketed it as a video game console for several years. In 1985, the game consoles market crashed and finally, the Astrocade company closed their doors and the Astrocade system disappeared.

SEPTEMBER - Heathkit presents its first computer

When Heathkit launched its first computer in kit form, the Benton Harbor, Michigan company was the biggest electronic kits maker. 59 years before, in 1926, Ed Heath sold the first Heath kit, an airplane. Sadly, he died a short time later while testing a new airplane model. After the World War II, the company really found its way selling low-cost electronic kits made of U.S. Army surplus parts. When a customer ordered the H8 kit, for $375, he received a bunch of circuit boards, various chips and passive components, a case, a power supply, and clear and progressive assembly instructions. After several hours or several weeks, the system was assembled, tested and ready to run. To run what? Only programs keyed in on the keypad and read on the Led display. The basic version didn't include any monitor display, ASCII keyboard and tape backup. When the computer was turned off, all the programmer work was gone and had to be typed again. Hopefully, Heathkit immediately provided a set of essential software including the first version of the Benton Harbor BASIC, a text editor, an assembly language, and some simple games. The first peripheral was the well-known H-10 paper tape puncher/reader, followed by the H-17 disk drives unit, H-9 video terminal and modem also sold in kit form. One year after it was launched, the H8 could run various operating systems including HDOS (Heath operating system) and CP/M.

When HEATH Company was sold to ZENITH Data Systems in November 1979, the H8 got the ZENITH logo. It was still manufactured until Heath closed down their kit business in the mid-80's.

OCTOBER - TI launches a new EPROM chip

The first 2716 EPROM was launched in October 1977 by Texas Instruments. An EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) can be programmed and then erased enabling it to be re-used about 1000 times. Programming is accomplished through a device called Eprom programmer (or EPROM burner), erasure uses an Ultra Violet light source that shines through a quartz erasing window. At the time, EPROM's were widely used to store boot-up programs in small systems or saving user's programs in computers that didn't featured tape recorder or floppy drive interface. Two types of EPROM chip were already used in 1977: 2704 (512 bytes) and 2708 (1 KB), but then users and computer manufacturers were requiring higher capacity chips. So came the 2716, wich was able to store 2 KB. The first TMS 2716 is actually a rarity because the chip needed 3 different voltages to run it, which was different than the 2716 Intel's and all others that manufacturers made later. So, TI quickly built a new Intel compatible chip, called it TMS2516 to differenciate it from

the first version and sold hundred thousands of pieces.

OCTOBER - VAX 11/780, the first VAX system

The VAX 11/780 was introduced on October 25, 1977 at the Digital Equipment Corporation's Annual Meeting of Shareholders. It was the first member of the VAX computer family, the first commercially available 32-bit computer and the first one MIPS (one million instructions per second) machine. The computer and its operating system (VMS) were designed both from scratch. The result was a really reliable, powerful and userfriendly system. The affordable price level allowed many institutions and universities to acquire it. In a VAX, one finds the basic architecture of the previous Digital PDP-11. Both systems were partially hardware and software compatible. However, the Virtual Address eXtension (VAX) allowed the use of 32-bit addressing, the number of the processor general registers has been doubled (16 instead of 8) and the instructions set deeply improved. The systeme bus, called LSI-11 then Q-Bus was the same as the PDP-11's. The Vax 11/780 was UNIBUS based system (16 bits). For many years, VAX 11/780 remained the base system every computer speed benchmarks refered to. Several programming languages could be used, such as Fortran-77, Cobol, Bliss-32, PL/I, BASIC, PASCAL, CORAL 66, and a netware software called DecNet. The VAX 11 series was sold until 1988. A dual processor version has been launched in 1981 (11/782) as well as various systems, from

the small VAXstation 1 up to the VAX 9000 mainframe. The VMS operating system is still sold by Digital (bought by Compaq in 1999) and it seems that a few of VAX 11/780 were still in use in the year 2000. The photo below is of Proto Type 15, the first Vax to have cabinet skins, taken in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, about 1977.

NOVEMBER - North Star Horizon announced

In November 1977, Byte magazine said: North Star Computers Inc. has announced the new North Star Horizon computer which uses a full speed (4 Mhz.) Z80 microprocessor and includes 16 KB of memory, a disk controller with one or two Shugart minifloppy disk drives and full extended disk basic. A serial I/O port is also provided. Options include additional disk drives, hardware floating point arithmetic board, 24 lines by 80 character upper and lower case video display controller board, and 16 KB memory board with parity check. The video display board, when used in conjunction with the 16 KB memory board will display high resolution (480 by 250 points) graphics on a video monitor. The Horizon computer uses the Altair S-100 bus. The single drive is $1599 in kit form and $1899 assembled. The dual drive is $1999 in kit form and $2349 assembled. In fact, Horizon computers started to be sold several months before this press release was printed. At the time, North Star argued that the Horizon was the fist 'personal computer' that could load or save a 10 Kb disk program in less than 2 seconds. The Horizon was one of the first business computers that was successfully introduced into small and medium size companies thanks to its robust construction and its efficient and easy-to-use software package.

The first issue of the Horizon newsletter is dated August 1977. It was then periodically mailed to all North Star product users and offered new products advertising, hardware and software updates, communication and software exchanges between users.

month unknown - Building its own S-100 bus based system

In this end of year 1977, when a computer fanatic wished to build himself a powerful and evolutional computer, he'd only have pactically one choice: to purchase a S-100 Bus based system, assembled or in kit form. Several manufacturers were selling spare parts allowing to assemble progressively and at low cost a basic system. The first step consisted in acquiring a box with a power supply and a bus card. One had to choose then amongst several CPU cards available: Motorola 6800, MOS 6502, Intel 8080 and 8085 or Zilog Z80. The cards were provided assembled or in kit form. One had then to solder the components on the card. A third essential part, the RAM card. It was composed of 2 to 64 Kb of static or dynamic memory chip. At this stage, the computer was able to operate... providing that one could communicate with it! A teletype or video terminal plugged in the computer's serial port was then necessary. After a few days of operation, the user noticed that he would most probably need to buy a backup system to save his programs. For a

few hundred $ more, he would rapidly buy a card punch or a cassette recorder with the additional interface card. Though his computer was working correctly and that our fanatic already spent approximately $1500, he's not yet acquainted that he'll have to spend approximately twice the price in the next months to purchase more memory, communication cards, one or two floppy drives, a printer, a modem... In 1977, when one would like to acquire a real computer, one had to be passionate, very handy... and rich!

1978
JANUARY - Apple Disk II, the Apple II second birth

Apple Disk II, the most inexpensive, easy to use floppy drive ever made was introduced in January at Winter Consumer Electronic Show. First deliveries will occur in July 1978 at $495, including the controller card. At the time the Apple II was sold for about six months. Most users had connected their television as a colour monitor, and a cassette recorder to store their programs. A couple of weeks before, Apple had introduced a floating point BASIC (made by Microsoft) and a printer interface card. Sadly, the Apple II cassette interface wasn't reliable and needed very accurate volume and tone adjustments, preventing owners from using the computer as a professional system. Actually, the disk interface shown at CES was just a prototype. Final version of the Disk II interface board will be finalized a few weeks later by Steve Wozniak, and the First DOS 3 version, written by Randy Wigginton, appeared un June. The disk II suddenly transformed the Apple II from an expensive hobbyist's toy to an efficient tool everyone could afford for home and business uses. In marketing terms, the Disk II launch can be considered as the Apple II second birth.

JANUARY - IBM ''Yellowstone''

"Yellowstone" was the code name for IBM's new revolutionary computer, the IBM 5110. About two years earlier, IBM announced its smallest and first portable computer (If you consider a 28 Kgs. computer portable, that is), the IBM 5100, no bigger than one of IBM's typewriters. Developed in Rochester, it used the same operating system as IBM's /370 line of main frames. Thus it could accommodate the same APL interpreter, permitting the use of APL programs. However, it was a very primitive machine that was largely unsuccessful due to its high price tag (basic version costed $10,975) and limited expansion capabilities. The new IBM 5110 was designed to provide much faster internal performance as well as many additional features. It supported full screen editing, 64 KB of RAM, the use of 8" disk drives and lower case characters. The 5110 was later replaced by the 5120, an integrated system also known as the 5110 model 3.

APRIL - Exidy announces its Sorcerer

Exidy, Incorporated, was founded in 1974 by H.R. Kaufman at Sunnyvale, California, and became a leading manufacturer of arcade type video games. Their first release was TV Pinball, followed by Mouse Trap or Boulder Dash which became worldwide hits when licensed to Coleco. While developing the Sorcerer hardware, Exidy designers closely examined all-in-one competitor systems released a few months earlier, the Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80. The Sorcerer was thus a combination of best features they offered plus an innovative idea, the software ROM cartridge called ROM PAC, making the Sorcerer the first Home Computer to support ROM cartridge use, even if these ROM PAC's were enclosed into 8-track audio housings! In spite of marketing and production problems, first sales occurred in the USA about 5 months after the machine was announced. The Sorcerer was then introduced in Europe and in Australia by Dick Smith Electronics making it the first personal computer available in this country.

In Holland, Compudata produced the Sorcerer under licence for several years, and sold a lot of them to educational market with several hardware and software improvements: CP/M operating system, S-100 bus support allowing various mass storage systems - including hard discs - to be connected. Despite obvious qualities, the Sorcerer - and the Sorcerer II launched in 1980 - never met a real success. Exidy ceased production and closed its doors in 1982, but the CompuData version was still produced in Europe until 1984.

APRIL - Intel introduces the 8086 microprocessor

In April 1978, Intel introduced its first 16 bit microprocessor. Production started in May, eventually, the 8086 was officially released on June 8. The chip had a 28.6 mm size, was manufactured in NMOS process with 3m linewidths and contained 29,000 transistors. This was nearly 5x the number of transistors in the earlier 8080, but 200x less than the 5.5 million transistors in a Pentium Pro! In fact, since the first Intel 4004 processor, the number of transistors in a single chip has been doubling every eighteen months. This exponential rate predicted by Gordon Moore, Intels co-founder, is known as the Moores law The 8086 implemented a Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) design methodology, and, to improve performance, included a sixbyte prefetch queue that was considered a primitive form of pipelining.

It featured twenty address lines giving a total address space of one megabyte. Actually, development team led by Bill Pohlman never suspected anyone would ever need more than one megabyte of RAM. However, the 8086 defines the base architecture of Intel's x86 family which is still in use in actual Intel processors. The chip also featured a 16 bit data bus allowing a 16 bit value to be read or write in one clock pulse. However, this first version was too expensive to implement in small business computers of the time, so Intel developed an 8 bit data bus compatible version, the 8088. This version was chosen by IBM for the first IBM PC and made Intel the leader of a multi-million dollar industry. In designing the 8086/8088, Intel chosen to keep an ascending compatibility with its previous 8080 processor, so the memory was not seen as a linear address space, but through 16 segments of 64 KB. This bank-switched architecture will have many negative impacts on PC hardware and software design. When IBM designed their PC, they assigned ten segments for RAM and the remaining six to other system functions. IBM only started using the true 16 bit 8086 version in the PS/2 model 25 and model 30, in 1987. First clones of the 8088 and 8086 were respectively the NEC V20 and V30. They had a more efficient design and were slightly faster and efficient, including instructions Intel will later use in its 80186 version. Intel also released an expensive 8087 math coprocessor which really improved calculation speed for the few programs that supported it.

MAY - French Logabax LX-500 launched

Logabax, a French computer manufacturer specialized in small and medium size computers aimed at private and state-owned companies, launched its fist microcomputer. It was a strange looking small plastic box containing a single multifunction Z80 based card and two 90 KB 5.25" floppy drives. A serial port allowed the Logabax video terminal to be connected. The system ran Logabax DOS and a flavour of CP/M Operating System. In fact, due to its very expensive price for the time (about 4000 Euros) the LX-500 never met success near private companies despite Logabax efforts in setting up a European dealers network. However, at this time French ministry of education sought French computers to equip thousands of high schools. Only two French manufacturers were able to provide such small systems: R2E and Logabax. Thus Logabax got more than half the ministry contract, even though the system was far to meet reliability and ease of use requested in educational environment. Despite Logabax had priviliged access to procurement contracts with French state, the company met serious cash shortage problems. After several vain attempts from French government to refloat the company, Logabax was eventually sold in 1981 to Olivetti, the first Italian computers company. After some common ventures (Olivetti-Logabax Persona PC systems), Logabax finally disappeared for good.

JUNE - Click and Spell

In 1976, after having conquered a major part of the calculators market, the consumer products group at Texas Instruments was searching for another mountain to climb. First time the idea of a Speak and Spell product for children came up, TI management didn't take it seriously. However, Richard Wiggins, an engineer who was brand-new to TI at the time, took a look at the idea and said: "I think we can do it.". And they did: in june 1978, the speaking bright coloured box was launched. Six months later, the product was a Christmas season hit, and the same sentence resounded in every American toys stores: Hello! I am Speak & Spell, the electronic learning aid, that challenges you with random questions stored in my brain. Its popularity with its target audience was given a further boost when a certain adorable alien used it to help him "phone home" in E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. Both parents and educators appreciated its value as a teaching tool, and their combined seals of approval made Speak & Spell a common sight in homes and schools alike. Its popularity also led to sequel electronic games for other areas of learning like Speak & Math and Speak & Read. The technology behind the toy was a result of Texas Instruments early investigations into speech synthesis. The result was the TMS5110/5220 series, first low cost mass produced DSP chips. They allowed speech data to be stored in a highly compressed format, which was very important in the days when ROM space was expensive; and synthesized speech using a method know as LinearPredictive Coding (LPC). More than 100 seconds of linguistic sounds could be stored into a 128 KB ROM chip. Same chips were used in the TI 99/4 Home Computer Voice module. Nowadays, DSP technology is everywhere. People can now send voice as well as live video over a cellular phone. In 2000, the programmable DSP market generated more than $6 billion in sales. Texas Instruments claimed 48 percent of that market.

JULY - Sinclair MK-14

In 1978 was born the MK-14, the first computer made by the Sinclair company (called at the time Science of Cambridgebecause Sinclair name was used by another company). The MK-14 was a training board sold in kit form costing around 40 and featuring a National Semiconductor SC/MP 8-bit processor, 256 bytes of RAM, 512 bytes of ROM holding a monitor, calculator keyboard and display, and some I/O ports. In fact, Clive Sinclair was not very enthusiastic about a personal computer project. The MK-14 project was thus managed byChris Curry and produced by National Semiconductor. As the system was five times cheaper than its closest competitor, the Compukit UK101, about 20,000 MK-14 boards were sold in the U.K. Chris Curry, who believed much more than Clive Sinclair in the future of such computers, left the company in 1978, founded Acorn Computers with Herman Hauser and built its fist computer kit, the System 1. A few months later, Sir Sinclair decided that computers were a good way to raise money and started a new project: a complete computer for less than 100. Meantime, the MK-14 grew into a modular system and several additional cards allowed to expand the system: cassette interface, text and graphics video module and Eprom programmer. 128 and 256 bytes RAM expansion modules could also be added up to a total of 640 bytes, Yes...640 BYTES... If the MK-14 had not been launched, Clive Sinclair wouldn't probably think so soon of its ZX-80 and the world personal computer scene would have been very different.

AUGUST - ABC-80

In August 1978, first units of the "Advanced Basic Computer for the 1980s", in short ABC-80 left the Swedish Luxor factory. A few months earlier, Luxor contracted with two other companies, Scandia Metric and Data Industrier AB (DIAB), to build the first totally Swedish computer. Scandia Metrics which had previous experience of computer based products designed the main board, DIAB manufactured the chips, while Luxor, one of the biggest TV set manufacturers, built the monitor, case and keyboard and assembled the whole system in its assembly plant of Motala (Sweden, at the northeast shore of Swedens second largest sea, Vttern). Despite the fact that the technology behind the ABC 80 was very simple and technical features wasn't better than US competitors, the ABC80 was a quality machine and became a great success among early Swedish computer enthusiasts, who had been waiting for a long time a real local computer. More than 10.000 computers were sold within two years. For six years, the ABC80 and then its sequel the ABC800, were by far the most sold and used personal computers in Sweden, for home, hobby, and especially education. In 1984, the ABC1600 and ABC9000, two Unix systems, were launched with the slogan "Who needs to be IBM compatible?"... They were the last Luxor computers produced.

AUGUST - University computer lab in 1978

Want to save your 8 KB program? Please, wait between 30 mn and 3 hours... This was one of the various difficulties encountered in the daily use of computers in an Academic Computer Lab, in 1978. At the time, Jerald W. Burnett was the computer lab manager of Cameron University of Lawton, Oklahoma. He recalls: My memory of the Computer Lab in Burch Hall 1978 is still fairly vivid. I had just graduated from Cameron with a BS in Business

Administration and had experience in electronics from my 4 year Navy Enlistment. At that time electronics experience was valued as the Lab Manager did troubleshooting and maintenance on various equipment. In particular, the ADM3 terminals were very susceptible to damage during lightning storms. It was not unusual to replace the 'line driver' chips in several terminals after storms. Equipment in the Computer Lab in 1978: 12 IBM 029 keypunch machines 3 ADM3 Lear Siegler Video Terminals 1 Line Printer 1 Card Reader 1 HP2000 Computer 1 Paper Tape "Flyreader" 1 Teletype Machine In July of 1978 the Academic Computer Lab was in a little room in the basement of Burch hall and had three Adm3 video terminals, about 12 IBM029 Keypunch machines, a card read and a line printer that were connected to an HP2000MX that emulated an interactive session on the HP3000. The HP2000MX was an 'interesting' device. The way we were set up, it had to be loaded daily (sometimes more often) from a paper tape. We had an old teletype machine that would duplicate the paper tapes from a master copy and could also be used to read the tape and load the program from it into memory. I think it ran at 110 baud! We also had a 'flyreader' that would read the paper tape at a speed of 600 baud. Students would write their programs, key their programs on the 80 column punch cards and then put them at the back of the card tray. A student worker would closely monitor the card reader and add jobs to it from the front of the card tray. On a good day, you might get a run in as little as 30 minutes. Around the end of the semester? Sometimes around 3 hours. Thorough desk checking was encouraged to minimize the number of re-runs. Those keypunch machines were a persistent source of problems. Someone would get a card jammed and it could take 30 minutes or more to get all the little pieces of it cleaned out. First you attempt to pull it out in one piece. Then, you get the little spring-steel device that has a hook on one side and saw teeth on the other and do what you can with it to dig out the rest. If that is not successful, you start removing pieces from around the card path to provide better access. As a last resort, it's time to call the IBM repairman. We saw him on a pretty regular basis for one reason or another - all dealing with the keypunch machines.

OCTOBER - 4164

The 4164 was quite a mythical memory chip. It contained 65535 bits of RAM memory, four times more than its predecessor, the 4116. Eight chips were thus needed to obtain 64 Kbytes of RAM. After a short period of low sales level, the famous 8 x 4164 RAM chips equipped quite every computer which featured at least 64 KB of RAM. >br> Texas Instruments launched the first samples of its TMS-4164 in late October 1978 at about... $170 per unit! However T.I. was not the first company to produce such chip. Japanese companies already manufactured the same chip for a few months, and the battle for international supremacy over RAM chips and computer components started with the 4164. >br> First, sales of the chip were modest. About 36.000 were sold worldwide in 1978-79 but they rocketed to some 13 million units in 1980-81. The Japanese captured 70 percent of the market. Sale price went from over $100 to $25 then $5, and remained the same throughout the following years.

NOVEMBER - Digital VT-100

Quickly After being introduced in August 1978, the Digital VT-100 terminal rapidly enjoyed great popularity and soon became the most widely imitated asynchronous terminal. The VT-100 featured lots of innovations including control by an Intel 8085 microprocessor (rather than custom discrete logic), scrolling regions, different character sizes (regular, compressed, double-wide, double-high-and-wide), smooth scrolling and so on. Its control codes and escape sequences still form the basis of the xterm set and of the ANSI or IBM PC standards. VT100 compatibility is still provided by most terminal emulators. All terminals that came after the VT100 (various VT1xx models as well as numerous competitors models) were able to emulate their ancestor, although they offered new features in addition to what the VT100 could do. In 1982, DEC launched the VT-180. It was a VT-100 terminal with a Z80 extra board and an external floppy drive unit allowing to run CP/M OS and programs.

NOVEMBER - Xerox Alto

In 1978, Xerox donated fifty Altos to Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). These machines featured a revolutionary concept called WIMP for Window Icon Mouse Pointer which wil become, a few years later, a universal standard for all of our modern computers. The idea of a graphical interface was born 5 years earlier at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre) as a part of an "automated office of the future" project. Within two years, engineers invented all the basic concepts of a new Human-Computer interface: the Graphical User Interface with a bitmap screen display, windows, icons and drop-down menu bars, the mouse, but also Ethernet protocols for local area networks, the Smalltalk programming language and a software productivity suite with a word processor, paint program, and even email. The first technical achievement was the Alto, a 64K machine which featured all of the above concepts. It was launched in 1974 but didn't meet success because of its $40.000 high price. Remember that at this time, none of the well known first personal computers (Imsai, Apple, Tandy, Commodore...) existed. In 1981, Xerox presented the successor of the Alto. The Star was a 512K machine dedicated to groups working together with integrated and interconnected components that shared mail, printing and filing. However nobody knew what that meant! Sharing information and communicating were foreign to the IBM-PC culture. Thus Xerox gave up on the project. The Alto-Star designers left the company and joined Apple or Microsoft. In 1979 Steve Jobs saw the Alto and realized it was the future of computing. Many of the ideas in the Alto showed up two years later in the Apple Lisa, and finally made it to market in the Apple Macintosh. In 1983, the first (and later) version of Microsoft Windows was also strongly inspired from the Alto concepts.

DECEMBER - Atari unveils its 400 and 800 home computers

In December, 1978, Atari was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Warner Communication. Nolan Bushnell, who funded Atari in 1972 sold the company for $28 million in 1976 but still kept a position of responsibility up to October 1978. The idea of a home computer able to compete with the first Apple, Commodore and Tandy systems came in 1977 fromRaymond Kassar, the new manager of Atari. The Home Computer Division was created the same year. The project took shape in 1978. Two computers code-named Candy and Colleen were designed simultaneously, based on three custom chips specially designed to handle graphics, sound and communication. Although the Atari 400 and 800 were announced in December 1978, the first prototypes were shown at the Winter CES in January 1979. The production started in October 1979 and the first sales occurred just before Christmas period. The design of these machines remains an amazing exploit to date. In one year, the teams of Atari (among them Jay Miner) succeeded in finalizing two really astonishing machines, as well as several concepts which are still largely used nowadays: The custom dedicated chips, the Serial I/O bus where all sorts of peripherals could be connected, is very close to our USB bus. Hardware scrolling, hardware

sprites, video mode mixing, multivoice synthesizer are all concepts invented by Atari engineers and commonly used in our actual computers. One can also mention the efficient Basic interpreter in ROM, written by Shepardson Microsystems, Inc (SMI), and a very well designed operating system.

1979
FEBRUARY - NEC PC-8001, the birth of the Japanese home computer industry

In 1977, Kazuhiko Nishi, the founder of ASCII Corporation and publisher of I/O, the first Japanese magazine dedicated to home computers, convinced NEC Corporation executive Kazuya Watanbe to build the first home computer in Japan.

Kazuhiko Nishi was also a friend of Bill Gates who started Microsoft two years earlier and wanted to work closely with Japanese hardware manufacturers in the development of microcomputers. He introduced him to NEC in 1978. The NEC PC-8001 was released in Japan in 1979 with a Microsoft operating system and Basic interpreter in ROM. Although it was not the very first Japanese home computer - The Sharp MZ80K and the Hitachi Basic Master MB-6880 were released in 1978 - it was by far the best selling 8-bit machine for two years in the Japanese domestic market. Up to 1983, about 150,000 machines were sold and a wide range of software was developed for the 8001, from games to management programs. Although a few thousands machines were sold world-wide, NEC, like all of the Japanese computer manufacturers at the time, never made big efforts to promote its computer apart from its domestic market. If the PC-8001 had been launched in USA and Europe along with a real marketing support, it would have been a very serious competitor to the first Apple, Commodore and Tandy home computers. The 8001 also marked the beginning of a close collaboration between Microsoft and almost all the Japanese manufacturers, up to the birth of the first MSX machine, in 1983.

MARCH - Commodore PET vs Sharp MZ-80K

In early 1979, Commodore introduced the first revision of its PET computer. The most visible change was the large mechanical keyboard that replaced the first "chicklet" style one. As there was no more room for it, the internal tape drive was removed. Internally, the machine offered 8 to 32 KB of RAM and a new version 1.2 of the Basic interpreter which corrected several bugs of the version 1 and allowed the use of the new 2040 floppy drive unit. Same versions were sold in Europe a few months later under the name CBM 3008, 3016 and 3032. The 2040 FD unit was also renamed CBM 3040. At the same time, Sharp started to sell in Japan its first home computer, the MZ-80K, with the intention of competing with the PET and Tandy TRS systems. Although its appearance was pretty PET like, its internal design was rather different: a Z80 CPU instead of a 6502, no Basic in ROM, only a 2 KB monitor and a mechanical keyboard, better than the first Pet keyboard, but less convenient than the new version. The MZ-80K was launched in various European countries in late 1979. Due to its specific features and permanent lack of software, it never presented a real threat to the major US manufacturers. This is probably the reason why Sharp did not launch the MZ-80 series on the U.S. market.

APRIL - Zilog Z8000

The Z8000 CPU series was introduced in early 1979, between the launch of the Intel 8086 (April 1978) and the Motorola68000 (September 1979). Two versions were released, the Z8001 capable of addressing 8 MB of memory via segment registers, and the Z8002 which could only address 64 KB. Like the Zilog Z80, the Z8000 included built-in DRAM refresh circuitry. An optional Z8010 MMU (Memory Management Unit) co-processor allowed up 48 MB of memory to be addressed. Internally the Z8000 chip held 17500 transistors in NMOS design, and it had sixteen 16 bit registers which could be extremely flexibly

used. The programmer could see them as 16 8-bit, 16 16-bit, 8 32-Bit, or 4 64-bit registers. All registers were general-purpose registers, although registers 14 and 15 were usually used as stack segment and pointer. Among its 110 instructions and 13 addressing modes, the Z8000 also offered 32-bit multiplication and division instructions. There was both a user mode, for programs, and a supervisor mode, for the operating system. The user mode prevented access to potentially dangerous things such as interrupt handling. Despite these attractive features the Z8000 was not very fast and suffered from some internal bugs. It was thus never very popular and was surpassed a few months later by the Motorola 68000 and later, by the Intel 286. The Z8000 can be found in some rare but well-known computers though, such as the Olivetti M20 and M40, and the Unix-based Commodore 900. Some third parties also manufactured the Z8000 including AMD, Hitachi and Sharp. The Z8000 was followed in 1986 by the Z80000, an amazing 32 bit processor whose features (pipeline, cache memory) would not appear until six years later in Intel processors. The Z8000 is still alive nowadays with the Z16C00, a CMOS version mainly used in embedded applications.

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Mike Throm's memories: I worked in Zilog's system division for 6 years. The primary goal was to design systems using Zilog processors. One of the notable leaders of Zilog's system engineering group was Judy Estrin who lead the effort to develop an ethernet like LAN product for Zilog, who then went on to other ventures like Bridge Communications (acquired by 3Com), NCD, and Precept. Zilog also designed a UNIX "supermicro" system called the S8000 initally based on the Z8000, then the Z80000 with a UNIX based OS called Zeus. Like most silicon valley firms of the time, we took pride in what we did and spent long hours to develop products. 60 - 80 hours per week during peak development cycles were common. Also, because almost all of us were under 30, weekend parties and "beer busts" were also common between development cycles. Many S8000 units were sold to the IRS; however, the system side of the business never took off and was eventually closed down around 1985. Peter Sandilands adds: The Z8000 was used in a quite successful line of computers from Onyx Inc (California). Originally built for AT&T they ran Unix V7 and Interactive Systems IS/1. The architecture continued into the mid '80s and ran Sys III. Sold as general purpose business computers they had the option of a number of bundled business packages using software such as Quadratron word processor. New Onyx C8002s were still being sold in 1986!

MAY - Tandy announces the TRS-80 Model II

In May 1979, Tandy introduced the Model II which was first shipped in October. The Model II was not an upgrade of the Model I, but an entirely different system whose size, weight, equipment and price ($3450 for the 32 KB version) show that it was clearly intended for the small business market. Internally, the Model II featured a passive backplane able to support up to 8 logic cards. The basic system used 4 slots, and shipped with a 12" green display, a detachable keyboard and a single Shugart single-sided, double-density 8" floppy drive that would reliably store up to 475 KB of programs and data. At that time, this was an enormous amount for personal desktop computers, compared to the 80 - 100 KB the newer 5.25 shugart drives could store.

Furthermore, the Model II had provision for plugging in an expansion chassis which allowed up to 3 more floppy drives to be added. Totalling 2 MB, this storage capacity allowed the Model II to do things that were impossible with most other systems of the time, and made it very popular for accounting systems and large database management. Tandy also offered additional chained 5 MB and 10 MB hard drives. When the machine was launched, Tandy only supported its TRS-DOS Operating System through versions 1.1, 1.2 and 2.0. Interestingly enough, these OSs were Y2K compliant, whereas further Model III and IV OSs didn't recognise dates beyond 1987! Several languages were available: BASIC interpreter and compiler, FORTRAN IV, COBOL and PASCAL, as well as a strange but efficient word processor called Scripsit. Fortunately, several third-party developers quickly adapted the CP/M 2.2 OS which became an important part of the sales pitch, and allowed standard business programs like WordStar word processor or the new VisiCalc spreasheet to be run, along with enabling the exchange of data with other CP/M systems. Options for the machine also included a 6 MHz 68000 board with extra memory so it could run XENIX. The Model II was on sale for four years. It was replaced in 1983 by the more advanced Mod. 12 and Mod. 16 in which a dual 5.25" 1.2 MB drive took the place of the old 8" drive. A smaller version of the Model II was also released, with an upgraded video display, and 5.25" floppies.

JUNE - Apple announces its third computer, the Apple II+

Released in June 1979 and retailing for $1,195 (over $100 less than the original Apple II), the II plus was essentially an extension of the Apple II. It came with 48 KB RAM, a new floating-point Basic interpreter in ROM written by Microsoft, and a new auto-start ROM for easier start-up and screen editing.

Despite these rather minor changes, the II+ instantly became a great success for 3 main reasons: It was the first personal computer to offer an affordable and reliable floppy disk unit and an easy-to-use operating system, DOS 3.1 It was also the first serious personal business machine thanks to the new VisiCalc spreadsheet program which was first released on the Apple II+ before any other systems. Instead of restricting its advertising campaign to computer enthusiasts and technical magazines, Apple was the first computer Company to advertise in popular magazines, emphasizing the usefulness of a personal computer at home, for business, education and entertainment. A few months later, a special version of the II+, called II Europlus, was launched in Europe. Special escape sequences allowed users to type all the specific European characters, and the video interface was also adapted to the European PAL standard. The first release of the Floppy drive OS was called 3.1 instead of the usual 1.0, simply because one of the OS developers updated a revision counter every time he recompiled the source code. The counter had reached 3.1 when the final version was released. The marketing department of Apple also felt that 3.1 sounded like a more advanced and debugged version than a standard 1.0. By the time of the launch of the Apple II+, the DOS version was up to 3.2.1 More than 2,000,000 Apple II+'s were sold between 1979 and 1983, not counting the numerous clones from south America, Asia, and also from the USA.

JUNE - Texas Instruments TI-99/4, first 16-bit home computer

When Texas Instruments announced its new personal computer at the Consumer Electronics Show, other players in the home computer market started shaking. Texas was the world's major chip manufacturer, it was also well known to the general public for its watches and calculators. Moreover, the new machine would be the first home computer to use a 16-bit microprocessor. In fact, the TI-99/4 didn't meet US radio frequency regulations, so it was only really released in quantity in early 1980 along with a specific T.I. colour monitor. It was a robust machine, well-manufactured, enclosed in a nice plastic and metal case. However, it suffered from three major faults: Its "chicklet-like" keyboard did not allowed fast typing, Its BASIC, not written in assembly language, was very slow, Its price, $1150, was practically the same as the new Apple II+. Although T.I. also released several original peripherals - a floppy disc interface, a serial interface, a speech Synthesizer, a thermal printer and joysticks - along with much software on solid-state cartridges, the TI99/4 was a commercial flop, mainly because of the price war with Commodore and its VIC-20. T.I. tried to sell the machine in the European market, but it arrived too late, about the same time as the TI-99/4A was lauched in the USA, so very few models were sold. In 1982, the price was dropped from $1150 to $500, and T.I. launched the TI-99/4A which resolved all of the major problems of the original model, better keyboard and faster Basic. But in the meantime, other manufacturers, including some Far East companies, had launched cheap machines and T.I was obliged to sell its TI-99 at a loss. Moreover, due to the specific microprocessor and hardware configuration, very few third-party companies wrote software and designed peripherals for the TI-99. T.I. still sold the TI-99 for a further two years. A third version with a beige plastic case was even launched. In 1984, T.I. finally decided to withdraw for good from the home computer business. Last TI-99's were sold for about $100 by second-hand dealers.

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Pictures, courtesy of the excellent site TI-99 Forever!

JUNE - The 8088, first Intel's really successful CPU

One year after having announced the 8086 (see April 1978 in the history section), Intel released the 8088 which was basically the same microprocessor. It ran at the same clock speed and had the same capacity for memory addressing, but its 8-bit data bus was half the size of its predecessor. All internal instructions were executed with 16-bit registers but a 16-bit data transfer needed two clock cycles to be performed. Although this made the 8088 less efficient than the 8086, it was less expensive and allowed computer manufacturers to design and

make cheaper 8-bit bus computers. The 8088 became Intel's first really successful CPU when it was adopted, in 1981, by IBM for their IBM PC and XT and by most XT-class clones. All of the following processors made by Intel kept the 8088 instruction set, up to the Pentium 4 which, 25 years later, can execute any piece of code that ran on the original 8088, but about 5,000 times faster!