The Cray-2 vector supercomputer was released in 1985 and was the successor to the Cray XMP by Cray Research. At the time of its release it was the fastest computer in the world, bumping the XMP off the top spot. It was capable of 1.9 GFLOPS. The first Cray-2 had…
Apple released the Macintosh Plus in 1986, two years after the debut of the best selling Macintosh. Although it had the same Motorola chip as the original, it sported a lavish 1MB of memory, a huge boost over the previous 128k. It also included support for the newest 800k double…
The Commodore Amiga 1000 was the successor to the best selling Commodore 64. It was built around a three coprocessor architecture that gave it unparalleled abilities in 3D animation, sound, and video, making it revolutionary compared to it’s rivals like the IBM PC. It was composed of a main video…
IBM’s second generation of personal computers. Released to the public in 1987, the PS/2 series introduced three advances over the PC series: 3.5″ 1.44 megabyte microfloppy disks, VGA and 8514 graphics display standards, and the Micro Channel bus architecture. The 3.5″ disks and VGA can be easily installed on other…
This was IBM’s first portable computer (shown here with printer attached). Released on April 3rd, 1986, it was also known as the IBM 5140. It featured power managment, the ability to run on batteries, and a CMOS version of the Intel 8088. It ran at a galloping 4mhz and had…
Designed by Manuel Fernandez, owner and founder of the Gavilan Computer Corporation, the Gaviian SC was one of the earliest portable computers and was the first machine dubbed a “laptop”. Although most portable computers were not the ultra light and powerful machines we know of today, it was one of…
The Rainbow 100 was a microcomputer produced by DEC and released in 1982. It borrowed from the VT102 for its video display and was one of the earliest dual CPU microcomputers, using a 4MHz Zilog and a 4.8 MHz Intel 8088. DEC produced three models during the production lifespan of…
The Connection Machine was the first commercial computer designed expressly to work on simulating intelligence and life. A massively parallel supercomputer with 65,536 processors, it was the brainchild of Danny Hillis, conceived while he was a graduate student under Marvin Minsky at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. At it’s height,…
Apple Computer debuted the Macintosh in 1984. It was the first personal computer to feature a graphical user interface, a system of operating a computer by manipulating windows, menus, and icons with a mouse. It’s much easier to use than the traditional system requiring precise text input, and revolutionizes the…