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 IBM PC AT is the successor of the PC and the XT. IBM added a lot of new features including switching to the Intel 80286, which allowed for among many other things, 16 bit expansion slots. It also used then-new MS DOS 3.0 which supported 1.2 MB floppies, 20…
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…
The Lisa was built by Apple Computer and development originally began in the late 1970s. It was their first attempt at designing a personal computer with a graphical user interface. First introduced in January 1983, it was the first PC with a GUI and mouse. It used a 5mhz Motorola…
The Commodore 64 was unveiled to the public in August, 1982 by Commodore Business Machines. It offered previously never seen graphics and sound performance for $595, which amazed even their competitors at the time. The graphics and sound chips were originally intended for a next generation game console, but the…
Apollo Computer unveiled the first work station, its DN100, offering more power than some minicomputers at a fraction of the price. Apollo Computer and Sun Microsystems, another early entrant in the work station market, optimized their machines to run the computer-intensive graphics programs common in engineering.
Introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire in 1981, the Osborne-1 was the brain child of Adam Osborne, a computer columnist, writer, and engineer. It was co-developed with Lee Felsenstein, and Lee designed it. The goal was a truly integrated computer that could go wherever the user want to. The…
The first IBM PC ran on a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor. The PC came equipped with 16 kilobytes of memory, expandable to 256k. The PC came with one or two 160k floppy disk drives and an optional color monitor. The price tag started at $1,565, which would be nearly…
A few years after the PET, Commodore released the VIC-20 in June, 1980. The system was the result of their efforts to build a computer that sold for less than $300. The machine was reportedly born mostly from an oversupply of parts. Aiming to compete with game consoles and intended…
The IBM System/38 was part of the Future Systems Project at IBM, and was developed by Dr.Frank Soltis under the codename “Pacific”. It was released to the public in August, 1979 and featured one of the first relational database management systems using SQL, System R, also developed by the company….