User:RobLa/1980s in computers

1980

 * January -United Kingdom (UK) - Sinclair ZX80 was released for under £100.
 * 22 May- Japan The game Pac-Man was released.
 * June United States (US) - Commodore released the VIC-20, which had 3.5 KB of usable memory and was based on the MOS Technology 6502 processor. Magazines became available which contained the code for various utilities and games. A 5¼" disk drive was available, along with a cassette storage system which used standard audio cassette tapes. Also available were a number of games, a color plotter which printed on 6 in (152 mm) wide paper tape, and a graphics tablet (the KoalaPad). A TV screen served as the monitor. The VIC-20 became the first computer to sell 1 million units.
 * July US Tandy released the TRS-80 Color Computer, based on the Motorola 6809E processor and using Microsoft Basic as its programming language. It was the first Tandy computer to support color graphics, and also supported cartridge programs and games, attempting to bridge both the home computing and video gaming markets.
 * October US- Development of MS-DOS/PC DOS began. Microsoft (known mainly for their programming languages) were commissioned to write the operating system for the PC; Digital Research failed to get the contract (there is much legend as to the real reason for this). DR's operating system, CP/M-86, was later shipped, but it was actually easier to adapt programs to DOS rather than to CP/M-86, and CP/M-86 cost $495. As Microsoft did not have an operating system to sell, they bought Seattle Computer Product's 86-DOS which had been written by Tim Paterson earlier that year (86-DOS was also known as QDOS, Quick & Dirty Operating System; it was a more-or-less 16 bit version of CP/M). The rights were actually bought in July 1981. It is reputed that IBM found over 300 bugs in the code when they subjected the operating system to scrutiny and re-wrote much of the code. Tim Paterson's DOS 1.0 was 4000 lines of assembler.
 * Netherlands -- Japan -- Red Book on Audio CDs was introduced by Sony and Philips. This was the beginning of the compact disc; it was released in Japan and then in Europe and America a year later.

See also: 1980 in science

1981

 * March UK Sinclair ZX81 was released, for a similar price to the ZX80 (see 1980).
 * 8 April US Osborne 1 portable computer introduced; the company sold many units before filing for bankruptcy only two years later.
 * 12 August US IBM announced their open architecture IBM Personal Computer. 100,000 orders were taken by Christmas. The design becomes far more successful than IBM had anticipated, and becomes the basis for most of the modern personal computer industry.
 * MDA (Monochrome Display Adapter), text only, introduced with IBM PC.
 * MS-DOS 1.0, PC DOS 1.0.
 * Microsoft (known mainly for their programming languages) were commissioned by IBM to write the operating system; they bought a program called 86-DOS from Tim Paterson which was loosely based on CP/M-80. The final program from Microsoft was marketed by IBM as PC DOS and by Microsoft as MS-DOS; collaboration on subsequent versions continued until version 5.0 in 1991.
 * Compared to modern versions of DOS, version 1 was very basic. The most notable difference was the presence of just one directory, the root directory, on each disk. Subdirectories were not supported until version 2.0 (March 1983).
 * MS-DOS was the main operating system for all IBM-PC compatible computers until Microsoft released Windows 95. According to Microsoft, in 1994, MS-DOS was running on some 100 million computers worldwide.
 * September US -- The TCP/IP protocol is established. This is the protocol that carries most of the information across the Internet.
 * US -- Richard Feynman proposed quantum computers. The main application he had in mind was the simulation of quantum systems, but he also mentioned the possibility of solving other problems.
 * US -- The Xerox 8010 ('Star') System, the first commercial system to use a WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing Devices) graphic user interface. Apple incorporated many of the ideas therein in the development of the interface for the Apple Lisa (see January 1983).
 * US Symbolics introduced the LM-2 workstation, a Lisp-based workstation based on the MIT CADR architecture.

See also: 1981 in science

1982
See also: 1982 in science

1983
See also: 1983 in science

1984
See also: 1984 in science

1985
See also: 1985 in science

1986
See also: 1986 in science

1987
See also: 1987 in science

1988
See also: 1988 in science

1989
See also: 1989 in science