A Brief History of Computing between 1980 and 1989

1980

"DOS addresses only 1 Megabyte of RAM because we cannot imagine any applications needing more." Microsoft on the development of DOS.

1980 - October

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 adapter programs to DOS rather than CP/M-86, and CP/M-86 cost $495. As Microsoft didn't 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 know as Q-DOS, Quick & Dirty Operating System, it was a more-or-less 16bit 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 and re-wrote much of the code. Tim Paterson's DOS 1.0 was 4000 lines of assembler.

1980 - Early

Sinclair ZX80 was released for under £100.

1981

The Xerox Start System, the first WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing Devices) system - from which all modern WIMP and Windowing systems have evolved. Apple copied it when designing the interface for the Apple Macintosh (see January 1984) and Apple alleged that Microsoft copied them when designing Windows.

1981

Sinclair ZX81 was released, for a similar price to the ZX80 (see 1980).

1981

Introduction of 80186/80188. These are rarely used on PCs as they incorporate a built in DMA and timer chip - and thus have register addresses incompatible with other IBM PCs.

1981 - August 12

IBM Announced PC, the standard model was sold for $2880. This had 64Kb of RAM, a mono display and the cassette drive was an optional extra. Two 160Kb single sided floppy drives could be added. The machines success was largely due to the openness of it's specification, anyone could produce new and improved parts or models of the computer - the original IBM PC usually had an INTEL processor, Tandon disk drives and an operating system from Microsoft. 100,000 orders were taken by Christmas. The first one sold in the U.K. cost £2080. An option of operating systems was actually available, but IBM/Microsoft's PC-DOS was by far the cheapest at $39.95.

1981 - August 12

MDA (Mono Display Adapter, text only) introduced with IBM PC.

1981 - August 12

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 1 directory, the root directory, on each disk. Subdirectories were not supported until version 2.0 (March, 1983). MS-DOS (and PC-DOS) was the main operating system for all IBM-PC compatible computers until 1995 when Windows '95 began to take over the market, and Microsoft turned its back on MS-DOS (leaving MS-DOS 6.22 from 1993 as the last version written - although the DOS Shell in Windows '95 calls itself MS-DOS version 7.0, and has some improved features like long filename support). According to Microsoft, in 1994, MS-DOS was running on some 100 million computers world-wide.

1982

The TCP/IP Protocol established, and the "Internet" is formed as a connected set of networks using TCP/IP.

1982

Introduction of BBC Micro. Based on the 6502 processor it was a very popular computer for British schools up to the development of the Acorn Archemedies (in 1987). In 1984 the government offered to pay half the cost of such computers in an attempt to promote their use in secondary education.

1982 - January

Commodore 64 released, costing just $595.

1982 - February 1

80286 Released. It supports clock frequencies of up to 20 MHz and implements a new mode of operation, protected mode - allowing access to more memory (up to 16 Mbytes compared to 1 MB for the 8086. The virtual address space can appear to be up to 1 GB through the use of virtual memory). It includes an extended instruction set to cope with this new mode of operation. At introduction the fastest version ran at 12.5 MHz, achieved 2.7 MIPs and contained 134,000 transistors.

1982

Compaq released their IBM PC compatible Compaq Portable.

1982

MIDI, Musical Instrument Digital Interface, (pronounced "middy") published by International MIDI Association (IMA). The MIDI standard allows computers to be connected to instruments like keyboards.

1982

Red Book on Audio CDs was introduced by Sony and Phillips. This was the beginning of the Compact Disk, it was released in Japan and then in Europe and America a year later.

1982 - March

MS-DOS 1.25
PC-DOS 1.1

1982 - April

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was announced, released later in the year. It is based on the Z80 chip from Zilog, it ran at 3.5 MHz and had an 8 colour graphics display. You could by a 16 Kb version for £125 or a 48 Kb version for £175 - remarkable prices when compared to the £1000+ IBM PC.

1982 - May

IBM launch the double-sided 320K floppy disk drives.

1982 - December

IBM buy 12% of Intel.

1983 - January

IBM PC gets European launch at Which Computer Show.

1983

Borland Formed.

1983 - Spring

IBM XT released, it was fitted with the 8086 (which could be replaced with an NEC V20 or V30) and had room for an 8087 maths co-processor to be installed. It also had a 10Mb hard disk, 128K of RAM, one floppy drive, mono monitor and a printer, all for $5000.

1983 - March

MS-DOS 2.0
PC-DOS 2.0

Introduced with the IBM XT this version included a UNIX style hierarchical sub-directory structure, and altered the way in which programs could load and access files on the disk.

1983 - May

MS-DOS 2.01

1983 - October

IBM released PC Junior in an attempt to get further into the home market, it cost just $699. Cheaper alternatives from other companies were more preferable to the home buyer, but businesses continued to buy IBM.

1983 - October

PC-DOS 2.1 (for PC Jr). Like the PC Jr this was not a great success and quickly disappeared from the market.

1983 - October

MS-DOS 2.11
MS-DOS 2.25

Version 2.25 included support for foreign character sets, and was marketed in the Far East.

1984

DNS (Domain Name Server) introduced to the Internet, with then consisted of about 1000 hosts.

1984

Turbo Pascal Introduced by Borland (see PASCAL, 1967).

1984

Hewlett-Packard release the immensely popular Laserjet printer, by 1993 they had sold over 10 million Laserjet printers and over 20 million printers overall. HP were also pioneering inkjet technology.

1984 - January

Apple Macintosh Released. Based on the 8 MHz version of the Motorola 68000 processor. The 68000 can address 16 Mb of RAM, a noticeable improvement over Intel's 8088/8086 family. However the Apple achieved 0.7 MIPs and originally came with just 128Kb of RAM. It was fitted with a monochrome video adapter.

1984

AT released. This incorporates a larger bus for expansion slots, the ISA standard was eventually made (in 1991) to cope with this - but not until some ATs had been produced with buses that run far quicker the 8.33 MHz laid down in the ISA standard. Some ATs ran the bus at 12.5 MHz which causes some expansion cards to run hot, therefore becoming less efficient and slower therefore eventually 'tripping over' and violently crashing the computer.

1984 - August

MS-DOS 3.0
PC-DOS 3.0

Released for the IBM AT, it supported larger hard disks as well as High Density (1.2 MB) 5¼" floppy disks.

1984 - September

Apple released a 512Kb version of the Macintosh - but there were no other major enhancements over the original (see Jan. 1984).

1984 - October

Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ released. Similar specifications to the 48 Kb version of the original ZX (see April 1982) it cost £179.

1984 - End

Compaq started the development of the IDE interface (see also 1989). IDE = Intelligent Drive Electronics. This standard was designed specially for the IBM PC and can achieve high data transfer rates through a 1:1 interleave factor and caching by the actual disk controller - the bottleneck is often the old AT bus and the drive may read data far quicker than the bus can accept it, so the cache is used as a buffer. Theoretically 1MB/s is possible but 700KB/s is perhaps more typical of such drives. This standard has been adopted by many other models of computer, such the Acorn Archimedes A4000 and above. A later improvement was EIDE, laid down in 1989, which also removed the maximum drive size of 528MB and increased data transfer rates.

1985 - January

Postscript introduced by Adobe Systems, used in the Apple Laserwriter printer. Adopted by IBM for their use in March 1987.

1985

CD-ROM, invented by Phillips, produced in collaboration with Sony.

1985

EGA released.

1985 - March

MS-DOS 3.1
PC-DOS 3.1

This was the first version of DOS to provide network support, and provides some new functions to handle networking.

1985 - May

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 announced, released in February 1986. See Feb. 1986.

1985 - October 17

80386 DX released. It supports clock frequencies of up to 33 MHz and can address up to 4 GB of memory and virtual memory of up to 64 TERABYTES! It also includes a bigger instruction set than the 80286, and a built in F.P.U. At the date of release the fastest version ran at 20 MHz and achieved 6.0 MIPs. It contained 275,000 transistors.

1985 - November

Microsoft Windows Launched. Not really widely used until version 3, released in 1990, Windows required DOS to run and so was not a complete operating system (until Windows '95, released on August 21, 1995). It merely provided a G.U.I. similar to that of the Macintosh., in fact so similar that Apple tried to sue Microsoft for copying the 'look and feel' of their operating system. This court case was not dropped until August 1997.

1985 - December

MS-DOS 3.2
PC-DOS 3.2

This version was the first to support 3½" disks, although only the 720KB ones. Version 3.2 remained the standard version until 1987 when version 3.3 was released with the IBM PS/2.

1985 - End

LIM EMS Standard introduced by Lotus, Intel and Microsoft. The first version introduced was version 3.2!

1986 - January

Apple released another enhanced version of the Macintosh (the Macintosh Plus) - this one could cope with 4 Mb of RAM and had a SCSI adapter.

1986 - February

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 released. It had 128 Kb of RAM, but little other improvement over the original ZX (except improved sound capabilities). Later models were produced by Amstrad - but they showed no major advances in technology.

1986 - April

Apple released another version of the Macintosh (the Macintosh 512Ke) which was basically the same as the 512K of Sept. 1984.

1986 - September

Amstrad Announced Amstrad PC 1512, a cheap and powerful PC. Cost was just under £1000, it included a slightly enhanced CGA graphics adapter, 512Kb RAM (upgradable to 640Kb), 8086 processor (upgradable to NEC V30) and a 20Mb harddisk (optional). Amstrad had previous success with PCW. To ensure the computer was accessible they made sure the manuals could be read by everyone, and also included DR's GEM desktop (a WIMP system) and a mouse to try to make to machine more user friendly. It was sold in many high street shops and was a complete success, being bought by Business and Home users alike. N.B. This was the author's family's first Home computer, with a Monochrome monitor and harddisk it cost just under £1000.

1987

Introduction of Acorn Archemedies.

1987

Connection Machine, an interesting supercomputer which instead of integration of circuits operates up to 64,000 fairly ordinary microprocessors - using parallel architecture - at the same time, in its most powerful form it can do somewhere in the region of 2 billion operations per second.

1987

Microsoft Windows 2 released. It was more popular than the original version but it was nothing special mind you, Windows 3 (see 1990) was the first really useful version.

1987

Fractal Image Compression Algorithm calculated by English mathematician Michael F. Barnsley, allowing digital images to be compressed and stored using fractal codes rather than normal image data.

1987 - March 2

Macintosh II & Macintosh SE released. The SE was still based on the 68000, but could cope with 4 Mb of RAM and had a SCSI adapter, similar specifications to the Macintosh Plus of Jan. 1986. The Macintosh II was based on the newer Motorola 68020, that ran at 16 MHz and achieved a much more respectable 2.6 MIPs (comparable to an 80286). It too had a SCSI adapter but was also fitted with a colour video adapter.

1987 - April 2

PS/2 Systems introduced by IBM. The first 4 models were released on this date. The PS/2 Model 30 based on an 8086 processor and an old XT bus, Models 50 and 60 based on the 80286 processor and the Model 80 based on the 80386 processor. These used the 3½" 'microfloppies', storing 1.44Mb on each (although the Model 30 could only use the low 720Kb density). These systems (except the Model 30, released in September 1998) included a completely new bus, the MCA (Micro Channel Architecture) bus, which did not catch on as it did not provide support for old-style 16-Bit AT bus expansion cards. The MCA bus did show many improvements in design and speed over the ISA bus most PCs used, and IBM (if no-one else) still use it in some of their machines. The PS/2 series were very successful - selling well over 2 million machines in less than 2 years.

1987

VGA released (designed for the PS/2) by IBM.

1987

MCGA released (only for low end PS/2s, i.e. the Model 30) by IBM.

1987

8514/A introduced, with own processor! Designed by IBM.

1987 - April

MS-DOS 3.3
PC-DOS 3.3

Released with the IBM PS/2 this version included support for the High Density (1.44MB) 3½" disks. It also supported hard disk partitions, splitting a hard disk into 2 or more logical drives.

1987 - April

OS/2 Launched by Microsoft and IBM. A later enhancement, OS/2 Warp provided many of the 32-bit enhancements boasted by Windows '95 - but several years earlier, yet the product failed to dominate the market in the way Windows '95 did 8 year later.

1987 - August

AD-LIB soundcard released. Not widely supported until a software company, Taito, released several games fully supporting AD-LIB - the word then spread how much the special sound effects and music enhanced the games. Adlib, a Canadian Company, had a virtual monopoly until 1989 when the SoundBlaster card was released.

1987 - October/November

Compaq DOS (CPQ-DOS) v3.31 released to cope with disk partitions >32Mb. Used by some other OEMs, but not Microsoft.

1987 - End

LIM EMS v4.0

1988

First optical chip developed, it uses light instead of electricity to increase processing speed.

1988

XMS Standard introduced.

1988

EISA Bus standard introduced.

1988

WORM (Write Once Read Many times) - disks marketed for first time by IBM.

1988 - June 16

80386 SX released as a cheaper alternative - same as 80386 but without the built in F.P.U.

1988 - July/August?

PC-DOS 4.0
MS-DOS 4.0

Version 3.4 - 4.x are confusing due to lack of correlation between IBM & Microsoft and also the USA & Europe. Several 'Internal Use only' versions were also produced. This version reflected increases in hardware capabilities, it supported hard drives greater than 32 MB (up to 2 GB) and also EMS memory. Written by IBM this version was not properly tested and was bug ridden, causing system crashes and loss of data, as was Microsoft's version 4.0 (in October) and version 4.01 was released (in November) to correct this then version 4.01a (in April 1989) - however many people could not trust this and reverted to version 3.3 while they waited for the complete re-write (version 5 - 3 years later). Beta's of Microsoft's version 4.0 were apparently shipped as early as '86 & '87.

1988 - September

IBM PS/2 Model 30 286 released, based on an 80286 processor and the old AT bus - IBM abandoned the MCA bus, released less than 18 months earlier! Other IBM machines continued to use the MCA bus.

1988 - October

Common Access Method committee (CAM) formed. They invented the ATA standard in March 1989.

1988 - October

Macintosh IIx released. It was based on a new processor, the Motorola 68030. It still ran at 16 MHz but now achieved 3.9 MIPs. It could now cope with 128 MB of RAM.

1988 - November

MS-DOS 4.01

PC-DOS 4.01

This corrected many of the bugs seen in version 4.0, but many users simply switched back to version 3.3 and waited for a properly re-written and fully tested version - which did not come until version 5 in June 1991. Support for disk partitions >32Mb.

1989

World Wide Web, invented by Tim Berners-Lee who saw the need for a global information exchange that would allow physicists to collaborate on research (he was working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland, at the time). The Web was a result of the integration of hypertext and the Internet. The hyperlinked pages not only provided information but provide transparent access to older Internet facilities such as ftp, telnet, Gopher, WAIS and USENET. He was awarded the Institute of Physics' 1997 Duddell Medal for this contribution to the advancement of knowledge. The Web started as a text-only interface, but NCSA Mosaic later presented a graphical interface for it and it's popularity exploded as it became accessible to the novice user. This explosion started in ernest during 1993, a year in which web traffic over the Internet increased by 300,000%.

1989

CD-I released by Phillips and Sony.

1989 - January

Macintosh SE/30 released. Like the SE of March 1987 it only had a monochrome display adapter but was fitted with the newer 68030 processor.

1989 - March

Command set for E-IDE drives was defined (the ATA interface) by CAM (formed Oct. 1988). This supports drives over 528MB in size. Early controllers often imposed a limit of 2.1GB, but later controllers support much higher capacities (my controller supports up to 8.4GB drives). Drives greater in size than 2.1GB must be partitioned under DOS since the drive structure (laid down in MS-DOS 4) used by DOS, Windows '95 and even Windows NT prevents partitions bigger than 2.1GB. EIDE controllers also support the ATAPI interface that is used by most CD-ROM drives produced after it's introduction. Newer implementations to EIDE, designed for the PCI bus, can achieve data transfer at up to 16.67 MB/s. A later enhancement, called UDMA, allows transfer rates of up to 33.3 MB/s.

1989 - March

The Macintosh IIcx released, with the same basic capabilities of the IIx.

1989 - April 10

80486 DX released. It contains the equivalent of about 1.2 million transistors. At the time of release the fastest version ran at 25 MHz and achieved up to 20 MIPs. Later versions, such as the DX/2 and DX/4 versions achieved internal clock rates of up to 100 MHz.

1989 - September

Macintosh IIci released based on a faster version of the 68030 - now running at 25 MHz, and achieved 6.3 MIPs. Macintosh also released the portable - which went back to the original 68000 processor (but now ran it at 16 MHz to achieve 1.3 MIPs). It had a monochrome display.

1989 - November

Release of Sound Blaster Card, by Creative Labs, its success was ensured by maintaining compatibility with the widely supported AD-LIB soundcard of 1987.