Personal computers: in the prime of life!
This year marks the thirty-five years since the birth of the first personal computer, the Apple I, and thirty years since the release of the first computer, named the IBM PC, the Model 5150. In the light of this event, it’s worthwhile to look back on the way this time, re-evaluate and possibly rethink its meaning for today’s day.
Long ago, when displays were smaller, disks and processors were slower, RAM was expensive, games excited imagination with diversity and indulged with originality, the connection was slow and strove to break at the most inopportune moment, and the worldwide network just tried to get on its feet and make the first uncertain steps to observe the development of information technology was no less interesting than it is now ...
When things were so uncomplicated
In those glorious times, the history of the founders of modern computers begins.
')
On the first of April (!) Of 1976 three comrades - Steve Jobs (Steven Jobs), Steve Wozniak (Stephen Wozniak) and Ronald Wayne (Ronald Wayne) - founded a company that sells personal computers that are really small and affordable. Many people thought then that this was such a joke. And it is in vain ...
The Apple I was originally offered at an “attractive” starting price of $ 666.66 (it will be reduced to $ 475 in a year) and was a ready-made printed circuit board with components already mounted. Assembling engaged Wozniak and Jobs, the guide wrote Ronald Wayne. To it, the user had to connect a keyboard, a display (an ordinary TV could play this role), a tape recorder (to work with which later, for an additional $ 75, it was proposed to purchase one more board), a power supply unit and “clothe” all this into the case. Of course, neither the shops selling components and software, nor the personal computers themselves, except, perhaps, Xerox Alto and IBM 5100 (we'll talk about it later), as well as MITS Altair 8800 and its direct competitor IMSAI 8080, then there was practically no. So it almost certainly meant “do it yourself”. For a year and a half (to October 1977) about two hundred cars were sold. Now they are all rarities and are of great collectible value: to this day no more than fifty original Apple I have survived intact.
By the way, today anyone can follow the path of Wozniak and Jobs and, with a soldering iron at the ready, assemble a full-fledged analogue of the Apple I ( video ).
The tape cassette, which was attached to the computer along with the manual, was recorded by the BASIC interpreter, a kind of forerunner of modern script programming languages ​​in the sense that it was used both for solving relatively simple and routine tasks and for writing relatively complex programs. As a demonstration of the possibilities, the user was offered several simple games (no graphics, only text mode). And, of course, there was an assembly language that, with proper talent and experience of a programmer, was able to squeeze out of the modest (by today's standards, of course) “hardware” everything that is possible ... and a little more.
The project aimed rather at enthusiastic electronics engineers, although this is not surprising: Steve Wozniak, who was then working at Hewlett-Packard, began developing a computer in his spare time, and especially for his own needs. Only later, when he actually demonstrated the results of his research to members of the Homebrew Computer Club , a longtime friend and soul mate Steve Jobs offered to sell it. As they say, a start was made ...
The era of personal computers was emerging.
Already in January 1977, the consumer electronics manufacturing company Commodore International entered the market with a Commodore PET computer. His somewhat awkward “retro-futuristic” appearance today involuntarily brings a smile ... Five years later, in August 1982, the iconic Commodore 64 will be released, as the name implies, 64 KB of RAM. In terms of cost and characteristics of graphics and sound at that time, the C64 was much more attractive than its competitors. Largely thanks to him, a new computer-based subculture has emerged - the demoscene (today, for the Commodore 64, they still create “ demos ” and even games ). Until 1994, a record number of cars of this model will be sold - 17 million units. Computers became massive.
A little more than a year after the release of the Apple I, a new model appeared - the Apple II with the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor operating at 1 MHz and 4-48 KB of RAM. It was not a self-made designer assembled in the garage, but a quality product. On the keyboard, which was partly a system unit, disk drives for five-inch floppy disks (they will be added later, in 1978) and the display, hinting at the support of color graphics, proudly flaunted the rainbow bitten apple - the new company logo (the previous one, with Isaac Newton under the tree, thought up the same Ronald Wayne).
This computer was an incredible success! And in many respects due to the fact that it is the Apple VisiCalc tabular processor that will initially be released, the machine will become especially attractive for small and medium businesses. Things will go uphill abruptly, and Jobs and Wozniak will not have time to look back as they become millionaires. This model will be released in several versions (including portable ) and will be sold as much as 16 years, until 1993. A lot of compatible (and often cheaper) machines from other manufacturers will appear. An analogue called Agate will be produced even in the Soviet Union. The latest modification, Apple IIGS , will be released in September 1986. It will carry a 16-bit processor, and work under an operating system with a graphical user interface.
In 1979, deliveries of two more 8-bit computers, the Atari 400 and Atari 800, began. Prior to that, Atari, Inc. very successful in the release of slot machines and home set-top boxes . Generally speaking, most often it was games that were the driving force behind the development of personal computers. For example, at Atari, Steve Jobs and Jay Miner , the main developer of Amiga PCs, worked for a while.
The appearance of the Atari 400 was also quite unusual: the developers decided to use a membrane-type keyboard (a similar constructive solution was used in the Soviet 16-bit personal computer Electronics BK-0010 of 1985, but was refused in subsequent modifications) cartridges of 8 KB. Downloading a program from a cassette took a lot of time, the first disk drives, although they were much faster than tape cassettes, remained very expensive, and the five-inch floppy disks themselves were never very reliable. The programs recorded in the removable ROM were ready for operation immediately after the power was turned on. The main difference between the Atari 800 was in the keyboard - it was the most common (and therefore more reliable), but this model sold worse.
Exactly thirty years ago, in 1981, events occurred that not only influenced the entire IT industry, but also determined the interests and occupation of many of those who now read these lines.
In March 1981, Clive Sinclair, entrepreneur Clive Sinclair , full name Sir Clive Marles Sinclair, who had previously been producing portable radios and televisions, pocket calculators and watches, began selling the Sinclair computer ZX81 in Great Britain in the UK. It was extremely simple, contained a minimum of details, and therefore cost cheap and was aimed at the mass consumer. The machine was equipped with a Zilog Z80 microprocessor with a frequency of 4 MHz, RAM with capacity from 1 to 64 KB, like the Atari 400 had a membrane-type keyboard and was offered in two versions. At a price of about 50 pounds in the form of a designer, which was necessary, armed with a soldering iron, multimeter, oscilloscope, and other tools familiar to the radio amateur, to assemble independently. Or at a price of about 70 pounds in assembled form for those who have never in their life held a soldering iron in their hands.
A more sophisticated model in 1982 was named ZX Spectrum because, unlike its predecessor, it already knew how to work with color graphics. It quickly became a sales hit in the UK and Europe, competing in popularity with the American Commodore 64. In 1983, Clive Sinclair will be knighted for creating this wonderful computer. Specs , as fans affectionately called him, not only paved the way for everyone to the exciting world of games, mathematics and computer art, he became an excellent school for future IT specialists, then teenagers. For example, Linus Torvalds had a Sinclair QL - the latest model, released by Sinclair Research , by Sir Clive, in 1984.
It is also curious that in the late eighties and early nineties in the USSR, and then in the CIS countries and the near abroad, a second life was granted to this architecture. Domestic counterparts, most often home-made, were significantly superior in performance to the original model. Such computers for many in childhood were the first. In the post-Soviet space, these small cars right up to the mid-nineties were deservedly considered “popular”. We still love them, continue to improve and release in the form of a board-designer called ZX Evolution .
In April 1981, Osborne 1 appeared on the market, a very interesting exhibit. It may well be considered the first truly "portable" computer. However, its design was different from today's usual laptops: a built-in monochrome CRT display with a diagonal of only 5 inches (it was possible to connect an external one), two drives for five-inch floppy disks, a folding keyboard cover and a carrying handle. All this with a weight of about 11 kilograms. The Zilog Z80 microprocessor was used, the amount of RAM was 64 KB. The computer was supplied with the CP / M operating system (we still have a reason to recall it), a BASIC interpreter, two text-based adventure games, and several office programs. Despite the considerable weight and size, it was willingly bought.
On August 12, 1981, the International Business Machines company introduced the IBM Personal Computer 5150 to the general public. Having been building and selling powerful, large and very expensive machines for decades now, the Blue Giant decided to make a name for itself in the rapidly developing personal computer market. No wonder: by that time the real boom began here!
Even before the early eighties, PCs were acquired mainly by experts or enthusiasts, and, of course, some companies that have already managed to see an affordable and effective tool for doing business in the “personal computers”. For the mass consumer, it was still far from always clear what a “personal computer” is, and most importantly, what to do with it: it’s still not cheap, difficult to master, and it turns out you need to write programs yourself. What is the use of it?
Now everything has changed. Hardly anyone and everyone wanted to see a novelty at home. There were several reasons for this: this is popularization (and, of course, advertising) in the press, on radio and television. Enthusiastic reviews of colleagues and acquaintances who whiled away their leisure time at lunchtime playing on a working computer. And the children, who, of course, dreamed that for Christmas or birthday, instead of a bicycle, parents would give them this electronic miracle. But the most important thing was that now to solve typical tasks, be it working with files and text, preparing a financial report or reading an e-mail, you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist and learn an incomprehensible programming language (the resources of the first machines were modest, so they wrote most often in assembly language). It is enough to purchase the appropriate program and thoughtfully read the manual attached to it. Began to appear more and more companies, teams and just independent developers who wrote and sold products that make the computer friendlier and closer to the ordinary user.
For IBM, this was not the first attempt to create a more or less compact desktop computer.
In 1975, sales of the IBM 5100 Portable Computer began. Among its large-sized counterparts and predecessors of the sixties and seventies, it was favorably distinguished by price (from $ 11,000 for 16 KB of RAM and up to 20,000 for 64 KB), miniature and weight - about 25 kg. This was very important, since the computers of those times most often weighed hundreds of kilograms and took up a lot of space (although there were exceptions), and there is no point in talking about cost. The most significant drawback was the tiny display (with a diagonal of 5 inches, like that of Osborne 1). Therefore, there was a three-position switch on the panel that allows you to choose between a 64 × 16 character mode or a 32 × 16 character display in the right or left half of the screen. Magnetic tape cartridges were used as carriers. The user could choose one of two programming languages ​​(this also included a mode switch): the familiar Basic and the functional language APL (A Programming Language), which was used on IBM mainframes. Special characters specific to this language were put on the keyboard. Production of the IBM 5100 stopped only in 1982, a year after the release of the first IBM PC.
IBM 5100 is considered a direct descendant of the model 5120 , which was released in February 1980 - it used the same 16-bit processor of its own design. It was called IBM PALM (Put All Logic in Microcode) and was not a microchip, but a separate printed circuit board with installed logic components and a microcode “stitched” in them. Eight-inch floppy disks replaced the magnetic tape, and the diagonal of the integrated display was already 9 inches. By the way, with a weight of about 45 kg. It remains the heaviest desktop computer ever created - such a record.
Finally, in July 1981, just a month (!) Before the release of the IBM PC, the System / 23 Datamaster computer appeared. Outwardly, it was very similar to 5120: the differences were only in the keyboard (BASIC was the only language, and they decided to refuse APL, therefore, the need for its special characters) and display (he, like the VT100 de facto terminal that already became standard), disappeared. from Digital Equipment Corporation , displayed 80 Ă— 24 characters). The fundamental change was the use of an 8-bit Intel 8085 processor.
But still, the personages (and even the modern Macs models) are not obliged to them at all, but ... to chess. It was under the codename “Project Chess” in 1980 that IBM began work on a project to create an architecture for a new computer, which was to not only compete with the three main players in the market - Apple, Atari and Commodore - but also how the history , become his absolute leader ...
Blue Giant starts and wins!
Don Estridge (Philip Donald Estridge) volunteered to lead the development. He and eleven other employees had a difficult task to meet in the shortest possible time (before IBM engineers usually took several years to develop new computers). At a certain stage, the Estridge team was faced with a choice: use only the company's own developments or rely on ready-made components from third-party manufacturers. As a result, it was decided that instead of the experimental IBM 801 RISC processor developed in 1974 (by the way, it formed the basis of the Power processor architecture ) to take the 16-bit Intel 8088. The keyboard and expansion slots were borrowed from System / 23 Datamaster, they added IBM display and installed floppy drive. Moreover: today it sounds like nonsense, but the IBM PC 5150 model also had a port for connecting a cassette recorder (!), And it was also possible to use a regular TV as a display. In the ROM was "stitched" and the interpreter of the good old BASIC.
With the choice of operating system for a new computer, everything was much more curious. The fact is that for the 8-bit microprocessors Intel 8080 (as well as its improved, but fully compatible analog Zilog Z80 ) and Intel 8085 already existed OS. It began to develop in 1973-74 by Gary Kildall (Gary Kildall), and it was called CP / M (Control Program for Microcomputers - Eng. Control Program for Microcomputers). For the best promotion of the system on the market, he will create Intergalactic Digital Research (later it will be called simply Digital Research) and, together with his wife, will lead it. Kildall's ambitions will justify themselves in full, and very soon CP / M will be in demand and widespread - it will be used on many machines (starting with MITS Altair 8080 and IMSAI 8800). The secret of success lay in the fact that the OS was initially conceived as platform-independent, which, given the “heterogeneity” of the first computers, was not at all superfluous. To write most of the system, Kildol developed a special high-level language - PL / M. But at the same time, it remained undemanding to system resources (all that was needed was 16 KB of RAM and a floppy disk drive), which was easy for the user to master and convenient enough for the programmer.
Therefore, IBM first relied on a popular product from Digital Research.Of course, this does not mean that IBM programmers would not be able to develop their own operating system (note that this will have to be done anyway). Just for CP / M at that time many system and application programs were already written and released to the market (for example, the debut version of AutoCAD was presented just for it). This was supposed to save the developers from having to rewrite everything anew and would contribute to the speedy advancement of the computer in the business environment for which it was designed. The transfer of the system itself to the 16-bit architecture was also not an insurmountable problem. But to agree and sign the paper Gary Kildall and IBM representatives still failed ...
(Bill Gates) (Paul Allen) Microsoft ( — Micro-Soft). , , , Altair BASIC, Altair 8080. , - « An Open Letter to Hobbyists » ( 1976 Homebrew Computer Club, ) .
At that time, Microsoft did not have its own operating system - the company was engaged in developing and selling its own BASIC implementations for the first personal computers. Therefore, when such a tempting offer from IBM arrived, Gates, without further ado, simply bought the rights to similar CP / M, but written by Seattle Computer Products for a 16-bit Intel 8086 microprocessor OS 86-DOS. Then it was slightly tweaked, renamed MS-DOS, and presented to IBM as an original product. The transaction took place ... As part of computers from IBM, the operating system will be delivered under the name IBM PC-DOS.
The first versions of MS-DOS and PC-DOS were suspiciously similar in many ways to the original CP / M. It even allowed Kildall to blame IBM for copyright infringement. In response, the company nevertheless agreed to release a version for the PC. However, this could not change anything drastically: a system from Digital Research under the name CP / M-86 will cost several times more and sell much worse, and over time will begin to lose ground to PC-DOS.
Pretty soon, the second OS available for the IBM PC will sink into oblivion (later Digital Research will release DR-DOS, but now it will, ironically, be based on DOS). But there was one more! Forgotten today, like CP / M, a system with a difficult to pronounce name UCSD p-System, was written in Pascal (!) and, due to the interpretation of the byte-code, also allowed to run the programs developed for it on different machines. For a while, she enjoyed a certain popularity among users of the computer Apple II.
What was the IBM Personal Computer 5150 ? Silicon computer heart, 16-bit Intel 8088 microprocessor, beat at a frequency of 4.77 MHz. In the minimum configuration - without a floppy disk drive, operating system and display - the computer was sold at a price of $ 1,565, and the amount of RAM was only 16 KB. It was possible to work in this case only with a cassette recorder and BASIC. The most running configuration cost $ 3,000. It included a monochrome display and floppy disk drive. The amount of RAM was 64 KB (this is the minimum required for working with PC-DOS). In subsequent modifications, it will be increased to 256 KB. And finally, the most complete package already included two drives, a color display and a printer. She was paying for business applications and was priced at $ 4,500. In total, the computer had five internal expansion slots. The first two usually occupied the floppy disk controller and video adapter.In the remaining ones, it was possible to install an RS-232 port controller, a modem or with the help of additional expansion cards to increase the amount of RAM to 640 KB.
The reason for the dizzying success of the IBM-created computer was not at all the outstanding characteristics of the hardware or software (and the operating system did have many significant flaws). Most importantly, for the first time in the company's history, the key specifications of the architecture remained open to all without exception. In the future, this factor will play a key role in the ubiquity of the IBM PC platform. However, the full significance of such a decision and its consequences are not fully realized immediately, but according to the original plan it should only have induced third-party manufacturers to start developing and producing components and peripherals, and programmers to write application software. After a while, many companies will rush to introduce their own computers to the market,hardware and software compatible with it. Sometimes even for machines with a completely different architecture will produce add-ons that ensure compatibility in one way or another. As a result, this will lead to the appearance of the concept of "IBM PC compatible".
After the triumph of the IBM PC, so unexpected, even for the company's management, the career of its creator, Don Estridge , went swiftly up the hill. The little-known fact that Steve Jobs himself suggested that he become president of Apple Computer is also interesting. Estridge, however, did not agree. By 1984, he will already hold the post of vice president of IBM. But the irreparable happened: on August 2, 1985, Don and his wife died in a plane crash. He was only 48 years old ...
By that time, the IBM Personal Computer / AT will enter the market , and the release of the Model 5150 will last until 1987.
To be continued?
Long ago, when displays were smaller, disks and processors were slower, RAM was expensive, games excited imagination with diversity and indulged with originality, the connection was slow and strove to break at the most inopportune moment, and the worldwide network just tried to get on its feet and make the first uncertain steps to observe the development of information technology was no less interesting than it is now ...
When things were so uncomplicated
In those glorious times, the history of the founders of modern computers begins.
')
On the first of April (!) Of 1976 three comrades - Steve Jobs (Steven Jobs), Steve Wozniak (Stephen Wozniak) and Ronald Wayne (Ronald Wayne) - founded a company that sells personal computers that are really small and affordable. Many people thought then that this was such a joke. And it is in vain ...
The Apple I was originally offered at an “attractive” starting price of $ 666.66 (it will be reduced to $ 475 in a year) and was a ready-made printed circuit board with components already mounted. Assembling engaged Wozniak and Jobs, the guide wrote Ronald Wayne. To it, the user had to connect a keyboard, a display (an ordinary TV could play this role), a tape recorder (to work with which later, for an additional $ 75, it was proposed to purchase one more board), a power supply unit and “clothe” all this into the case. Of course, neither the shops selling components and software, nor the personal computers themselves, except, perhaps, Xerox Alto and IBM 5100 (we'll talk about it later), as well as MITS Altair 8800 and its direct competitor IMSAI 8080, then there was practically no. So it almost certainly meant “do it yourself”. For a year and a half (to October 1977) about two hundred cars were sold. Now they are all rarities and are of great collectible value: to this day no more than fifty original Apple I have survived intact.
By the way, today anyone can follow the path of Wozniak and Jobs and, with a soldering iron at the ready, assemble a full-fledged analogue of the Apple I ( video ).
The tape cassette, which was attached to the computer along with the manual, was recorded by the BASIC interpreter, a kind of forerunner of modern script programming languages ​​in the sense that it was used both for solving relatively simple and routine tasks and for writing relatively complex programs. As a demonstration of the possibilities, the user was offered several simple games (no graphics, only text mode). And, of course, there was an assembly language that, with proper talent and experience of a programmer, was able to squeeze out of the modest (by today's standards, of course) “hardware” everything that is possible ... and a little more.
The project aimed rather at enthusiastic electronics engineers, although this is not surprising: Steve Wozniak, who was then working at Hewlett-Packard, began developing a computer in his spare time, and especially for his own needs. Only later, when he actually demonstrated the results of his research to members of the Homebrew Computer Club , a longtime friend and soul mate Steve Jobs offered to sell it. As they say, a start was made ...
The era of personal computers was emerging.
Already in January 1977, the consumer electronics manufacturing company Commodore International entered the market with a Commodore PET computer. His somewhat awkward “retro-futuristic” appearance today involuntarily brings a smile ... Five years later, in August 1982, the iconic Commodore 64 will be released, as the name implies, 64 KB of RAM. In terms of cost and characteristics of graphics and sound at that time, the C64 was much more attractive than its competitors. Largely thanks to him, a new computer-based subculture has emerged - the demoscene (today, for the Commodore 64, they still create “ demos ” and even games ). Until 1994, a record number of cars of this model will be sold - 17 million units. Computers became massive.
A little more than a year after the release of the Apple I, a new model appeared - the Apple II with the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor operating at 1 MHz and 4-48 KB of RAM. It was not a self-made designer assembled in the garage, but a quality product. On the keyboard, which was partly a system unit, disk drives for five-inch floppy disks (they will be added later, in 1978) and the display, hinting at the support of color graphics, proudly flaunted the rainbow bitten apple - the new company logo (the previous one, with Isaac Newton under the tree, thought up the same Ronald Wayne).
This computer was an incredible success! And in many respects due to the fact that it is the Apple VisiCalc tabular processor that will initially be released, the machine will become especially attractive for small and medium businesses. Things will go uphill abruptly, and Jobs and Wozniak will not have time to look back as they become millionaires. This model will be released in several versions (including portable ) and will be sold as much as 16 years, until 1993. A lot of compatible (and often cheaper) machines from other manufacturers will appear. An analogue called Agate will be produced even in the Soviet Union. The latest modification, Apple IIGS , will be released in September 1986. It will carry a 16-bit processor, and work under an operating system with a graphical user interface.
In 1979, deliveries of two more 8-bit computers, the Atari 400 and Atari 800, began. Prior to that, Atari, Inc. very successful in the release of slot machines and home set-top boxes . Generally speaking, most often it was games that were the driving force behind the development of personal computers. For example, at Atari, Steve Jobs and Jay Miner , the main developer of Amiga PCs, worked for a while.
The appearance of the Atari 400 was also quite unusual: the developers decided to use a membrane-type keyboard (a similar constructive solution was used in the Soviet 16-bit personal computer Electronics BK-0010 of 1985, but was refused in subsequent modifications) cartridges of 8 KB. Downloading a program from a cassette took a lot of time, the first disk drives, although they were much faster than tape cassettes, remained very expensive, and the five-inch floppy disks themselves were never very reliable. The programs recorded in the removable ROM were ready for operation immediately after the power was turned on. The main difference between the Atari 800 was in the keyboard - it was the most common (and therefore more reliable), but this model sold worse.
Exactly thirty years ago, in 1981, events occurred that not only influenced the entire IT industry, but also determined the interests and occupation of many of those who now read these lines.
In March 1981, Clive Sinclair, entrepreneur Clive Sinclair , full name Sir Clive Marles Sinclair, who had previously been producing portable radios and televisions, pocket calculators and watches, began selling the Sinclair computer ZX81 in Great Britain in the UK. It was extremely simple, contained a minimum of details, and therefore cost cheap and was aimed at the mass consumer. The machine was equipped with a Zilog Z80 microprocessor with a frequency of 4 MHz, RAM with capacity from 1 to 64 KB, like the Atari 400 had a membrane-type keyboard and was offered in two versions. At a price of about 50 pounds in the form of a designer, which was necessary, armed with a soldering iron, multimeter, oscilloscope, and other tools familiar to the radio amateur, to assemble independently. Or at a price of about 70 pounds in assembled form for those who have never in their life held a soldering iron in their hands.
A more sophisticated model in 1982 was named ZX Spectrum because, unlike its predecessor, it already knew how to work with color graphics. It quickly became a sales hit in the UK and Europe, competing in popularity with the American Commodore 64. In 1983, Clive Sinclair will be knighted for creating this wonderful computer. Specs , as fans affectionately called him, not only paved the way for everyone to the exciting world of games, mathematics and computer art, he became an excellent school for future IT specialists, then teenagers. For example, Linus Torvalds had a Sinclair QL - the latest model, released by Sinclair Research , by Sir Clive, in 1984.
It is also curious that in the late eighties and early nineties in the USSR, and then in the CIS countries and the near abroad, a second life was granted to this architecture. Domestic counterparts, most often home-made, were significantly superior in performance to the original model. Such computers for many in childhood were the first. In the post-Soviet space, these small cars right up to the mid-nineties were deservedly considered “popular”. We still love them, continue to improve and release in the form of a board-designer called ZX Evolution .
In April 1981, Osborne 1 appeared on the market, a very interesting exhibit. It may well be considered the first truly "portable" computer. However, its design was different from today's usual laptops: a built-in monochrome CRT display with a diagonal of only 5 inches (it was possible to connect an external one), two drives for five-inch floppy disks, a folding keyboard cover and a carrying handle. All this with a weight of about 11 kilograms. The Zilog Z80 microprocessor was used, the amount of RAM was 64 KB. The computer was supplied with the CP / M operating system (we still have a reason to recall it), a BASIC interpreter, two text-based adventure games, and several office programs. Despite the considerable weight and size, it was willingly bought.
On August 12, 1981, the International Business Machines company introduced the IBM Personal Computer 5150 to the general public. Having been building and selling powerful, large and very expensive machines for decades now, the Blue Giant decided to make a name for itself in the rapidly developing personal computer market. No wonder: by that time the real boom began here!
Even before the early eighties, PCs were acquired mainly by experts or enthusiasts, and, of course, some companies that have already managed to see an affordable and effective tool for doing business in the “personal computers”. For the mass consumer, it was still far from always clear what a “personal computer” is, and most importantly, what to do with it: it’s still not cheap, difficult to master, and it turns out you need to write programs yourself. What is the use of it?
Now everything has changed. Hardly anyone and everyone wanted to see a novelty at home. There were several reasons for this: this is popularization (and, of course, advertising) in the press, on radio and television. Enthusiastic reviews of colleagues and acquaintances who whiled away their leisure time at lunchtime playing on a working computer. And the children, who, of course, dreamed that for Christmas or birthday, instead of a bicycle, parents would give them this electronic miracle. But the most important thing was that now to solve typical tasks, be it working with files and text, preparing a financial report or reading an e-mail, you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist and learn an incomprehensible programming language (the resources of the first machines were modest, so they wrote most often in assembly language). It is enough to purchase the appropriate program and thoughtfully read the manual attached to it. Began to appear more and more companies, teams and just independent developers who wrote and sold products that make the computer friendlier and closer to the ordinary user.
For IBM, this was not the first attempt to create a more or less compact desktop computer.
In 1975, sales of the IBM 5100 Portable Computer began. Among its large-sized counterparts and predecessors of the sixties and seventies, it was favorably distinguished by price (from $ 11,000 for 16 KB of RAM and up to 20,000 for 64 KB), miniature and weight - about 25 kg. This was very important, since the computers of those times most often weighed hundreds of kilograms and took up a lot of space (although there were exceptions), and there is no point in talking about cost. The most significant drawback was the tiny display (with a diagonal of 5 inches, like that of Osborne 1). Therefore, there was a three-position switch on the panel that allows you to choose between a 64 × 16 character mode or a 32 × 16 character display in the right or left half of the screen. Magnetic tape cartridges were used as carriers. The user could choose one of two programming languages ​​(this also included a mode switch): the familiar Basic and the functional language APL (A Programming Language), which was used on IBM mainframes. Special characters specific to this language were put on the keyboard. Production of the IBM 5100 stopped only in 1982, a year after the release of the first IBM PC.
IBM 5100 is considered a direct descendant of the model 5120 , which was released in February 1980 - it used the same 16-bit processor of its own design. It was called IBM PALM (Put All Logic in Microcode) and was not a microchip, but a separate printed circuit board with installed logic components and a microcode “stitched” in them. Eight-inch floppy disks replaced the magnetic tape, and the diagonal of the integrated display was already 9 inches. By the way, with a weight of about 45 kg. It remains the heaviest desktop computer ever created - such a record.
Finally, in July 1981, just a month (!) Before the release of the IBM PC, the System / 23 Datamaster computer appeared. Outwardly, it was very similar to 5120: the differences were only in the keyboard (BASIC was the only language, and they decided to refuse APL, therefore, the need for its special characters) and display (he, like the VT100 de facto terminal that already became standard), disappeared. from Digital Equipment Corporation , displayed 80 Ă— 24 characters). The fundamental change was the use of an 8-bit Intel 8085 processor.
But still, the personages (and even the modern Macs models) are not obliged to them at all, but ... to chess. It was under the codename “Project Chess” in 1980 that IBM began work on a project to create an architecture for a new computer, which was to not only compete with the three main players in the market - Apple, Atari and Commodore - but also how the history , become his absolute leader ...
Blue Giant starts and wins!
Don Estridge (Philip Donald Estridge) volunteered to lead the development. He and eleven other employees had a difficult task to meet in the shortest possible time (before IBM engineers usually took several years to develop new computers). At a certain stage, the Estridge team was faced with a choice: use only the company's own developments or rely on ready-made components from third-party manufacturers. As a result, it was decided that instead of the experimental IBM 801 RISC processor developed in 1974 (by the way, it formed the basis of the Power processor architecture ) to take the 16-bit Intel 8088. The keyboard and expansion slots were borrowed from System / 23 Datamaster, they added IBM display and installed floppy drive. Moreover: today it sounds like nonsense, but the IBM PC 5150 model also had a port for connecting a cassette recorder (!), And it was also possible to use a regular TV as a display. In the ROM was "stitched" and the interpreter of the good old BASIC.
With the choice of operating system for a new computer, everything was much more curious. The fact is that for the 8-bit microprocessors Intel 8080 (as well as its improved, but fully compatible analog Zilog Z80 ) and Intel 8085 already existed OS. It began to develop in 1973-74 by Gary Kildall (Gary Kildall), and it was called CP / M (Control Program for Microcomputers - Eng. Control Program for Microcomputers). For the best promotion of the system on the market, he will create Intergalactic Digital Research (later it will be called simply Digital Research) and, together with his wife, will lead it. Kildall's ambitions will justify themselves in full, and very soon CP / M will be in demand and widespread - it will be used on many machines (starting with MITS Altair 8080 and IMSAI 8800). The secret of success lay in the fact that the OS was initially conceived as platform-independent, which, given the “heterogeneity” of the first computers, was not at all superfluous. To write most of the system, Kildol developed a special high-level language - PL / M. But at the same time, it remained undemanding to system resources (all that was needed was 16 KB of RAM and a floppy disk drive), which was easy for the user to master and convenient enough for the programmer.
Therefore, IBM first relied on a popular product from Digital Research.Of course, this does not mean that IBM programmers would not be able to develop their own operating system (note that this will have to be done anyway). Just for CP / M at that time many system and application programs were already written and released to the market (for example, the debut version of AutoCAD was presented just for it). This was supposed to save the developers from having to rewrite everything anew and would contribute to the speedy advancement of the computer in the business environment for which it was designed. The transfer of the system itself to the 16-bit architecture was also not an insurmountable problem. But to agree and sign the paper Gary Kildall and IBM representatives still failed ...
(Bill Gates) (Paul Allen) Microsoft ( — Micro-Soft). , , , Altair BASIC, Altair 8080. , - « An Open Letter to Hobbyists » ( 1976 Homebrew Computer Club, ) .
At that time, Microsoft did not have its own operating system - the company was engaged in developing and selling its own BASIC implementations for the first personal computers. Therefore, when such a tempting offer from IBM arrived, Gates, without further ado, simply bought the rights to similar CP / M, but written by Seattle Computer Products for a 16-bit Intel 8086 microprocessor OS 86-DOS. Then it was slightly tweaked, renamed MS-DOS, and presented to IBM as an original product. The transaction took place ... As part of computers from IBM, the operating system will be delivered under the name IBM PC-DOS.
The first versions of MS-DOS and PC-DOS were suspiciously similar in many ways to the original CP / M. It even allowed Kildall to blame IBM for copyright infringement. In response, the company nevertheless agreed to release a version for the PC. However, this could not change anything drastically: a system from Digital Research under the name CP / M-86 will cost several times more and sell much worse, and over time will begin to lose ground to PC-DOS.
Pretty soon, the second OS available for the IBM PC will sink into oblivion (later Digital Research will release DR-DOS, but now it will, ironically, be based on DOS). But there was one more! Forgotten today, like CP / M, a system with a difficult to pronounce name UCSD p-System, was written in Pascal (!) and, due to the interpretation of the byte-code, also allowed to run the programs developed for it on different machines. For a while, she enjoyed a certain popularity among users of the computer Apple II.
What was the IBM Personal Computer 5150 ? Silicon computer heart, 16-bit Intel 8088 microprocessor, beat at a frequency of 4.77 MHz. In the minimum configuration - without a floppy disk drive, operating system and display - the computer was sold at a price of $ 1,565, and the amount of RAM was only 16 KB. It was possible to work in this case only with a cassette recorder and BASIC. The most running configuration cost $ 3,000. It included a monochrome display and floppy disk drive. The amount of RAM was 64 KB (this is the minimum required for working with PC-DOS). In subsequent modifications, it will be increased to 256 KB. And finally, the most complete package already included two drives, a color display and a printer. She was paying for business applications and was priced at $ 4,500. In total, the computer had five internal expansion slots. The first two usually occupied the floppy disk controller and video adapter.In the remaining ones, it was possible to install an RS-232 port controller, a modem or with the help of additional expansion cards to increase the amount of RAM to 640 KB.
The reason for the dizzying success of the IBM-created computer was not at all the outstanding characteristics of the hardware or software (and the operating system did have many significant flaws). Most importantly, for the first time in the company's history, the key specifications of the architecture remained open to all without exception. In the future, this factor will play a key role in the ubiquity of the IBM PC platform. However, the full significance of such a decision and its consequences are not fully realized immediately, but according to the original plan it should only have induced third-party manufacturers to start developing and producing components and peripherals, and programmers to write application software. After a while, many companies will rush to introduce their own computers to the market,hardware and software compatible with it. Sometimes even for machines with a completely different architecture will produce add-ons that ensure compatibility in one way or another. As a result, this will lead to the appearance of the concept of "IBM PC compatible".
After the triumph of the IBM PC, so unexpected, even for the company's management, the career of its creator, Don Estridge , went swiftly up the hill. The little-known fact that Steve Jobs himself suggested that he become president of Apple Computer is also interesting. Estridge, however, did not agree. By 1984, he will already hold the post of vice president of IBM. But the irreparable happened: on August 2, 1985, Don and his wife died in a plane crash. He was only 48 years old ...
By that time, the IBM Personal Computer / AT will enter the market , and the release of the Model 5150 will last until 1987.
To be continued?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/126493/
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