Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
The first personal computers were usually sold as kits. Each kit contained a
printed circuit board, a bunch of chips, typically including an Intel 8080, some
cables, a power supply, and perhaps an 8-inch floppy disk. Putting the parts toget-
her to make a computer was up to the purchaser. Software was not supplied. If
you wanted any, you wrote your own. Later, the CP/M operating system, written
by Gary Kildall, became popular on 8080s. It was a true (floppy) disk operating
system, with a file system, and user commands typed in from the keyboard to a
command processor (shell).
Another early personal computer was the Apple and later the Apple II, de-
signed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in the proverbial garage. This machine
was enormously popular with home users and at schools and made Apple a serious
player almost overnight.
After much deliberating and observing what other companies were doing,
IBM, then the dominant force in the computer industry, finally decided it wanted to
get into the personal computer business. Rather than design the entire machine
from scratch, using only IBM parts, made from IBM transistors, made from IBM
sand, which would have taken far too long, IBM did something quite uncharac-
teristic. It gave an IBM executive, Philip Estridge, a large bag of money and told
him to go build a personal computer far from the meddling bureaucrats at corporate
headquarters in Armonk, NY. Estridge, working 2000 km away in Boca Raton,
Florida, chose the Intel 8088 as his CPU, and built the IBM Personal Computer
from commercial components. It was introduced in 1981 and instantly became the
best-selling computer in history. When the PC hit 30, a number of articles about
its history were published, including those by Bradley (2011), Goth (2011), Bride
(2011), and Singh (2011).
IBM also did something uncharacteristic that it would later come to regret.
Rather than keeping the design of the machine totally secret (or at least, guarded
by a gigantic and impenetrable wall of patents), as it normally did, it published the
complete plans, including all the circuit diagrams, in a book that it sold for $49.
The idea was to make it possible for other companies to make plug-in boards for
the IBM PC, to increase its flexibility and popularity. Unfortunately for IBM,
since the design was now completely public and all the parts were easily available
from commercial vendors, numerous other companies began making
clones
of the
PC, often for far less money than IBM was charging. Thus, an entire industry
started.
Although other companies made personal computers using non-Intel CPUs, in-
cluding Commodore, Apple, and Atari, the momentum of the IBM PC industry
was so large that the others were steamrollered. Only a few survived, and these
were in niche markets.
One that did survive, although barely, was the Apple Macintosh. The Macin-
tosh was introduced in 1984 as the successor to the ill-fated Apple Lisa, which was
the first computer to come with a
GUI
(
Graphical User Interface
), similar to the
now-popular Windows interface. The Lisa failed because it was too expensive, but
