Introduction - Computer Busses - page 29

• Lotus 1-2-3 . This was a spreadsheet designed and developed by Jonathan Sachs and

Mitch Kapor at Lotus Development. It initially required an extremely large amount of
memory, 256 KB. Over $1 million was spent on its initial promotion but, it paid back its
original investment a thousand times over. Its sales hit Microsoft's Multiplan spread-
sheet, which had sold over 1 million copies. Microsoft learnt from this, and in the coming
years would release Excel, which would become the standard spreadsheet.

• WordPerfect . This was a word processing package developed by Satellite Software In-

ternational (who would eventually change their name to the WordPerfect Corporation.). It
initially cost $500, and was an instant success. Many believed that WordPerfect 5.1 was
the classic touch-type program, as it used keystrokes instead of long-winded menu op-
tions. Many typists have since had real troubles moving from WordPerfect to WIMPs-
based packages such as Microsoft Word (so much so that many current word processors
support all of the WordPerfect keystrokes).

The year 1983 was to be bleak for non-IBM PC compatible computers and saw prices falling
month upon month. It also spelt the end of the line, in different ways, for three great innova-
tors in the personal computer industry: Zilog, Osborne and Texas Instruments. It was the
beginning of the end for Zilog when they released their 32-bit microprocessor: the Z8000. It
was an advanced device that had a 256-byte on-chip cache, instruction pipelining, memory
management, and 10-25 MHz clock speed. Unfortunately, for Zilog, it was incompatible
with the great Z80 processor. It thus failed in the market against the strength of the Intel
8086, and the up-and-coming 80386 processor. Of the many computer manufacturers who
rushed to the market and used the 8086/8088, only one, Commodore, introduced a Z8000-
based system (Commodore Z8000). Apart from the failings at IBM and DEC, the release of
the Z8000 processor must rank amongst the poorest decisions in computing history. No one
could predict the effect that a Z80-compatiable 32-bit processor would have had on the mar-
ket. Certainly a 32-bit processor, which was functionally compatible with the 8086/8088 (as
the Z80 had been with the 8080) would have blown the market wide open, and would have
possibly stopped the slide to quasimonopoly of the Intel processors. Another failure in the
processor market was the extremely powerful 6 MHz, 32-bit NS32032 microprocessor from
National Semiconductor.
Commodore Business Machines were becoming dominant in the home computers mar-
ket, and highlighted their dominance with the release of the Commodore 64, for $400, which
quickly fell to $200 and dropped the prices of the VIC-20 to below $100 (breaking it for the
first time). In 1983, the sales of the VIC-20 reached 1 000000.
Commodore was also keen to develop the business market, and released the Commodore
Executive 64. It cost $1000 and had 64 KB RAM, a detachable keyboard, a 5-inch colour
monitor, and a 170 KB floppy drive. In 1983, Commodore became the first personal com-
puter to sell over $1 billion worth of computers.
Many companies in the home computer market had made large profits, but one failure in
a product range could spell disaster for a company. The high profits for all would not last
long as Commodore, Atari and Sinclair started slashing prices. Sinclair, through Timex, in-
troduced the Timex/Sinclair 2000 in the USA (which was called the Sinclair Spectrum in
other countries). It cost $149 for a 16 KB model, while the ZX81 price was reduced to $49.
The squeeze was on, as prices tumbled.
Atari released their 600XL for $199, and ceased production of the Atari 5200. The
600XL was based on the 1.79 MHz 6502C processor, had 16 KB RAM, 24 KB ROM, and an
optional CP/M module. As the push was on from other manufacturers to reduce prices, they