Apple Macintosh

Apple Macintosh

That alone would have been remarkable for a company founded by two men in their twenties on a shoestring budget, but in 1983 Apple had another hit with the Macintosh model. The "Mac" was the first successful personal computer with a graphical user interface complete with mouse, windows, menus. Along with the Apple LaserWriter, one of the earliest mass-market Laser Printers, the Mac redefined how a computer should be used, and all personal computers since have worked like the Mac

Development

The Macintosh project started in early 1979 with Jef Raskin, who envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. In September 1979, Raskin was given permission to start hiring for the project and was, in particular, looking for an engineer that could put together a prototype. Bill Atkinson, a member of the Lisa team, introduced him to Burrell Smith, a service technician who had been hired earlier that year.

Macintosh, or for newer models, Mac, is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The original Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI) rather than a command line interface.

Small Capacity PERSONAL COMPUTERS

TOP: Atari 800- The machine that won the color graphics race

Bottom: Commodore 64- Breaking the price barrier

The Atari Models 400 and 800 were considered the best personal computers for games and color graphics. They had a very large family of game software, but not much business software. Lack of good disk and peripheral support cased these machines to have a short life.

The Commodore 64 was the best-selling personal computer of all time. It had a large memory capacity, low cost floppy disks and peripherals and color graphics. It could use a TV for a monitor and there was all the software anyone could want. Commodore in a price war with Texas Instruments, reduced the prices of the C-64 as low as $260 and more of them were sold than any computer in history.

PERSONAL COMPUTERS TRS-80

Radio Shack's TRS-80 selling for about $500 complete with video monitor and BASIC took the personal computer market by storm. Using a fast Z-80 processor it use a cassette recorder for program and data storage. Later models incorporated disk drives and more memory. the Model III, housed in one case became the most popular personal computer in schools and homes rivaling the Apple II. Radio Shack also built other types of personal computers including the first practical laptop, the Model 100.

RADIO SHACK COMPUTERS -- Tandy 1000 SL

The Tandy 1000 SL (1986) series of computers were an update of the Tandy 1000 SX. They came in a redesigned case and, in the case of the TL/2 and above, featured onboard XT IDE hard disk controllers (These controllers are not AT IDE compatible and thus will not work with modern ATA hard drives).

The Tandy 1000 SL boasted an Intel 8086 processor running at 8 MHz. The 8086's 16-bit bus gave it a small but definite performance advantage over the earlier 8088-based Tandy 1000s. The SL came with 384 KB of memory preinstalled, whereas the SL/2 offered 512 KB. Both machines could be expanded to 640 KB.

The Tandy SL model was equipped with a 5.25" floppy disk drive (360 KB) whereas the SL/2 featured a 3.5" floppy disk drive (720 KB). It was possible to add a second disk drive or even a hard disk.

The SL series offered two innovations over the earlier SX series. One is high resolution (640x200) 16 color graphics; the other is an improved sound circuit, using an 8-bit mono DAC alongside the PSSJ 3-voice sound source. The DAC gave the SL series digital sound output capabilities not much unlike those of the early 8-bit SoundBlaster line of audio cards: 3 PCM voices, 8-bit DMA up to 22050 KHz, audio mono output, audio mono inputs (mic + line), sampling at 5512 KHz, 11025 KHz and 22050 KHz.

One interesting feature was the 512 KB BIOS, from which 350 KB where available as a read-only C: drive. DOS 3.3 and the main component of Deskmate 3 where stored on it. This was excellent as you could access DOS and start to work only within a few seconds (an unreachable dream nowadays).

There is no internal clock but one called "SmartWatch" was available as an option. There was thus a socket on the electronic board reserved for it.