CHAPTER 8
1975 to 1985
Augmenting
Human
Intellect
1
1975+
Altair + others and expansion
 Minicomputer also “booming”





DEC: PDP-8, PDP- 11
Prime: 32 bit mini
Interdata - “mega-mini”
Systems engineering Laboratory; 32-bit


Popular NASA / aerospace
Gould bought
2
DEC Attitude
Proud of architecture innovations
 Rejected 8080 to keep architectural
decision in their control
 Did not license the PDP-11 instruction
set to chip makers



Give away “corporate jewels”
Also kept DEC out of PC market
3
DEC  VAX
VAX 11-780
 1977-
VAX announced
 Virtual Address eXtension of PDP-11
Implication: 32 bit PPD-11
 Really a new machine
 PDP-11 mode available

4
VAX Virtual Memory
 Not

But was important upgrade
 4.3

first; in IBM 370 (few others)
gigabytes virtual memory
1 million 32-bit words
 Paged
memory, swaps between
core & drum, associative
technique
5
VAX Features
MIPS - 1 million
instructions/second
 16 32-bit general
registers
 250+ instructions
 9 addressing
modes


VT-100 Terminal
 Powerful, easy to
use
 Scrolled by pixel
 ASCII based
6
VAX Success
 Speed
was the benchmark
 $120,000 and up
 Sold 100,000 in the next decade
 Surpassed other 32-bit mini’s
 Could run UNIX
7
IBM in the 70’s

New Mainframes – LSI chips



SNA–Systems Networking Architecture



1977- 3033,
1979- 4300 - Less cost per performance
1974: Standards for networking large
computers
Used into the 1990’s
1975 - 5100 PC


Sold; but not a great success
$9,000, big, heavy
8
IBM in Court
U.S. vs. IBM; Jan. 17, 1969
 Filed by Justice Dept.

Violations of anti-trust laws by virtue of it’s
market dominance (70%) for g.p. electronic
computers
10 years of testimony, depositions, etc.
Trial in 1975





Judge overwhelmed by jargon
Focused on mainframes, not emerging smaller market
9
IBM in Court

Witness: “…it is most unlikely that any major
new venture into the g.p. computing industry
can be expected”



1977: as Apple II introduced at CA conference
Dismissed in 1981
 Competitors were getting RICH
 Still lots of healthy companies
 Not Noted: PC’s were changing everything
Hurt development, non-standard with others
10
Terminals & Networks

1970’s – private networks emerged

MEDLINE
OLTP – online transaction processing
 Dumb terminals developed



VT-100 – standard ASCII
3270 – IBM EBCDIC standard
 Smart

Terminals
Blurred line: terminal vs. PC
11
Wang - Office Automation


Pioneered Calculators
1972 - Model 2200 computing calculator




Bankrupt in
1990’s – in the
PC market
Office Automation = Word
Processing
Not Successful - expensive,
“scary”
WPS-1976


$30,000 - Hard-disk & screen
G.P., distributed computing
system
12



Goal: to anticipate profound changes that
technology would bring to the handling of
information in the business world
Xerox concerned about “paperless office”
Two Important Points


Palo Alto – early Silicon Valley
Mansfield Amendment
 No DOD funds without specific relationship to
military; NSF for basic research not funded
 Lots of available researchers
13
Doug Englebart
Stanford
 Invented the Mouse-1967
 Inspired by Vannevar Bush’s “Atlantic
Monthly” article “As we may think”1945
 Wanted to improve communication
between man and computer
 Dec . 1968 - Fall Joint Computer
Conference, San Francisco,
“Augmented Knowledge Workshop”

14
J.C.R. Licklider
 Psychologist,
MIT
“Man - Computer Symbiosis”
 “The Computer as a Communication
Device”

 ARPA
- 1962
“Galactic Network”- his vision
 Encouraged Englebart

15
More Xerox PARC

Developed but did not commercialize


Alto Computer - $18,000



GUI with mouse, Ethernet
1000 @ PARC, most networked
WYSIWYG
Commercial  Star 8010

Marketed as a network to executives


- 10
years early
- Wang
Never had any commercial successes
16
PC’s - 1977- 1985

1977- Radio Shack TRS-80 - Model I





$400 +
Z-80 processor chip
Nation-wide marketing
BASIC, cassette
“Signaled end of experimental phase of
personal computing & beginning of
mature phase”
17
PC’s (cont.)
 Commodore
PET
6502 processor
 More popular in Europe, @ MSU

 Apple
II - Jobs and Wozniak
6502 processor
 Fewer chips than Altair,
out-performed

but
18
Apple
 1977
- $10,5000 to MS for BASIC
license - saved MS financially
 Bus architecture & expansion slots
 Outsold TRS-80 & PET; even
though more $$$
 Still didn’t threaten establishment
19
Innovations –
Apple’s 5 ¼ Disk
1977- 8’’ disks - MITS, IMSAI Expensive
 Apple - drives from Shugart Assoc.




50 chips
Wozniak redesigned with 5 chips
“a marvel of elegance & economy”
113 Kbytes
 $495 (drive + OS + controller)
“Last pivotal computer”

20
Visi Calc- 1979
 Bricklin
& Frankston- developers
 Flystra, marketed
 Software Arts
 On Apple - $200
 Was big success
 SW tail wags HW dog
21
IBM PC- August 1981






Intel 8088, 16 bit word; external 8 bit*
ASCII, Internal drives
62-pin bus
5 Expansion slots
ROM - MS BASIC
3 Operating Systems available




CPM-86 (1982)
Pascal-based from UCSC
PC- DOS*
Full screen - 25 lines X 80 characters

Color available
22
IBM PC (cont.)
Word processing, accounting, games,
VisiCalc
 Oct. 1982 - Lotus 1-2-3


faster than VisiCalc
IBM passed Apple
 December 1982
 Time Magazine
 Computer named “Man of the Year”
for 1983

23
IBM PC (cont’d)
 Again
misjudged demand
 Estimate 250,000 total sales

Some months nearly that
 Transformed
MS to dominance
24
Why MS-DOS?
 IBM
going “outside” for lot - hw & sw
 MS Provided Basic for 8088
 Planned to use CP/M - Gary Kildall
He wasn’t there when IBM visited
 Dispute over “non-disclosure”
 DEC Promised 16-bit version, but late

25
MS-DOS (cont.)
 MS
offered PC-DOS
Retained rights to market
 Had paid $15K to Seattle Computer
products for rights to 86-DOS
 Ended up as MS-DOS  Windows


Most influential & longest lasting sw ever
26
MS DOS vs. CP/M
 Retained
BIOS
 Terminology (PIP to Copy)
 More intuitive syntax
 Eliminated reboot for wrong disk

“Abort, Retry, Fail?”
 Discussed
multi-tasking, not time
27
Comments
- If IBM’s PC division were a
separate company, would have been #3
in industry, behind IBM & DEC
 640K addressable memory: Thought to
be very adequate, soon a road block
 Compatibles- mixed results
 Now locked into IBM PC architecture
 1984
28
1984 - Apple Macintosh
Influenced from Xerox PARC
 Designer Jeff Raskin
 “Lisa” had been a flop($10k)


Wanted cheaper version
Mouse and GUI, 3.5” disk
 $2,495
 Motorola 6800
 1985 – Appletalk - networking


No hard drive so MAC couldn’t be a
server
29
Macintosh (cont.)
Closed Architecture-can’t add boards
 Allowed it to be cheaper
 Not in current trend of H.W.
 1987 - Color monitor
 System SW was it’s greatest strength
 Copied by MS for Windows
 Difficult to develop applications for



Elegant but slower than DOS
4 Mb Memory (PC 640K)
30
PC Clones
Most IBM PC’s consisted of parts from
other manufacturers - anyone could buy
 Same with S.W.- e.g. PC-DOS
 IBM retained BIOS code
 Compaq





3 guys from TI
Reverse engineered BIOS
1983 - 1st clone
Top 100 companies by 1985
31
Clones (cont.)

Phoenix Technologies


Reverse engineered BIOS
Sold to anyone
Lotus 1-2-3 & Flight Simulator
became tests for compatibility
 By 1990’s - other companies made
more selling IBM clones, than IBM

32
CHAPTER 8
1975 to 1985
Augmenting
Human Intellect
33