Dennis Barker
As we approach our twentieth year of publishing BYTE, we'll be looking back at highlights from two decades of covering the PC revolution.
5 Years Ago in BYTE
Big laptop issue: We looked at new portables--Compaq's LTE/286, Grid's GridPad, the T1000SE and T3100SX from Toshiba, and Zenith's Supersport SX--and claimed they ``point to the future of small computing.'' Looking back, their farsightedness was spotty. The Compaq and Grid machines probably pointed the farthest. The LTE had a 20-MB hard drive only three-quarters of an inch high, and Compaq engineers had designed a very small circuit board (7.5 by 2.5 inches). The GridPad, precursor to the PDAs of the 1990s, could read handwriting. Looking not so futuristic, the T1000SE used the ``now-ubiquitous battery-backed RAM card,'' which
we apparently thought would be the big thing in tomorrow's notebooks. Battery life for these units averaged 3 hours.
Happy birthday, VisiCalc. In the tenth year of the spreadsheet, our interview with inventors Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston serves as a reminder of how small big things could be: Their ``visible calculator'' ran on a 24-KB machine. (In contrast, Lotus 1-2-3 would require a 256-KB machine; today's Windows version needs at least 4 MB.)
Toward the other end of the issue, Intel engineer Neal Margulis wrote about the new 860, Intel's foray into RISC. Promoted as a supercomputer on a chip, the 860 was expected to hit 50 MHz (although the designers generally spoke of it as a 40-MHz chip). This million-transistor processor made big use of pipelining, could execute two instructions in the same clock cycle, and put a CPU, FPU, MMU (memory management unit), graphics unit, and separate instruction and data caches on the same silicon slab. Today, you can find it used in laser printers and othe
r embedded applications.
10 Years Ago in BYTE
Communications was the theme that month, and one of the hot issues was the debate over the best high-level protocol for four-year-old Ethernet: TCP/IP or the Xerox Network System. (Ethernet grew out of Xerox's scheme for connecting its office machines.) Manufacturers were supporting one of these protocols, and their Ethernet boards were consequently incompatible.
PC of the Month: The Tandy 1000 Perceived highlights: ``will give a lot of homes the advantages of a fully functional 16-bit machine''; base price of $1358.95; ``will run Flight Simulator and most other IBM PC and PCjr software''; ``clever use of gate arrays to handle multiple graphics modes''; ``DeskMate software''; ``more compatible with IBM PC than Tandy 2000 (can read disks used with the IBM but not those with the 2000).''
15 Years Ago in BYTE
Numerical analysis was the focus. ``If Leibniz were alive today, he would be employing a friendly desktop computer as a tool fo
r examination of concepts ranging far beyond the calculus he helped shape.''
He'd also be reading this issue of BYTE to learn how to analyze polynomial functions with a TI-59 calculator, cop some code for performing trigonometric functions and printing curves on an HP plotter, and maybe even ordering one of the new Heathkits.
It Sounded So Fast Back Then
Maximum clock rates was the big debate at the Microprocessor Forum. Our news story quoted one designer: ``The electrical environment becomes a real problem at clock speeds higher than 33 MHz.'' Microprocessor Report's Michael Slater and others predicted clock speeds would top out at about 50 MHz. But former IBMer Andrew Heller had the clearer crystal ball, predicting speeds of 100 to 150 MHz in the ``next few years.''
``Thousands of books could be on-line, available at the touch of a button.''
--Senator Al Gore, on his proposal for a National Digital Library and advanced communications network
Love and War at Chaos Manor
Jerry Pournelle finally got his hands on one of the first HP LaserJets. Despite some flaws--problems with proportional spacing, a paper tray that held only 80 sheets, a useless print-intensity control--Jerry wrote, ``I think I'm going to be in love.''
The Chaos Manor game of the month was Gulf Strike from Victory Games, a simulation of war in the Persian Gulf. What if Saddam Hussein had been reading?
In the News
The number of BBSes had jumped in a year from three to an estimated 60. . . . Computer Systems Design Group was offering a new ``Unix-like'' operating system for 8080 and Z80 systems....Motorola and Zilog were developing MMUs for their 68000 and Z8000 chips....The FCC benevolently granted permission to amateur radio operators with PCs to zap ASCII files around using the OSCAR satellite....Shugart was cranking out a thousand floppy drives a day, while number 2 Micropolis was producing 200.
Blasts from the Past
