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
Second annual BYTE Awards
. Things we thought excellent from '89 included the 486, for which we made the daring prediction: "we see great potential"; Apple's 32-bit QuickDraw; Xircom's Pocket Ethernet Adapter; Wingz; OSF Motif; the Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture; Phar Lap's Virtual Control Program Interface; and Electronic Arts' Studio/1 paint program. Only one computer made the best-of-the-year list: the Mac IIci -- "the biggest jump in processing performance for a Mac since the Mac II was announced."
Strange Little Beastie of the Month
The Portable Mainfr
ame from Opus Systems: a $14,000 386SX-based lunchbox with a Motorola 88000 card slotted in. The 88K zoomed along at 21 MIPS, but because the thing was plugged into an AT slot, throughput was throttled. Good for running big spreadsheets, but not for conducting experiments in fluid dynamics in your hotel room.
The Next Cube had been announced more than a year before
, but it wasn't until mid-'89 that we actually could get a production machine for testing, and then a few more months to get a less buggy operating system. As a concept, we liked Mr. Jobs's onyx box, especially the software and development tools, "but the cube doesn't make it as a multiuser Unix system." Man, are we glad we didn't call it "insanely great."
Microsoft and IBM, hoping to make everything perfectly clear
, called a press conference to define their operating system intentions. Windows would be tailored for PCs with less than 2 MB of RAM, said IBM's Jim Cannavino. OS/2 1.2 would be for 3-MB mac
hines, said Microsoft's Bill Gates, and OS/2 2.0 would be for luxury systems. According to Cannavino, Windows would never be a server platform, and it would never have the fancy features of OS/2, like multithreading, distributed processing, and long filenames.
10 YEARS AGO IN BYTE
You can tell now that the preceding year had been the Year of the Mac Debut.
This issue was full of Mac-related articles, including features on Microsoft Mac BASIC version 2 and "The Visual Mind and the Macintosh," which extolled MacPaint as a tool for visual thinking.
From the UK:
Dick Pountain reported on the Amstrad CPC 464. Amstrad targeted its new Z80A-based system for use in the home, where most computers were used for "playing games or learning programming." The CPC 464, with its 80-column screen, "neat" operating system from Locomotive, and support for CP/M and DOS, appeared to be a business and a pleasure machine. With a color monitor, it sold for 37
5 Pounds -- a deal, considering color monitors sold then for about 300 Pounds.
We interviewed Steve Wozniak.
The Woz spoke candidly about mistakes Apple had made with the Apple III. "We made it very difficult for anyone to get access to the insides of the machine. . . . We closed that machine up to where somebody could have a very difficult time finding out how to add their own I/O drivers. . . . We made it very difficult for outside developers instead of providing all the information as we did with the Apple II." Some folks are still using Apple IIs. When was the last time you saw someone using an Apple III?
Our West Coast bureau reported from Unix Systems Expo, in L.A.,
that Unix was starting to appear on PCs. Amidst all the minicomputer products, Xenix was running on IBM PCs, Tandy Model 16Bs, and Apple Lisas. Our reporter lamented the preferential treatment given attendees of a men's fashion show going on at the same time. The fashion people got free parking a
t the convention center and free passes to the Unix show. The Unix crowd didn't.
15 YEARS AGO IN BYTE
Domesticated computers.
Along with Steve Ciarcia's instructions on building a home-control console, we explained how you could use a microcomputer to manipulate the lighting in your house, run the furnace, dial the phone, and sustain marital bliss (No, wait -- sustain marital bliss is in an upcoming issue).
"As of this writing,
the state of the art in personal computing is such that the user is king. It is possible to enter a computer store and witness the operation of a typical modern system, try it out, then purchase one just like it to take home." -- Carl Helmers editorial, "The Era of Off-the-Shelf Personal Computers Has Arrived"
Time was more expensive then.
Mountain Hardware advertised its Apple Clock, for the Apple II. It kept time in 1-ms increments and came with software for calendar and clock routines. B
ut the board cost $199, and it took up a whole slot.
Programming quickies
included listings for a checkbook balancer written in Pascal and a program in CBASIC that would give you the French equivalent of an English word and vice versa.
Blasts from the Past
