Dennis Barker
5 YEARS AGO IN BYTE
Zenith's new EISA PC, a 33-MHz 386 machine, was our cover story. It was one of the first EISA boxes, and it had a drive controller that ``leaves others in the dust.''
Three things that haven't changed. A Microbytes story quoted David Liddle, then chairman of Metaphor Computer Systems, as saying users have three big needs the industry isn't filling: the ability to access data, no matter where it is; tools that everyone can use; and tools that let even technology novices build applications.
Department of It Sounded Like a Good Idea
We looked at some products that left the drawing board with grand hope and hype but tanked when they hit the market. These micro Edsels included the Apple III, the TI-99/4A, and the IBM PCjr.
Motorola
had just released the 68040. Notable enhancements: an integrated FPU, two 4-KB caches, and separate MMUs (memory management units) for data and instructions. At approximately 20 MIPS and 3.5 MFLOPS, it would make the next generation of Macs run at the speeds of SparcStations.
Space Oddity
An article called ``Drowning in Data'' proposed a serial memory system that involved bouncing data off the moon with a laser beam and using space as a recording medium. And did you know that digital tape has a bit-storage density that's about two orders of magnitude greater than the neuron density of the brain?
Spreadsheets
Picking one then was like buying a bottle of iced tea today: There were about a dozen brands to choose from. We reviewed the three Excels (for Windows, OS/2, and the Mac), Lotus 1-2-3, Quattro Pro, SuperCalc, Lucid 3-D, PlanPerfect, ProQube, SmartWare, 20/20, Twin, Full Impact, and Wingz.
Ray tracing
--a techni
que for rendering photo-realistic images--was a natural application for transputers. Author Owen F. Ransen showed how to use the Inmos chip's innate parallel processing power to whip up 3-D graphics.
10 YEARS AGO IN BYTE
Computers in the sciences.
BYTE published articles that looked at using PCs for low-cost data acquisition, modeling kinetics, removing noise from data, interfacing with lab equipment, and viewing molecules--novel ideas back then.
``It may be worth it
someday when there's a lot of great software. But right now not many are going to pay a thousand bucks to hook up a $2000 computer to a network. . . because there isn't enough software that makes it worthwhile.''
-- Steve Jobs, in an interview with BYTE, on the lack of networked computers
Did you hear the one about the COBOL hacker
who... Reader William Carlson wrote to suggest we add a ``Jokes and Riddles'' column and a comic strip or two. We haven'
t forgotten your suggestion, Mr. Carlson. We're just trying to figure out how to embed the sound of a rimshot in the pages of the magazine. (Ba-dum!)
Dick Pountain wrote from the U.K.
about a system that almost attained his Platonic ideal of a computer. The MG-1 from Whitechapel Computer Works was powered by National Semiconductor's 32-bit 32016 processor. It was designed for speedy bit-mapped graphics. Fashion-wise, it was ahead of its time: It was housed in black.
Our West Coast bureau reported
Microsoft was delaying Windows. It took up too much memory--a humongous 156 KB--and certain functions were judged too slow. ``Microsoft is also looking for a way to differentiate Windows from [IBM's] TopView.'' Is Presentation Manager, then, the TopView of the 1990s?
Our first column on computers and the law
looked at Lotus's lawsuits against businesses it accused of illegally copying 1-2-3 for internal use. Other software companies were also linin
g up their lawyers. A ``vocal group of users'' charged that the lawsuits were ``nothing more than an attempt to intimidate users into paying inflated license fees.''
15 YEARS AGO IN BYTE
Graph theory
was the major story, explaining how graphing programs could figure such things as the shortest distance between two cities. The big challenge with these graphs was storage. ``Space should not be wasted on 0s that represent nonexistent edges.''
Retro tech
Robert Newcomb described how he built a plotter out of an Etch-A-Sketch, two stepper motors, gears, a circuit board, and a Tiny BASIC program. He hooked the device up to a KIM-1 computer. The Etch-A-Sketch drew quite nice graphs and had two advantages: It didn't use any memory to put information on the screen, and it was nonvolatile--well, as long as you didn't shake it.
Steve Ciarcia's project
was seasonal. It was something that BYTE's New Hampshire-based staff could re
ally relate to: using a computer to control a wood stove.
Blasts from the Past
