Dennis Barker
5 YEARS AGO IN BYTE
Big month for sizzling systems.
Apple's Mac IIfx was our cover model; buzzing along with a 40-MHz 68030, it was the fastest Mac yet. We took our first look at IBM's new RISC workstations, the RS/6000 line, built around a new 32-bit superscalar CPU. This replacement for the "lackluster" RT peaked at 40 MIPS, or about 2.5 times faster than the SparcStation 1.
Who would have thought then
that four years later Apple would be the world's leading producer of RISC systems and that Apple and IBM would be allies? Apple and IBM! What's next--Sinatra and Bono?
The 486 was the hot new thing,
but many folks were cranking up performance by swapping in 386 motherboards. We reviewed 23 of them. You could buy a
25-MHz caching board for $1100.
Jon Udell dissected "Microsoft's long-awaited 32-bit OS/2 2.0."
His critical assessment of the not-yet-ready operating system as it was five years ago:
COOL NOT COOL
Flat memory model 16- and 32-bit APIs Can't run Windows binaries
Can run 32-bit applications on a server Few native applications
Multitasking DOS and Windows sessions "Spotty" device-driver support
MVDMS (multiple virtual DOS machines) Can't run DOS-extended programs
under MVDM
Threads support multitasking between Development tools lacking
and within applications
Diagnosis: He liked it,and he wanted it, even though it was "still wobbly." And "a final release is many months away." How many months? It would be nearly two years and several big changes before IBM would ship 2.0.
Our newly named State of the Art section
l
ooked at applications architectures, including two "blueprints for the `90s": IBM's Systems Application Architecture and Digital's Network Applications Support.
Our reviewer had a tough time tackling HP's New-Wave enhancement layer for Windows 2.11.
He liked the iconic, object-oriented interface, the ability to share data between programs, and the Agent task automater. But the programming required to turn Windows applications into NewWave applications, the cryptic error messages, and snafu after snafu made it seem less than worthwhile.
10 YEARS AGO IN BYTE
The big AI issue.
Some of the top names in the field wrote about transplanting expert knowledge to a computer, massive parallelism as the key to simulating intelligence, a program that teaches Lisp programming, theories of learning, and that miracle that machines have yet to match: vision.
"When we meet those aliens in outer space, will we be able to converse? . . .
Yes . . . because we'll both think in similar ways. . . . All intelligent problem solvers are subject to the same ultimate constraints--limitations on space, time, and materials."
-- Marvin Minsky
Reverse engineering the brain.
John Stevens, a professor of biomedical engineering, wrote about the possibility of digital hardware that copies the circuitry of the brain. While computers might be smart enough to ignore the O.J. trial, according to the professor's estimate "it would take a minimum of 100 years of Cray time" to simulate the processing power of the human eye.
Hey Dad, Did CP/M Machines Have, Like, Big Fins?
"The micro industry is moving toward new standards of adequacy that will eventually relegate 8-bit CP/M computers to low-cost entry-level systems--or relics, like my neighbor's 1957 Studebaker." -- Pournelle's column
Our correspondent in Japan visited Hitachi to see the new S-810 supercomputer.
The hardware deserved
raves for its 600-megaflop performance, faster than a Cray. But the researchers admitted that without hand-tweaking their Fortran code ran no faster on the supercomputer than on their M-280 mainframe.
15 YEARS AGO IN BYTE
On the cover: Hewlett-Packard's new barcode-reading wand.
Editorial director Carl Helmers was a proponent of distributing software on paper, in barcode form.
Jef Raskin, info-appliance proponent and mind behind the Macintosh concept
, wrote about the technical difficulties of turning a computer into a musician's amanuensis: It listens to what you play, then writes it down as notation.
In the News "Xerox has announced a new concept
of processor-to-processor communications intended for an office environment. This novel concept is called `Ethernet."' Rumor has it that Xerox and Intel are developing an Ethernet chip.
Steve Ciarcia explained how to build a multiuser system out of five
integrated circuits,
one of which was the new 16-bit 8088. The postcard-size board held enough memory and peripheral interfaces to support two 300-bps terminals, each running a Tiny BASIC interpreter.
Electronic musician Hal Chamberlin discussed advanced techniques for real-time music synthesis.
With new, low-cost micros like Texas Instruments' 99/4 having built-in three-voice synthesizers, music applications of PCs "may soon approach the popularity of accounting, word processing, and games."
Blasts from the Past
