1982

By Fred Langa

August 23, 1999

(Two Gigs, And Growing :  Page 6 of 7 )

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Two Gigs, And Growing 1975 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984

Compaq rolled out its portable, simply called the "Compaq Portable." The Commodore 64 arrived with an initial price of $600 that quickly dropped to about a third that. Kaypro announced a machine to compete head to head with the Osborne. Intel announced the 286. Lotus introduced 1-2-3; AutoDesk produced AutoCAD (the first PC-based CAD system); Peter Norton published the first Norton Utilities. PC Magazine started up, fully six years after BYTE. Franklin announced an Apple II clone. BYTE devotes many pages to the top-selling IBM PC -- the first generally accepted business computer (although many Apple IIs had been brought into businesses by PC guerrillas). Although the PC was hot, BYTE continued to cover every major brand and type of technology, hardware and software with articles such as "A Comparison of Five Compilers for Apple BASIC."

1983
1983 saw the first female U.S. astronaut, Sally Ride, rocket into space; the USSR shot down a South Korean civilian jet, killing all 269 on board; U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon were bombed by terrorists, killing 241.

Radio Shack announced the TRS-80 Model 100, a 4-pound wonder (the first notebook computer, really) that immediately became the darling of professional journalists -- and almost no one else. Apple unveiled the Lisa (a $10,000 dog of a PC) and the far more successful Apple IIe, at $1,395. Coleco tried to enter the PC market with the "Adam," but it fared so poorly it became known as the "Adam Bomb." Not to be outdone, IBM rolled out the PCjr -- which everyone immediately hated for its "chicklet" keyboard, high prices, and low power. But IBM recovered by introducing the $5000 PC XT -- the first mainstream system to ship with a hard drive (it was all of 10 MBs).

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