OF the 1980S
THAT MADE THE HOME COMPUTER REVOLUTION OF THE 1980s 23 THAT MADE THE HOME COMPUTER REVOLUTION OF THE 1980s First published in 2021 by Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd, Maurice Wilkes Building, St. John’s Innovation Park, Cowley Road, Cambridge, CB4 0DS Publishing Director Editors Russell Barnes Phil King, Simon Brew Sub Editor Design Nicola King Critical Media Illustrations CEO Sam Alder with Brian O Halloran Eben Upton ISBN 978-1-912047-90-1 The publisher, and contributors accept no responsibility in respect of any omissions or errors relating to goods, products or services referred to or advertised in this book. Except where otherwise noted, the content of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Contents Introduction. 6 Research Machines 380Z. 8 Commodore PET 2001. 18 Apple II. 36 Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81. 46 Commodore VIC-20 . 60 IBM Personal Computer (5150). 78 BBC Micro . 90 Sinclair ZX Spectrum. 114 Dragon 32. 138 Commodore 64. 150 Acorn Electron . .166 Apple Macintosh . .176 Amstrad CPC 464. 194 Sinclair QL . .210 Atari 520ST. 222 Commodore Amiga. 234 Amstrad PCW 8256. 256 Acorn Archimedes . .268 Epilogue: Whatever happened to the British PC? . .280 Acknowledgements . 281 Further reading, further viewing, and forums. 283 Index . .286 The chapters are arranged in order of each computer’s availability in the UK, as reflected by each model’s date of review in Personal Computer World magazine. Introduction The 1980s was, categorically, the best decade ever. Not just because it gave us Duran Duran and E.T., not even because of the Sony Walkman.
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