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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. -
Shiraz Shivji (Wikipedia)
Shiraz Shivji - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 1 of 2 Shiraz Shivji From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Shiraz Shivji (*1947 in Tansania) was the primary designer of the Atari ST computer, and one of the engineers behind the Commodore 64. Contents ■ 1 Biography ■ 1.1 Atari ST design ■ 1.2 Momenta design ■ 2 External links Biography Shiraz Shivji studied electrical engineering at Stanford University in 1969-1973. Atari ST design When Jack Tramiel took over Atari in 1984 with a number of Commodore engineers, the company was in bad shape. Shiraz Shivji became Atari's Vice President of Research and Development, and led a team of six engineers who designed the Atari 520ST computer. This work was completed in a remarkably short five months (July to December 1984). The prototype presentation at the January 1985 Las Vegas CES was a great coup for Atari, and the product revived the company. Shivji had designed the Atari ST as the first member of a family. He later led the design of the Atari TT before leaving Atari. Momenta design After leaving Atari, Shivji designed the Momenta Pen Computer in 1991. This was one of the first full- sized tablet computers with a sophisticated hardware for that time. However, its operating system was based on DOS and did not deliver sufficient applications for its graphical user interface. External links ■ First Antics Awards (http://www.atarimagazines.com/v5n1/anticawards.html) ■ Three years of the ST (http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n1/threeyearsofst.html) ■ Father of the ST (http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/peaks/6320/ard/misc/whatever.htm) ■ A tribute to the ST (http://alive.atari.org/alive0/stbirth.php) ■ Momenta computer (http://www.byte.com/art/9611/sec4/art1.htm) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiraz_Shivji 5/13/2009 Shiraz Shivji - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 2 of 2 Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiraz_Shivji" Categories: Living people | Atari | Commodore International | Year of birth missing (living people) ■ This page was last modified on 11 December 2008, at 12:24 (UTC). -
ATARI-COMPUTER! Aattaarrii--Ffaann Ddeess Mmoonnaattss
DAS SOFTWARE-VERZEICHNIS FÜR ATARI-COMPUTER! AAttaarrii--FFaann ddeess MMoonnaattss James Rolfe James Rolfe gehört als „Angry Vi- deo Game Nerd“ zu den bekann- testen YouTube-Künstlern. Der Nerd fluchte und schimpfte sich bisher durch über 130 Episoden – meist waren es schlechte NES-Spiele, die er besprach, Spiele wie „Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde“, oder die Spiele- sammlung „Action 52“. Neben Nin- tendo-Konsolen schätzt Rolfe aber auch das VCS 2600, widmete eine Folge den Atari-Sportspielen und mit seiner zweiten Show, „James & Mike Mondays“ gleich vier Folgen verschiedenen VCS- Spielen. Für einen NES-Fan wäre es ein Leichtes, schon wegen der primitiven Gra- fik jedes VCS-Spiel abzuwerten, aber so einfach macht er es sich nicht. In den Nerd-Episoden fiel auch immer der Name „E.T.“ - Fans erwarteten das Review des angeblich schlechtesten Spiels aller Zeiten, einen ultimativen Wutausbruch. Im „Angry Video Game Nerd Movie“ ist dieses Review die Schlussszene und um es vorweg zu nehmen: Der Nerd widerstand der Versuchung, seinen Fans einfach das zu geben, was sie erwarteten. E.T. ist zwar ein schlechtes, aber eben nicht das schlechteste Spiel aller Zeiten. http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesNintendoNerd Inhalt 02/2015 Aktuelles 03 Atari-Fan des Monats: James Rolfe 06 News 11 Immer Up-ToDate 32 Siteseeing - Atari-Museen im Web Features 12 Happy Computer 02/85 13 Classic Atari - Fanzine Titelthema: 30 Jahre Atari ST 14 Traumcomputer Atari ST 24 Atari findet Anschluss - Zubehör für den Atari ST 27 Seitenweise - Das Premierenbuch zum Atari ST 36 Have you played Atari today? - Top-Farbspiele 38 Serious Gaming. -
Bil Herd and Dave Haynie Commvex Video
Bil Herd and Dave Haynie CommVEx Video This video was recorded by Bil and Dave and sent for presentation at CommVEx in Las Vegas on July 30, 2005. This transcript is an attempt to capture the content of the video so that those with hearing difficulties may be able to enjoy the material presented here and understand some of the old hardware as presented by Bil and Dave. There are no guarantees that this transcript is 100% accurate. I have placed time stamps in parentheses throughout the transcript to help you keep your place with the video. Bruce Thomas – Sept 13, 2005 Note from Bil Herd: What didn’t make it onto tape was an in depth discussion of the contributions of the key programmers, namly Fred Bowen and Terry Ryan. We simply forgot to have the recorder on while we were talking. Dave inserted some naration to make sure that they were recognized during the tape in time for the Expo, but we really apologize for this ommision given the impossible feats they pulled off and their contributions to Commodore’s product line in general. Bil Herd- What is this 20 years later? Dave Haynie – 20 years. BH - How Y’all doin? I’m Bil Herd and who are you? DH - I’m Dave Haynie last time I checked. BH – We’re some of the original Commodore Engineers. Actually we’re the original Animals. DH – The C-128 Animals. Previously the Plus/4 or TED Animals…. BH – I always gave Dave the credit for coming up with the name. -
The History of Atari /|\
The History of Atari /|\ Presented by: Craig Maloney http://decafbad.net Penguicon 2020 What we’ll cover ● The origins of Atari ● The rise of Atari ● The time Steve Jobs worked at Atari and got Steve Wozniak to do his work for him ● The excesses of Atari ● Atari’s sale to Warner Communications ● The spin-offs (Activision, Imagic, etc.) ● The Video Game Crash ● Atari’s sale to Jack Tramiel and some of the aftermath ● Afterword and additional resources What we won’t cover ● Many of the stories from the developers at the time (not enough time, but will give references) ● Atari Home Games like Stunt Cycle, Video Music, Video Pinball, etc. ● The Atari Portfolio, even though it was a cool machine. ● A deep history of the Atari ST ● Atari Coin-Op / Atari Games, save for a few notable games ● Any Atari game development in great detail (save for a couple of notable exceptions) ● Atari’s contests (Swordquest) ● Atarisoft and Tengen What we’ll conveniently ignore (because it’s just a bunch of folks cashing-in on a beloved brand and that’s boring compared to the real thing) ● Atari Corporation’s sale to JTS, Hasbro, Infogrames and so on ● Atari Games sale to Namco, back to Time Warner, Midway, and so on ● The various Atari bankruptcies, reorganizations, and what-not since the 1980s ● The “Atari Estate” (my term for the company handling branding of merchandise and other “ventures”. Believe me, it’s not pretty). ● Whatever the hell the Atari® VCS™ is. Our story begins... The 1960s By Joi Ito from Inbamura, Japan - Steve "Slug" Russell manipulating PDP-1, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2099682 By Kenneth Lu - Spacewar!, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2060215 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar! By Pretzelpaws - Own work by uploader.