ATARI-COMPUTER! Aattaarrii--Ffaann Ddeess Mmoonnaattss
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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. -
Company Background
O M E N T A INTERNATIONAL Company Background 7/26/91 THE COMPANY Momenta was founded in September 1989. The company's mission is to create an "anytime, anywhere" computer, a machine that delivers computing power to situations and settings not served by conventional PCs. The company's first product, the Momenta Computer, is in die final stages of development and will be on the market by early 1992. Momenta will provide hardware, operating software and core application programs for the system. The company is based in Mountain View, California. Momenta had more than 95 employees as of July, 1991. THE MOMENTA COMPUTER For all their power, conventional PCs are useful only in a limited range of applications and environments. One result is that die average PC isn't used that much — less than an hour a day according to one recent study. If the aim of the personal computer is to be an all-around productivity aid, a tool people can apply to all phases of dieir work, then current machines fall far short of the mark. The Momenta Computer is a radically new approach to the problem. The "Momenta" has an electronic pen that writes direcdy on its screen, so users can take notes, retrieve data and run programs without a keyboard. The pen is a more natural, direct and efficient way to operate a computer, and it enables the Momenta to function in situations where keyboards are inappropriate or clumsy—in meetings or other interpersonal situations, while standing at a payphone or even with your feet up. -
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). -
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.