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 | This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Romanian. (November 2020)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
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| History of computing |
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| Computer science |
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| Timeline of computing |
| Glossary of computer science |
This article describes the history of computing in Romania.
The Romanian computers HC family (HC 85, HC 85+, HC 88, HC 90, HC 91 and HC 2000) were clones of the ZX Spectrum produced at ICE Felix from 1985 to 1994. HC 85 was first designed at Institutul Politehnic București by Prof. Dr. Ing. Adrian Petrescu (in laboratory), then redesigned at ICE Felix (in order to be produced at industrial scale). Their operating system was a BASIC interpreter.
aMIC (microcomputer) was a Romanian microcomputer designed by Prof. Adrian Petrescu at Institutul Politehnic București in 1982, later produced at Fabrica de Memorii in Timișoara.
MARICA and the DACICC family (DACICC-1 and DACICC-200) were Romanian computers produced in 1959–1968 at T. Popoviciu Institute of Numerical Analysis, Cluj-Napoca.
Felix PC was a Romanian IBM-PC compatible produced at ICE Felix in 1985–1990.
Felix C was a family of Romanian computers produced by ICE Felix from 1970 to 1978. They were similar to IBM/360; their operating system was SIRIS.
Felix M was a family of Romanian mini and microcomputers in 1975–1984.
CoBra was a Romanian personal computer produced at I.T.C.I Brașov, in 1986.
Independent minicomputer series was a series of Romanian minicomputers, manufactured from 1983 to 1989. They were compatible with DEC-PDP 11–34, running RSX-11M operating system. They were produced at ITC Timișoara, with memory chips also produced in Timișoara.
A disk operating system is a computer operating system that resides on and can use a disk storage device, such as a floppy disk, hard disk drive, or optical disc. A disk operating system must provide a file system for organizing, reading, and writing files on the storage disk. Strictly speaking, this definition does not include any other functionality, it doesn't apply to more complex OSes, such as current generations of PC operating systems like the versions of Microsoft Windows in use, and is more appropriately used only for older generations of operating systems.
The IBM Personal Computer is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team of engineers and designers directed by Don Estridge in Boca Raton, Florida.
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, The New York Times suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than US$25,000, with an input-output device such as a teleprinter and at least four thousand words of memory, that is capable of running programs in a higher level language, such as Fortran or BASIC.
A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB). Microcomputers became popular in the 1970s and 1980s with the advent of increasingly powerful microprocessors. The predecessors to these computers, mainframes and minicomputers, were comparatively much larger and more expensive. Many microcomputers are also personal computers. An early use of the term personal computer in 1962 predates microprocessor-based designs. (See "Personal Computer: Computers at Companies" reference below). A microcomputer used as an embedded control system may have no human-readable input and output devices. "Personal computer" may be used generically or may denote an IBM PC compatible machine.
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. The term "IBM PC compatible" is now a historical description only, since IBM no longer sells personal computers after it sold its personal computer division in 2005 to Chinese technology company Lenovo. The designation "PC", as used in much of personal computer history, has not meant "personal computer" generally, but rather an x86 computer capable of running the same software that a contemporary IBM PC could. The term was initially in contrast to the variety of home computer systems available in the early 1980s, such as the Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore 64. Later, the term was primarily used in contrast to Apple's Macintosh computers.
A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term workstation has been used loosely to refer to everything from a mainframe computer terminal to a PC connected to a network, but the most common form refers to the class of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies such as Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Apollo Computer, DEC, HP, NeXT, and IBM which powered the 3D computer graphics revolution of the late 1990s.
Wintel is the partnership of Microsoft Windows and Intel producing personal computers using Intel x86-compatible processors running Microsoft Windows.
A portable computer is a computer designed to be easily moved from one place to another and included a display and keyboard together, with a single plug, much like later desktop computers called all-in-ones (AIO), that integrate the system's internal components into the same case as the display. The first commercially sold portable might be the 20-pound (9.1 kg) MCM/70, released 1974. The next major portables were the 50-pound (23 kg) IBM 5100 (1975), Osborne's 24-pound (11 kg) CP/M-based Osborne 1 (1981) and Compaq's 28-pound (13 kg), advertised as 100% IBM PC compatible Compaq Portable (1983). These luggable computers still required a continuous connection to an external power source; this limitation was later overcome by the laptop. Laptops were followed by lighter models, so that in the 2000s mobile devices and by 2007 smartphones made the term almost meaningless. The 2010s introduced wearable computers such as smartwatches.
The history of computing hardware starting at 1960 is marked by the conversion from vacuum tube to solid-state devices such as transistors and then integrated circuit (IC) chips. Around 1953 to 1959, discrete transistors started being considered sufficiently reliable and economical that they made further vacuum tube computers uncompetitive. Metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) large-scale integration (LSI) technology subsequently led to the development of semiconductor memory in the mid-to-late 1960s and then the microprocessor in the early 1970s. This led to primary computer memory moving away from magnetic-core memory devices to solid-state static and dynamic semiconductor memory, which greatly reduced the cost, size, and power consumption of computers. These advances led to the miniaturized personal computer (PC) in the 1970s, starting with home computers and desktop computers, followed by laptops and then mobile computers over the next several decades.
Commodity computing involves the use of large numbers of already-available computing components for parallel computing, to get the greatest amount of useful computation at low cost. It is computing done in commodity computers as opposed to in high-cost superminicomputers or in boutique computers. Commodity computers are computer systems - manufactured by multiple vendors - incorporating components based on open standards.
The Professional 325 (PRO-325), Professional 350 (PRO-350), and Professional 380 (PRO-380) are PDP-11 compatible microcomputers introduced in 1982 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as high-end competitors to the IBM PC.
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was a socialist country that existed in the second half of the 20th century. Being socialist meant that strict technology import rules and regulations shaped the development of computer history in the country, unlike in the Western world. However, since it was a non-aligned country, it had no ties to the Soviet Bloc either. One of the major ideas contributing to the development of any technology in SFRY was the apparent need to be independent of foreign suppliers for spare parts, fueling domestic computer development.
Midrange computers, or midrange systems, were a class of computer systems that fell in between mainframe computers and microcomputers.
Following the introduction of the IBM Personal Computer, or IBM PC, many other personal computer architectures became extinct within just a few years. It led to a wave of IBM PC compatible systems being released.
The history of the personal computer as a mass-market consumer electronic device began with the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time-sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals. After the development of the microprocessor, individual personal computers were low enough in cost that they eventually became affordable consumer goods. Early personal computers – generally called microcomputers – were sold often in electronic kit form and in limited numbers, and were of interest mostly to hobbyists and technicians.
Core International, Inc. commonly known as Core, was a multinational computer and technology corporation headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, United States.
HP Vectra was a line of business-oriented personal computers manufactured by Hewlett-Packard. It was introduced in October 1985 as HP's first IBM-compatible PC.
The history of Polish computing (informatics) began during the Second World War with breaking the Enigma machine code by Polish mathematicians. After World War II, work on Polish computers began. Poles made a significant contribution to both the theory and technique of world computing.
