The Apple Computer 1, originally released as the Apple Computer and known later as the Apple I or Apple-1, is an 8-bit desktop computer released by the Apple Computer Company in 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak. The idea of selling the computer came from Wozniak's friend and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. The Apple I was Apple's first product, and to finance its creation, Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for $500 and Jobs sold a second hand VW Microbus, for a few hundred dollars. Wozniak demonstrated the first prototype in July 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California.
The TRS-80 Micro Computer System is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of Tandy Radio Shack, Z80 [microprocessor]. It is one of the earliest mass-produced and mass-marketed retail home computers.
The RadioShack TRS-80 Color Computer, later marketed as the Tandy Color Computer and sometimes nicknamed the CoCo, is a line of home computers developed and sold by Tandy Corporation. Despite sharing a name with the earlier TRS-80, the Color Computer is a completely different, incompatible system and a radical departure in design and compatibility with its Motorola 6809E processor rather than the Zilog Z80 earlier models were built around.
Tandy Corporation was an American family-owned leather-goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas, United States. Tandy Leather was founded in 1919 as a leather supply store. By the end of the 1950s, under the tutelage of then-CEO Charles Tandy, the company expanded into the hobby market, making leather moccasins and coin purses, making huge sales among Scouts, leading to a fast growth in sales.
The Tandy 1000 is the first in a line of IBM PC compatible home computer systems produced by the Tandy Corporation for sale in its Radio Shack and Radio Shack Computer Center chains of stores.
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.
The MCS-48 microcontroller series, Intel's first microcontroller, was originally released in 1976. Its first members were 8048, 8035 and 8748. The 8048 is probably the most prominent member of the family. Initially, this family was produced using NMOS technology. In the early 1980s, it became available in CMOS technology. It was manufactured into the 1990s to support older designs that still used it.
Xenix is a discontinued version of the Unix operating system for various microcomputer platforms, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T Corporation in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually replaced it with SCO UNIX.
Micro Channel architecture, or the Micro Channel bus, is a proprietary 16- or 32-bit parallel computer bus introduced by IBM in 1987 which was used on PS/2 and other computers until the mid-1990s. Its name is commonly abbreviated as "MCA", although not by IBM. In IBM products, it superseded the ISA bus and was itself subsequently superseded by the PCI bus architecture.
RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921.
The Tandy 2000 is a personal computer introduced by Radio Shack in September 1983 based on the 8 MHz Intel 80186 microprocessor running MS-DOS. By comparison, the IBM PC XT used the older 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor, and the IBM PC/AT would later use the newer 6 MHz Intel 80286. Due to the 16-bit-wide data bus and more efficient instruction decoding of the 80186, the Tandy 2000 ran significantly faster than other PC compatibles, and slightly faster than the PC AT. The Tandy 2000 was the company's first computer built around an Intel x86 series microprocessor; previous models used the Zilog Z80 and Motorola 6809 CPUs.
The history of computing hardware in the Eastern Bloc is somewhat different from that of the Western world. As a result of the CoCom embargo, computers could not be imported on a large scale from Western Bloc.
The TRS-80 Model 100 is a portable computer introduced in April 1983. It is one of the first notebook-style computers, featuring a keyboard and liquid crystal display, in a battery-powered package roughly the size and shape of a notepad or large book.
The Rainbow was a monthly magazine dedicated to the TRS-80 Color Computer, a home computer made by Tandy Corporation. It was started by Lawrence C. Falk(commonly known as Lonnie Falk) and was published from July 1981 to May 1993 by Falk's company, Falsoft, which was based in Prospect, Kentucky.
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.
Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user. These computers were a distinct market segment that typically cost much less than business, scientific or engineering-oriented computers of the time such as those running CP/M or the IBM PC, and were generally less powerful in terms of memory and expandability. However, a home computer often had better graphics and sound than contemporary business computers. Their most common uses were playing video games, but they were also regularly used for word processing and programming.
Tandy Graphics Adapter is a computer display standard for the Tandy 1000 series of IBM PC compatibles, which has compatibility with the video subsystem of the IBM PCjr but became a standard in its own right.
The Tandy 3000 is a personal computer introduced by Radio Shack in 1986 based on the 16-bit 8 MHz Intel 80286 microprocessor.
