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Background After the monumental success of Apple Computer's Apple II in 1977, large numbers of new machines of all types began to appear during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The boom was further facilitated by the 1979 release of VisiCalc, a software application which greatly helped to legitimize the personal computer in the business sector and as a whole. Included in the explosion of new commercial systems were such exotica as the Forth-based Jupiter ACE, which appeared on the market in the early 1980s but vanished rapidly. Some offerings became market mainstays for years, such as the BBC Micro and Commodore 64, both of which are still favorites among classic computer hobbyists as of 2006. However, the introduction of the IBM PC (its original designation actually being the quite anonymous, classic IBM-nomenclature, "IBM 5150") in August 1981 led to a revolution in personal computing, largely due to the system's open architecture, which encouraged production of third-party clones of the unit. While the Apple II would eventually be displaced by the IBM PC, Apple Computer's 1984 release of the Apple Macintosh would create a new model for the home computer which IBM compatible Personal Computers would eventually emulate. Technology Many home computers were superficially similar, some having a very cheap-to-manufacture keyboard integrated into the processor unit and displaying 20–40 column text output on a home television. Many used ordinary and widely available compact audio cassettes as a (notoriously slow and sometimes unreliable) storage mechanism since floppy disk drives were very expensive at the time, especially in Europe (often a disk drive would be priced higher than the computer itself due to its more complicated mechanical construction, and thus, manufacturing cost). All in all, cheapness was the order of the day for most of these machines, in order to get the prices low enough to encourage ordinary-income people to buy. A prime buyer segment were families with school-age children. All modern desktop computers employ an operating system (OS) which acts as an interface between the operator and the computer's internal hardware (memory, CPU, etc). Home computers most often had their OS, of which one part was usually a BASIC interpreter, stored in one or more ROM chips. The term software commonly denoted application programs sitting 'above' the OS to perform a specific task, e.g. wordprocessors or games. As many older computers have become obsolete it has become popular amongst enthusiasts to enable one type of computer to emulate another via the use of emulation software. Thus, many of the operating environments for the computers listed below can be recreated on a modern PC. Home computers were mostly based on 8-bit microprocessor technology, typically the MOS Technology 6502 or the Zilog Z80. A large variety of 8-bit home computers were designed and marketed during the early to mid-1980s. A notable exception was the TI-99 series, released in 1979 with a 16 bit TMS9900 CPU. These were then gradually supplanted by the PC (mostly the PC compatibles—clones—costing significantly less than the IBM PC) and the PC's competing Motorola 68000-based home/personal computers appearing from 1984 onwards. Some vendors attempted to prolong the market life of their 8-bit computers by price cuts and other means (see, for example, GEOS), but their era had ended. See the list of home computers by category for a comprehensive listing of most well-known home computers, divided by wordlength (8, 16-bit) and CPU architecture. Notable home computers
1970s 1980s
Notable game consoles The list below includes the most popular and/or significant video game consoles of the home computer era and other superlatives. Though not general purpose computers, many consoles competed for consumer money in the same market as the more low-end home computers (and used similar hardware, sometimes directly affecting the development of home computers). This market was also flooded with several oddball or badly marketed systems that never achieved much success, and neither introduced any technical novelties; accordingly, those systems are not mentioned here. (For a comprehensive overview of game consoles, i.e. not just the most notable ones given below, see the List of video game consoles, which includes most game consoles up to the present.) Notes See also | ||||||||||||||
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