1.
Computing
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Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating a mathematical sequence of steps known as an algorithm — e. g. through computers. The field of computing includes computer engineering, software engineering, computer science, information systems, the ACM Computing Curricula 2005 defined computing as follows, In a general way, we can define computing to mean any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computers. For example, an information systems specialist will view computing somewhat differently from a software engineer, regardless of the context, doing computing well can be complicated and difficult. Because society needs people to do computing well, we must think of computing not only as a profession, the fundamental question underlying all computing is What can be automated. The term computing is also synonymous with counting and calculating, in earlier times, it was used in reference to the action performed by mechanical computing machines, and before that, to human computers. Computing is intimately tied to the representation of numbers, but long before abstractions like the number arose, there were mathematical concepts to serve the purposes of civilization. These concepts include one-to-one correspondence, comparison to a standard, the earliest known tool for use in computation was the abacus, and it was thought to have been invented in Babylon circa 2400 BC. Its original style of usage was by lines drawn in sand with pebbles, abaci, of a more modern design, are still used as calculation tools today. This was the first known computer and most advanced system of calculation known to date - preceding Greek methods by 2,000 years. The first recorded idea of using electronics for computing was the 1931 paper The Use of Thyratrons for High Speed Automatic Counting of Physical Phenomena by C. E. Wynn-Williams. Claude Shannons 1938 paper A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits then introduced the idea of using electronics for Boolean algebraic operations, a computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions called a computer program. The program has a form that the computer can use directly to execute the instructions. The same program in its source code form, enables a programmer to study. Because the instructions can be carried out in different types of computers, the execution process carries out the instructions in a computer program. Instructions express the computations performed by the computer and they trigger sequences of simple actions on the executing machine. Those actions produce effects according to the semantics of the instructions, computer software or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provides the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it. Software refers to one or more programs and data held in the storage of the computer for some purposes. In other words, software is a set of programs, procedures, algorithms, program software performs the function of the program it implements, either by directly providing instructions to the computer hardware or by serving as input to another piece of software
2.
Printed circuit board
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Components are generally soldered on the PCB. Advanced PCBs may contain components embedded in the substrate, PCBs can be single sided, double sided or multi-layer. Conductors on different layers are connected with vias, multi-layer PCBs allow for much higher component density. FR-4 glass epoxy is the primary insulating substrate, a basic building block of the PCB is an FR-4 panel with a thin layer of copper foil laminated to one or both sides. In multi-layer boards multiple layers of material are laminated together, printed circuit boards are used in all but the simplest electronic products. Alternatives to PCBs include wire wrap and point-to-point construction, PCBs require the additional design effort to lay out the circuit, but manufacturing and assembly can be automated. Manufacturing circuits with PCBs is cheaper and faster than other wiring methods as components are mounted and wired with one single part. A minimal PCB with a component used for easier prototyping is called a breakout board. When the board has no embedded components it is correctly called a printed wiring board or etched wiring board. However, the printed wiring board has fallen into disuse. A PCB populated with electronic components is called a printed circuit assembly, the IPC preferred term for assembled boards is circuit card assembly, and for assembled backplanes it is backplane assemblies. The term PCB is used both for bare and assembled boards. The world market for bare PCBs exceeded $60.2 billion in 2014, initially PCBs were designed manually by creating a photomask on a clear mylar sheet, usually at two or four times the true size. Starting from the diagram the component pin pads were laid out on the mylar. Rub-on dry transfers of common component footprints increased efficiency, traces were made with self-adhesive tape. Pre-printed non-reproducing grids on the mylar assisted in layout, to fabricate the board, the finished photomask was photolithographically reproduced onto a photoresist coating on the blank copper-clad boards. Modern PCBs are designed with dedicated software, generally in the following steps. Card dimensions and template are decided based on required circuitry and case of the PCB, the positions of the components and heat sinks are determined
3.
Electrical connector
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An electrical connector, is an electro-mechanical device used to join electrical terminations and create an electrical circuit. Electrical connectors consist of plugs and jacks, the connection may be temporary, as for portable equipment, require a tool for assembly and removal, or serve as a permanent electrical joint between two wires or devices. An adapter can be used to bring together dissimilar connectors. There are hundreds of types of electrical connectors, connectors may join two lengths of flexible copper wire or cable, or connect a wire or cable to an electrical terminal. In computing, a connector can also be known as a physical interface. Cable glands, known as cable connectors in the US, connect wires to devices rather than electrically and are distinct from quick-disconnects performing the latter. It is usually desirable for a connector to be easy to visually, rapid to assemble, require only simple tooling. In some cases an equipment manufacturer might choose a connector specifically because it is not compatible with those other sources. No single connector has all the properties, the proliferation of types is a reflection of differing requirements. Fretting is a failure mode in electrical connectors that have not been specifically designed to prevent it. Many connectors are keyed, with some mechanical component which prevents mating except with a correctly oriented matching connector, some connector housings are designed with locking mechanisms to prevent inadvertent disconnection or poor environmental sealing. Locking mechanism designs include locking levers of various sorts, screw locking, a terminal is a simple type of electrical connector that connects two or more wires to a single connection point. Wire nuts are another type of single point connector, terminal blocks provide a convenient means of connecting individual electrical wires without a splice or physically joining the ends. They are usually used to connect wiring among various items of equipment within an enclosure or to make connections among individually enclosed items. Since terminal blocks are available for a wide range of wire sizes and terminal quantity. One type of terminal block accepts wires that are prepared only by removing a short length of insulation from the end, another type accepts wires that have ring or spade terminal lugs crimped onto the wires. Printed circuit board mounted terminal blocks allow individual wires to be connected to the circuit board, a general type of connector that simply screws or clamps bare wire to a post, such connectors are frequently used in electronic test equipment and audio. Many, but not all binding posts will also accept a banana connector plug, since stripping the insulation from wires is time-consuming, many connectors intended for rapid assembly use insulation-displacement connectors so that insulation need not be removed from the wire
4.
Motherboard
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A motherboard is the main printed circuit board found in general purpose microcomputers and other expandable systems. It holds and allows communication between many of the electronic components of a system, such as the central processing unit and memory. In very old designs, copper wires were the discrete connections between card connector pins, but printed circuit boards soon became the standard practice, the Central Processing Unit, memory, and peripherals were housed on individual printed circuit boards, which were plugged into the backplate. The ubiquitous S-100 bus of the 1970s is an example of type of backplane system. During the late 1980s and 1990s, it became economical to move a number of peripheral functions onto the motherboard. Business PCs, workstations, and servers were more likely to need expansion cards, either for more robust functions, or for higher speeds, laptop and notebook computers that were developed in the 1990s integrated the most common peripherals. This even included motherboards with no upgradeable components, a trend that would continue as smaller systems were introduced after the turn of the century, memory, processors, network controllers, power source, and storage would be integrated into some systems. A motherboard provides the connections by which the other components of the system communicate. Unlike a backplane, it contains the central processing unit and hosts other subsystems. A typical desktop computer has its microprocessor, main memory, an important component of a motherboard is the microprocessors supporting chipset, which provides the supporting interfaces between the CPU and the various buses and external components. This chipset determines, to an extent, the features and capabilities of the motherboard, modern motherboards include, Sockets in which one or more microprocessors may be installed. In the case of CPUs in ball grid array packages, such as the VIA C3, as of 2007, some graphics cards require more power than the motherboard can provide, and thus dedicated connectors have been introduced to attach them directly to the power supply. Connectors for hard drives, typically SATA only, disk drives also connect to the power supply. Additionally, nearly all motherboards include logic and connectors to support commonly used devices, such as USB for mouse devices. Early personal computers such as the Apple II or IBM PC included only this minimal peripheral support on the motherboard, occasionally video interface hardware was also integrated into the motherboard, for example, on the Apple II and rarely on IBM-compatible computers such as the IBM PC Jr. Additional peripherals such as disk controllers and serial ports were provided as expansion cards, given the high thermal design power of high-speed computer CPUs and components, modern motherboards nearly always include heat sinks and mounting points for fans to dissipate excess heat. Motherboards are produced in a variety of sizes and shapes called computer form factor, however, the motherboards used in IBM-compatible systems are designed to fit various case sizes. As of 2007, most desktop computer motherboards use the ATX standard form factor — even those found in Macintosh and Sun computers, a cases motherboard and PSU form factor must all match, though some smaller form factor motherboards of the same family will fit larger cases
5.
Backplane
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A backplane is a group of electrical connectors in parallel with each other, so that each pin of each connector is linked to the same relative pin of all the other connectors, forming a computer bus. It is used as a backbone to connect several printed circuit boards together to make up a computer system. Backplanes commonly use a circuit board, but wire-wrapped backplanes have also been used in minicomputers. Early microcomputer systems like the Altair 8800 used a backplane for the processor, a backplane is generally differentiated from a motherboard by the lack of on-board processing and storage elements. A backplane uses plug-in cards for storage and processing, backplanes are normally used in preference to cables because of their greater reliability. In a cabled system, the cables need to be flexed every time that a card is added or removed from the system, a backplane does not suffer from this problem, so its service life is limited only by the longevity of its connectors. For example, the DIN41612 connectors used in the VMEbus system can withstand 50 to 500 insertions and removals, to transmit information, Serial Back-Plane technology uses a low voltage differential signaling transmission method for sending information. These cable sets have a board located in the computer, an expansion board in the remote backplane. Backplanes have grown in complexity from the simple Industry Standard Architecture or S-100 style where all the connectors were connected to a common bus, due to limitations inherent in the Peripheral Component Interconnect specification for driving slots, backplanes are now offered as passive and active. True passive backplanes offer no active bus driving circuitry, any desired arbitration logic is placed on the daughter cards. Active backplanes include chips which buffer the various signals to the slots, the distinction between the two isnt always clear, but may become an important issue if a whole system is expected to not have a single point of failure. A passive backplane, even if it is single, is not usually considered a SPOF, active backplanes are more complicated and thus have a non-zero risk of malfunction. While there are a few motherboards that offer more than 8 slots, in addition, as technology progresses, the availability and number of a particular slot type may be limited in terms of what is currently offered by motherboard manufacturers. However, backplane architecture is somewhat unrelated to the SBC technology plugged into it, there are some limitations to what can be constructed, in that the SBC chip set and processor have to provide the capability of supporting the slot types. In addition, virtually an unlimited number of slots can be provided with 20, including the SBC slot, as a practical though not an absolute limit. Thus, a PICMG backplane can provide any number and any mix of ISA, PCI, PCI-X, for example, an SBC with the latest i7 processor could interface with a backplane providing up to 19 ISA slots to drive legacy I/O cards. Some backplanes are constructed with slots for connecting to devices on both sides, and are referred to as midplanes and this ability to plug cards into either side of a midplane is often useful in larger systems made up primarily of modules attached to the midplane. Midplanes are often used in computers, mostly in blade servers, where server blades reside on one side, orthogonal midplanes connect vertical cards on one side to horizontal boards on the other side
6.
Riser card
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A riser card is a printed circuit board that picks up a multitude of signal lines via a single connector on a mainboard and distributes them via dedicated connectors on the card. A riser card is a board that plugs into the system board, because it rises above the system board, it enables you to connect additional adapters to the system in an orientation that is parallel to the system board and save space within the system case. Riser cards are used in rack-mount server and industrial computer applications, in 1U and 2U rack-mount computer systems, riser cards are integrated into the system to allow the addition of feature cards in a horizontal position. This is due to the limitations of a 1U and 2U system which are 1.75 and 3.5 respectively. Typically, a 1U system uses a 1U single slot riser card whereas a 2U system uses a 2U3 slot riser card
7.
Bus (computing)
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In computer architecture, a bus is a communication system that transfers data between components inside a computer, or between computers. This expression covers all related components and software, including communication protocols. Modern computer buses can use both parallel and bit serial connections, and can be wired in either a multidrop or daisy chain topology, or connected by switched hubs, as in the case of USB. An early computer might contain a hand-wired CPU of vacuum tubes, a drum for main memory. In both examples, computer buses of one form or another move data between all of these devices, in most traditional computer architectures, the CPU and main memory tend to be tightly coupled. In most cases, the CPU and memory share signalling characteristics, the bus connecting the CPU and memory is one of the defining characteristics of the system, and often referred to simply as the system bus. It is possible to allow peripherals to communicate with memory in the same fashion and this is commonly accomplished through some sort of standardized electrical connector, several of these forming the expansion bus or local bus. However, as the differences between the CPU and peripherals varies widely, some solution is generally needed to ensure that peripherals do not slow overall system performance. Many CPUs feature a set of pins similar to those for communicating with memory. Others use smart controllers to place the data directly in memory, most modern systems combine both solutions, where appropriate. As the number of potential peripherals grew, using a card for every peripheral became increasingly untenable. This has led to the introduction of bus systems designed specifically to support multiple peripherals, common examples are the SATA ports in modern computers, which allow a number of hard drives to be connected without the need for a card. However, these systems are generally too expensive to implement in low-end devices. This has led to the development of a number of low-performance bus systems for these solutions. All such examples may be referred to as peripheral buses, although this terminology is not universal, in modern systems the performance difference between the CPU and main memory has grown so great that increasing amounts of high-speed memory is built directly into the CPU, known as a cache. These system buses are used to communicate with most other peripherals, through adaptors. Such systems are more similar to multicomputers, communicating over a bus rather than a network. In these cases, expansion buses are entirely separate and no longer share any architecture with their host CPU, what would have formerly been a system bus is now often known as a front-side bus
8.
Central processing unit
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The computer industry has used the term central processing unit at least since the early 1960s. The form, design and implementation of CPUs have changed over the course of their history, most modern CPUs are microprocessors, meaning they are contained on a single integrated circuit chip. An IC that contains a CPU may also contain memory, peripheral interfaces, some computers employ a multi-core processor, which is a single chip containing two or more CPUs called cores, in that context, one can speak of such single chips as sockets. Array processors or vector processors have multiple processors that operate in parallel, there also exists the concept of virtual CPUs which are an abstraction of dynamical aggregated computational resources. Early computers such as the ENIAC had to be rewired to perform different tasks. Since the term CPU is generally defined as a device for software execution, the idea of a stored-program computer was already present in the design of J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchlys ENIAC, but was initially omitted so that it could be finished sooner. On June 30,1945, before ENIAC was made, mathematician John von Neumann distributed the paper entitled First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC and it was the outline of a stored-program computer that would eventually be completed in August 1949. EDVAC was designed to perform a number of instructions of various types. Significantly, the programs written for EDVAC were to be stored in high-speed computer memory rather than specified by the wiring of the computer. This overcame a severe limitation of ENIAC, which was the considerable time, with von Neumanns design, the program that EDVAC ran could be changed simply by changing the contents of the memory. Early CPUs were custom designs used as part of a larger, however, this method of designing custom CPUs for a particular application has largely given way to the development of multi-purpose processors produced in large quantities. This standardization began in the era of discrete transistor mainframes and minicomputers and has accelerated with the popularization of the integrated circuit. The IC has allowed increasingly complex CPUs to be designed and manufactured to tolerances on the order of nanometers, both the miniaturization and standardization of CPUs have increased the presence of digital devices in modern life far beyond the limited application of dedicated computing machines. Modern microprocessors appear in electronic devices ranging from automobiles to cellphones, the so-called Harvard architecture of the Harvard Mark I, which was completed before EDVAC, also utilized a stored-program design using punched paper tape rather than electronic memory. Relays and vacuum tubes were used as switching elements, a useful computer requires thousands or tens of thousands of switching devices. The overall speed of a system is dependent on the speed of the switches, tube computers like EDVAC tended to average eight hours between failures, whereas relay computers like the Harvard Mark I failed very rarely. In the end, tube-based CPUs became dominant because the significant speed advantages afforded generally outweighed the reliability problems, most of these early synchronous CPUs ran at low clock rates compared to modern microelectronic designs. Clock signal frequencies ranging from 100 kHz to 4 MHz were very common at this time, the design complexity of CPUs increased as various technologies facilitated building smaller and more reliable electronic devices
9.
Random-access memory
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Random-access memory is a form of computer data storage which stores frequently used program instructions to increase the general speed of a system. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read or written in almost the same amount of time irrespective of the location of data inside the memory. RAM contains multiplexing and demultiplexing circuitry, to connect the lines to the addressed storage for reading or writing the entry. Usually more than one bit of storage is accessed by the same address, in todays technology, random-access memory takes the form of integrated circuits. RAM is normally associated with types of memory, where stored information is lost if power is removed. Other types of non-volatile memories exist that allow access for read operations. These include most types of ROM and a type of memory called NOR-Flash. Integrated-circuit RAM chips came into the market in the early 1970s, with the first commercially available DRAM chip, early computers used relays, mechanical counters or delay lines for main memory functions. Ultrasonic delay lines could only reproduce data in the order it was written, drum memory could be expanded at relatively low cost but efficient retrieval of memory items required knowledge of the physical layout of the drum to optimize speed. Latches built out of vacuum tube triodes, and later, out of transistors, were used for smaller and faster memories such as registers. Such registers were relatively large and too costly to use for large amounts of data, the first practical form of random-access memory was the Williams tube starting in 1947. It stored data as electrically charged spots on the face of a cathode ray tube, since the electron beam of the CRT could read and write the spots on the tube in any order, memory was random access. The capacity of the Williams tube was a few hundred to around a thousand bits, but it was smaller, faster. In fact, rather than the Williams tube memory being designed for the SSEM, magnetic-core memory was invented in 1947 and developed up until the mid-1970s. It became a form of random-access memory, relying on an array of magnetized rings. By changing the sense of each rings magnetization, data could be stored with one bit stored per ring, since every ring had a combination of address wires to select and read or write it, access to any memory location in any sequence was possible. Magnetic core memory was the form of memory system until displaced by solid-state memory in integrated circuits. Data was stored in the capacitance of each transistor, and had to be periodically refreshed every few milliseconds before the charge could leak away
10.
Communications protocol
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These are the rules or standard that defines the syntax, semantics and synchronization of communication and possible error recovery methods. Protocols may be implemented by hardware, software, or a combination of both, Communicating systems use well-defined formats for exchanging various messages. Each message has a meaning intended to elicit a response from a range of possible responses pre-determined for that particular situation. The specified behavior is independent of how it is to be implemented. Communications protocols have to be agreed upon by the parties involved, to reach agreement, a protocol may be developed into a technical standard. Multiple protocols often describe different aspects of a single communication, a group of protocols designed to work together are known as a protocol suite, when implemented in software they are a protocol stack. Most recent protocols are assigned by the IETF for Internet communication, the ITU-T handles telecommunications protocols and formats for the PSTN. As the PSTN and Internet converge, the two sets of standards are also being driven towards convergence, the nature of a communication, the actual data exchanged and any state-dependent behaviors, is defined by these specifications. In digital computing systems, the rules can be expressed by algorithms, expressing the algorithms in a portable programming language makes the protocol software operating-system independent. Operating systems usually contain a set of cooperating processes that manipulate shared data to communicate each other. This communication is governed by protocols, which can be embedded in the process code itself. In contrast, because there is no memory, communicating systems have to communicate with each other using a shared transmission medium. Transmission is not necessarily reliable, and individual systems may use different hardware or operating systems, to implement a networking protocol, the protocol software modules are interfaced with a framework implemented on the machines operating system. This framework implements the functionality of the operating system. The best known frameworks are the TCP/IP model and the OSI model and this gave rise to the concept of layered protocols which nowadays forms the basis of protocol design. Systems typically do not use a protocol to handle a transmission. Instead they use a set of cooperating protocols, sometimes called a family or protocol suite. Some of the best known protocol suites are TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, X.25, AX.25, the protocols can be arranged based on functionality in groups, for instance there is a group of transport protocols
11.
Integrated circuit
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An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece of semiconductor material, normally silicon. The ICs mass production capability, reliability and building-block approach to circuit design ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of using discrete transistors. ICs are now used in all electronic equipment and have revolutionized the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones, and other home appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the small size. These advances, roughly following Moores law, allow a computer chip of 2016 to have millions of times the capacity, ICs have two main advantages over discrete circuits, cost and performance. Cost is low because the chips, with all their components, are printed as a unit by photolithography rather than being constructed one transistor at a time, furthermore, packaged ICs use much less material than discrete circuits. Performance is high because the ICs components switch quickly and consume little power because of their small size, the main disadvantage of ICs is the high cost to design them and fabricate the required photomasks. This high initial cost means ICs are only practical when high production volumes are anticipated, Circuits meeting this definition can be constructed using many different technologies, including thin-film transistor, thick film technology, or hybrid integrated circuit. However, in general usage integrated circuit has come to refer to the single-piece circuit construction originally known as a integrated circuit. Jacobi disclosed small and cheap hearing aids as typical industrial applications of his patent, an immediate commercial use of his patent has not been reported. The idea of the circuit was conceived by Geoffrey Dummer. Dummer presented the idea to the public at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington and he gave many symposia publicly to propagate his ideas, and unsuccessfully attempted to build such a circuit in 1956. A precursor idea to the IC was to create small ceramic squares, Components could then be integrated and wired into a bidimensional or tridimensional compact grid. This idea, which seemed very promising in 1957, was proposed to the US Army by Jack Kilby, however, as the project was gaining momentum, Kilby came up with a new, revolutionary design, the IC. In his patent application of 6 February 1959, Kilby described his new device as a body of semiconductor material … wherein all the components of the circuit are completely integrated. The first customer for the new invention was the US Air Force, Kilby won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit. His work was named an IEEE Milestone in 2009, half a year after Kilby, Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor developed his own idea of an integrated circuit that solved many practical problems Kilbys had not. Noyces design was made of silicon, whereas Kilbys chip was made of germanium, Noyce credited Kurt Lehovec of Sprague Electric for the principle of p–n junction isolation, a key concept behind the IC
12.
Floating-point unit
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A floating-point unit is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square root, some systems can also perform various transcendental functions such as exponential or trigonometric calculations, though in most modern processors these are done with software library routines. This could be an integrated circuit, an entire circuit board or a cabinet. Where floating-point calculation hardware has not been provided, floating point calculations are done in software, emulation can be implemented on any of several levels, in the CPU as microcode, as an operating system function, or in user space code. When only integer functionality is available the CORDIC floating point emulation methods are most commonly used, in most modern computer architectures, there is some division of floating-point operations from integer operations. This division varies significantly by architecture, some, like the Intel x86 have dedicated floating-point registers, in earlier superscalar architectures without general out-of-order execution, floating-point operations were sometimes pipelined separately from integer operations. Since the early 1990s, many microprocessors for desktops and servers have more than one FPU, the modular architecture of Bulldozer microarchitecture uses a special FPU named FlexFPU, which uses simultaneous multithreading. Each physical integer core, two per module, is threaded, in contrast with Intels Hyperthreading, where two virtual simultaneous threads share the resources of a single physical core. Some floating-point hardware only supports the simplest operations - addition, subtraction, but even the most complex floating-point hardware has a finite number of operations it can support - for example, none of them directly support arbitrary-precision arithmetic. When a CPU is executing a program calls for a floating-point operation that is not directly supported by the hardware. In systems without any floating-point hardware, the CPU emulates it using a series of simpler fixed-point arithmetic operations that run on the arithmetic logic unit. The software that lists the series of operations to emulate floating-point operations is often packaged in a floating-point library. In some cases, FPUs may be specialized, and divided between simpler floating-point operations and more complicated operations, like division, in some cases, only the simple operations may be implemented in hardware or microcode, while the more complex operations are implemented as software. In the 1980s, it was common in IBM PC/compatible microcomputers for the FPU to be separate from the CPU. It would only be purchased if needed to speed up or enable math-intensive programs, the IBM PC, XT, and most compatibles based on the 8088 or 8086 had a socket for the optional 8087 coprocessor. Other companies manufactured co-processors for the Intel x86 series, coprocessors were available for the Motorola 68000 family, the 68881 and 68882. These were common in Motorola 68020/68030-based workstations like the Sun 3 series, there are also add-on FPUs coprocessor units for microcontroller units /single-board computer, which serve to provide floating-point arithmetic capability. These add-on FPUs are host-processor-independent, possess their own programming requirements and are provided with their own integrated development environments
13.
PDP-8
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The 12-bit PDP-8, produced by Digital Equipment Corporation, was the first successful commercial minicomputer. DEC introduced it on March 22,1965 priced at $18,500 and eventually more than 50,000 systems. The PDP-8 was the first computer to be sold for under $20,000 and it was the first widely sold computer in the DEC PDP series of computers. The chief engineer who designed the initial version of the PDP-8 was Edson de Castro, the earliest PDP-8 model uses diode–transistor logic, packaged on flip chip cards, and is about the size of a small household refrigerator. This was followed in 1966 by the PDP-8/S, available in desktop, using a one-bit serial arithmetic logic unit implementation, allowed the PDP-8/S to be smaller, less expensive and slower than the original PDP-8. The PDP-8/S was about 20% of the cost and about 10% of the performance of the PDP-8, the only mass storage peripheral available for the PDP-8/S was the DF32 disk. Later systems returned to a faster, fully parallel implementation but use less costly transistor-transistor logic MSI logic. Most surviving PDP-8s are from this era, the PDP-8/E is common, and well-regarded because so many types of I/O devices were available for it. It was often configured as a general-purpose computer, the last commercial PDP-8 models introduced in 1979 were called CMOS-8s. They use custom complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor microprocessors and they were not priced competitively, and the offering failed. The IBM PC in 1981 cemented the doom of the CMOS-8s by making a legitimate, Intersil sold the integrated circuits commercially through to 1982 as the Intersil 6100 family. By virtue of their CMOS technology they had low power requirements and were used in some embedded military systems, the PDP-8 combined low cost, simplicity, expandability, and careful engineering for value. The greatest historical significance was that the PDP-8s low cost and high volume made a computer available to new people for many new uses. Its continuing significance is as a example of value-engineered computer design. The low complexity brought other costs and it made programming cumbersome, as is seen in the examples in this article and from the discussion of pages and fields. Some ambitious programming projects failed to fit in memory or developed design defects that could not be solved, as design advances reduced the costs of logic and memory, the programmers time became relatively more important. Subsequent computer designs emphasized ease of programming, typically using a larger, eventually, most machine-language programming came to be generated by compilers and report generators. The PDP-8 used ideas from several 12-bit predecessors, most notably the LINC designed by W. A. Clark, the architecture has a simple programmed I/O bus, plus a DMA channel
14.
Microcomputer
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A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. It includes a microprocessor, memory, and minimal input/output circuitry mounted on a printed circuit board. 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, the abbreviation micro was common during the 1970s and 1980s, but has now fallen out of common usage. The term microcomputer came into use after the introduction of the minicomputer. Most notably, the replaced the many separate components that made up the minicomputers CPU with one integrated microprocessor chip. The first microcomputer was the Japanese Sord Computer Corporations SMP80/08, which was followed by the SMP80/x, the French developers of the Micral N filed their patents with the term Micro-ordinateur, a literal equivalent of Microcomputer, to designate a solid state machine designed with a microprocessor. Use of audio cassettes for data storage replaced manual re-entry of a program every time the device was powered on. Large cheap arrays of silicon logic gates in the form of memory and EPROMs allowed utility programs. This replaced the slow, complex, and expensive teletypewriter that was common as an interface to minicomputers. All these improvements in cost and usability resulted in an explosion in their popularity during the late 1970s, a large number of computer makers packaged microcomputers for use in small business applications. This allowed businesses unable to afford leasing of a minicomputer or time-sharing service the opportunity to automate business functions, without hiring a full-time staff to operate the computers. A representative system of this era would have used an S100 bus, an 8-bit processor such as an Intel 8080 or Zilog Z80, the increasing availability and power of desktop computers for personal use attracted the attention of more software developers. In time, and as the industry matured, the market for personal computers standardized around IBM PC compatibles running DOS, everyday use of the expression microcomputer has declined significantly from the mid-1980s and has declined in commonplace usage since 2000. The term is most commonly associated with the first wave of all-in-one 8-bit home computers, although, or perhaps because, an increasingly diverse range of modern microprocessor-based devices fit the definition of microcomputer, they are no longer referred to as such in everyday speech. IBM first promoted the personal computer to differentiate themselves from other microcomputers, often called home computers. However, following its release, the IBM PC itself was widely imitated, the component parts were commonly available to producers and the BIOS was reverse engineered through cleanroom design techniques. IBM PC compatible clones became commonplace, and the personal computer
15.
Micral
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Micral is a series of microcomputers produced by the French company Réalisation dÉtudes Électroniques, beginning with the Micral N in early 1973. According to the Computer History Museum, the Micral N was the earliest commercial, alain Perrier of INRA was looking for a computer for process control in his crop evapotranspiration measurements. The software was developed by Benchetrit, beckmann designed the I/O boards and controllers for peripheral magnetic storage. Lacombe was responsible for the system, I/O high speed channel, power supply. Gernelle invented the Micral N, which was smaller than existing minicomputers. The January 1974 Users Manual called it the first of a new generation of mini-computer whose principal feature is its low cost. It does not aim to be an universal mini-computer, the software, the ROM-based MIC01 monitor and the ASMIC01 assembler, was written on an Intertechnique Multi-8 minicomputer using a cross assembler. The computer was based on an Intel 8008 microprocessor clocked at 500 kHz and it had a backplane bus, called the Pluribus with 74-pin connector. 14 boards could be plugged in a Pluribus, with two Pluribus, the Micral N could support up to 24 boards. The computer used MOS memory instead of core memory, the Micral N could support parallel and serial input/output. It had 8 levels of interrupt and a stack, the computer was programmed with punched tape, and used a teleprinter or modem for I/O. The front panel console was optional, offering customers the option of designing their own console to match a particular application. It was delivered to the INRA in January 1973, and commercialized in February 1973 for FF8,500 making it a replacement for minicomputers which augured the era of the PC. France had produced the first microcomputer, a year would pass before the first North American microcomputer, SCELBI, was advertised in the March 1974 issue of QST, an amateur radio magazine. Indeed, INRA was originally planning to use PDP-8 computers for process control, an 8-inch floppy disk reader was added to the Micral in December 1973, following a command of the Commissariat à lEnergie Atomique. This was made possible by the pile-canal, a buffer that could accept one megabyte per second, in 1974, a keyboard and screen were fitted to the Micral computers. A hard disk became available in 1975, in 1979, the Micral 8031 D was equipped with a 5 1/4 inches hard disk of 5 Megabytes made by Shugart. Following the April 1974 introduction of the Intel 8080, R2E introduced the second and third Micral models, 8080-based at 1 MHz, in November 1975, R2E signed Warner & Swasey Company as the exclusive manufacturer and marketer of the Micral line in the United States and Canada
16.
Altair 8800
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The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. The designers hoped to sell a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, the Altair also appealed to individuals and businesses that just wanted a computer and purchased the assembled version. The Altair is widely recognized as the spark that ignited the microcomputer revolution as the first commercially successful personal computer, the model rocket kits were a modest success and MITS wanted to try a kit that would appeal to more hobbyists. The November 1970 issue of Popular Electronics featured the Opticom, a kit from MITS that would send voice over an LED light beam, Mims and Cagle were losing interest in the kit business so Roberts bought his partners out, then began developing a calculator kit. Electronic Arrays had just announced a set of six LSI integrated circuit chips that would make a four-function calculator, the MITS816 calculator kit used the chip set and was featured on the November 1971 cover of Popular Electronics. This calculator kit sold for $175, Forrest Mims wrote the assembly manual for this kit and many others over the next several years. He often accepted a copy of the kit as payment, the calculator was successful and was followed by several improved models. The MITS1440 calculator was featured in the July 1973 issues of Radio-Electronics and it had a 14-digit display, memory, and square root function. The kit sold for $200 and the version was $250. MITS later developed a unit that would connect to the 816 or 1440 calculator. In addition to calculators, MITS made a line of test equipment kits and these included an IC tester, a waveform generator, a digital voltmeter, and several other instruments. To keep up with the demand, MITS moved into a building at 6328 Linn NE in Albuquerque in 1973. They installed a wave soldering machine and a line at the new location. In 1972, Texas Instruments developed its own calculator chip and started selling complete calculators at less than half the price of other commercial models, MITS and many other companies were devastated by this, and Roberts struggled to reduce his quarter-million-dollar debt. In January 1972, Popular Electronics merged with another Ziff-Davis magazine, the change in editorial staff upset many of their authors, and they started writing for a competing magazine, Radio-Electronics. In 1972 and 1973, some of the best construction projects appeared in Radio-Electronics, in 1974, Art Salsberg became editor of Popular Electronics. It was Salsbergs goal to reclaim the lead in electronics projects and he was impressed with Don Lancasters TV Typewriter article and wanted computer projects for Popular Electronics. Don Lancaster did an ASCII keyboard for Popular Electronics in April 1974 and they were evaluating a computer trainer project by Jerry Ogdin when the Mark-8 8008-based computer by Jonathan Titus appeared on the July 1974 cover of Radio-Electronics
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S-100 bus
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The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE696-1983, was an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800. The S-100 bus was the first industry standard bus for the microcomputer industry. S-100 computers, consisting of processor and peripheral cards, were produced by a number of manufacturers, the S-100 bus formed the basis for homebrew computers whose builders implemented drivers for CP/M and MP/M. These S-100 microcomputers ran the gamut from hobbyist toy to small business workstation and were common in home computers until the advent of the IBM PC. The S-100 bus is a passive backplane of 100-pin printed circuit board edge connectors wired in parallel, circuit cards measuring 5 × 10-inches serving the functions of CPU, memory, or I/O interface plugged into these connectors. The bus signal definitions closely follow those of an 8080 microprocessor system, the 100 lines of the S-100 bus can be grouped into four types, 1) Power, 2) Data, 3) Address, and 4) Clock and control. Power supplied on the bus was unregulated +8 V and ±16 V, designed to be regulated on the cards to +5 V, the onboard voltage regulation was typically performed by devices of the 78xx family. These were linear regulators which commonly were mounted on heat sinks, the bi-directional 8-bit data bus of the Intel 8080 was split into two unidirectional 8-bit data buses. Later these two 8-bit busses would be combined to support a 16-bit data width for more advanced processors, the address bus was 16-bits wide in the initial implementation and later extended to 24-bits wide. A bus control signal could put these lines in a condition to allow direct memory access. The Cromemco Dazzler, for example, was an early S-100 card that retrieved digital images from memory using direct memory access, Clock and control signals were used to manage the traffic on the bus. For example the DO Disable line would tristate the address lines during direct memory access, unassigned lines of the original bus specification were later assigned to support more advanced processors. For example, the Zilog Z-80 processor had an interrupt line that the Intel 8080 processor did not. One unassigned line of the S-100 bus then was reassigned to support the non-maskable interrupt request, during the design of the Altair, the hardware required to make a usable machine was not available in time for the January 1975 launch date. The designer, Ed Roberts, also had the problem of the taking up too much room. Attempting to avoid problems, he placed the existing components in a case with additional slots. The backplane was split into four separate cards, with the CPU on a fifth and he then looked for an inexpensive source of connectors, and he came across a supply of military surplus 100-pin edge connectors. The 100-pin bus was created by a draftsman, who selected the connector from a parts catalog
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Apple II
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The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak. It was introduced in 1977 at the West Coast Computer Faire by Jobs and was the first consumer product sold by Apple Computer and it is the first model in a series of computers which were produced until Apple IIe production ceased in November 1993. The Apple II marks Apples first launch of a computer aimed at a consumer market – branded towards American households rather than businessmen or computer hobbyists. Along with the PET2001 and the TRS-80, Byte magazine referred to these as the 1977 Trinity of personal computing. The Apple II had the feature of being able to display color graphics. By 1976, Steve Jobs had convinced the product designer Jerry Manock to create the shell for the Apple II – a smooth case inspired by kitchen appliances that would conceal the internal mechanics. The earliest Apple IIs were assembled in Silicon Valley, and later in Texas, printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland, the original retail price of the computer was $1,298 and $2,638. To reflect the color graphics capability, the Apple logo on the casing has rainbow stripes. Perhaps most significantly, the Apple II was a catalyst for personal computers across many industries, the Apple II used a multiplicity of idiosyncratic engineering shortcuts to save hardware and reduce costs. This arrangement simultaneously eliminated the need for a separate circuit for the DRAM chips. Similarly, in the graphics mode, color is determined by pixel position and can thus be implemented in software. This also allows for subpixel font rendering since orange and blue pixels appear half a pixel-width farther to the right on the screen than green, the Apple II at first used data cassette storage like most other microcomputers of the time. In 1978 the company introduced an external 5 1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive, the Disk II interface, created by Wozniak, is regarded as an engineering masterpiece for its economy of electronic components. The approach taken in the Disk II controller is typical of Wozniaks designs, with a few small-scale logic chips and a cheap PROM, he created a functional floppy-disk interface at a fraction of the component cost of standard circuit configurations. The cost of such terminals could easily exceed the price of the computer itself, the Apple IIs PCB underwent several revisions as Steve Wozniak made modifications to it. The earliest version was known as Revision 0, and the first 6000 units shipped used it, later revisions added a color killer circuit to prevent color fringing when the computer was in text mode, as well as modifications to improve the reliability of cassette I/O. Revision 0 Apple IIs powered up in a mode and had garbage on screen. This was eliminated on the later board revisions, Revision 0 Apple IIs could display only four colors, but Wozniak was later able to generate 16 in low-res mode
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IBM
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International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360
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Industry Standard Architecture
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Industry Standard Architecture is a retronym term for the 16-bit internal bus of IBM PC/AT and similar computers based on the Intel 80286 and its immediate successors during the 1980s. The bus was backward compatible with the 8-bit bus of the 8088-based IBM PC, originally referred to as the PC/AT-bus it was also termed I/O Channel by IBM. The 16-bit ISA bus was used with 32-bit processors for several years. An attempt to extend it to 32 bits, called Extended Industry Standard Architecture, was not very successful, later buses such as VESA Local Bus and PCI were used instead, often along with ISA slots on the same mainboard. Derivatives of the AT bus structure were and still are used in ATA/IDE, the PCMCIA standard, Compact Flash, the PC/104 bus, compaq created the term Industry Standard Architecture to replace PC compatible. The ISA bus was developed by a led by Mark Dean at IBM as part of the IBM PC project in 1981. It originated as an 8-bit system, the newer 16-bit standard, the IBM AT bus, was introduced in 1984. Therefore, the ISA bus was synchronous with the CPU clock, designed to connect peripheral cards to the motherboard, ISA allows for bus mastering although only the first 16 MB of main memory are available for direct access. The 8-bit bus ran at 4.77 MHz, while the 16-bit bus operated at 6 or 8 MHz IBM RT/PC also used the 16-bit bus. It was also available on some non-IBM compatible machines such as Motorola 68k-based Apollo and Amiga 3000 workstations, the short-lived AT&T Hobbit and later PowerPC based BeBox. MCA had many features that would appear in PCI, the successor of ISA. The system was far more advanced than the AT bus, and computer manufacturers responded with the Extended Industry Standard Architecture and later, in fact, VLB used some electronic parts originally intended for MCA because component manufacturers already were equipped to manufacture them. Both EISA and VLB were backwards-compatible expansions of the AT bus, users of ISA-based machines had to know special information about the hardware they were adding to the system. While a handful of devices were essentially plug-n-play, this was rare, users frequently had to configure several parameters when adding a new device, such as the IRQ line, I/O address, or DMA channel. MCA had done away with this complication, and PCI actually incorporated many of the ideas first explored with MCA, in reality, ISA PnP can be troublesome, and did not become well-supported until the architecture was in its final days. PCI slots were the first physically incompatible expansion ports to directly squeeze ISA off the motherboard, at first, motherboards were largely ISA, including a few PCI slots. By the mid-1990s, the two types were roughly balanced, and ISA slots soon were in the minority of consumer systems. Which was why the software compatible LPC bus was created, in late 2008, even floppy disk drives and serial ports were disappearing, and the extinction of vestigial ISA from chipsets was on the horizon
21.
IBM Personal Computer XT
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The IBM Personal Computer XT, often shortened to the IBM XT, PC XT, or simply XT, is a version of the IBM PC with a built-in hard drive. It was released as IBM Machine Type number 5160 on March 8,1983, apart from the hard drive, it was essentially the same as the original PC, with only minor improvements. The XT was mainly intended as an enhanced IBM PC for business users, later floppy-only models would effectively replace the original model 5150 PC. A corresponding 3270 PC featuring 3270 terminal emulation was released later in October 1983, the motherboard had an Intel 8088 microprocessor running at 4.77 MHz, with a socket for an optional 8087 math coprocessor. IBM recognized soon after the IBM PCs release in 1981 that its five 8-bit I/O channel expansion slots were insufficient. An internal IBM publication stated in October 1981 about the number that In my opinion, it could be a problem, a BYTE Magazine article commented that DOS2.0 is more revolutionary and advanced than the computer itself. Unlike many hard disk systems on microcomputers at the time, the XT was able to boot directly off the drive, aside from the hard disk, a serial port card was also standard equipment on the XT, all other cards being optional. By the end of 1983, the XT was neck-and-neck with the original PC for sales, two were behind the floppy drive and shorter than PCs slots. The other six fit into the space as the PCs five slots. Most PC cards would not fit into the two slots, and some would not fit into the six standard-length, but narrower, slots. The floppy and hard drive adapters, the serial port card, the basic specification was soon upgraded to have 256 KB of RAM as standard. Expansion slots could be used for I/O devices or for memory expansion, available Video cards were initially the Monochrome Display Adapter and Color Graphics Adapter, with Enhanced Graphics Adapter and Professional Graphics Controller becoming available in 1984. The XT had a case similar to that of the IBM PC. It weighed 32 pounds and was approximately 19.5 inches wide by 16 inches deep by 5.5 inches high, the power supply of the original XT sold in the US was configured for 120 V AC only and could not be used with 240 V mains supplies. XTs with 240V-compatible power supplies were sold in international markets. Both were rated at 130 Watts, the operating system usually sold with the XT was PC DOS2.0 or, by the time the XT was discontinued in early 1987, DOS3.2. Like the original PC, the XT came with IBM BASIC in its ROM, the XT BIOS also displayed a memory count during the POST, unlike the PC. The XT was discontinued in the spring of 1987, replaced by the PS/2 Model 30, XT motherboards came in two different versions
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Micro Channel architecture
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Micro Channel architecture, or the Micro Channel bus, was 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 abbreviated as MCA, although not by IBM. In IBM products, it superseded the ISA bus and was subsequently superseded by the PCI bus architecture. The development of Micro Channel was driven by both technical and business pressures, the IBM AT bus, which later became known as the Industry Standard Architecture bus had a number of technical design limitations, including, A slow bus speed. A limited number of interrupts, fixed in hardware, a limited number of I/O device addresses, also fixed in hardware. Hardwired and complex configuration with no conflict resolution, deep links to the architecture of the 80x86 chip family In addition, it suffered from other problems, Poor grounding and power distribution. Undocumented bus interface standards that varied between systems and manufacturers and these limitations became more serious as the range of tasks and peripherals, and the number of manufacturers for IBM PC-compatibles, grew. It was thought that by creating a new standard, IBM would regain control of standards via the required licensing, as patents can take three years or more to be granted, however, only those relating to ISA could be licensed when Micro Channel was announced. Patents on important Micro Channel features, such as Plug and Play automatic configuration, were not granted to IBM until after PCI had replaced Micro Channel in the marketplace, the Micro Channel architecture was designed by engineer Chet Heath. A lot of the Micro Channel cards that were developed used the CHIPS P82C612 MCA interface controller, the Micro Channel was primarily a 32-bit bus, but the system also supported a 16-bit mode designed to lower the cost of connectors and logic in Intel-based machines like the IBM PS/2. In time, memory moved to the CPUs local bus, thereby eliminating the problem, another connector extension was included for graphics cards. This extension was used for analog output from the video card, the advantage of this was that Micro Channel system boards could have a basic VGA or MCGA graphics system on board, and higher level graphics could then share the same port. Micro Channel cards also featured a unique, 16-bit software-readable ID, the BIOS and/or OS can read IDs, compare against a list of known cards, and perform automatic system configuration to suit. This led to boot failures whereby an older BIOS would not recognize a newer card, in turn, this required IBM to release updated Reference Disks on a regular basis. A fairly complete list of known IDs is available, to accompany these reference disks were ADF files which were read by setup which in turn provided configuration information for the card. The ADF was a text file, containing information about the cards memory addressing. In this critical area, Micro Channel architectures biggest advantage was also its greatest disadvantage, in practice, however, this meant that the user must keep that same floppy disk matched to that PC. For a small company with a few PCs, this was annoying, but for large organizations with hundreds or even thousands of PCs, permanently matching each PC with its own floppy disk was logistically unlikely or impossible
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Compaq
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Compaq was a company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compatible computers, being the first company to reverse engineer the IBM Personal Computer. It rose to become the largest supplier of PC systems during the 1990s before being overtaken by HP in 2001, struggling in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble bust, as well as with a risky acquisition of DEC, Compaq was acquired for US$25 billion by HP in 2002. The Compaq brand remained in use by HP for lower-end systems until 2013 when it was discontinued, the company was formed by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto—former Texas Instruments senior managers. Murto departed Compaq in 1987, while Canion and Harris left under a shakeup in 1991, prior to its takeover the company was headquartered in a facility in northwest unincorporated Harris County, Texas, that now continues as HPs largest United States facility. Compaq was founded in February 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto, the three of them had left due to lack of faith and loss of confidence in TIs management, and initially considered but ultimately decided against starting a chain of Mexican restaurants. Each invested $1,000 to form the company, which was founded with the temporary name Gateway Technology, the name COMPAQ was said to be derived from Compatibility and Quality but this explanation was an afterthought. The name was chosen from many suggested by Ogilvy and Mather, the first Compaq PC was sketched out on a placemat by Canion while dining with the founders in a Houston pie shop. Their first venture came from Benjamin M. Rosen and Sevin Rosen Funds who helped the fledgling company secure $1.5 million to produce their initial computer. Overall, the managed to raise $25 million from venture capitalists. In contrast to Dell Computer and Gateway 2000, Compaq hired veteran engineers with an average of 15 years experience, under Canions direction, Compaq sold computers only through dealers to avoid potential competition that a direct sales channel would foster, which helped foster loyalty among resellers. By giving dealers considerable leeway in pricing Compaqs offerings, either a significant markup for more profits or discount for more sales, dealers had a major incentive to advertise Compaq. During its first year of sales, the company sold 53,000 PCs for sales of $111 million, Compaq went public in 1983 on the NYSE and raised $67 million. In 1986, it enjoyed record sales of $329 million from 150,000 PCs, in 1987, Compaq hit the $1 billion revenue mark, taking the least amount of time to reach that milestone. By 1991, Compaq held the fifth spot in the PC market with $3 billion in sales that year. Two key marketing executives in Compaqs early years, Jim DArezzo, other key executives responsible for the companys meteoric growth in the late 80s and early 90s were Ross A. In the United States, Brendan A. Mac McLoughlin led the companys sales organization after starting up the Western U. S. The soft-spoken Canion was popular with employees and the culture that he built helped Compaq to attract the best talent, at semi-annual meetings, turnout was high as any employee could ask questions to senior managers
