1.
Computer program
–
A computer program is a collection of instructions that performs a specific task when executed by a computer. A computer requires programs to function, and typically executes the programs instructions in a processing unit. A computer program is written by a computer programmer in a programming language. From the program in its form of source code, a compiler can derive machine code—a form consisting of instructions that the computer can directly execute. Alternatively, a program may be executed with the aid of an interpreter. A part of a program that performs a well-defined task is known as an algorithm. A collection of programs, libraries and related data are referred to as software. Computer programs may be categorized along functional lines, such as software or system software. The earliest programmable machines preceded the invention of the digital computer, in 1801, Joseph-Marie Jacquard devised a loom that would weave a pattern by following a series of perforated cards. Patterns could be weaved and repeated by arranging the cards, in 1837, Charles Babbage was inspired by Jacquards loom to attempt to build the Analytical Engine. The names of the components of the device were borrowed from the textile industry. In the textile industry, yarn was brought from the store to be milled, the device would have had a store—memory to hold 1,000 numbers of 40 decimal digits each. Numbers from the store would then have then transferred to the mill. It was programmed using two sets of perforated cards—one to direct the operation and the other for the input variables, however, after more than 17,000 pounds of the British governments money, the thousands of cogged wheels and gears never fully worked together. During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Ada Lovelace translated the memoir of Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea, the memoir covered the Analytical Engine. The translation contained Note G which completely detailed a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers using the Analytical Engine and this note is recognized by some historians as the worlds first written computer program. In 1936, Alan Turing introduced the Universal Turing machine—a theoretical device that can model every computation that can be performed on a Turing complete computing machine and it is a finite-state machine that has an infinitely long read/write tape. The machine can move the back and forth, changing its contents as it performs an algorithm
2.
Computer hardware
–
Computer hardware is the collection of physical components that constitute a computer system. By contrast, software is instructions that can be stored and run by hardware, hardware is directed by the software to execute any command or instruction. A combination of hardware and software forms a usable computing system, the template for all modern computers is the Von Neumann architecture, detailed in a 1945 paper by Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann. The meaning of the term has evolved to mean a stored-program computer in which an instruction fetch and this is referred to as the Von Neumann bottleneck and often limits the performance of the system. For the third year, U. S. business-to-business channel sales increased. The impressive growth was the fastest sales increase since the end of the recession, sales growth accelerated in the second half of the year peaking in fourth quarter with a 6.9 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2012. There are a number of different types of system in use today. The personal computer, also known as the PC, is one of the most common types of computer due to its versatility, laptops are generally very similar, although they may use lower-power or reduced size components, thus lower performance. The computer case is a plastic or metal enclosure that houses most of the components, a case can be either big or small, but the form factor of motherboard for which it is designed matters more. A power supply unit converts alternating current electric power to low-voltage DC power for the components of the computer. Laptops are capable of running from a battery, normally for a period of hours. The motherboard is the component of a computer. It is usually cooled by a heatsink and fan, or water-cooling system, most newer CPUs include an on-die Graphics Processing Unit. The clock speed of CPUs governs how fast it executes instructions, many modern computers have the option to overclock the CPU which enhances performance at the expense of greater thermal output and thus a need for improved cooling. The chipset, which includes the bridge, mediates communication between the CPU and the other components of the system, including main memory. Random-Access Memory, which stores the code and data that are being accessed by the CPU. For example, when a web browser is opened on the computer it takes up memory, RAM usually comes on DIMMs in the sizes 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB, but can be much larger. Read-Only Memory, which stores the BIOS that runs when the computer is powered on or otherwise begins execution, the BIOS includes boot firmware and power management firmware
3.
Video game console
–
A video game console is an electronic, digital or computer device that outputs a video signal or visual image to display a video game that one or more people can play. The term video game console is used to distinguish a console machine primarily designed for consumers to use for playing video games. An arcade machine consists of a video game computer, display, game controller, a home computer is a personal computer designed for home use for a variety of purposes, such as bookkeeping, accessing the Internet and playing video games. There are various types of game consoles, including home video game consoles, handheld game consoles, microconsoles. Although Ralph Baer had built working game consoles by 1966, it was nearly a decade before the Pong game made them commonplace in regular peoples living rooms. Through evolution over the 1990s and 2000s, game consoles have expanded to additional functions such as CD players, DVD players, Blu-ray disc players, web browsers, set-top boxes. The first video appeared in the 1960s. They were played on massive computers connected to vector displays, not analog televisions, Ralph H. Baer conceived the idea of a home video game in 1951. In the late 1960s, while working for Sanders Associates, Baer created a series of game console designs. In 1972, Magnavox released the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home game console which could be connected to a TV set. Magnavox replaced the switch design with separate cartridges for each game, by autumn 1975, Magnavox, bowing to the popularity of Pong, cancelled the Odyssey and released a scaled-down version that played only Pong and hockey, the Odyssey 100. A second, higher end console, the Odyssey 200, was released with the 100 and added on-screen scoring, up to four players, almost simultaneously released with Ataris own home Pong console through Sears, these consoles jump-started the consumer market. All three of the new consoles used simpler designs than the original Odyssey did with no board game pieces or extra cartridges, in the years that followed, the market saw many companies rushing similar consoles to market. Most of the consoles from this era were dedicated consoles playing only the games came with the console. These video game consoles were often just called video games, because there was reason to distinguish the two yet. While a few companies like Atari, Magnavox, and newcomer Coleco pushed the envelope, Fairchild released the Fairchild Video Entertainment System in 1976. The VES, however, contained a programmable microprocessor so its cartridges only needed a single ROM chip to store microprocessor instructions, RCA and Atari soon released their own cartridge-based consoles, the RCA Studio II and the Atari 2600, respectively. The first handheld console with interchangeable cartridges was the Microvision designed by Smith Engineering
4.
Software
–
Computer software, or simply software, is that part of a computer system that consists of data or computer instructions, in contrast to the physical hardware from which the system is built. In computer science and software engineering, computer software is all information processed by computer systems, programs, computer software includes computer programs, libraries and related non-executable data, such as online documentation or digital media. Computer hardware and software require each other and neither can be used on its own. At the lowest level, executable code consists of machine language instructions specific to an individual processor—typically a central processing unit, a machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a storage location in the computer—an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction may also cause something to appear on a display of the computer system—a state change which should be visible to the user. The processor carries out the instructions in the order they are provided, unless it is instructed to jump to a different instruction, the majority of software is written in high-level programming languages that are easier and more efficient for programmers, meaning closer to a natural language. High-level languages are translated into machine language using a compiler or an interpreter or a combination of the two, an outline for what would have been the first piece of software was written by Ada Lovelace in the 19th century, for the planned Analytical Engine. However, neither the Analytical Engine nor any software for it were ever created, the first theory about software—prior to creation of computers as we know them today—was proposed by Alan Turing in his 1935 essay Computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. This eventually led to the creation of the academic fields of computer science and software engineering. Computer science is more theoretical, whereas software engineering focuses on practical concerns. However, prior to 1946, software as we now understand it—programs stored in the memory of stored-program digital computers—did not yet exist, the first electronic computing devices were instead rewired in order to reprogram them. On virtually all platforms, software can be grouped into a few broad categories. There are many different types of software, because the range of tasks that can be performed with a modern computer is so large—see list of software. System software includes, Operating systems, which are collections of software that manage resources and provides common services for other software that runs on top of them. Supervisory programs, boot loaders, shells and window systems are parts of operating systems. In practice, an operating system bundled with additional software so that a user can potentially do some work with a computer that only has an operating system. Device drivers, which operate or control a particular type of device that is attached to a computer, utilities, which are computer programs designed to assist users in the maintenance and care of their computers
5.
Programming language
–
A programming language is a formal computer language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to programs to control the behavior of a machine or to express algorithms. From the early 1800s, programs were used to direct the behavior of such as Jacquard looms. Thousands of different programming languages have created, mainly in the computer field. Many programming languages require computation to be specified in an imperative form while other languages use forms of program specification such as the declarative form. The description of a language is usually split into the two components of syntax and semantics. Some languages are defined by a document while other languages have a dominant implementation that is treated as a reference. Some languages have both, with the language defined by a standard and extensions taken from the dominant implementation being common. A programming language is a notation for writing programs, which are specifications of a computation or algorithm, some, but not all, authors restrict the term programming language to those languages that can express all possible algorithms. For example, PostScript programs are created by another program to control a computer printer or display. More generally, a language may describe computation on some, possibly abstract. It is generally accepted that a specification for a programming language includes a description, possibly idealized. In most practical contexts, a programming language involves a computer, consequently, abstractions Programming languages usually contain abstractions for defining and manipulating data structures or controlling the flow of execution. Expressive power The theory of computation classifies languages by the computations they are capable of expressing, all Turing complete languages can implement the same set of algorithms. ANSI/ISO SQL-92 and Charity are examples of languages that are not Turing complete, markup languages like XML, HTML, or troff, which define structured data, are not usually considered programming languages. Programming languages may, however, share the syntax with markup languages if a computational semantics is defined, XSLT, for example, is a Turing complete XML dialect. Moreover, LaTeX, which is used for structuring documents. The term computer language is used interchangeably with programming language
6.
Computing platform
–
Computing platform means in general sense, where any piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the system, even a web browser or other application. The term computing platform can refer to different abstraction levels, including a hardware architecture, an operating system. In total it can be said to be the stage on which programs can run. For example, an OS may be a platform that abstracts the underlying differences in hardware, platforms may also include, Hardware alone, in the case of small embedded systems. Embedded systems can access hardware directly, without an OS, this is referred to as running on bare metal, a browser in the case of web-based software. The browser itself runs on a platform, but this is not relevant to software running within the browser. An application, such as a spreadsheet or word processor, which hosts software written in a scripting language. This can be extended to writing fully-fledged applications with the Microsoft Office suite as a platform, software frameworks that provide ready-made functionality. Cloud computing and Platform as a Service, the social networking sites Twitter and facebook are also considered development platforms. A virtual machine such as the Java virtual machine, applications are compiled into a format similar to machine code, known as bytecode, which is then executed by the VM. A virtualized version of a system, including virtualized hardware, OS, software. These allow, for instance, a typical Windows program to run on what is physically a Mac, some architectures have multiple layers, with each layer acting as a platform to the one above it. In general, a component only has to be adapted to the layer immediately beneath it, however, the JVM, the layer beneath the application, does have to be built separately for each OS
7.
Operating system
–
An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. All computer programs, excluding firmware, require a system to function. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones, the dominant desktop operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of around 83. 3%. MacOS by Apple Inc. is in place, and the varieties of Linux is in third position. Linux distributions are dominant in the server and supercomputing sectors, other specialized classes of operating systems, such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. A single-tasking system can run one program at a time. Multi-tasking may be characterized in preemptive and co-operative types, in preemptive multitasking, the operating system slices the CPU time and dedicates a slot to each of the programs. Unix-like operating systems, e. g. Solaris, Linux, cooperative multitasking is achieved by relying on each process to provide time to the other processes in a defined manner. 16-bit versions of Microsoft Windows used cooperative multi-tasking, 32-bit versions of both Windows NT and Win9x, used preemptive multi-tasking. Single-user operating systems have no facilities to distinguish users, but may allow multiple programs to run in tandem, a distributed operating system manages a group of distinct computers and makes them appear to be a single computer. The development of networked computers that could be linked and communicate with each other gave rise to distributed computing, distributed computations are carried out on more than one machine. When computers in a work in cooperation, they form a distributed system. The technique is used both in virtualization and cloud computing management, and is common in large server warehouses, embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems. They are designed to operate on small machines like PDAs with less autonomy and they are able to operate with a limited number of resources. They are very compact and extremely efficient by design, Windows CE and Minix 3 are some examples of embedded operating systems. A real-time operating system is a system that guarantees to process events or data by a specific moment in time. A real-time operating system may be single- or multi-tasking, but when multitasking, early computers were built to perform a series of single tasks, like a calculator. Basic operating system features were developed in the 1950s, such as resident monitor functions that could run different programs in succession to speed up processing
8.
VisiCalc
–
VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for the Apple II by VisiCorp. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a business tool. VisiCalc is considered the Apple IIs killer app and it sold over 700,000 copies in six years, and as many as 1 million copies over its history. Initially developed in a 6502 assembler running on the Multics time sharing system, VisiCalc was ported to numerous platforms, in order to do this, the company developed porting platforms that produced bug compatible versions. The company took the approach when the IBM PC was launched. Sales were initially brisk, with about 300,000 copies sold, VisiCalc used the A1 notation in formulas. When Lotus 1-2-3 was launched in 1983, taking advantage of the expanded memory and screen of the PC. Sales imploded so rapidly that the company was soon insolvent, Lotus Development purchased the company in 1985, and immediately ended sales of VisiCalc and the companys other products. VISICALC represented a new idea of a way to use a computer, — Ted Nelson VisiCalc traces its history to a presentation that Dan Bricklin was watching while attending Harvard Business School. The professor was creating a model on a blackboard that was ruled with lines to create a table. When the professor found an error or wanted to change a parameter, he had to erase, Bricklin realized that he could replicate the process on a computer using an electronic spreadsheet to view results of underlying formulae. Bricklin was joined by Bob Frankston, and the pair worked on VisiCalc for two months during the winter of 1978–79, forming Software Arts, Bricklin wrote that with the years of experience we had at the time we created VisiCalc, we were familiar with many row/column financial programs. However, these earlier timesharing programs were not completely interactive, nor did they run on personal computers, Frankston described VisiCalc as a magic sheet of paper that can perform calculations and recalculations, which allows the user to just solve the problem using familiar tools and concepts. Personal Software began selling it in mid-1979 for under $100, after a demonstration at the fourth West Coast Computer Faire and it required an Apple II with 32K of random-access memory, and supported saving files to magnetic tape cassette or Apples Disk II floppy disk system. VisiCalc was unusually easy to use and came with excellent documentation, ben Rosen speculated in July 1979 that VisiCalc could someday become the software tail that wags the personal computer dog. For the first 12 months it was available for the Apple II. Many bought $2000 Apples to run the software, even if they already owned computers. Apples rival Tandy Corporation used VisiCalc on its own Apple IIs, other software supported its Data Interchange Format to share data
9.
Spreadsheet
–
A spreadsheet is an interactive computer application for organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets are developed as computerized simulations of paper accounting worksheets, the program operates on data entered in cells of a table. Each cell may contain either numeric or text data, or the results of formulas that automatically calculate, a spreadsheet may also refer to one such electronic document. Spreadsheet users can adjust any stored value and observe the effects on calculated values and this makes the spreadsheet useful for what-if analysis since many cases can be rapidly investigated without manual recalculation. Modern spreadsheet software can have multiple interacting sheets, and can display either as text and numerals. Besides performing basic arithmetic and mathematical functions, modern spreadsheets provide built-in functions for financial and statistical operations. Such calculations as net present value or standard deviation can be applied to data with a pre-programmed function in a formula. Spreadsheet programs also provide conditional expressions, functions to convert between text and numbers, and functions operate on strings of text. Spreadsheets have replaced paper-based systems throughout the business world, although they were first developed for accounting or bookkeeping tasks, they now are used extensively in any context where tabular lists are built, sorted, and shared. LANPAR, available in 1969, was the first electronic spreadsheet on mainframe and time sharing computers, LANPAR was an acronym, LANguage for Programming Arrays at Random. VisiCalc was the first electronic spreadsheet on a microcomputer, and it helped turn the Apple II computer into a popular, Lotus 1-2-3 was the leading spreadsheet when DOS was the dominant operating system. Excel now has the largest market share on the Windows and Macintosh platforms, a spreadsheet program is a standard feature of an office productivity suite, since the advent of web apps, office suites now also exist in web app form. A spreadsheet consists of a table of cells arranged into rows and columns, X locations, the columns, are normally represented by letters, A, B, C, etc. while rows are normally represented by numbers,1,2,3, etc. A single cell can be referred to by addressing its row and column and this electronic concept of cell references was first introduced in LANPAR and a variant used in VisiCalc, and known as A1 notation. Additionally, spreadsheets have the concept of a range, a group of cells, for instance, one can refer to the first ten cells in the first column with the range A1, A10. LANPAR innovated forward referencing/natural order calculation which didnt re-appear until Lotus 123, in modern spreadsheet applications, several spreadsheets, often known as worksheets or simply sheets, are gathered together to form a workbook. A workbook is physically represented by a file, containing all the data for the book, the sheets, worksheets are normally represented by tabs that flip between pages, each one containing one of the sheets, although Numbers changes this model significantly. Cells in a multi-sheet book add the name to their reference, for instance
10.
Apple II series
–
Introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire on April 16,1977, the Apple II was among the first successful personal computers, it launched the Apple company into a successful business. Throughout the years, a number of models were sold, with the most popular model remaining relatively little changed into the 1990s, while primarily an 8-bit computer, by mid-run a 16-bit model was introduced. It was first sold on June 10,1977, by the end of production in 1993, somewhere between five and six million Apple II series computers had been produced. The Apple II was one of the longest running mass-produced home computer series, the Apple II became one of several recognizable and successful computers during the 1980s and early 1990s, although this was mainly limited to the USA. The original Apple II operating system was in ROM along with Integer BASIC, programs were entered, then saved and loaded on cassette tape. When the Disk II was implemented in 1978 by Steve Wozniak, the final and most popular version of this software was Apple DOS3.3. Some commercial Apple II software booted directly and did not use standard DOS formats and this discouraged the copying or modifying of the software on the disks and improved loading speed. Apple DOS was superseded by ProDOS, which supported a hierarchical filesystem, with an optional third-party Z80-based expansion card the Apple II could boot into the CP/M operating system and run WordStar, dBase II, and other CP/M software. At the height of its evolution, towards the late 1980s, by 1992, the platform had 16-bit processing capabilities, a mouse-driven graphical user interface, and graphics and sound capabilities far beyond the original. At its peak, it was an industry with its associated community of third-party developers and retailers. The Apple IIGS was sold until the end of 1992, the last II-series Apple in production, total Apple II sales for its 14-year run were about 6 million units, with the peak occurring in 1983 when 1 million were sold. The Apple II was designed to more like a home appliance than a piece of electronic equipment. The Apple II had color and high-resolution graphics modes, sound capabilities, the Apple II was targeted for the masses rather than just hobbyists and engineers, it also influenced most of the microcomputers that followed it. Unlike preceding home microcomputers, it was sold as a consumer appliance rather than as a kit. VanLOVEs Apple Handbook and The Apple Educators Guide by Gerald VanDiver, the Apple dealer network used this book to emphasize the growing software developer base in education and personal use. The Apple II series had a built into the motherboard shell. An upgrade kit was later to house the motherboard of an Apple IIGS in an Apple IIe case. The Apple II case was durable enough, according to a 1981 Apple ad, early II-series models were usually designated Apple ][ plus
11.
Byte (magazine)
–
Byte magazine was an American microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage. Coverage was in-depth with much detail, rather than user-oriented. Print publication ceased in 1998 and online publication in 2013, Byte started in 1975, shortly after the first personal computers appeared as kits advertised in the back of electronics magazines. Byte was published monthly, with a yearly subscription price of $10. In 1975 Wayne Green was the editor and publisher of 73 and his ex-wife, on May 25th we made a deal with the publisher of a small computer hobby magazine to take over as editor of a new publication which would start in August. Carl Helmers published a series of six articles in 1974 that detailed the design and construction of his Experimenters Computer System, in January 1975 this became the monthly ECS magazine with 400 subscribers. The last issue was published on May 12,1975 and in June the subscribers were mailed a notice announcing Byte magazine, carl wrote to another hobbyist newsletter, Micro-8 Computer User Group Newsletter, and described his new job as editor of Byte magazine. I got a note in the mail about two weeks ago from Wayne Green, publisher of 73 Magazine essentially saying hello and why dont you come up, the net result of a follow up is the decision to create BYTE magazine using the facilities of Green Publishing Inc. I will end up with the focus for the magazine. Virginia Londner Green had returned to 73 in the December 1974 issue, the first five issues of Byte were published by Green Publishing and the name was changed to Byte Publications starting with the February 1976 issue. Carl Helmers was a co-owner of Byte Publications, the first four issues were produced in the offices of 73 and Wayne Green was listed as the publisher. One day in November 1975 Wayne came to work and found that the Byte magazine staff had moved out, the February 1976 issue of Byte has a short story about the move. After a start which reads like a light opera with an episode or two reminiscent of the Keystone Cops, Byte magazine finally has moved into separate offices of its own. Wayne Green was not happy about losing Byte magazine so he was going to start a new one called Kilobyte, Byte quickly trademarked KILOBYTE as a cartoon series in Byte magazine. The new magazine was called Kilobaud, there was competition and animosity between Byte Publications and 73 Inc. but both remained in the small town of Peterborough, New Hampshire. Byte was able to attract advertising and articles from many well-knowns, soon-to-be-well-knowns, articles in the first issue included Which Microprocessor For You. by Hal Chamberlin, Write Your Own Assembler by Dan Fylstra and Serial Interface by Don Lancaster. Advertisements from Godbout, MITS, Processor Technology, SCELBI, and Sphere appear, early articles in Byte were do-it-yourself electronic or software projects to improve small computers. A continuing feature was Ciarcias Circuit Cellar, a column in which electronic engineer Steve Ciarcia described small projects to modify or attach to a computer, Byte ran Microsofts first advertisement, as Micro-Soft, to sell a BASIC interpreter for 8080-based computers
12.
Creative Computing (magazine)
–
Creative Computing was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution. Published from October 1974 until October 1985, the covered the whole spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format than the rather technically oriented BYTE. Creative Computing also published software on cassette tape and floppy disk for the computer systems of the time. The magazine was founded by David H. Ahl, who sold it to Ziff-Davis in the early 1980s, featured writers included Robert Swirsky, David Lubar, and John J. Anderson. The magazine regularly included BASIC source code for utility programs and games, ted Nelson, known for the invention of hypertext, was briefly the editor. The April 1980 issue of Creative Computing contained parodies of the computer magazines of the time. Ahl published three volumes of The Best of Creative Computing Magazine in 1976,1977, and 1980, the cover of volume 2 was illustrated by famed underground cartoonist Gilbert Shelton. At the end of its run, Creative Computing was attempting to refocus on business computing, but was not successful at this and ultimately ceased publication in October 1985
13.
EasyWriter
–
EasyWriter was a word processor first written for the Apple II series computer in 1979, the first word processor for that platform. Published by Information Unlimited Software, it was written by John Drapers Capn Software, which produced a version of Forth. Draper developed EasyWriter while serving nights in the Alameda County Jail under a work furlough program and it was later ported to the IBM PC and released with the new computer in August 1981 as a launch title. While IBM offered an upgrade to version 1.10 to version 1.0 owners. IUS released an application, EasyWriter II. Completely rewritten by Basic Software Group, IUS emphasized that II—developed with C instead of Forth—is not a version of the original IBM selection or its upgrade. He cited several bugs, slow performance, and user-interface issues, iBMs Don Estridge admitted in 1983 that he tried to use EasyWriter 1.0 and had the same experience everybody else had. EasyWriter 1.10 resolved most of Fluegelmans complaints, list of word processors John Drapers The Creation of EasyWriter on his own site
14.
Commodore International
–
Commodore International was a North American home computer and electronics manufacturer. Commodore International, along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Machines, participated in the development of the computer industry in the 1970s and 1980s. The company developed and marketed one of the worlds best-selling desktop computers, the company that would become Commodore Business Machines, Inc. was founded in 1954 in Toronto as the Commodore Portable Typewriter Company by Polish immigrant and Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel. He moved to Toronto to start production, by the late 1950s a wave of Japanese machines forced most North American typewriter companies to cease business, but Tramiel instead turned to adding machines. In 1955, the company was incorporated as Commodore Business Machines. In 1962, Commodore went public on the New York Stock Exchange, in the late 1960s, history repeated itself when Japanese firms started producing and exporting adding machines. The companys main investor and chairman, Irving Gould, suggested that Tramiel travel to Japan to understand how to compete, instead, he returned with the new idea to produce electronic calculators, which were just coming on the market. Commodore soon had a profitable calculator line and was one of the popular brands in the early 1970s. However, in 1975, Texas Instruments, the supplier of calculator parts, entered the market directly. Commodore obtained an infusion of cash from Gould, which Tramiel used beginning in 1976 to purchase several second-source chip suppliers, including MOS Technology, Inc. in order to assure his supply. He agreed to buy MOS, which was having troubles of its own, through the 1970s, Commodore also produced numerous peripherals and consumer electronic products such as the Chessmate, a chess computer based around a MOS6504 chip, released in 1978. In December 2007 when Tramiel was visiting the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, for the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 and he said, I wanted to call my company General, but theres so many Generals in the U. S. Then I went to Admiral, but that was taken, so I wind up in Berlin, Germany, with my wife, and we were in a cab, and the cab made a short stop, and in front of us was an Opel Commodore. Tramiel gave this account in interviews, but Opels Commodore didnt debut until 1967. Once Chuck Peddle had taken over engineering at Commodore, he convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were already a dead end, from PETs 1977 debut, Commodore would be a computer company. The operational headquarters, where research and development of new products occurred, retained the name Commodore Business Machines, in 1980 Commodore launched production for the European market in Braunschweig. By 1980 Commodore was one of the three largest microcomputer companies, and the largest in the Common Market and this was addressed with the introduction of the VIC-20 in 1981, which was introduced at a cost of US$299 and sold in retail stores. Commodore took out ads featuring William Shatner asking consumers Why buy just a video game
15.
Tandy Corporation
–
Tandy Corporation, was an American family-owned leather goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas. Tandy Leather was founded in 1919 as a supply store. In 2000, the Tandy Corporation name was dropped and the entity became the RadioShack Corporation, Hinckley and Tandy opened their first branch store in 1927 in Beaumont, Texas and in 1932, Dave Tandy moved the store from Beaumont to Houston, Texas. Tandys business survived the economic storms of the Depression, gathered strength, Dave Tandy had a son, Charles Tandy, who was drafted into the business during his early twenties. Charles obtained a B. A degree at Texas Christian University then began attending the Harvard Business School to further expand his education, as World War II escalated Charles was called to serve his country in the military and relocated to Hawaii. Leathercraft gave the men something useful to do and their handiwork, Charles Tandy returned home from the service as a Lieutenant Commander in 1948 and negotiated to operate the fledgling leathercraft division himself. He had encouraged and followed the development of that venture through correspondence with his father, within a short time Charles succeeded in opening the first of two retail stores in 1950 that specialized exclusively in leathercraft. Mr. Hinckley did not share the enthusiasm of Dave and Charles Tandy for the new leathercraft division, the first Tandy Catalog, only 8 pages long, was mailed to readers of Popular Science magazine who had responded to two-inch test ads that were placed by Tandy. From 1950 forward Tandy operated retail mail order stores supported by direct mail advertising and this successful formula helped the company expand into a chain of some 150 leathercraft stores. A growing do-it-yourself movement prompted by a shortage of consumer goods, the fifteen leathercraft stores opened during this divisions first two years of operation became quite successful. Sixteen additional retail stores were opened in 1953, and by 1955 Tandy Leather was a company with leased sales sites in 75 cities across the United States. Tandy Leather became a commodity and was purchased in 1955 by the American Hide. Charles continued to control of managing the Tandy Leather division while owned by GAI. During 1956, General American Industries acquired three other companies unrelated to the industry and a struggle for control of the parent company began. Charles saw the need to emancipate from the direction initiated by GAI and he used all his resources, raised additional money, and exercised his right to purchase the 500,000 shares of stock that were included in the original settlement. When the votes were counted on the day of that pivotal stockholders meeting, Tandy had a landmark year in 1961. The company name was changed to Tandy Corporation and the headquarters were moved to Fort Worth, Texas where Charles Tandy became the President. Tandy Leather was operating 125 stores in 105 cities of the United States and Canada, the first of the Tandy Marts was also opened in Fort Worth in December 1961
16.
Lotus 1-2-3
–
Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software. It was the IBM PCs first killer application, was popular in the 1980s. The first spreadsheet, VisiCalc, had helped launch the Apple II as one of the earliest personal computers in business use, 1-2-3 quickly overtook VisiCalc, as well as Multiplan and SuperCalc, two VisiCalc competitors. With the acceptance of Windows 3.0, the market for desktop software grew even more, Lotus was passed by Microsoft in the early 1990s and never recovered. IBM purchased Lotus and continued to sell Lotus offerings, only officially ending sales in 2013, VisiCalc was launched in 1979 on the Apple II and immediately became a best-seller. Compared to earlier programs, VisiCalc allowed one to easily construct free-form calculation systems for any purpose. The application was so compelling that there were stories of people buying Apple II machines to run the program. VisiCalcs runaway success on the Apple led to direct bug compatible ports to other platforms, including the Atari 8-bit family, Commodore PET and many others. This included the IBM PC when it launched in 1981, where it became another best-seller. There were well known problems with VisiCalc, and several competitors appeared to some of these issues. In spite of these, and others, VisiCalc continued to outsell them all, the Lotus Development Corporation was founded by Mitchell Kapor, a friend of the developers of VisiCalc. 1-2-3 was originally written by Jonathan Sachs, who had written two spreadsheet programs previously while working at Concentric Data Systems, Inc, to aid its growth, in the UK, and possibly elsewhere, Lotus 1-2-3 was the very first computer software to use television consumer advertising. Lotus 1-2-3 was released on 26 January 1983, and immediately overtook Visicalc in sales, unlike Microsoft Multiplan, it stayed very close to the model of VisiCalc, including the A1 letter and number cell notation, and slash-menu structure. Among other novelties that Lotus introduced was a graph maker that could display several forms of graphs, at this early stage, the only video boards available for the PC were IBMs Color/Graphics Adapter and Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter while the latter did not support any graphics. The initial release of 1-2-3 supported only three video setups, CGA, MDA or dual monitor mode, however, a few months later support was added for Hercules Computer Technologys Hercules Graphics Adapter which was a clone of the MDA that allowed bitmap mode. The ability to have text and graphics capabilities proved extremely popular. Subsequent releases of Lotus 1-2-3 supported more video standards as time went on, including EGA, AT&T/Olivetti, significantly, support for the PCjr/Tandy modes was never added and users of those machines were limited to CGA graphics. The early versions of 1-2-3 also had a key disk copy protection, while the program was hard disk installable, the user had to insert the original floppy disk when starting 1-2-3 up
17.
IBM Personal Computer
–
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12,1981 and it was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida. IBM compatible became an important criterion for sales growth, only the Apple Macintosh family kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, International Business Machines, one of the worlds largest companies, had a 62% share of the mainframe computer market in 1981. Its share of the computer market, however, had declined from 60% in 1970 to 32% in 1980. In 1979 BusinessWeek asked, Is IBM just another stodgy, mature company, by 1981 its stock price had declined by 22%. IBMs earnings for the first half the year grew by 5. 3%—one third of the inflation rate—while those of minicomputer maker Digital Equipment Corporation grew by more than 35%. B. M, No longer dominates the computer business. IBM wished to avoid the outcome with the new personal computer industry, dominated by the Commodore PET, Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, Tandy Corporations TRS-80. With $150 million in sales by 1979 and projected growth of more than 40% in the early 1980s. The Japanese project, codenamed Go, ended before the 1981 release of the American-designed IBM PC codenamed Chess, whether IBM had waited too long to enter an industry in which Apple and others were already successful was unclear. An observer stated that IBM bringing out a computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance. Successful microcomputer company Vector Graphics fiscal 1980 revenue was $12 million, the company only sold through its internal sales force, had no experience with resellers or retail stores, and did not introduce the first product designed to work with non-IBM equipment until 1980. Another observer claimed that IBM made decisions so slowly that, when tested, as with other large computer companies, its new products typically required about four to five years for development. IBM had to learn how to develop, mass-produce. The potential importance to microcomputers of a company so prestigious, that a saying in American companies stated No one ever got fired for buying IBM, was nonetheless clear. InfoWorld, which described itself as The Newsweekly for Microcomputer Users, stated that for my grandmother, is far and away the media star, not because of its features, but because it exists at all. When the number eight company in the Fortune 500 enters the field, the influence of a personal computer made by a company whose name has literally come to mean computer to most of the world is hard to contemplate. The editorial acknowledged that some factions in our industry have looked upon IBM as the enemy, desktop sized programmable calculators by Hewlett Packard had evolved into the HP9830 BASIC language computer by 1972. In 1972–1973 a team led by Dr. SCAMP emulated an IBM1130 minicomputer to run APL\1130, in 1973 APL was generally available only on mainframe computers, and most desktop sized microcomputers such as the Wang 2200 or HP9800 offered only BASIC
18.
PC compatible
–
IBM PC compatible computers are those similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, able to run the same software and support the same expansion cards as those. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones, Columbia Data Products built the first clone of the IBM personal computer by a clean room implementation of its BIOS. Early IBM PC compatibles used the computer bus as the original PC. The IBM AT compatible bus was named the Industry Standard Architecture bus by manufacturers of compatible computers. The term IBM PC compatible is now a historical description only, only the Apple Macintosh classic Mac OS and macOS kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, so consumers are typically identified as being a PC or Mac user. IBM decided in 1980 to market a low-cost single-user computer as quickly as possible in response to Apple Computers success in the microcomputer market. On 12 August 1981, the first IBM PC went on sale, there were three operating systems available for it. The least expensive and most popular was PC DOS made by Microsoft, in a crucial concession, IBMs agreement allowed Microsoft to sell its own version, MS-DOS, for non-IBM computers. The only component of the original PC architecture exclusive to IBM was the BIOS and this software would run on any machine using MS-DOS or PC-DOS. Software that directly addressed the hardware instead of making standard calls was faster, however, software addressing IBM PC hardware in this way would not run on MS-DOS machines with different hardware. The 808x computer marketplace rapidly excluded all machines which were not hardware-, the 640 KB barrier on conventional system memory available to MS-DOS is a legacy of that period, other non-clone machines, while subject to a limit, could exceed 640 kB. Rumors of lookalike, compatible computers, created without IBMs approval, by June 1983 PC Magazine defined PC clone as a computer accommodate the user who takes a disk home from an IBM PC, walks across the room, and plugs it into the foreign machine. Because of a shortage of IBM PCs that year, many customers purchased clones instead, Columbia Data Products produced the first computer more or less compatible to the IBM PC standard during June 1982, soon followed by Eagle Computer. Compaq announced its first IBM PC compatible in November 1982, the Compaq Portable, the Compaq was the first sewing machine-sized portable computer that was essentially 100% PC-compatible. The company could not copy the BIOS directly as a result of the decision in Apple v. Franklin. Each computer would have its own Original Equipment Manufacturer version of MS-DOS, any software written for MS-DOS would operate on any MS-DOS computer, despite variations in hardware design. This expectation seemed reasonable in the marketplace of the time. Until then Microsoft was based primarily on computer languages such as BASIC, the established small system operating software was CP/M from Digital Research which was in use both at the hobbyist level and by the more professional of those using microcomputers
19.
WordStar
–
WordStar is a word processor application that had a dominant market share during the early- to mid-1980s. It was published by MicroPro International, and written for the CP/M operating system, Rubinstein was the principal owner of the company, Rob Barnaby was the sole author of the early versions of the program. Starting with WordStar 4.0, the program was built on new code written principally by Peter Mierau. WordStar was deliberately written to make as few assumptions about the system as possible. As all of these versions had relatively similar commands and controls, already popular, its inclusion with the Osborne 1 computer made the program become the de facto standard for much of the word-processing market. As the computer market became dominated by the IBM PC. In spite of its popularity in the early 1980s, these problems allowed WordPerfect to take WordStars place as the most widely used word processor from 1985 onwards. Rubinstein was an employee of early microcomputer company IMSAI, where he negotiated contracts with Digital Research. After leaving IMSAI, Rubinstein planned to start his own company that would sell through the new network of retail computer stores. MicroPro began selling the product, now renamed WordStar, in June 1979, by early 1980, MicroPro claimed in advertisements that 5,000 people had purchased WordStar in eight months. Wordstar was the first microcomputer word processor to offer mail merge, by May 1983 BYTE magazine called WordStar without a doubt the best-known and probably the most widely used personal computer word-processing program. By 1984, the year it held a public offering. A manual that PC Magazine described as incredibly inadequate led many authors to publish replacements, WordStar 3.0, the first version for MS-DOS, appeared in April 1982. WordStars ability to use a non-document mode to create text files without formatting made it popular among programmers for writing code, like the CP/M versions, the DOS WordStar was not explicitly designed for IBM PCs, but rather for any x86 machine. As such, it used only DOSs OS calls and avoided any BIOS usage or direct hardware access, the first DOS version was a port of the CP/M-86 version, and therefore could only address 64k of RAM even though DOS supported up to 640k. Users quickly learned they could make WordStar run dramatically faster by installing a RAM disk board, WordStar would still access the disk repeatedly, but the far faster access of the RAM drive compared to a floppy disk yielded a substantial speed improvement. However, edited versions of a document were saved only to this RAM disk, infoWorld described WordStar as notorious for its complexity, but by 1983 it was the leading word processing system. Although competition appeared early, WordStar was the dominant word processor on x86 machines until 1985 and it was part of the software bundle that accompanied Kaypro computers
20.
Word processor
–
A word processor is an electronic device or computer software application, that performs the task of composing, editing, formatting, and printing of documents. Later models introduced innovations such as spell-checking programs, and improved formatting options, as of 2009 there were only two U. S. companies, Classic and AlphaSmart, which still made them. Many older machines, however, remain in use, since 2009, Sentinel has offered a machine described as a word processor, but it is more accurately a highly specialised microcomputer used for accounting and publishing. Most are powerful systems consisting of one or more programs that can produce a combination of images, graphics and text, the latter handled with type-setting capability. In its simplest form, a processor is like an Expensive Typewriter or Typewriter machine, with the improvement of being able to proofread. Microsoft Word is the most widely used word processing software according to a tracking system built into the software. Microsoft estimates that half a billion people use the Microsoft Office suite. Many other word processing applications exist, including WordPerfect and open source applications OpenOffice. org Writer, LibreOffice Writer, AbiWord, KWord, web-based word processors, such as Office Online or Google Docs are a relatively new category. Word processors evolved dramatically once they became software programs rather than dedicated machines and they can usefully be distinguished from text editors, the category of software they evolved from. A text editor is a program that is used for typing, copying, pasting, text editors do not format lines or pages. Text editors are now used mainly by programmers, website designers, computer system administrators and they are also useful when fast startup times, small file sizes, editing speed, and simplicity of operation are valued, and when formatting is unimportant. Due to their use in managing complex software projects, text editors can sometimes provide better facilities for managing large writing projects than a word processor. Word processing added to the editor the ability to control type style and size, to manage lines, to format documents into pages. Functions now taken for granted were added incrementally, sometimes by purchase of independent providers of add-on programs, spell checking, grammar checking and mail merge were some of the most popular add-ons for early word processors. Word processors are capable of hyphenation, and the management. More advanced features found in recent word processors include, Collaborative editing, allowing users to work on the same document. Management, editing, and positioning of visual material, and sometimes sound files, automatically managed cross-references to pages or notes. Version control of a document, permitting reconstruction of its evolution, styles, which automate consistent formatting of text body, titles, subtitles, highlighted text, and so on
21.
Unix
–
Among these is Apples macOS, which is the Unix version with the largest installed base as of 2014. Many Unix-like operating systems have arisen over the years, of which Linux is the most popular, Unix was originally meant to be a convenient platform for programmers developing software to be run on it and on other systems, rather than for non-programmer users. The system grew larger as the system started spreading in academic circles, as users added their own tools to the system. Unix was designed to be portable, multi-tasking and multi-user in a time-sharing configuration and these concepts are collectively known as the Unix philosophy. By the early 1980s users began seeing Unix as a universal operating system. Under Unix, the system consists of many utilities along with the master control program. To mediate such access, the kernel has special rights, reflected in the division between user space and kernel space, the microkernel concept was introduced in an effort to reverse the trend towards larger kernels and return to a system in which most tasks were completed by smaller utilities. In an era when a standard computer consisted of a disk for storage and a data terminal for input and output. However, modern systems include networking and other new devices, as graphical user interfaces developed, the file model proved inadequate to the task of handling asynchronous events such as those generated by a mouse. In the 1980s, non-blocking I/O and the set of inter-process communication mechanisms were augmented with Unix domain sockets, shared memory, message queues, and semaphores. In microkernel implementations, functions such as network protocols could be moved out of the kernel, Multics introduced many innovations, but had many problems. Frustrated by the size and complexity of Multics but not by the aims and their last researchers to leave Multics, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, M. D. McIlroy, and J. F. Ossanna, decided to redo the work on a much smaller scale. The name Unics, a pun on Multics, was suggested for the project in 1970. Peter H. Salus credits Peter Neumann with the pun, while Brian Kernighan claims the coining for himself, in 1972, Unix was rewritten in the C programming language. Bell Labs produced several versions of Unix that are referred to as Research Unix. In 1975, the first source license for UNIX was sold to faculty at the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science, UIUC graduate student Greg Chesson was instrumental in negotiating the terms of this license. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the influence of Unix in academic circles led to adoption of Unix by commercial startups, including Sequent, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX. In the late 1980s, AT&T Unix System Laboratories and Sun Microsystems developed System V Release 4, in the 1990s, Unix-like systems grew in popularity as Linux and BSD distributions were developed through collaboration by a worldwide network of programmers
22.
PDP-11
–
The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a succession of products in the PDP series. The PDP-11 had several innovative features, and was easier to program than its predecessors through the additional general-purpose registers. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold and its successor in the mid-range minicomputer niche was the 32-bit VAX-11, named as a nod to the PDP-11s popularity. The PDP-11 is considered by experts to be the most popular minicomputer ever. Design features of the PDP-11 influenced the design of most late-1970s computer systems including the Intel x86, design features of PDP-11 operating systems, as well as other operating systems from Digital Equipment, influenced the design of other operating systems such as CP/M and hence also MS-DOS. For a decade, the PDP-11 was the smallest system that could run Unix and it is commonly stated that the C programming language took advantage of several low-level PDP-11–dependent programming features, albeit not originally by design. In 1967–68, DEC engineers designed a 16-bit, word-addressed machine, management cancelled the project and some of the engineers later left DEC and produced it as the Data General Nova. A subsequent effort, code-named Desk Calculator, looked at a variety of options before choosing what became the 16-bit PDP-11, DECs previous PDP-8 and PDP-9 had 12- and 18-bit words, the PDP-11 family was announced in January 1970 and shipments began early that year. DEC sold over 170,000 PDP-11s in the 1970s, initially manufactured of small-scale transistor–transistor logic, a single-board large scale integration version of the processor was developed in 1975. A two-or-three-chip processor, the J-11 was developed in 1979, the last models of the PDP-11 line were the PDP-11/94 and -11/93 introduced in 1990. The PDP-11 processor architecture has an orthogonal instruction set. For example, instead of such as load and store. More complex instructions such as add likewise can have memory, register, input, most operands can apply any of eight addressing modes to eight registers. The addressing modes provide register, immediate, absolute, relative, deferred, and indexed addressing, use of relative addressing lets a machine-language program be position-independent. Early models of the PDP-11 had no dedicated bus for input/output, an input/output device determined the memory addresses to which it would respond, and specified its own interrupt vector and interrupt priority. DEC openly published the basic Unibus specifications, even offering prototyping bus interface circuit boards, the Unibus made the PDP-11 suitable for custom peripherals. Higher-performance members of the PDP-11 family, starting with the PDP-11/45 Unibus and 11/83 Q-bus systems, instead, memory was interfaced by dedicated circuitry and space in the CPU cabinet, while the Unibus continued to be used for I/O only
23.
VAX-11
–
The VAX-11 was a family of minicomputers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation using processors implementing the VAX instruction set architecture. The VAX-11/780 was the first VAX computer, the VAX-11/780, code-named Star, was introduced on 25 October 1977 at DECs Annual Meeting of Shareholders. It was the first computer to implement the VAX architecture, the VAX-11/780 central processing unit was built from transistor-transistor logic devices and had a 200 ns cycle time and a 2 kB cache. Memory and I/O were accessed via the Synchronous Backplane Interconnect, the VAX-11/780 supported 128 kB to 8 MB of memory through one or two memory controllers. Each memory controller supported 128 kB to 4 MB of memory, the memory was constructed from 4 or 16 kbit metal oxide semiconductor RAM chips mounted on memory array cards. Each memory controller controlled up to 16 array cards, the memory was protected by error correcting code. The VAX-11/780 used the Unibus and Massbus for I/O, Unibus was used for attaching peripherals and Massbus for disk and tape drives. Both buses were provided by adapters that interfaced the bus to the SBI, all systems came with one Unibus as standard, with up to four supported. Massbus was optional, with up to four supported, the VAX-11/780 also supported Computer Interconnect, a proprietary network to attach disk drives and potentially share them with other VAX computers. Later, this feature was used to connect VAX computers in a VMScluster, the VAX 11/782, code-named Atlas, was a dual-processor VAX-11/780 introduced in 1982. For multistream computation-intensive tasks the system delivered up to 1.8 times the performance of a VAX 11/780, the VAX-11/785, code-named superstar, was introduced in April 1984. It was essentially a faster VAX-11/780, with a CPU cycle time of 133 ns versus the 200 ns CPU cycle time of the VAX-11/780, the memory subsystem was also upgraded to support higher capacity memory boards. The VAX-11/787 was a variant of the VAX-11/785. The VAX-11/750, code-named Comet, was a compact, lower-performance TTL gate array–based implementation of the VAX architecture introduced in October 1980. The CPU had a 320 ns cycle time, introduced in April 1982, the VAX-11/730, code-named Nebula, was a still-more-compact, still-lower-performance bit slice implementation of the VAX architecture. Its CPU had a 270 ns cycle time, code-named LCN, it was a cost-reduced model of the VAX-11/730. Its CPU had a 270 ns cycle time, the Living Computer Museum of Seattle, Washington maintains a VAX-11/780-5 running OpenVMS6.2, which is available to interested parties via telnet. The Computer History Museum of Mountain View, California has three VAX-11/780 systems, one VAX-11/725, one VAX-11/730, and one VAX-11/750 within its permanent collection
24.
Berkeley Software Distribution
–
Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995. Today the term BSD is often used non-specifically to refer to any of the BSD descendants which together form a branch of the family of Unix-like operating systems, operating systems derived from the original BSD code remain actively developed and widely used. Historically, BSD has been considered a branch of Unix, Berkeley Unix, because it shared the initial codebase, in the 1980s, BSD was widely adopted by vendors of workstation-class systems in the form of proprietary Unix variants such as DEC ULTRIX and Sun Microsystems SunOS. This can be attributed to the ease with which it could be licensed, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and PC-BSD. The earliest distributions of Unix from Bell Labs in the 1970s included the source code to the system, allowing researchers at universities to modify. A larger PDP-11/70 was installed at Berkeley the following year, using money from the Ingres database project, also in 1975, Ken Thompson took a sabbatical from Bell Labs and came to Berkeley as a visiting professor. He helped to install Version 6 Unix and started working on a Pascal implementation for the system, graduate students Chuck Haley and Bill Joy improved Thompsons Pascal and implemented an improved text editor, ex. Other universities became interested in the software at Berkeley, and so in 1977 Joy started compiling the first Berkeley Software Distribution, 1BSD was an add-on to Version 6 Unix rather than a complete operating system in its own right. Some thirty copies were sent out, some 75 copies of 2BSD were sent out by Bill Joy. 2. 9BSD from 1983 included code from 4. 1cBSD, the most recent release,2. 11BSD, was first issued in 1992. As of 2008, maintenance updates from volunteers are still continuing, a VAX computer was installed at Berkeley in 1978, but the port of Unix to the VAX architecture, UNIX/32V, did not take advantage of the VAXs virtual memory capabilities. 3BSD was also alternatively called Virtual VAX/UNIX or VMUNIX, and BSD kernel images were normally called /vmunix until 4. 4BSD, 4BSD offered a number of enhancements over 3BSD, notably job control in the previously released csh, delivermail, reliable signals, and the Curses programming library. In a 1985 review of BSD releases, John Quarterman et al, many installations inside the Bell System ran 4. 1BSD. 4. 1BSD was a response to criticisms of BSDs performance relative to the dominant VAX operating system, the 4. 1BSD kernel was systematically tuned up by Bill Joy until it could perform as well as VMS on several benchmarks. Back at Bell Labs,4. 1cBSD became the basis of the 8th Edition of Research Unix, to guide the design of 4. The committee met from April 1981 to June 1983, apart from the Fast File System, several features from outside contributors were accepted, including disk quotas and job control. Sun Microsystems provided testing on its Motorola 68000 machines prior to release, the official 4. 2BSD release came in August 1983. On a lighter note, it marked the debut of BSDs daemon mascot in a drawing by John Lasseter that appeared on the cover of the printed manuals distributed by USENIX
25.
AmigaOS
–
AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, early versions of AmigaOS required the Motorola 68000 series of 16-bit and 32-bit microprocessors. Later versions were developed by Haage & Partner and then Hyperion Entertainment, a PowerPC microprocessor is required for the most recent release, AmigaOS4. AmigaOS is a operating system based on a preemptive multitasking kernel. It includes an abstraction of the Amigas hardware, an operating system called AmigaDOS, a windowing system API called Intuition. The Amiga intellectual property is fragmented between Amiga Inc, the copyrights for works created up to 1993 are owned by Cloanto. On December 29,2015, the AmigaOS3.1 source code leaked to the web, AmigaOS is a single-user operating system based on a preemptive multitasking kernel, called Exec. AmigaOS provides an abstraction of the Amigas hardware, an operating system called AmigaDOS, a windowing system API called Intuition. A command-line interface, called AmigaShell, is integrated into the system. The CLI and Workbench components share the same privileges, notably, AmigaOS lacks any built-in memory protection. AmigaOS is formed from two parts, namely, a component called Kickstart and a software portion usually referred to as Workbench. Up until AmigaOS3.1, matching versions of Kickstart, however, since AmigaOS3.5, the first release after Commodores demise, only the software component has been updated and the role of Kickstart has been diminished somewhat. Firmware updates may still be applied by patching at system boot, Kickstart is the bootstrap firmware, usually stored in ROM. Kickstart contains the code needed to boot standard Amiga hardware and many of the components of AmigaOS. The function of Kickstart is comparable to the BIOS plus the operating system kernel in IBM PC compatibles. However, Kickstart provides more functionality available at boot time than would typically be expected on PC, for example, Kickstart contains many core parts of the Amigas operating system, such as Exec, Intuition, the core of AmigaDOS and functionality to initialize Autoconfig-compliant expansion hardware. Later versions of the Kickstart contained drivers for IDE and SCSI controllers, PC card ports, upon start-up or reset the Kickstart performs a number of diagnostic and system checks and then initializes the Amiga chipset and some core OS components. It will then examine connected boot devices and attempt to boot from the one with the highest boot priority, if no boot device is present a screen will be displayed asking the user to insert a boot disk, typically a floppy disk
26.
Deluxe Paint
–
Deluxe Paint, often referred to as DPaint, is a bitmap graphics editor series created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts. The original Deluxe Paint was written for the Commodore Amiga 1000 and it was eventually ported to other platforms, including an MS-DOS version which became the standard for pixel graphics in video games in the 1990s, the only competitor being Autodesk Animator Pro. Dan Silva previously worked on the Cut & Paste word processor, Deluxe Paint began as an in-house art development tool called Prism. As author Dan Silva added features to Prism, it was developed as a product to coincide with the Amigas debut in 1985. Upon release, it was embraced by the Amiga community. It was used almost ubiquitously in the making of Amiga games, animation, Amiga manufacturer Commodore International later commissioned EA to create version 4.5 AGA to bundle with the new Advanced Graphics Architecture chipset capable Amigas. Version 5 was the last release after Commodores bankruptcy in 1994, early versions of Deluxe Paint were available in protected and non copy-protected versions, the latter retailing for a slightly higher price. The copy protection scheme was later dropped, with the development of Deluxe Paint, EA introduced the ILBM and ANIM file format standards for graphics. While widely used on the Amiga, these formats never gained widespread end user acceptance on other platforms, but were heavily used by game development companies. bbm. Deluxe Paint I Deluxe Paint II Deluxe Paint III Deluxe Paint IV Deluxe Paint 4.5 AGA Deluxe Paint V DeluxePaint II for the Apple IIGS was developed by Brent Iverson and released in 1987. Deluxe Paint II for PC came out in 1988, requiring MS-DOS2.0 and 640 kB of RAM and it supported CGA, EGA, MCGA, VGA, Hercules and Tandy IBM-compatible PC graphic cards. Deluxe Paint II Enhanced was released in 1989, requiring MS-DOS2.11 and 640 kB of RAM, Deluxe Paint II Enhanced 2.0, released in 1994, was the most successful PC version, and was compatible with ZSofts PC Paintbrush PCX image format file. The MS-DOS conversion was carried out by Brent Iverson and its features were by Steve Shaw. The sister product Deluxe Paint Animation was widely used, especially in the videogame industry, Deluxe Paint ST was released in 1990, supporting features such as the STE 4096-color palette. After leaving EA in 1989, Silva went on to join the Yost Group, in 2015 Electronic Arts released via the Computer History Museum the source code of Deluxe Paint I for historical reasons. The Amiga natively supports indexed color, where a color value does not carry any RGB hue information. By adjusting the value in the palette, all pixels with that palette value change simultaneously in the image or animation. Creative artists could use this in their animation by using color cycling, Deluxe Paint III added support for Extra Halfbrite
27.
Video Toaster
–
The NewTek Video Toaster is a combination of hardware and software for the editing and production of NTSC standard-definition video. The related software tools support video switching, chroma keying, character generation, animation, and image manipulation. Together, the hardware and software provided a low-cost video editing suite for a few thousand U. S. dollars that rivaled the output of professional systems costing ten times as much at the time, the Video Toaster won the Emmy Award for Technical Achievement in 1993. Other parts of the software package were spun off as stand-alone products, notably LightWave 3D. The company also produces what is essentially a portable pre-packaged version of the Video Toaster along with all the hardware needed. These became all-digital units in 2014, ending production of the analog Video Toaster line, the Video Toaster was designed by NewTek founder Tim Jenison in Topeka, Kansas. Engineer Brad Carvey built the first wire wrap prototype, and Steve Kell wrote the software for the prototype, many other people worked on the Toaster as it developed. The card has several BNC connectors in the rear, which accepts four video input sources and this initial generation system is essentially a real-time four-channel video switcher. One feature of the Video Toaster is the inclusion of LightWave 3D, a 3D modeling, rendering and this program became so popular and useful in its own right that in 1994 it was made available as standalone product separate from the Toaster systems. Aside from simple fades, dissolves, and cuts, the Video Toaster has a variety of character generation, overlays. These effects are in large part performed with the help of the native Amiga graphics chipset, as a result, while the Toaster was rendering a switching animation, the computer desktop display is not visible. While these effects are unique and inventive, they cannot be modified, soon Toaster effects were seen everywhere, advertising itself as the brand of switcher those particular production companies were using. The Toaster hardware requires very stable input signals, and therefore is used along with a separate video sync time-base corrector to stabilize the video sources. The cards do not use the Bridgeboard to communicate, but simply as a convenient power supply, as with all video switchers that use a frame buffer to create DVEs, the video path through the Toaster hardware introduced delays in the signals when the signal was in digital mode. The frame delays passing through the Toaster and other low-cost video switchers make precise editing a frustrating endeavor, as a result, the Flyer never caught on as a viable product. Although initially offered as just an add-on to an Amiga, the product was available as a complete turn-key system that included the Toaster, Amiga. These Toaster systems became popular, primarily because at a cost of around $5,000 US. The Toaster was also the first such video device designed around a personal computer that is capable of delivering broadcast-quality NTSC signals
28.
Classic Mac OS
–
This is a list of macOS components, features that are included in the current Mac operating system. Latest version 2.7 Automator is a developed by Apple Inc. Automator enables the repetition of tasks across a variety of programs, including Finder, Safari, Calendar, Contacts. It can also work with third-party applications such as Microsoft Office, the icon features a robot holding a pipe, a reference to pipelines, a computer science term for connected data workflows. Automator was first released with Mac OS X Tiger, Automator provides a graphical user interface for automating tasks without knowledge of programming or scripting languages. Tasks can be recorded as they are performed by the user or can be selected from a list, the output of the previous action can become the input to the next action. Automator comes with a library of Actions that act as individual steps in a Workflow document, a Workflow document is used to carry out repetitive tasks. Workflows can be saved and reused, unix command line scripts and AppleScripts can also be invoked as Actions. The actions are linked together in a Workflow, the Workflow can be saved as an application, Workflow file or a contextual menu item. Options can be set when the Workflow is created or when the Workflow is run, a workflow file created in Automator is saved in /Users//Library/Services. Latest version 10.8 Calculator is a calculator application made by Apple Inc. It has three modes, basic, scientific, and programmer, Basic includes a number pad, buttons for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, as well as memory keys. Scientific mode supports exponents and trigonometric functions, and programmer mode gives the user access to more options related to computer programming, Apple currently ships a different application called Grapher. Calculator has Reverse Polish notation support, and can speak the buttons pressed. The Calculator appeared first as an accessory in first version of Macintosh System for the 1984 Macintosh 128k. Its design was maintained with the basic math operations until the final release of classic Mac OS in 2002. A Dashboard Calculator widget is included in all versions of macOS from Mac OS X Tiger onwards and it only has the basic mode of its desktop counterpart. Since the release of OS X Yosemite, there is also a simple calculator widget available in the notifications area, since the release of Mac OS X Leopard, simple arithmetic functions can be calculated from Spotlight feature
29.
Microsoft PowerPoint
–
Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program currently developed by Microsoft, for use on both Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. PowerPoint, initially named Presenter, was created by Forethought Inc, Microsofts version of PowerPoint was officially launched on May 22,1990, as a part of the Microsoft Office suite. PowerPoint is useful for helping develop the slide-based presentation format and is one of the most commonly used slide-based presentation programs available. Microsoft has also released the PowerPoint mobile application for use on Apple, originally designed for the Macintosh computer, the initial release was called Presenter, developed by Thomas Rudkin and Dennis Austin of Forethought, Inc. In 1987, it was renamed to PowerPoint due to problems with trademarks, by then some experts believed that desktop presentations, using computers to create flip charts and overhead transparencies, could become as large a market as desktop publishing. That year Forethought was bought by Microsoft for $14 million, and became Microsofts Graphics Business Unit, Microsofts version of PowerPoint was officially launched on May 22,1990, the same day that Microsoft released Windows 3.0. PowerPoint introduced many new changes with the release of PowerPoint 97 and it incorporated the Visual Basic for Applications language, underlying all macro generation in Office 97. PowerPoint 2000 introduced a clipboard that could hold objects at once. PowerPoint 2002 massively overhauled the engine, allowing users to create more advanced. PowerPoint 2011 makes it possible to remove image backgrounds, and provides additional effects for pictures. As of 2012, various versions of PowerPoint claim about 95% of the software market share. Among presenters world-wide, this program is used at a frequency of 350 times per second. PowerPoint presentations consist of a number of pages or slides. The slide analogy is a reference to the slide projector, slides may contain text, graphics, sound, movies, and other objects, which may be arranged freely. The presentation can be printed, displayed live on a computer, for larger audiences the computer display is often a video projector. Slides can also form the basis of webcasts, PowerPoint provides three types of movements, Entrance, emphasis, and exit of elements on a slide itself are controlled by what PowerPoint calls Custom Animations. Transitions, on the hand, there are movements between slides. These can be animated in a variety of ways, Custom animation can be used to create small story boards by animating pictures to enter, exit or move
30.
RISC OS
–
RISC OS /rɪskoʊˈɛs/ is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset. RISC OS takes its name from the RISC architecture supported, between 1987 and 1998, RISC OS was bundled with every ARM-based Acorn computer model. These included the Acorn Archimedes range, Acorns R line of computers, RiscPC, A7000 and also prototype models such as the Acorn NewsPad, a version of the OS was also used in Oracles Network Computer and compatible systems. After the break-up of Acorn in 1998, development of the OS was forked and separately continued by several companies, including RISCOS Ltd, Pace Micro Technology, since then, it has been bundled with a number of ARM-based desktop computers such as the Iyonix and A9home. As of March 2017, the OS remains forked and is developed by RISCOS Ltd. Most recent stable versions run on the ARMv3/ARMv4 RiscPC, the ARMv5 Iyonix, ARMv7 Cortex-A8 processors, there is a development version for the Raspberry Pi. SD card images have been available for downloading free of charge to Raspberry Pi 1 &2 users with a full graphical user interface version. RISC OS was originally released in 1987 as Arthur 1.20, the next version, Arthur 2, became RISC OS2 and was made available in April 1989. RISC OS3.00 was released with the A5000 in 1991, by 1996 RISC OS had been shipped on over 500,000 systems. Acorn officially halted work on the OS in January 1999, renaming themselves Element 14, meanwhile, Element 14 had also kept a copy of RISC OS3.8 in house, which they developed into NCOS for use in set-top boxes. In 2000, Element 14 sold RISC OS to a company called Pace Micro Technology, in May 2001, RISCOS Ltd launched RISC OS Select, a subscription scheme allowing users access to the latest RISC OS4 updates. These upgrades are released as soft-loadable ROM images, separate to the ROM where the boot OS is stored, Select 1 was shipped in May 2002, with Select 2 following in November 2002 and the final release of Select 3 in June 2004. In the same month, RISC OS4.39, dubbed RISC OS Adjust, was released, RISC OS Adjust was a culmination of all the Select Scheme updates to date, released as a physical set of replaceable ROMs for the RiscPC and A7000 series of machines. Meanwhile, in October 2002, Castle Technology released the Acorn clone Iyonix PC and this ran a 32-bit variant of RISC OS, known as RISC OS5. RISC OS5 is an evolution of RISC OS based upon the NCOS work done by Pace. The following year, Castle Technology bought RISC OS from Pace for an undisclosed sum, in October 2006, Castle announced a source sharing license plan for elements of RISC OS5. This Shared Source Initiative is managed by RISC OS Open Limited, versions of RISC OS run or have run on the following hardware
31.
Sibelius (software)
–
Sibelius is a scorewriter program developed and released by Sibelius Software for the Microsoft Windows, macOS, and the RISC OS operating systems. It is used by composers, arrangers, performers, music publishers, teachers and students, particularly for writing classical, jazz, band, vocal, film and television music. Lite versions of Sibelius, with features, at lower prices, have been released. Sibelius was originally developed by British twins Ben and Jonathan Finn for the Acorn Archimedes computer, under the name Sibelius 7, development was started in 1986, just after the Finns left school, continuing while they were at Oxford and Cambridge universities. They were music students, and they said they wrote the program because they did not like the process of writing music by hand. The program was released to the public in April 1993 on 3. 5-inch floppy disk and it required considerably less than 1 MB of memory, but the combination of assembly language and Acorns RISC chip meant that it ran very quickly. No matter how long the score, changes were displayed almost instantly, the first ever user of Sibelius was the composer and engraver Richard Emsley, who used it before its release and provided advice on music-engraving aspects of the software. The first score published using Sibelius was Antara by George Benjamin, published by Faber Music, other early users included composer John Rutter, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, and publisher Music Sales. Sibelius rapidly dominated the UK market, being an application for the niche Acorn platform. It also sold in numbers in a few other countries. Lite versions were released, these were successful in UK schools. In September 1998, the first version for Windows was released, a Mac version was released a few months later. To produce these versions the software was rewritten in C++, while retaining most of the originals functionality. Releasing Sibelius for more widely available computers brought it to a market, particularly the US. Following the break-up of Acorn Computers shortly after Sibeliuss Windows release, in August 2006, Sibelius Software Ltd. was acquired by Avid Technology, an American manufacturer of software and hardware for audio and video production. Avid has continued publishing Sibelius as a stand-alone notation product, as well as integrating it with some of its software products. Sibelius 3, with new features such as Kontakt Player and the ability to create audio files and CDs. Sibelius 4, with new features such as the ability to write music synchronised to video, instrumental parts which are updated when the score is changed
32.
Video game
–
A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device such as a TV screen or computer monitor. The word video in video game referred to a raster display device. Some theorists categorize video games as an art form, but this designation is controversial, the electronic systems used to play video games are known as platforms, examples of these are personal computers and video game consoles. These platforms range from large mainframe computers to small handheld computing devices, the input device used for games, the game controller, varies across platforms. Common controllers include gamepads, joysticks, mouse devices, keyboards, the touchscreens of mobile devices, and buttons, or even, with the Kinect sensor, a persons hands and body. Players typically view the game on a screen or television or computer monitor, or sometimes on virtual reality head-mounted display goggles. There are often game sound effects, music and, in the 2010s, some games in the 2000s include haptic, vibration-creating effects, force feedback peripherals and virtual reality headsets. In the 2010s, the game industry is of increasing commercial importance, with growth driven particularly by the emerging Asian markets and mobile games. As of 2015, video games generated sales of USD74 billion annually worldwide, early games used interactive electronic devices with various display formats. The earliest example is from 1947—a Cathode ray tube Amusement Device was filed for a patent on 25 January 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on 14 December 1948, as U. S. Written by MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanens on a DEC PDP-1 computer in 1961, and the hit ping pong-style Pong, used the DEC PDP-1s vector display to have two spaceships battle each other. In 1971, Computer Space, created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was the first commercially sold and it used a black-and-white television for its display, and the computer system was made of 74 series TTL chips. The game was featured in the 1973 science fiction film Soylent Green, Computer Space was followed in 1972 by the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home console. Modeled after a late 1960s prototype console developed by Ralph H. Baer called the Brown Box and these were followed by two versions of Ataris Pong, an arcade version in 1972 and a home version in 1975 that dramatically increased video game popularity. The commercial success of Pong led numerous other companies to develop Pong clones and their own systems, the game inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants, and convenience stores. The game also became the subject of articles and stories on television and in newspapers and magazines. Space Invaders was soon licensed for the Atari VCS, becoming the first killer app, the term platform refers to the specific combination of electronic components or computer hardware which, in conjunction with software, allows a video game to operate. The term system is commonly used
33.
Atari 2600
–
The Atari 2600 is a home video game console by Atari, Inc. This format contrasts with the model of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware. The console was sold as the Atari VCS, an abbreviation for Video Computer System. Following the release of the Atari 5200 in 1982, the VCS was renamed to the Atari 2600, after the units Atari part number, CX2600. The 2600 was typically bundled with two controllers, a conjoined pair of paddle controllers, and a game cartridge, initially Combat. Ted Dabney and Nolan Bushnell developed the Atari gaming system in the 1970s, originally operating under the name Syzygy, Bushnell and Dabney changed the name of their company to Atari in 1972. In 1973, Atari Inc. had purchased an engineering think tank called Cyan Engineering to research next-generation video game systems, and had been working on a prototype known as Stella for some time. Unlike prior generations of machines that use custom logic to play a number of games, its core is a complete CPU. It was combined with a RAM-and-I/O chip, the MOS Technology 6532, the first two versions of the machine contain a fourth chip, a standard CMOS logic buffer IC, making Stella cost-effective. Some later versions of the console eliminated the buffer chip, programs for small computers of the time were generally stored on cassette tapes, floppy disks, or paper tape. In 1976, Fairchild Semiconductor released their own CPU-based system, the Video Entertainment System. Stella was still not ready for production, but it was clear that it needed to be there were a number of me too products filling up the market. Atari Inc. didnt have the flow to complete the system quickly. Nolan Bushnell eventually turned to Warner Communications, and sold the company to them in 1976 for US$28 million on the promise that Stella would be produced as soon as possible. Key to the success of the machine was the hiring of Jay Miner. Once that was completed and debugged, the system was ready for shipping, the unit was originally priced at US$199, and shipped with two joysticks and a Combat cartridge. In a move to compete directly with the Channel F, Atari Inc. named the machine the Video Computer System, as the Channel F was at that point known as the VES, for Video Entertainment System. The VCS was also rebadged as the Sears Video Arcade and sold through Sears, Roebuck, another breakthrough for gaming systems was Ataris invention of a computer-controlled opponent, rather than the usual two-player or asymmetric challenges of the past
34.
Space Invaders
–
Space Invaders is an arcade video game created by Tomohiro Nishikado and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally. Space Invaders is one of the earliest shooting games and the aim is to defeat waves of aliens with a cannon to earn as many points as possible. In designing the game, Nishikado drew inspiration from popular media, Breakout, The War of the Worlds, to complete it, he had to design custom hardware and development tools. It was one of the forerunners of video gaming and helped expand the video game industry from a novelty to a global industry. When first released, Space Invaders was very successful, the game has been the inspiration for other video games, re-released on numerous platforms, and led to several sequels. The 1980 Atari 2600 version quadrupled the systems sales and became the first killer app for video game consoles, Space Invaders has been referenced and parodied in multiple television shows, and been a part of several video game and cultural exhibitions. The pixelated enemy alien has become a pop icon, often used as a synecdoche representing video games as a whole. Space Invaders is a fixed shooter game in which the player controls a laser cannon by moving it horizontally across the bottom of the screen. The aim is to defeat five rows of eleven aliens—some versions feature different numbers—that move horizontally back, the player defeats an alien, and earns points, by shooting it with the laser cannon. As more aliens are defeated, the movement and the games music both speed up. Defeating the aliens brings another wave that is difficult, a loop which can continue without end. The aliens attempt to destroy the cannon by firing at it while they approach the bottom of the screen, if they reach the bottom, the alien invasion is successful and the game ends. A special mystery ship will move across the top of the screen. The laser cannon is protected by several stationary defense bunkers—the number varies by version—that are gradually destroyed by a numerous amount of blasts from the aliens or player. A game will end if players last laser base is destroyed. Alien invaders,10,20, or 30 points, mystery ship,50,100,150, or 300 points. Points earned for shooting mystery ship varies, players earn an extra life at either 1,000 or 1,500 points
35.
Star Raiders
–
Star Raiders is a space combat simulator video game for the Atari 8-bit family of computers. It was written by Doug Neubauer, an Atari employee, and it was later ported to other Atari computer and game platforms. The game simulates combat in 3D between the powerful ship and an invading fleet of alien Zylon vessels. The games attract mode, a simple streaming star field, was a sight in computer stores of the early-1980s to show off the Atari computers graphics capabilities. The game is referred to as the platforms killer app. While there had already been simple target-shooting games using this perspective, Star Raiders had considerably higher quality graphics, as a result, it inspired both imitators throughout the 1980s and later-generation space combat simulation games. Notably, it is one of the games inspired the seminal title Elite. It is also one in a series of first person shooters that appeared in the late-1970s and were arguably predecessors of the later seen first-person shooter genre. In 2007, Star Raiders was included as #2 in a list of the 10 most important video games of all time, as compiled by Stanford Universitys History of Science and Technology Collections. Wanting to make an action-oriented Star Trek-type game, Doug Neubauer designed Star Raiders in about eight to ten months working for Atari. Star Raiders was unusual at the time for Atari, as it made relatively few game cartridges for its computers, like the text-based Star Trek games, in Star Raiders the players ship maneuvers about a two-dimensional grid fighting a fleet of enemy spaceships. The Galactic Map is the equivalent of the earlier Star Treks Long Range Scan, to the Star Trek formula, the game added real-time 3D battles as a space combat simulator. There is also a long-range scan screen showing the region in a third-person overhead view centered on your ship. Enemy ships come in three types, the standard Zylon fighters resemble the TIE fighter. The more powerful Patrol ships loosely resemble the front-on view of a Klingon Battlecruiser, the most powerful Zylon ship, the Basestar, has a pulsating orange glow and resembles a Cylon Basestar. In order to destroy the Zylon Basestar the player must hit the target at close range, the game has four difficulty levels, on all but the lowest level enemies fire back, which can cause damage if the players ship is hit. The ship can also be damaged by collision with random meteoroids, the player has to manage finite energy reserves as well as damage to the ship, it can be repaired and restocked by rendezvous with a friendly starbase. The enemy can destroy a star base if allowed to surround its Galactic Chart sector for too long
36.
Atari 8-bit family
–
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 and manufactured until 1992. All of the machines in the family are similar and differ primarily in packaging. They are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU running at 1.79 MHz, star Raiders is widely considered the platforms killer app. The original Atari 400 and 800 models were released with a series of plug-n-play peripherals that used Ataris SIO serial bus system, to meet stringent FCC requirements, the early machines were completely enclosed in a solid cast aluminum block, which made them physically robust but expensive to produce. Over the following decade, the models were replaced by the XL and XE series which had the same basic logical design. The Atari 8-bit computer line sold two million units during its production run between late 1979 and mid-1985. They were not only sold through dedicated computer retailers, but department stores such as Sears, the primary competition in the worldwide market was, starting in 1982, the Commodore 64. This was the first computer to offer similar performance. Atari also found a market in Eastern Europe and had something of a renaissance in the early 1990s as these countries joined a uniting Europe. On January 1,1992, Atari corp, officially dropped all remaining support of the 8-bit line. Design of the 8-bit series of machines started at Atari as soon as the Atari 2600 games console was released in late 1977. While designing the 2600 in 1976, the team from Atari Grass Valley Research Center felt that the 2600 would have about a three-year lifespan before becoming obsolete. They started blue sky designs for a new console that would be ready to replace it around 1979, what they ended up with was essentially a greatly updated version of the 2600, fixing its more obvious limitations but sharing a similar overall design philosophy. The newer design would be faster than the 2600, have better graphics, work on the chips for the new system continued throughout 1978 and focused on much-improved video hardware known as the Color Television Interface Adaptor, or CTIA. During this gestation the home computer era began in earnest in the form of the TRS-80, Commodore PET, Warner Communications had purchased Atari from Nolan Bushnell for $28 million in 1976 in order to fund the launch of the 2600. Atari had recently sent Ray Kassar to act as the CEO of the company, Kassar felt the chipset should be used in a home computer to challenge Apple. In order to adapt the machine to this role, it would need to support character graphics, include some form of expansion for peripherals, and run the then-universal BASIC programming language. The CTIA, like the 2600s TIA, was designed to produce Player-Missile graphics, instead of expanding the CTIA to handle these tasks, the designers instead introduced an entirely new chip for this purpose, the Alphanumeric Television Interface Controller, or ANTIC
37.
Donkey Kong (video game)
–
Donkey Kong is an arcade game released by Nintendo in 1981. It is an example of the platform game genre, as the gameplay focuses on maneuvering the main character across a series of platforms while dodging and jumping over obstacles. In the game, Mario must rescue a damsel in distress named Pauline, the hero and ape later became two of Nintendos most popular and recognizable characters. Donkey Kong is one of the most important titles from the Golden Age of Video Arcade Games, the game was the latest in a series of efforts by Nintendo to break into the North American market. Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendos president at the time, assigned the project to a video game designer named Shigeru Miyamoto. The two men broke new ground by using graphics as a means of characterization, including cutscenes to advance the games plot, regardless of initial doubts by Nintendos American staff, Donkey Kong succeeded commercially and critically in North America and Japan. Nintendo licensed the game to Coleco, who developed home console versions for numerous platforms, other companies cloned Nintendos hit and avoided royalties altogether. Miyamotos characters appeared on boxes, television cartoons, and dozens of other places. A lawsuit brought on by Universal City Studios, alleging Donkey Kong violated their trademark of King Kong, the success of Donkey Kong and Nintendos victory in the courtroom helped to position the company for video game market dominance from its release in 1981 until the late 1990s. Winning the game requires patience and the ability to accurately time Marios ascent, in addition to presenting the goal of saving Pauline, the game also gives the player a score. The player typically receives three lives with an awarded for the first 7,000 points, although this can be modified via the games built in DIP switches. One life is lost whenever Mario touches Donkey Kong or any object, falls too far through a gap or off the end of a platform. The game is divided into four different single-screen stages, each represents 25 meters of the structure Donkey Kong has climbed, one stage being 25 meters higher than the previous. The final stage occurs at 100 meters, stage one involves Mario scaling a construction site made of crooked girders and ladders while jumping over or hammering barrels and oil drums tossed by Donkey Kong. Stage two involves climbing a five-story structure of conveyor belts, each of which transport cement pans, the third stage involves the player riding elevators while avoiding bouncing springs. The final stage involves Mario removing eight rivets which support Donkey Kong, removing the final rivet causes Donkey Kong to fall and the hero to be reunited with Pauline. These four stages combine to form a level, upon completion of the fourth stage, the level then increments, and the game repeats the stages with progressive difficulty. For example, Donkey Kong begins to hurl barrels faster and sometimes diagonally, the victory music alternates between levels 1 and 2
38.
ColecoVision
–
The ColecoVision is Coleco Industries second-generation home video-game console which was released in August 1982. The ColecoVision offered an experience to more powerful arcade game systems compared to competitors such as the Atari 2600. Approximately 145 titles in total were published as ROM cartridges for the system between 1982 and 1984, Coleco withdrew from the video game market in 1985, and ColecoVision was discontinued that same year. River West Brands currently owns the ColecoVision brand name, by Christmas of 1982, Coleco had sold more than 500,000 units, in part on the strength of its bundled game. The ColecoVisions main competitor was the more advanced but less commercially successful Atari 5200. The ColecoVision was distributed by CBS Electronics outside of North America, sales quickly passed 1 million in early 1983, before the video game crash of 1983. By the beginning of 1984, quarterly sales of the ColecoVision had dramatically decreased, over the next 18 months, the Coleco company ramped down its video game division, ultimately withdrawing from the video game market by the end of the summer of 1985. The ColecoVision was officially discontinued by October 1985, the video game crash of 1983 has been cited as the main cause of the ColecoVisions being discontinued less than three years after its launch. In 1983 Spectravideo announced the SV-603 ColecoVision Video Game Adapter for its SV-318 computer, the company stated that the $70 product allowed users to enjoy the entire library of exciting ColecoVision video-game cartridges. In 1986, Bit Corporation produced a ColecoVision clone called the Dina, the controllers connect into plugs in a recessed area on the top of the unit. The design of the controllers is similar to that of Mattels Intellivision—the controller is rectangular and consists of a numeric keypad, in place of the circular control disc below the keypad, the Coleco controller has a short,1. 5-inch joystick. The keypad is designed to accept a thin plastic overlay that maps the keys for a particular game, each ColecoVision console shipped with two controllers. All first-party cartridges and most third-party software titles feature a 12-second pause before presenting the game select screen and this delay results from an intentional loop in the consoles BIOS to enable on-screen display of the ColecoVision brand. CPU, NEC version of Zilog Z80A @3, from its introduction, Coleco touted the ColecoVisions hardware expandability by highlighting the Expansion Module Interface on the front of the unit. These hardware expansion modules and accessories were sold separately, Expansion Module #1 makes the ColecoVision compatible with the industry-leading Atari 2600, with some exceptions. Functionally, this gave the ColecoVision the largest software library of any console of its day, the expansion module prompted legal action from Atari, but Atari was unable to stop sales of the module because the 2600 could be reproduced with off the shelf parts. Coleco also designed and sold the Gemini game system, which was a clone of the 2600, Expansion Module #2 is a driving controller that came packaged with a port of the arcade game Turbo. The gas pedal is merely a simple on/off switch, so many gamers used the second ColecoVision controller as a shift for more precise speed control
39.
Super Mario Bros.
–
Super Mario Bros. is a platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System home console. Released as a sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros. was released in Japan and North America in 1985, and in Europe and Australia two years later. Super Mario Bros. was critically acclaimed, the games mid-1980s release served to further popularize the side-scrolling subgenre of the already popular platform video game genre of the early 1980s. The commercial success of Super Mario Bros. has caused it to be ported to almost every one of Nintendos major gaming consoles. The games success led to a series of sequels and a franchise, including adaptations into a television series, an anime. Super Mario Bros. s plot is told in the instruction manual. The peaceful people of the Mushroom Kingdom are suddenly attacked by a tribe of turtles called the Koopa Army, using Bowsers signature black magic, the army leaves waste to the kingdom and turns its inhabitants into objects such as bricks and stones. The tribe also kidnaps Princess Toadstool, the daughter of the Mushroom King, after hearing the story, the plumber Mario sets out on a quest to save the princess and free the kingdom from the Koopa. Mario then enters a room and frees the princess, and the Mushroom Kingdom is let free of the Koopas reign, the player takes on the role of the main protagonist of the series, Mario. Marios younger brother, Luigi, is playable by the second player in the games multiplayer mode and assumes the same plot role. The objective is to race through the Mushroom Kingdom, survive the main antagonist Bowsers forces, the player moves from the left side of the screen to the right side in order to reach the flag pole at the end of each level. The game world has coins scattered around it for Mario to collect, and special bricks marked with a question mark, other secret, often invisible, bricks may contain more coins or rare items. If the player gains a red and yellow Super Mushroom, Mario grows to double his size and can take one hit from most enemies and obstacles. One life is lost when Mario takes damage while small, falls in a pit, the game ends when all lives are lost. Marios primary attack is jumping on top of enemies, though many enemies have differing responses to this, for example, a Goomba will flatten and be defeated, while a Koopa Troopa will temporarily retract into its shell, allowing Mario to use it as a projectile. These shells may be deflected off a wall to other enemies, though they can also bounce back against Mario. Another attack, for enemies standing overhead, is to jump up, another is the Fire Flower, when picked up, this item changes the color of Super Marios outfit and allows him to throw fireballs, or only upgrades Mario to Super Mario if he has not already. A less common item is the Starman, which appears when Mario hits certain concealed or otherwise invisible blocks
40.
Nintendo
–
Nintendo Co. Ltd. is a Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. Nintendo is one of the worlds largest video game companies by market capitalization, founded on 23 September 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small businesses, such as cab services. The word Nintendo can be translated from Japanese to English as leave luck to heaven. From 1992 until 2016, Nintendo was also the majority shareholder of Major League Baseballs Seattle Mariners, as of 31 March 2014, Nintendo has cumulative sales of over 670.43 million hardware units and 4.23 billion software units. The company has created and released some of the best-known and top-selling video game franchises, such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo was founded as a card company in late 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi. Based in Kyoto, Japan, the produced and marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda. The handmade cards soon became popular, and Yamauchi hired assistants to mass-produce cards to satisfy demand, in 1949, the company adopted the name Nintendo Karuta Co. Ltd. doing business as The Nintendo Playing Card Co. outside Japan. Nintendo continues to manufacture playing cards in Japan and organizes its own contract bridge tournament called the Nintendo Cup. In 1956, Hiroshi Yamauchi, grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, visited the U. S. to talk with the United States Playing Card Company and he found that the biggest playing card company in the world was using only a small office. Yamauchis realization that the card business had limited potential was a turning point. He then acquired the license to use Disney characters on playing cards to drive sales, in 1963, Yamauchi renamed Nintendo Playing Card Co. Ltd. to Nintendo Co. Ltd. The company then began to experiment in other areas of business using newly injected capital during the period of time between 1963 and 1968, Nintendo set up a taxi company called Daiya. However, Nintendo was forced to sell it because problems with the unions were making it too expensive to run the service. It also set up a hotel chain, a TV network. All of these ventures failed, and after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, playing card sales dropped. In 1966, Nintendo moved into the Japanese toy industry with the Ultra Hand, Yokoi was moved from maintenance to the new Nintendo Games department as a product developer. Nintendo continued to produce toys, including the Ultra Machine, Love Tester
41.
Tetris
–
Tetris is a tile-matching puzzle video game, originally designed and programmed by Russian game designer Alexey Pajitnov. It was released on June 6,1984, while he was working for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow and he derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix tetra- and tennis, Pajitnovs favorite sport. Tetris was the first entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the US, the Tetris game is a popular use of tetrominoes, the four-element special case of polyominoes. Polyominoes have been used in popular puzzles since at least 1907, however, even the enumeration of pentominoes is dated to antiquity. It has even inspired Tetris serving dishes and been played on the sides of various buildings, electronic Gaming Monthlys 100th issue had Tetris in first place as Greatest Game of All Time. In 2007, Tetris came in place in IGNs 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time. Tetriminos are game pieces shaped like tetrominoes, geometric shapes composed of four blocks each. A random sequence of Tetriminos fall down the playing field, the objective of the game is to manipulate these Tetriminos, by moving each one sideways and rotating it by 90 degree units, with the aim of creating a horizontal line of ten units without gaps. When such a line is created, it disappears, and any block above the line will fall. When a certain number of lines are cleared, the game enters a new level. As the game progresses, each level causes the Tetriminos to fall faster, some games also end after a finite number of levels or lines. All of the Tetriminos are capable of single and double clears, I, J, and L are able to clear triples. Only the I Tetrimino has the capacity to four lines simultaneously. Pajitnovs original version for the Electronika 60 computer used green brackets to represent blocks, prior to The Tetris Companys standardization in the early 2000s, those colors varied widely from implementation to implementation. The scoring formula for the majority of Tetris products is built on the idea that more difficult line clears should be awarded more points. For example, a line clear in Tetris Zone is worth 100 points, clearing four lines at once is worth 800. Nearly all Tetris games allow the player to press a button to increase the speed of the current pieces descent, rather than waiting for it to fall. The player can stop the pieces increased speed before the piece reaches the floor by letting go of the button
42.
Game Boy
–
It is the first handheld console in the Game Boy line and was created by Satoru Okada and Nintendo Research & Development 1. This same team, led by Gunpei Yokoi at the time, is credited with designing the Game & Watch series as well as popular games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Redesigned versions were released in 1996 and 1998 in the form of Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Light, the Game Boy is Nintendos second handheld system following the Game & Watch series introduced in 1980 and it combined features from both the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game & Watch. It was either bought as a unit or bundled with the puzzle game Tetris. During its early lifetime, the Game Boy mainly competed with Segas Game Gear, Ataris Lynx, the Game Boy beat its rivals and became a tremendous success. The Game Boy and its successor, the Game Boy Color, have sold over 118 million units worldwide, upon the Game Boys release in the United States, it sold its entire shipment of one million units within a few weeks. The Game Boy and Game Boy Color were discontinued in the early 2000s in favor of the subsequent Game Boy Advance, the Game Boy has four operation buttons labeled A, B, SELECT, and START, as well as a directional pad. There is a control dial on the right side of the device. At the top of the Game Boy, a sliding on-off switch, the on-off switch includes a physical lockout to prevent users from either inserting or removing a cartridge while the unit is switched on. Nintendo recommends users leave a cartridge in the slot to prevent dust, the Game Boy also contains optional input and/or output connectors. On the left side of the system is an external 3. 5mm x 1. 35mm DC power supply jack that allows users to use a rechargeable battery pack or AC adapter instead of four AA batteries. The Game Boy requires 6 V DC of at least 150 mA, a 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack is located on the bottom side of the unit which allows users to listen to the audio with the bundled headphones or external speakers. The right-side of the device offers a port which allows a user to connect to another Game Boy system via a link cable, the port can also be used to connect a Game Boy Printer. The link cable was designed for players to play head-to-head two-player games such as in Tetris. However, game developer Satoshi Tajiri would later use the cable technology as a method of communication. CPU Custom 8-bit Sharp LR35902 at 4.19 MHz and this processor is similar to an Intel 8080 in that none of the registers introduced in the Z80 are present. However, some of the Z80s instruction set enhancements over the 8080, still other instructions are unique to this particular flavor of 8080/Z80 CPU. The IC also contains integrated sound generation, the unit only has one speaker, but headphones provide stereo sound Display, Reflective STN LCD160 ×144 pixels Frame Rate, Approx
43.
Grand Theft Auto III
–
Grand Theft Auto III is an open world action-adventure third-person shooter video game developed by DMA Design and published by Rockstar Games. It was released on 22 October 2001 for the PlayStation 2, on 20 May 2002 for Microsoft Windows, a remastered version of the game was released on mobile platforms in 2011, for the games tenth anniversary. It is the title in the Grand Theft Auto series. Set within the fictional Liberty City, based on New York City, the game is played from a third-person perspective and its world is navigated on foot or by vehicle. The open world design lets players freely roam Liberty City, consisting of three main islands, development was shared between DMA Design, based in Edinburgh and Rockstar, in New York City. Much of the development work constituted transforming popular series elements into a 3D world, the game was delayed following the September 11 attacks, to allow the team to change references and gameplay deemed inappropriate. Upon release, the game received acclaim, with praise particularly directed at its concept. However, the game generated controversy, with criticism directed at the depiction of violence. Grand Theft Auto III became the video game of 2001. Since its release, it has received numerous ports to many gaming platforms and its successor, Grand Theft Auto, Vice City, was released in October 2002. Grand Theft Auto III is a game played from a third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story and it is possible to have several active missions running at one time, as some missions require players to wait for further instructions or events. Outside of missions, players can roam the games open world. Liberty City is composed of three boroughs, Portland, Staunton Island, and Shoreside Vale, the islands are unlocked to players as the story progresses, players may run, jump or use vehicles to navigate the games world. In combat, auto-aim can be used as assistance against enemies, should players take damage, their health meter can be fully regenerated through the use of health pick-ups. Body armour can be used to absorb gunshots and explosive damage, when health is entirely depleted, gameplay stops, and players respawn at the nearest hospital, at the expense of losing all weapons and armour, and an amount of money. If players commit crimes while playing, the law enforcement agencies may respond as indicated by a wanted meter in the head-up display. On the meter, the stars indicate the current wanted level
44.
PlayStation 2
–
The PlayStation 2 is a home video game console that was developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the successor to the PlayStation, and is the installment in the PlayStation lineup of consoles. It was released on March 4,2000 in Japan, October 26,2000 in North America, November 24,2000 in Europe and it competed with Segas Dreamcast, Microsofts Xbox, and Nintendos GameCube in the sixth generation of video game consoles. Announced in 1999, the PlayStation 2 was the first PlayStation console to offer backwards compatibility for its predecessors DualShock controller, the PlayStation 2 is the best-selling video game console of all time, selling over 155 million units, with 150 million confirmed by Sony in 2011. More than 3,874 game titles have been released for the PS2 since launch, Sony later manufactured several smaller, lighter revisions of the console known as Slimline models in 2004 and well on, and in 2006, announced and launched its successor, the PlayStation 3. Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4 console the following month on February 20,2013, Sony announced the PlayStation 2 on March 1,1999. The Dreamcast itself launched very successfully in North America later that year, soon after the Dreamcasts North American launch, Sony unveiled the PlayStation 2 at the Tokyo Game Show on September 20,1999. Sony showed fully playable demos of upcoming PlayStation 2 games including Gran Turismo 2000 and Tekken Tag Tournament – which showed the consoles graphic abilities, the PS2 was launched in March 2000 in Japan, October in North America and November in Europe. Sales of the console, games and accessories pulled in $250 million on the first day, directly after its release, it was difficult to find PS2 units on retailer shelves due to manufacturing delays. Another option was purchasing the console online through websites such as eBay. This allowed the PS2 to tap the large install base established by the PlayStation – another major selling point over the competition, later, Sony added new development kits for game developers and more PS2 units for consumers. The PS2s built-in functionality also expanded its audience beyond the gamer and this made the console a low cost entry into the home theater market. The PS2 remained as the only active sixth generation console for over 6 months, before it would face competition from rivals, Nintendos GameCube and Microsofts Xbox. While the PlayStation 2 theoretically had the weakest specification of the three, it had a start due to its installed base plus strong developer commitment. Sony also countered the Xbox by temporarily securing PlayStation 2 exclusives for highly anticipated games such as the Grand Theft Auto series and Metal Gear Solid 2, Sons of Liberty. Sony cut the price of the console in May 2002 from US$299 to $199 in North America, making it the price as the GameCube. It also planned to cut the price in Japan around that time and it cut the price twice in Japan in 2003. In 2006, Sony cut the cost of the console in anticipation of the release of the PlayStation 3, Sony, unlike Sega with its Dreamcast, originally placed little emphasis on online gaming during its first few years, although that changed upon the launch of the online-capable Xbox
45.
Super Smash Bros. Melee
–
Melee is a crossover fighting game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the GameCube video game console. It is the game in the Super Smash Bros. series. It was released in Japan in November 2001, with other territories later, the game features characters from Nintendo video game franchises such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, and Pokémon. The stages and gameplay modes make references to, or take their designs from and it builds on the first game by adding new gameplay features and playable characters. Following the popularity of its gameplay, Melee has been featured in many competitive gaming tournaments. The game received praise, as well as awards and acknowledgements from gaming publications. It achieved strong sales upon release, and is the GameCubes best-selling game, like its predecessor, Super Smash Bros. Melee differs from traditional fighting games as the objective is to force their opponents beyond the boundaries of the stage, most attacks inflict damage and can, if enough damage is dealt, knock back the enemy. Each characters health is measured by a meter that represents the damage received as a percentage. The higher the value, the farther the player gets knocked back, and the easier they are to knock off the stage, which will result in the characters death. Unlike other games of the genre, in which moves are entered by button-input combinations. Melee can be accessed via one-button presses and a joystick direction, during battles, items related to Nintendo games or merchandise fall onto the game field. These items have purposes ranging from inflicting damage on the opponent to restoring health to the player, additionally, most stages have a theme relating to a Nintendo franchise or a specific Nintendo game and are interactive to the player. Although the stages are rendered in three dimensions, players can move on a two-dimensional plane. Not all stages are available immediately, some stages must be unlocked by achieving particular requirements, some stages feature moving elements and platforms and hazards that harm players, while others lack these elements. Single-player mode provides the player with a variety of side-scrolling fighting challenges and these areas may include references to that particular characters past and legacy. The Board the Platforms minigame from the prequel was not included in Melee, Melee introduced Adventure mode, which takes the player to several predefined universes of characters in the Nintendo franchise. All-Star mode is a feature of Melee, requiring the player to defeat every character in the game while having only three health supplements between battles
