HOME WEB NEWS IMAGES CLASSIFIEDS YELLOW PAGESPOLLS - SURVEYS WIKI COUNTRIES PHOTOS US UK INDIA
Cities Stocks Weather Movies Coupons Travel Blogs Health Horoscope Maps ASIA EUROPE Classifieds Yellow Pages
 1
|
|
|
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2008) |
This article is primarily about a certain class of Personal computers from the late 1970\'s to mid 1980\'s, see Domotics or Home servers for home computers used in home automation.
Children playing Paperboy on an Amstrad CPC 464 in the 1980s.
Most home computers, such as this Tandy Color Computer 3, featured a version of the BASIC programming language.
A home computer was a class of personal computers entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. These computers typically cost much less than business, scientific or engineering-oriented desktop personal computers of the time, and were generally less powerful in terms of memory and expandability. However, a home computer often had better graphics and sound than contemporary business personal computers, and was usually sold for purposes of education, game play, and personal productivity use such as word processing. Advertisements for early home computers were rife with possibilities for their use in the home, from cataloging recipes to personal finance to home automation, but these were seldom realized in practice as they usually required the home computer user to learn how to program; a significant time committment many weren\'t willing to make.
The home computer became affordable for the general public due to the mass production of the microprocessor. In contrast to their predecessors, they were designed to be used by the average consumer, not necessarily an electronics hobbyist. These machines were pre-assembled, with plug-in peripheral devices such as screens, cassette tape recorders, joysticks, and (later) disk drives. Usually the manufacturer would provide all the peripheral devices practical to add to any system as extra cost accessories. Often peripherals were not interchangeable between brands of home computer (or sometimes even between successive models of the same brand).
Very typically a home computer would have had a version of the BASIC programming language in read-only permanent memory. To save the cost of a dedicated monitor, the home computer often would have connected either directly or through an RF modulator to the family TV set as video display and sound system.
Contents |
After the success of systems like the RadioShack TRS-80, the Commodore PET and the Apple Inc. Apple II in 1977, large numbers of new machines of all types began to appear during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Some home computers sold many units over several years, such as the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Atari 800XL and Commodore 64, and attracted third-party software development.
To some extent, low-end home computers competed with video game consoles. The markets weren\'t entirely distinct, as both had the ability to be used for games. A common marketing tactic was to show a computer system and console playing games side by side, then emphasising the computer\'s greater ability by showing it running user programs, educational software, word processing, spreadsheet and other applications. Some video game consoles offered "programming packs", consisting of a version of BASIC in a ROM cartridge. The ColecoVision console even had an expansion module which converted it into a full-fledged Coleco Adam computer system. During the peak years of the home computer market, scores of models were produced, usually with little or no thought given to compatibility between different manufacturers or even within product lines of one manufacturer. The concept of a computer platform did not exist, except for the Japanese MSX standard.
The introduction of the IBM Personal Computer in August 1981 would eventually lead to standardization in personal computing, largely due to the system\'s open architecture, which encouraged production of third-party clones of the unit. While the Apple II would be quickly displaced by the IBM PC for office use, Apple Computer\'s 1984 release of the Apple Macintosh created a new model for the home computer which IBM-compatible computers would eventually imitate.
The declining cost of IBM-compatible "personal computers" on the one hand, and the greatly increased graphics, sound, and storage capabilities of dedicated video game consoles on the other, caused the market segment for home computers to vanish in the early 1990s in the US. In Europe, the home computer remained a distinct presence for a few years more, with the Amiga and Atari ST lines being the dominant players, but today a computer purchased for home use anywhere will be very similar to those used in offices - made by the same manufacturers, with compatible peripherals, operating systems, and application software.
A Commodore 64c system, showing the basic layout of a typical home computer system of the era. Pictured are the CPU/keyboard unit, floppy disk drive, and dedicated color monitor. Many systems also had a printer for producing paper output.
Many home computers were superficially similar. Some had a keyboard integrated into the case; sometimes a cheap-to-manufacture chiclet keyboard in the early days, although full-travel keyboards quickly became universal. Most could use an RF modulator to display 20–40 column text output on a home television. The use of a television set as a display almost defines the pre-PC home computer. Although monitors dedicated for use with a computer were available for this market segment, it was often a later purchase only made after users had bought a floppy disk drive, printer, modem, and the other pieces of a full system. This "peripherals sold separately" approach is another defining characteristic of home computers.
In the early part of the 1980s, home computers were mostly based on 8-bit microprocessor technology, typically the MOS Technology 6502 or the Zilog Z80. A notable exception was the TI-99 series, announced in 1979 with a 16 bit TMS9900 CPU.
Processor clock rates were typically 1-2 MHz but this aspect of performance was not emphasized by users or manufacturers, as dealing with the systems\' limited RAM capacity, graphics capabilities and storage options took priority. To economize on component cost, often the same crystal used to produce color television compatible signals was also divided down and used for the processor clock. This meant processors rarely operated at their full rated speed, and had the side-effect that European and North American versions of the same home computer operated at slightly different speeds and different video resolution due to different television standards.
Most home computers initially used the ubiquitous compact audio cassettes as a (notoriously slow and sometimes unreliable) storage mechanism. Floppy disk drives found on more costly busines-oriented microcomputers were expensive and originally used disks eight inches wide. Eventually large production of 5 1/4 inch drives reduced the cost where these became common peripherals for home computers. Costs declined toward the end of the 1980s as sales of microcomputers increased. Various copy protection schemes were developed for floppy disks but many users would only tolerate them for games. The 5.25" floppy disk drives would become standard, with 3.5" drives being made available for most systems toward the latter part of the decade. Standardization of disk formats was not common; sometimes even different models from the same manufacturer used different disk formats.
In contrast to modern computers, home computers most often had their OS stored in ROM chips. This made startup times very fast - no more than a few seconds but made upgrades difficult or impossible without buying a new unit. Usually only the most severe bugs were fixed by issuing new ROMs to replace the old ones. The user interface was usually only a BASIC interpreter coupled to a character-based screen or line editor, with applications performing all other OS duties. Application programs usually accessed hardware directly to perform a specific task, often "switching out" the ROM based OS to free the address space it occupied. In an enduring reflection of their early cassette-oriented nature, most home computers loaded their Disk Operating System (DOS) separately from the main OS. The DOS was only used to send commands to the floppy disk drive and needn\'t be loaded to perform other computing functions. One notable exception was Commodore, whose disk drives actually contained a 6502 processor and Commodore DOS in ROM. Many home computers also had a cartridge interface which accepted ROM-based software. This was occasionally used for expansion or upgrades such as fast loaders, and application software on cartridge did exist, but the vast majority of cartridges were games.
From about 1985, the high end of the home computer market began to be dominated by "next generation" home computers using the 16-bit Motorola 68000 chip, which helped to enable the greatly increased abilities of the Amiga and Atari ST series. Clock rates on these systems were approximately 8 MHz with RAM capacities of 256 kB (for the basic Amiga 1000 system) up to 1024 kB (1 megabyte, a milestone, first seen on the Atari 1040 ST). The Amiga and ST both had GUIs inspired by the Apple Macintosh, but at a list price of $2495 (over $5000 in 2007 dollars), the Macintosh itself was too expensive for most households.
After the first wave of computers landed in American homes, the US Federal Communications Commission began receiving complaints of interference to television reception. By 1979 the FCC demanded that home computer manufacturers submit samples for radio frequency interference testing. It was found that "first generation" home computers, which often included their own screens, emitted too much radio frequency noise for household use. Some manufacturers appealed to the FCC to waive the requirements for home computers, while other manufacturers (with compliant designs) objected to the waiver. Many manufacturers must supply an external RF modulator to allow their units to connect to a home television receiver. Eventually techniques to suppress intereference become standardized.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, from about 1977 to 1983, it was widely predicted[1] that computers would soon revolutionize many aspects of home and family life. Mothers would keep their recipe catalog in computer databases, fathers would use the family\'s computer to manage their finances (note the gender roles). Children would use the computer for school work and playing games. Home automation would bring about the intelligent home of the \'80s. Using some sort of computer technology, television would be interactive. Coffee would be brewed automatically under computer control, robots would take the garbage out, and be programmable to perform new tasks by the home computer. Virtually every aspect of the revolution would prove not to be or be delayed. Put simply, the computers available to consumers of the time period just weren\'t powerful enough to perform the tasks that would be required. Memory capacities were too small to hold entire databases or financial records, floppy disk-based storage was woefully inadequate in both capacity and speed for true multimedia work, and the graphics of the systems could only display blocky, unrealistic images and blurry, jagged text. Before long, a backlash set in -- computer users were "geeks", "nerds" or worse, "hackers". The North American video game crash of 1983 soured many on technology in general. The computers that were purchased for use in the family room were relegated to childrens\' bedrooms and used exclusively for games. It took another 10 years for technology to mature, for the graphical user interface to make the computer approachable for non-technical users, and for the internet to provide a compelling reason for most people to want a computer in their homes. This delay wasn\'t out of keeping with other technologies newly introduced to an unprepared public. Early motorists were widely derided with the cry of "Get a horse!"[2] until the automobile was accepted. Television languished in research labs for decades before regular public broadcasts began. Before the invention of radio, the telephone was used to distribute opera and news reports, whose subscribers were denounced as "illiterate, blind, bedridden and incurably lazy people"[3]. Likewise, the acceptance of computers into daily life today is a product of continuing refinement of both technology and perception.
As many older computers have become obsolete and in some cases nonfunctional, it has become popular amongst enthusiastsReviving Old Computer Games to "virtually" recreate these machines, their environments and popular software titlesgametap.com - Traffic Details from Alexa with emulation software. One of the more well known emulators is the Multiple Emulator Super System which can emulate most of the better known home computers. One system for which many emulators exist is the MSX. A more or less complete list of home computer emulators can be found here.
Retrocomputing is gaining in popularity, with many enthusiasts using real Commodore 64 hardware to perform modern tasks such as surfing the web and email.
The 1977 Apple II with 2 Disk II disk drives and an Apple monitor.
The list below shows many of the most popular or significant home computers of the late 1970s and of the 1980s. The most popular home computers in the USA up to 1985 were: the TRS-80 (1977), the Apple II (1977), the Atari 400/800(1979), the Commodore VIC-20 (1980) and the Commodore 64 (1982) which is still the highest-selling single model of personal computer ever, with over 17 million produced before production stopped in 1994 - a 12 year run with only minor changes.
Until the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981, computers such as the Apple II and TRS 80 also found considerable use in office work.
(For a comprehensive overview of home computers, i.e. not just the most notable ones given below, see the List of home computers.)
Three microcomputers were the prototypes for what would later become the home computer market segment; but when introduced they sold as much to hobbyists and small businesses as to the home.
The following computers were more typical of the home computer segment:
No computer has sold more units than the Commodore 64Grandiose Price for a Modest PC.
|
|
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008) |
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia
