Timeline of computing 1980–89

This article presents a detailed timeline of events in the history of computing from 1980 to 1989. For narratives explaining the overall developments, see the History of computing.

1980

Date	Place	Event
January	UK	Sinclair ZX80 was released for under £100.
May	Japan	On 22 May the game Pac-Man was released.
June	United States	Commodore released the VIC-20, which had 3.5 KB of usable memory and was based on the MOS Technology 6502 processor. Magazines became available which contained the code for various utilities and games. A 5¼" disk drive was available, along with a cassette storage system which used standard audio cassette tapes. Also available were a number of games, a color plotter which printed on 6 in (152 mm) wide paper tape, a graphics tablet (the KoalaPad). A TV screen served as monitor. The VIC-20 became the first computer to sell 1 million units.
July	United States	Tandy released the TRS-80 Color Computer, based on the Motorola 6809E processor and using Microsoft Basic as its programming language. It was the first Tandy computer to support color graphics, and also supported cartridge programs and games, attempting to bridge both the home computing and video gaming markets.
October	United States	Development of MS-DOS/PC DOS began. Microsoft (known mainly for their programming languages) were commissioned to write the Operating System for the PC; Digital Research failed to get the contract (there is much legend as to the real reason for this). DR's Operating System, CP/M-86, was later shipped, but it was actually easier to adapt programs to DOS rather than to CP/M-86, and CP/M-86 cost $495. As Microsoft didn't have an operating system to sell, they bought Seattle Computer Product's 86-DOS which had been written by Tim Paterson earlier that year (86-DOS was also known as QDOS, Quick & Dirty Operating System, it was a more-or-less 16 bit version of CP/M). The rights were actually bought in July 1981. It is reputed that IBM found over 300 bugs in the code when they subjected the operating system to scrutiny and re-wrote much of the code. Tim Paterson's DOS 1.0 was 4000 lines of assembler.
?	Netherlands Japan	Red Book on Audio CDs was introduced by Sony and Philips. This was the beginning of the Compact disc, it was released in Japan and then in Europe and America a year later.

1981

Date	Place	Event
March	UK	Sinclair ZX81 was released, for a similar price to the ZX80 (see 1980).
April	United States	On April 8 Osborne 1 portable computer introduced; the company sold many units before filing for bankruptcy only two years later.
August	United States	On August 12 IBM announced their open architecture IBM Personal Computer. 100,000 orders were taken by Christmas. The design becomes far more successful than IBM had anticipated, and becomes the basis for most of the modern personal computer industry. MDA (Monochrome Display Adapter), text only, introduced with IBM PC. MS-DOS 1.0, PC DOS 1.0. Microsoft (known mainly for their programming languages) were commissioned by IBM to write the operating system, they bought a program called 86-DOS from Tim Paterson which was loosely based on CP/M-80. The final program from Microsoft was marketed by IBM as PC DOS and by Microsoft as MS-DOS, collaboration on subsequent versions continued until version 5.0 in 1991. Compared to modern versions of DOS, version 1 was very basic. The most notable difference was the presence of just 1 directory, the root directory, on each disk. Subdirectories were not supported until version 2.0 (March 1983). MS-DOS was the main operating system for all IBM-PC compatible computers until Microsoft released Windows 95. According to Microsoft, in 1994, MS-DOS was running on some 100 million computers worldwide.
September	United States	The TCP/IP protocol is established. This is the protocol that carries most of the information across the Internet. RFC 793
?	United States	Richard Feynman proposed quantum computers. The main application he had in mind was the simulation of quantum systems, but he also mentioned the possibility of solving other problems.
?	United States	The Xerox 8010 ('Star') System, the first commercial system to use a WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing Devices) graphic user interface. Apple incorporated many of the ideas therein in the development of the interface for the Apple Lisa (see January 1983)
?	United States	Symbolics introduced the LM-2 workstation, a Lisp-based workstation based on the MIT CADR architecture.

1982

Date	Place	Event
January	UK	Introduction of the BBC Micro, announced in December last year. Based on the MOS Technology 6502 processor, it was a very popular computer for British schools up to the development of the Acorn Archimedes (in 1987). In 1984 the government offered to pay half the cost of such computers in an attempt to promote their use in secondary education.
January	United States	Commodore unveils the Commodore 64 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Built in just two months around the VIC-II Video Integrated Circuit and the SID Sound Interface Device chips, the C64 used the 6510 processor to access 64K of RAM plus 16K of switchable ROM. This "epitome of the 8-bit computer" sold up to 22 million units in the next decade.
February	United States	On February 1 the 80286 processor was released. It implements a new mode of operation, protected mode – allowing access to more memory (up to 16 MB compared to 1 MB for the 8086). At introduction the fastest version ran at 12.5 MHz, achieved 2.7 MIPS and contained 134,000 transistors.
March	United States	Compaq released their IBM PC compatible Compaq Portable.
March	United States	MS-DOS 1.25, PC DOS 1.1
April	UK	The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was announced, released later in the year. It is based on the Z80 microprocessor from Zilog, running at 3.5 MHz with an 8 color graphics display. The Spectrum sold with two memory options, a 16 KB version for £125 or a 48 KB version for £175.
May	United States	IBM launch the double-sided 320 KB floppy disk drive.
July	UK United States	Timex/Sinclair introduced the first computer touted to cost under $100 marketed in the U.S., the Timex Sinclair 1000. In spite of the flaws in the early versions, half a million units were sold in the first 6 months alone, surpassing the sales of Apple, Tandy, and Commodore combined.
August	United States	The Commodore 64 is released, retailing at US$595. The price rapidly dropped, creating a price war and causing the departure of numerous companies from the home computing market. Total C64 sales during its lifetime (from 1982 to 1994) are estimated at more than 17 million units, making it the best-selling computer model of all time.
October	United States	MIDI, Musical Instrument Digital Interface, (pronounced "middy") published by International MIDI Association (IMA). The MIDI standard allows computers to be connected to instruments like keyboards through a low-bandwidth (31,250 bit/s) protocol.
December	United States	IBM bought 12% of Intel.
?	United States	Introduction of 80186/80188. These are rarely used in personal computers as they incorporate a built in DMA and timer chip – and thus have register addresses incompatible with IBM PCs.

1983

Date	Place	Event
January	United States	Apple introduced its Lisa. The first mass market personal computer with a graphical user interface, its development was central in the move to such systems for personal computers. The Lisa's sloth and high price ($10,000) led to its ultimate failure. The Lisa ran on a Motorola 68000 microprocessor and came equipped with 1 MB of RAM, a 12-inch black-and-white monitor, dual 5¼" floppy disk drives and a 5 MB Profile hard drive. The Xerox Star – which included a system called Smalltalk that involved a mouse, windows, and pop-up menus – inspired the Lisa's designers.
January	United States Europe	IBM PC gets European launch at Which Computer Show.
March	United States	IBM XT released, similar to the original IBM PC but with a hard drive. It had a 10 MB hard disk, 128 KB of RAM, one floppy drive, mono monitor and a printer, all for $5000.
March	United States	MS-DOS 2.0, PC DOS 2.0 Introduced with the IBM XT this version included a Unix style hierarchical sub-directory structure, and altered the way in which programs could load and access files on the disk.
May	United States	Thinking Machines Corporation formed.
May	United States	MS-DOS 2.01
September	United States	Richard Stallman announces the GNU Project, to create a free software alternative to proprietary Unixes, on Usenet. He works towards this goal over the next years, but GNU's own kernel, the GNU Hurd, is delayed indefinitely and GNU only becomes a complete usable alternative to Unix with the creation of the Linux kernel in 1991.
October	United States	IBM released the IBM PCjr in an attempt to get further into the home market; it cost just $699. Cheaper alternatives from other companies were more preferable to the home buyer, but businesses continued to buy IBM. PC DOS 2.1 (for PCjr). Like the PCjr this was not a great success and quickly disappeared from the market. MS-DOS 2.11, MS-DOS 2.25 Version 2.25 included support for foreign character sets, and was marketed in the Far East.
October	United States	Microsoft Word software released.
November	United States	Domain Name System (DNS) introduced to the Internet, which then consisted of about 1000 hosts. RFC 881 (now obsoleted by subsequent revisions) Microsoft Windows is announced.
December	Serbia	Detailed schematic diagrams for build-it-yourself computer Galaksija released in Belgrade. Thousands were soon assembled by computer enthusiasts.
?	United States	Borland formed.
?	Japan	Epson QX-10 released; first Japanese computer sold in the US
?	United States	Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software launched.
?	Italy	Olivetti M24 was put on sale. This personal computer had good success and was later rebranded by AT&T.

1984

Date	Place	Event
January	UK	Sinclair Research Ltd announced its first (and only) personal computer aimed to the business market, the Sinclair QL, at an attractive introductory price of £399. The machine was based on the 68008 CPU of Motorola, the low-cost version of Motorola 68000 with 8-bit external bus. The QL (abbreviation of Quantum Leap) did not become a market success, because of quality issues of the first series and due to the Microdrive used as storage medium instead of the much more reliable floppy discs, and its development and production later caused serious financial difficulties to the company.
January	United States	Apple Macintosh released, based on the 8 MHz version of the Motorola 68000 processor. The 68000 can address 16 MB of RAM, a noticeable improvement over Intel's 8088/8086 family. However the Apple achieved 0.7 MIPS and originally came with just 128 KB of RAM. It came fitted with a monochrome monitor and was the first successful mouse-driven computer with a Graphical user interface. The Macintosh included many of the Lisa's features at a much more affordable price: $2,500. Applications that came as part of the package included MacPaint, which made use of the mouse, and MacWrite, which demonstrated WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processing.
May	United States	Hewlett-Packard release the immensely popular LaserJet printer, by 1993 they had sold over 10 million LaserJet printers and over 20 million printers overall. HP were also pioneering inkjet technology.
June	UK	Amstrad CPC was introduced first in Britain, later in other European markets as well. The machine was based on the popular 8 bit Z80 CPU. The mainboard (i.e. the computer itself) and a cassette recorder (Datacorder) were both integrated in the keyboard. The CPC could be bought in a bundle with a monochrome (GT64) monitor for £249 or a colour (CTM640) monitor for £359. The monitor also served as the power supply in order to have only one plug to be connected to the wall outlet. CPC became very popular in France and Spain, and in Germany where it was marketed by Schneider Rundfunkwerke AG under its own label. In 1985 two further models (CPC 664 and 6128) with built-in 3-inch floppy disc drive were released.
August	United States	MS-DOS 3.0, PC DOS 3.0 Released for the IBM AT, it supported larger hard disks as well as High Density (1.2 MB) 5¼" floppy disks.
September	United States	Apple released a 512KB version of the Macintosh, known as the "Fat Mac".
End	United States	Compaq started the development of the IDE interface (see also 1989). IDE = Intelligent Drive Electronics. This standard was designed specially for the IBM PC and can achieve high data transfer rates through a 1:1 interleave factor and caching by the actual disk controller – the bottleneck is often the old AT bus and the drive may read data far quicker than the bus can accept it, so the cache is used as a buffer. Theoretically 1 MB/s is possible but 700 kB/s is perhaps more typical of such drives. This standard has been adopted by many other models of computer, such the Acorn Archimedes A4000 and above. A later improvement was EIDE, laid down in 1989, which also removed the maximum drive size of 528 MB and increased data transfer rates.
?	United States	Turbo Pascal introduced by Borland.
?	United States	Motorola released the 68020 processor.

1985

Date	Place	Event
January	United States	PostScript introduced by Adobe Systems. It is a powerful page description language used in the Apple Laserwriter printer. Adopted by IBM for their use in March 1987.
March	United States	MS-DOS 3.1, PC DOS 3.1 This was the first version of DOS to provide network support, and provides some new functions to handle networking.
March	United States	Symbolics registered the symbolics.com domain, the first .com domain in the world.
April	United States	Expanded memory specification, a memory paging scheme for PCs, was introduced by Lotus and Intel.
June	United States	Commodore 128 was released. Based on a complex multi-mode architecture, this was Commodore's last 8-bit computer. Cost: $299.95 for each of the CPU unit and accompanying 1571 disk drive.
June	United States	The Atari ST, an inexpensive 8 MHz Motorola 68000-based computer, appeared. Nicknamed the "Jackintosh", after Atari owner Jack Tramiel, it featured 512 KB of memory and used GEM graphical interface from Digital Research. It was priced under US$1,000.
June	USSR	Tetris was written by Russian Alexey Pazhitnov. It was later released for various western games machines, the crown jewel being its inclusion with Nintendo's Game Boy in 1989. Alexey made nothing from the game, since under the Communist Regime it was owned by the people. However, after the collapse of Communism he was able to move to the USA where he now works for Microsoft.
July	United States	Commodore released the Amiga, based on a 7.16 MHz Motorola 68000 and a custom chipset. It was the first home computer to feature pre-emptive multitasking operating system. It used a Macintosh-like GUI. Cost: US$1,295 for a system with a single 880 KB 3.5 in disk drive and 256 KB of RAM.
September	UK	Amstrad introduced Amstrad PCW 8256/8512, an 8 bit, Z80 based computer system with 256 or 512 KB of RAM, dedicated to word processing and promoted as the alternative of electronic typewriters. PCW was the abbreviation of personal computer for word processing (or personal computer word processor). 8 million PCWs were sold until 1998 when Amstrad discontinued this range of computers.
October	United States	On October 17 80386 DX was released. It supports clock frequencies of up to 33 MHz and can address up to 4 GB of memory (and in theory virtual memory of up to 64 TB, which was important for marketing purposes). It also includes a bigger instruction set than the 80286. At the date of release the fastest version ran at 20 MHz and achieved 6.0 MIPS. It contained 275,000 transistors.
November	United States	Microsoft Windows launched. Not really widely used until version 3, released in 1990, Windows required DOS to run and so was not a complete operating system (until Windows 95, released on August 21, 1995). It merely provided a G.U.I. similar to that of the Macintosh. It was so similar that Apple tried to sue Microsoft for copying the 'look and feel' of their operating system. This court case was not dropped until August 1997.
December	United States	MS-DOS 3.2, PC DOS 3.2 This version was the first to support 3½" disks, although only the 720 KB ones. Version 3.2 remained the standard version until 1987 when version 3.3 was released with the IBM PS/2.
?	Netherlands Japan	CD-ROM, invented by Philips, produced in collaboration with Sony.
?	United States	Enhanced Graphics Adapter released.
?	UK	Meiko Scientific formed.

1986

Date	Place	Event
January	United States	Apple released another enhanced version of the Macintosh (the Macintosh Plus personal computer) – this one could cope with 4 MB of RAM (for the first time, upgradable via SIMMs) and it had a built-in SCSI adapter based on the NCR 5380.
February	UK	Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 released. It had 128 KB of RAM, but little other improvement over the original ZX (except improved sound capabilities). Later models were produced by Amstrad – but they showed no major advances in technology.
April	United States	Apple released another version of the Macintosh (the Macintosh 512Ke) equipped with a double sided 3.5 inch Floppy Disk drive.
April	UK	On April 7 it was officially announced that Amstrad Plc acquired the computer division of Sinclair Research Ltd including the marketing and development rights of all ZX Spectrum models and the exclusive right to use the well-known Sinclair brand itself. As ZX Spectrum still had 40% market share and CPC also had some 20%, by the merger a very strong player was established in the British home computer market.
June	France	LISTSERV, the first automated mailing list management application, was invented by Eric Thomas.
September	UK	Amstrad announced Amstrad PC 1512, a cheap and powerful PC. Which included a slightly enhanced CGA graphics adapter, 512 KB RAM (upgradable to 640KB), 8086 processor (upgradable to NEC V30) and a 20 MB hard disk (optional). To ensure the computer was accessible they made sure the manuals could be read by everyone, and also included DR's GEM desktop (a WIMP system) and a mouse to try to make to machine more user friendly. It was sold in many high street shops and was a complete success, being bought by Business and Home users alike.
September	Nederlands	At EUSPICO '86 conference it was presented RIPAC, a microprocessor specialized for speech-recognition designed by CSELT, Elsag and manufactured by SGS. It was used for telephone dialogue-based services in Italy.
November	United States	At Comdex Las Vegas Atari invited Gene Mosher to introduce his touchscreen point of sale graphic user interface with direct manipulation widget toolkit editing, including the Atari ST's 12" CRT with a Microtouch capacitance touchscreen overlay, 320x200 resolution graphics and a 16-color bitmapped display.

1987

Date	Place	Event
March	United States	Macintosh II and Macintosh SE released on March 2. The SE was based on the 68000, but could cope with 4 MB of RAM and had an internal and external SCSI adapter. It offered a high performance PDS interrupt slot which provided some of the first expandability on a Mac. The SE also offered the capability of displaying color with a third-party video card with its new ROM. The Macintosh II was based on the newer Motorola 68020, that ran at 16 MHz and achieved a much more respectable 2.6 MIPS (comparable to an 80286). It too had a SCSI adapter but was also fitted with a colour video adapter.
April	United States	On April 2 PS/2 Systems were introduced by IBM. The first 4 models were released on this date. The PS/2 Model 30 based on an 8086 processor and an old XT bus, Models 50 and 60 based on the 80286 processor and the Model 80 based on the 80386 processor. These used the 3½" floppy disks, storing 1.44 MB on each (although the Model 30 could only use the low 720KB density). These systems (except the Model 30, released in September 1988) included a completely new bus, the MCA (Micro Channel Architecture) bus, which did not catch on as it did not provide support for old-style 16 bit AT bus expansion cards. The MCA bus did show many improvements in design and speed over the ISA bus most PCs used, and IBM (if no-one else) still use it in some of their machines. The PS/2 models were very successful – selling well over 2 million machines in less than 2 years.
April	United States	MS-DOS 3.3, PC DOS 3.3 Released with the IBM PS/2 this version included support for the High Density (1.44 MB) 3½" disks. It also supported hard disk partitions, splitting a hard disk into 2 or more logical drives.
April	United States	OS/2 Launched by Microsoft and IBM. A later enhancement, OS/2 Warp provided many of the 32 bit enhancements boasted by Windows 95 – but several years earlier, yet the product failed to dominate the market in the way Windows 95 did 8 years later.
June	UK	Introduction of Acorn Archimedes.
August	Canada	AD-LIB soundcard released. Not widely supported until a software company, Taito, released several games fully supporting AD-LIB – the word then spread how much the special sound effects and music enhanced the games. Ad Lib, Inc., a Canadian Company, had a virtual monopoly until 1989 when the SoundBlaster card was released.
August	United States	LIM EMS v4.0
October– November	United States	Compaq DOS (CPQ-DOS) v3.31 released to cope with disk partitions >32Mb. Used by some other OEMs, but not Microsoft.
December	United States	Microsoft Windows 2 released on December 9.
?	United States	Connection Machine, an interesting supercomputer which instead of integration of circuits operates up to 64,000 fairly ordinary microprocessors – using parallel architecture – at the same time, in its most powerful form it can do somewhere in the region of 2 billion operations per second.
?	UK	Fractal Image Compression Algorithm invented by English mathematician Michael F. Barnsley, allowing digital images to be compressed and stored using fractal codes rather than normal image data.
?	United States	Motorola released the 68030 processor.
?	United States	HyperCard software released.
?	United States	Commodore released the Amiga 500 and the Amiga 2000. The Amiga 500 was similar to the original Amiga 1000, but in an all-in-one case with 512 KB of RAM and at a lower price. The Amiga 2000 was built in a large PC-style case and included 1 MB of RAM and Zorro II expansion slots.
?	United States	VGA released (designed for the PS/2) by IBM.
?	United States	MCGA released (only for low end PS/2s, i.e. the Model 30) by IBM.
?	United States	The 8514/A introduced by IBM. This was a graphics card that included its own processor to speed up the drawing of common objects. The advantages included a reduction in CPU workload.

1988

Date	Place	Event
January	Italy	Foundation of the MPEG group by Leonardo Chiariglione and Hiroshi Yasuda.
June	United States	80386SX was released on June 16 as a cheaper alternative to the 80386DX. It had a narrower (16 bit) time multiplexed bus. This reduction in pins, and the easier integration with 16 bit devices made the cost savings.
July– August	United States	PC DOS 4.0, MS-DOS 4.0 Version 3.4 – 4.x are confusing due to lack of correlation between IBM and Microsoft and also the US and Europe. Several 'Internal Use only' versions were also produced. This version reflected increases in hardware capabilities; it supported hard drives greater than 32 MB (up to 2 GB) and also EMS memory. This version was not properly tested and was bug ridden, causing system crashes and loss of data. The original release was IBM's, but Microsoft's version 4.0 (in October) was no better and version 4.01 was released (in November) to correct this, then version 4.01a (in April 1989) as a further improvement. However many people could not trust this and reverted to version 3.3 while they waited for the complete re-write (version 5 – 3 years later). Betas of Microsoft's version 4.0 were apparently shipped as early as 1986–1987.
September	United States	IBM PS/2 Model 30 286 released, based on an 80286 processor and the old AT bus – IBM abandoned the MCA bus, released less than 18 months earlier. Other IBM machines continued to use the MCA bus.
October	?	Common Access Method committee (CAM) formed. They invented the ATA standard in March 1989.
October	United States	Macintosh IIx released. It was based on a new processor, the Motorola 68030. It still ran at 16 MHz but now achieved 3.9 MIPS. It could be expanded to 128 MB of RAM and had 6 NuBus expansions slots.
November	United States	MS-DOS 4.01, PC DOS 4.01 This corrected many of the bugs seen in version 4.0, but many users simply switched back to version 3.3 and waited for a properly re-written and fully tested version – which did not come until version 5 in June 1991. Support for disk partitions >32 MB.
?	?	First optical chip developed, it uses light instead of electricity to increase processing speed.
?	?	XMS Standard introduced.
?	?	EISA Bus standard introduced.
?	United States	WORM (Write Once Read Many times) – disks marketed for first time by IBM.
?	United States	Adobe Photoshop software created.

1989

Date	Place	Event
January	United States	Apple Computer Macintosh SE/30 released. Like the SE of March 1987 it only had a monochrome display adapter but was fitted with the newer 68030 processor.
March	?	Command set for E-IDE disk drives was defined by CAM (formed Oct. 1988). This supports drives over 528 MB in size. Early controllers often imposed a limit of 2.1 GB, then later ones 8.4GB. Newer controllers support much higher capacities. Drives greater in size than 2.1GB must be partitioned under DOS since the drive structure (laid down in MS-DOS 4) used by DOS and even Windows 95 prevents partitions bigger than 2.1 GB. EIDE controllers also support the ATAPI interface that is used by most CD-ROM drives produced after its introduction. Newer implementations to EIDE, designed for the PCI bus, can achieve data transfer at up to 16.67 MB/s. A later enhancement, called UDMA, allows transfer rates of up to 33.3 MB/s.
March	United States	The Macintosh IIcx released, with the same basic capabilities of the Macintosh IIx but in a more compact half-width case.
April	United States	80486DX released by Intel on April 10. It contains the equivalent of about 1.2 million transistors. At the time of release the fastest version ran at 25 MHz and achieved up to 20 MIPS. Later versions, such as the DX/2 and DX/4 versions achieved internal clock rates of up to 120 MHz.
September	United States	Apple Computer Macintosh IIci released based on a faster version of the 68030 – now running at 25 MHz, and achieved 6.3 MIPS. Apple also released the Macintosh Portable – the first notebook computer Mac, which went back to the original 68000 processor (but now ran it at 16 MHz to achieve 1.3 MIPS). It had a monochrome display.
November	Singapore	Release of Sound Blaster Card, by Creative Labs, its success was ensured by maintaining compatibility with the widely supported AdLib soundcard of 1987.
?	Switzerland
?	United States	Lotus Notes software launched.

External links

• A Brief History of Computing, by Stephen White. The present article is a modified version of his timeline, used with permission.