I was lucky enough to become interested in electronics before the advent of microchips and the whole personal computer industry. By the time the first microprocessors were invented, I was already designing computer hardware. It seemed more my destiny than a choice to be intimately involved in this.

This history has a very personal and somewhat opinionated slant. This is because I lived and breathed it. I loved what I did as I love what I do now. There is no way I could possibly write something without some of my passion showing through.

When I started working with computer electronics it wasn't unusual for people to look at me with a blank stare when I told them that I earned my living designing computer equipment. Most people hadn't heard of computers but when I said "You know, like IBM machines" a glimmer of understanding appeared and a response something like "You must be a genius" came from their mouthes.

The first microprocessors appeared on the market in the early 1970's and they were not sold as computers but as programmable logic replacements. Of course, hobbyists paid no attention to this statement and started building personal computers. I know, I was one of them.

My first computer was designed and built around an Intel 8080 shortly after it became available. It was built mostly from salvaged chips and other components. I couldn't afford to go and buy all this stuff. It was ugly to look at but it worked very well. It's console was an old Teletype model 15 that made a racket loud enough to wake my neighbors.

The 8 bit 8080 and the Motorola 6800 could arguably be called the microprocessors that started it all. Sure, there were a few predecessors such as the Intel 4004, 4040, and 8008 but these were quckly replaced by their more powerful brethren.

The first commercial personal computer I remember seeing on the market was the Altair 8080. Apple and Microsoft didn't exist yet but Byte magazine was just about to start publication as a hacker's magazine. Hacker was a term used describe those who built and programmed their own machines. It wasn't until much later that the term hacker was conscripted to mean a person involved in acts of piracy and general wrong-doing that involved computers.

A short time after the advent of the Altair, several other personal computers appeared on the market and also the CP/M 80 operating system came on the market. A small company called Digital Research maketed this and it was sold on an 8 inch floppy disk that had a capacity of 128 killobytes.

CP/M 80 required a microprocessor such as the 8080 or a Zilog Z80 wiith 16 kilobytes of RAM. You had to write your own BIOS in assembler to make the operating system run. CP/M pretty much ruled the market until the introduction of the IBM PC in 1983.

Many of the commericial designs of personal computers were very poorly done and the IBM PC was no exception. The word junk comes to mind. But IBM was a magic name in those days and Corporate America scooped  these new PC`s up like candy.

Apparently, IBM never expected that these little machines would eventually all but kill their mainframe market. The PC was just a low cost replacement for their 3270 series terminals that could also do a few small computing tasks. IBM generously made all the schematics and BIOS listings avialable in their technical manuals. All the world enthusiastically copied them and made what became known as PC clones. Overnight, small companies sprung up to write various sorts of software for the PC. There were wordprocessing packages, spreadsheet, accounting packages and games to mention only a few. Nobody cared that IBM considered the PC a terminal replacement. The PC was a goldmine and a new gold rush had started.

The PC was based on an Intel 8088 chip. The processor architecture was a bit odd and somewhat difficult to program. There were much better processors on the market among these the Motorola 68000 but that didn't matter. The PC was all the rage.

Along with the PC came MS-DOS. This was essentially a clone of CP/M 80 with a few additional features and written for the x86 processors. The fortunes of both Intel and Microsoft followed the popularity of the IBM PC. Both rose from relatively unknown companies to de facto monopolies.

Oddly, Intel at first refused to acknowledge the IBM PC and told its field application engineers (FAE) that they were to avoid clone manufacturers. I remember this clearly since I was an FAE working for Intel at the time. How things change!

The first PC was rapidly replaced by the PC/XT that supported the addition of hard disk drives. Hot on it heels was the PC/AT that brought the more powerful 80286 to the PC platform. All the while, clone manufacturers were not only copying the new iterations of PC but making faster versions at lower cost the the IBM brand.

The 80286 was the first Intel processor to have a memory management unit (MMU). An MMU is required in order to be able to design an operating system the supports memory protection. The unit allows an operating system to run multiple applications and users in complete isolation of each other. Unfortunately, due to the quirkiness of the x86 architecture, the 80286 never really got a protected mode operating system.

The 80386, was the first 32 bit x86 microprocessor. It also had an MMU and because of the processors 32 bit registers, also made a protected mode operating system much easier to implement. Still we had to wait until the release of the Pentium processors before a protected mode operating system became popular. The Pentium and various further iterations of it are really just extensions of the 80386.

Around the time the 80386 came on the market, Microsoft introduced Windows 3.0 and 3.1. This was not an operating system but an extension of MS-DOS. It could be called a desktop environment. It was very successful and led to Windows 95. Windows was essentially intended to bring the ease of use and graphics capability of the Apple MAC's to the PC.

The most notable thing that happened with the Pentium was the replacement of ths ISA bus with the PCI bus. ISA is an acronym for Industry Standard Architecture and had been around since the first PC was introduced. I had always thought that ISA would be better called "Insanely Stupid Architecture". It was one of the worst designs I had ever seen.

PCI was definitely a huge improvement and brought with it a few innovative ideas. It was long overdue as ISA had long stifled innovation in the PC. Finally, we had well well designed bus.

Now, in the early days of the PC, every chip manufacturer had to have another manufacturer making copies of its chips. This was known as a second source and no engineer would consider using a chip unless a second source was available. I mention this because it is crucial to how AMD got into the PC marketplace as chip provider.

AMD and Intel had cross-licensing agreements the covered the first x86 series of chips and so could easily produce chips for the PC market. But with the introduction of the 80386, Intel was in a position where it no longer needed a second source for it chips. Intel controlled the PC market as far a chip supply was concerned.

AMD decided to start on making their own clones of Pentium chips. Now, in my opinion, AMD made a huge and costly mistake. They decided to attack Intel at the low end of the chip market. That is, the low cost, commodity chips and boldly announced that it would always sell them at 25% less than a comparable Intel chip. In order to understand why this is a mistake, you need to understand that Intel's low end chips were at one time their high end chips. When a chip is first introduced, there are huge development costs that need to be recouped before a profit can be made. The low end chips have long since paid off these costs and manufacturing is both easy and low cost. Intel could easily afford to cut the prices on these chips and still make a profit. On the other hand, AMD could not cut prices and make money. AMD consistantly lost money with their strategy.

Now, Intel's turn to goof. They decided that the x86 instruction set, also known as IA32, had reached it's end. To go to a 64 bit processor, Intel decided on a completely new architecture that became the Itanium.

AMD took on a challenge. There were billions of dolloars worth of investment in existing 32 bit software that would be lost in going to the Itanium. AMD decided to extend the IA32 instruction set to 64 bits and keep compatibility with the exisiting 32 bit software. These processors were codenamed Hammer and later became known as Athlon 64 processors. The instruction set, not surprisingly, became known as AMD64.

Intel was left playing catch-up and its response became known as the CORE 2 processors that run the AMD64 instruction set. For a while, AMD was on top. But it doesn't end there. Amd's resources are mere pocket change to Intel and it didn't take long wor Intel to come out ahead.

I haven't said much about Apple so far. Clearly, Apple was a big player in the personal computer marketplace since the beginning. It has had its ups and downs along the way but has always provided interesting innovations.

The first successful computer Apple brought to market was the Apple II. It offered graphics and used TV as a display. It was a huge success with people who wanted to play games as well as do work. There were many clones of the Apple II and Apple was relatively powerless to stop all the copies. 

The next generation of computer that that Apple brought to market was the Lisa. It was a very good design but also much too expensive for most people's budgets. A scaled down version of the LIsa became the Mac. This too is where Apple made a big mistake

Every computer needs software to be useful and, at the time, most software was written by small garage operations where two or three guys with an idea worked long hours to create an application. Apple had forgotten its roots. Perhaps because of its experience with cloning of the Apple II, they decided that anyone who wanted to write software for the Mac had to sign a license agreement as well as pay a substantial sum of money to Apple. Many garage operations simply could not afford the investment. As a consequence, there were very few applications written for the Mac. In spite of the fact that Mac hardware was much better than the PC, it could never compete.

It took many years before Apple reinvented itself and introdoced the iMac and the MacBooks as well as all the other products that are now Apple's claim to fame.

Many people believe that Apple invented the mouse and the Graphical User Interface (GUI) that the Mac and the PC sports. Apple sued Microsoft over the GUI claiming the Microsoft had infringed on its copyrights. The suit was dropped.

In fact, the whole idea of a GUI and the mouse was invented by a researcher at Xerox PARC in the late sixties or early seventies. In the manner of the day, this invention was not really related to the primary business that Xerox was in and so was simply put on a shelf to gather dust. Legend has it that Steve Jobs was wandering around the research center, came across the invention, and decided to use it. Again, in those days, the idea of "intellectual property" hadn't been invented by lawyers and MBA's so Apple and Microsoft were free to use these.

There are, of course, a number of other players that deserve a place in this history. For example Commodore 64 and the Timex Sinclair were quite popular for a time. To include all of the players and do them justice, would easily fill a book.

I find it a shame that the PC market has become a competition of price. Quality has suffered and there really is no innovation in the mainstream market. Sadly Microsoft can stuff junk like Windows Vista down everyone's throats and charge exorbitant prices for what should be a low cost commodity.

There are alternatives and perhaps developing countires will provide the impetus to drive the next major change in computing. Until then corporate America will stay suck in a rut fearful of change and anything really new.