Apple II Plus

Announced 1978
Discontinued 1982

The Apple II was eventually superseded by the Apple II Plus, which included the Applesoft BASIC programming language in ROM. This Microsoft-authored dialect of BASIC, which was previously available as an upgrade, supported floating-point arithmetic (though it ran at a noticeably slower speed than Steve Wozniak's Integer BASIC) and became the standard BASIC dialect on the Apple.

Apple IIc

Announced 1984
Discontinued 1988

Apple released the Apple IIc in April 1984, billing it as a portable Apple II. (By portable it was meant that the computer could be easily carried from place to place; lacking battery power and a built-in display, it was not a true portable as the term is used today.) The IIc even sported a carrying handle that folded down to prop the machine up in a typing position. It was the first of three Apple II models to be made in the Snow White design language -- and the only one that was actually white. (The other machines, the Apple IIGS and the IIc Plus, were actually light gray, or as Apple had it, "platinum.")

Apple IIgs

Announced 1986
Discontinued 1992

The next member of the line was the Apple IIGS computer, released in 1986. A radical departure from the existing Apple II line, the IIGS featured a true 16-bit microprocessor, the 65C816, operating at 2.8 MHz with 24-bit addressing, allowing expansion up to 8 MB of RAM without the bank-switching hassles of the earlier machines. It introduced two completely new graphic modes sporting higher resolutions and a palette of 4,096 colors; however, only 4 (at 640 × 200 resolution) or 16 (at 320 × 200 resolution) colors could be used on a single line at a time, although a technique known as dithering was often employed in software to increase the number of perceived colors.

Apple Macintosh Plus

Announced 1986
Discontinued 1990

The Apple Macintosh Plus features an 8 MHz 68000 processor, 1 MB of RAM, and an 800k disk drive in a beige all-in-one case with a 9" monochrome display. The Macintosh Plus was the first Macintosh to have a double-density 800k disk drive, a SCSI port to allow external expansion, and RAM slots to allow the RAM to be expanded beyond the pre-installed limit.

Commodore 64 Versions 1 & 2

Announced 1982
Discontinued 1985

The Commodore 64 personal computer released in August 1982 became the best selling single computer model of all time. The Commodore 64 is commonly referred to as the C64, other less common names include CBM 64/CBM64, C= 64. It is also affectionately nicknamed the "breadbin" due to its shape.

The C64, together with the Commodore PET and VIC-20 were pioneering forays into the emergent personal computer industry, in a time characterized by many varieties of mostly incompatible machines. Introduced by Commodore Business Machines in August 1982 at the low price of US$595, it offered 64 kilobytes of RAM, with sound and graphics performance that compared favorably with later IBM compatible computers of that time. During the Commodore 64's lifetime (between 1982 and 1993), sales totaled around 17 million units [1]. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Commodore 64 remains the best selling single computer model of all time.

Compaq Prolinea 4/33

Announced ?
Discontinued ?

The Compaq ProLinea Family of Personal Computers introduced a new generation of desktop computers designed for the business environment. The family included Desktop 3 slot/3 bay (DT3) and Desktop 4 slot/4 bay (DT4) models.

Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) Micro Vax

Announced 1976
Discontinued 1983

In 1976 DEC decided to move to an entirely new 32-bit platform, which they referred to as the super-mini. They released this as the VAX (Virtual Address eXtension) 11/780 in 1978, and immediately took over the vast majority of the minicomputer market. Desperate attempts by competitors such as Data General (which had been formed in 1968 by a former DEC engineer who had worked on a 16-bit design that DEC had rejected) to win back market share failed, due not only to DEC's successes, but the emergence of the microcomputer and workstation into the lower-end of the minicomputer market. In 1983, DEC cancelled their "Jupiter" project, which had been intended to build a successor to the PDP-10, and instead focused on promoting the VAX as their flagship model.

Osborne 1

Announced 1981
Discontinued ?

The Osborne 1 was the first commercially available portable "all-in-one" microcomputer, released in April, 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. It weighed 23.5 pounds (12 kg), cost US$1795, and ran the then-popular CP/M 2.2 operating system. Its principal deficiencies were a tiny 5 inch (13 cm) display screen and single sided, single density floppy disk drives whose disks could not contain sufficient data for practical business applications. Its design owed much to that of the Xerox NoteTaker, a prototype developed at Xerox PARC in 1976.

Tandy-Radio Shack Model 2000

Announced ?
Discontinued ?

The Tandy 2000 was a computer which used the Intel 80186 microprocessor. By comparison, the IBM PC-XT used the older 8088 processor. Due to the more efficient design of the 80186, the Tandy 2000 ran somewhat faster than other PC compatibles. While touted as being compatible with the IBM XT, the Tandy 2000 was different enough for most software beyond purely text oriented to not work properly. It differed by having a Tandy-specific video mode (640x480, but not related to or forward-compatible with VGA) and keyboard scan codes, and possible other differences. The computer was well supported by Radio Shack in the ensuing years; eventually the remaining unsold computers were converted into the first Radio Shack Terminals (which, oddly enough, had been one of the original backup plans for the original Trs-80 Model 1). The Tandy 2000 was the first computer that Radio Shack put out that lacked the TRS-80 (AKA "Trash-80") name.

Timex Sinclair 1000

Announced 1982
Discontinued ?

The TS1000 was a slightly modified Sinclair ZX81 with an NTSC RF modulator instead of a UK PAL device and the onboard RAM doubled to two kilobytes. The TS1000's casing had slightly more internal shielding but remained the same as Sinclair's, including the much-reviled membrane keyboard. It had no sound and black and white graphics. It was followed by an improved version, the Timex Sinclair 1500.

Toshiba T1000

Announced 1987
Discontinued ?

The first real laptop - the Toshiba T1000 - emerged from the future in 1987. Equipped with a 4.77 MHz intel processor, 512 kB RAM and the Toshiba MS-DOS 2.11 operating system in read-only memory it was - and is - a virtually indestructible piece of equipment. This thing doesn't know how to crash, in contrast to modern windows machines. Use for example FirstBasic (available as a fully functional shareware version) set to "8086/88" CPU and "procedure" floating point support to program the T1000. The entire program occupies less than 500 kB without the sample files, and will fit on one floppy.

Toshiba T1000SE

Announced ?
Discontinued ?

Toshiba's (at the time) smallest and lightest battery operated computer is perfect for students whose work requires a truly functional notebook size PC. Major features include: 80C86 CPU, running at 9.54Mhz; 1MB RAM standard expandable to 3MB; CGA compatible backlit supertwist LCD display; 640X400 bit mapped graphics; one 1.44MB 3.5" floppy disk drive; re­chargeable battery pack and Universal AC adapter, and lots more.

Apple II Plus Motherboard

By 1981, when the Revision 7 motherboard was released for the Apple II Plus, a different method of character generation was used, which reduced radio-frequency interference that was generated. For Revision 7 boards, lower-case characters could be displayed with the addition of only a single chip. However, unless a user changed the keyboard encoder with a third-party product, only upper-case characters could be typed.

Apple III Version 2 Motherboard