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Exidy Sorcerer
The Sorcerer is a home computer system released in 1978 by the video game company Exidy. Based on the Zilog Z80 and the general layout of the emerging S-100 standard, the Sorcerer was comparatively advanced when released, especially when compared to the contemporary more commercially successful Commodore PET and TRS-80. The basic design was proposed by Paul Terrell, formerly of the Byte Shop, a pioneering computer store. Lacking strong support from its parent company, who were focused on the successful arcade game market, the Sorcerer was sold primarily through international distributors and technology licensing agreements. Distribution agreements with Dick Smith Electronics in Australia and Liveport in the UK as well as Compudata which included a manufacturing license to build, market and distribute the Tulip line of computers in Europe. The system remains relatively unknown outside these markets. The Exidy Data Systems division was sold to a Wall Street firm, Biotech, in 198 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exidy
Exidy was a developer and manufacturer of coin-operated amusements. The company was founded by H.R. "Pete" Kauffman and Samuel Hawes in 1973. The name "Exidy" was a portmanteau of the words "Excellence in Dynamics". Notable games released by Exidy include ''Circus (video game), Circus'', ''Death Race (1976 game), Death Race'', ''Star Fire'', ''Venture (video game), Venture'', ''Pepper II'', ''Mouse Trap (video game), Mouse Trap'', ''Targ (video game), Targ'' and ''Spectar''. Game history Pete Kauffman (1923 – 2015) was a marketing executive at Ramtek (company) in 1972 and was one of several employees of the company who played the original Atari ''Pong'' prototype at Andy Capps Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. Believing coin-operated video games would become a major business, he left Ramtek in late 1973 to establish Exidy with Ampex engineer Samuel Hawes. Exidy found competing with larger video game companies such as Atari, Inc. difficult. The company's Lila Zinter claimed in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apple II
The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-molded plastic case, Rod Holt developed the switching power supply, while Steve Jobs's role in the design of the computer was limited to overseeing Jerry Manock's work on the plastic case. It was introduced by Jobs and Wozniak at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire, and marks Apple's first launch of a personal computer aimed at a consumer market—branded toward American households rather than businessmen or computer hobbyists. ''Byte'' magazine referred to the Apple II, Commodore PET 2001, and TRS-80 as the "1977 Trinity". As the Apple II had the defining feature of being able to display color graphics, the Apple logo was redesigned to have a spectrum of colors. The Apple II is the first model in the Apple II series, followed by Apple ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CP/M
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations and were migrated to 16-bit processors. The combination of CP/M and S-100 bus computers became an early standard in the microcomputer industry. This computer platform was widely used in business through the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s. CP/M increased the market size for both hardware and software by greatly reducing the amount of programming required to install an application on a new manufacturer's computer. An important driver of software innovation was the advent of (comparatively) low-cost microcomputers running CP/M, as independent programmers and hackers bought them and shared their crea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Datamax UV-1
{{no footnotes, date=May 2014 The Datamax UV-1 is a pioneering computer designed by a group of computer graphics artists working at the University of Illinois at Chicago, known as the ''Circle Graphics Habitat''. It was primarily the brainchild of Tom DeFanti, who was trying to build a machine capable of running his GRASS programming language at a personal computer price point, a project they referred to as the Z-Box. As time went on the project evolved into a machine intended to be used to make high-quality color graphics for output to videotape, and later as a titling system for use by cable television companies. It represents what seems to be the first dedicated graphics workstation. DeFanti had been working at the Habitat for some time when, in 1977, he was introduced to Jeff Frederiksen, a chip designer working at Dave Nutting Associates. Nutting had been contracted by Midway, the video game division of Bally, to create a standardized graphics driver chip. They intended to use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astrocade
The ''Bally'' ''Astrocade'' (also known as ''Bally Arcade'' or initially as ''Bally ABA-1000'') is a second-generation home video game console and simple computer system designed by a team at Midway, at that time the videogame division of Bally. It was originally announced as the "Bally Home Library Computer" in October 1977 and initially made available for mail order in December 1977. But due to production delays, the units were first released to stores in April 1978 and its branding changed to "Bally Professional Arcade". It was marketed only for a limited time before Bally decided to exit the market. The rights were later picked up by a third-party company, who re-released it and sold it until around 1984. The Astrocade is particularly notable for its very powerful graphics capabilities for the time of release, and for the difficulty in accessing those capabilities. History Nutting and Midway In the late 1970s, Midway contracted Dave Nutting Associates to design a video ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bally Technologies
Bally Technologies, Inc. is an American manufacturer of slot machines and other gambling technology based in Enterprise, Nevada. It is owned by Light & Wonder. The company was founded in 1968 as Advanced Patent Technology. It eventually changed its name to Alliance Gaming and in 1996 acquired Bally Gaming International, a former division of Bally Manufacturing. In 2006, the entire company adopted the Bally name. Scientific Games (now Light & Wonder) acquired the company in 2014. Today, Bally constitutes one of the three brands of Light & Wonder, along with WMS and Shuffle Master. History Advanced Patent Technology Advanced Patent Technology was founded in 1968 by Jack Solomon and Alvin Snaper, entrepreneurs who held patents in fields including medicine, optics, and electronics. The company's stock was publicly offered the next year. Its first 12 years were spent in the development stage. It boasted a portfolio of over 80 patents, but generated considerable publicity for five ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intel 8088
The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and the one megabyte address range are unchanged, however. In fact, according to the Intel documentation, the 8086 and 8088 have the same execution unit (EU)—only the bus interface unit (BIU) is different. The original IBM PC is based on the 8088, as are its clones. History and description The 8088 was designed at Intel's laboratory in Haifa, Israel, as were a large number of Intel's processors. The 8088 was targeted at economical systems by allowing the use of an eight-bit data path and eight-bit support and peripheral chips; complex circuit boards were still fairly cumbersome and expensive when it was released. The prefetch queue of the 8088 was shortened to four bytes, from the 8086's six bytes, and the prefetch algorithm was s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
16-bit
16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 65,535 (216 − 1) for representation as an (unsigned) binary number, and −32,768 (−1 × 215) through 32,767 (215 − 1) for representation as two's complement. Since 216 is 65,536, a processor with 16-bit memory addresses can directly access 64 KB (65,536 bytes) of byte-addressable memory. If a system uses segmentation with 16-bit segment offsets, more can be accessed. 16-bit architecture The MIT Whirlwind ( 1951) was quite possibly the first-ever 16-bit computer. It was an unusual word size for the era; most systems used six-bit character code and used a word length of some multiple of 6-bits. This changed with the effort to introduce ASCII, which used a 7-bit code and naturally led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Netherlands
) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherlands , established_title2 = Act of Abjuration , established_date2 = 26 July 1581 , established_title3 = Peace of Münster , established_date3 = 30 January 1648 , established_title4 = Kingdom established , established_date4 = 16 March 1815 , established_title5 = Liberation Day (Netherlands), Liberation Day , established_date5 = 5 May 1945 , established_title6 = Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kingdom Charter , established_date6 = 15 December 1954 , established_title7 = Dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles, Caribbean reorganisation , established_date7 = 10 October 2010 , official_languages = Dutch language, Dutch , languages_type = Regional languages , languages_sub = yes , languages = , languages2_type = Reco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. Comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia, it shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Africa and Asia. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and Asia to the east. Europe is commonly considered to be Boundaries between the continents of Earth#Asia and Europe, separated from Asia by the drainage divide, watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural (river), Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DAI Personal Computer
The DAI personal computer is an early home computer from the Belgian company '' Data Applications International''. The DAI came to market in 1980. It provided many pioneering features such as high resolution color graphics, a maths co-processor, and a pre-compiling BASIC interpreter. However, it never became a commercial success. History The computer was initially designed by DAI for the UK subsidiary of Texas Instruments for use with the PAL televisions used in Britain. TI US did not want to build a PAL version of their TI-99/4A home computer, although they subsequently authorized one after they saw the DAI. The Dutch educational TV broadcast company Teleac wanted to use the DAI to teach computing, some years before the BBC's similar initiative using the BBC Micro. However, they chose the Exidy Sorcerer instead, because the DAI was not completely ready. Main technical specifications The DAI was based on a very early 8-bit microprocessor, the Intel 8080 A, a CPU that was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Micro
The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphasis on education, it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability, and the quality of its operating system. An accompanying 1982 television series, ''The Computer Programme'', featuring Chris Serle learning to use the machine, was broadcast on BBC2. After the Literacy Project's call for bids for a computer to accompany the TV programmes and literature, Acorn won the contract with the ''Proton'', a successor of its Atom computer prototyped at short notice. Renamed the BBC Micro, the system was adopted by most schools in the United Kingdom, changing Acorn's fortunes. It was also successful as a home computer in the UK, despite its high cost. Acorn later employed the machine to simulate and develop the ARM architecture. While nine models ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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