And what were the 80s like for you? (Was: z80 timing...

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Wed Apr 21 18:47:54 1999

>10 years?
>Does this imply that the PC was not the dominant force until the end of the
80s?
>
No, I'd say it was a force to be reckoned with from the first day it
appeared, but it was several years before a reasonably useful suite of
software was available at a reasonable price. The Z-80 and Apple-II
continued to be a force in the marketplace until the late '80's. By 1988,
the PC was completely dominant in the general purpose microcomputer market,
with the exception of the desktop publishing market, which the Apple
MacIntosh, in case you've forgotten about it, had pretty well dominated up
to the release of Windows 3.0. The appearance of WIndows 3.0 got the MAC
people to look at the pricetag for the first time. Up to then there had
been few WYSIWYG graphics tools for the PC. Once the PC started showing up
with WYSIWYG graphics applications, the MAC's days were numbered. This
could have been fixed with a timely price cut, but that wasn't forthcoming.

I even had pretty decent cross-development tools for the PC, yet continued
using my CP/M tools until about 1987.

Dick

-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Wednesday, April 21, 1999 2:38 PM
Subject: And what were the 80s like for you? (Was: z80 timing...


>On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>> I suppose that's true, Hans, BUT, in1982, there were few other
processors
>> than the 6502 and Z-80 in popular use, with the exception of the 8080A
and
>> the 8085, of course.
>
>In it's first couple of years, the IBM PC (introduced 8/11/1981) sold
>enough machines that surely the 8088 could have been said to be in popular
>use!
>[this is a comment about market, NOT an endorsement]
>
>> The majority of home computers, though, used one of
>> these two, at that time. Several years later, we found the 6510 and 6809
in
>> commercially interesting applications, but not for as long a period as
the
>> Z-80 and 6502. These two had a life of nearly ten years before the
IBM-PC
>> and its clones wrenched the home computer market from their grasp.
>
>10 years?
>Does this imply that the PC was not the dominant force until the end of
>the 80s?
>[this is a comment about market, NOT an endorsement]
>
>
Received on Wed Apr 21 1999 - 18:47:54 BST