Raspberry Pi (2012)

Available April 2012

Single board computers were common in the early days of microcomputers, with the KIM-1 offering a relatively low-cost way of playing with the then-new 6502 CPU and later devices such as the Acorn System 1 made it cheaper still. But single board computers appealed most to hobbyists, and as technology developed so did microcomputers, eventually evolving into complete systems that were easier for novices to use.

Original Raspberry Pi Model B

As the decades rolled on, the amount of computing power that could be squeezed into a board computer grew. First came Arduino, a series of open source board computers that could be used for microcontrollers. A few years later, TI came up with the BeagleBoard which was a general purpose computer on a single board. But perhaps the best know modern single board computer is the Raspberry Pi, shipping to customers in April 2012.

Unlike some other designs, the Pi was a complete system on a compact board. With built-in USB, video and networking ports all that was required was a memory card with an operating system and a monitor, keyboard, mouse and power supply. These are all pretty common peripherals, and in most cases Pi users could just re-purpose old equipment used elsewhere. The Pi didn’t come with a case so a cottage industry started up making them, all of this echoing the rather do-it-yourself approach of the original Apple I.

The first Raspberry Pi models were announced in February 2012, coming to market in April the same year. Like the BBC Micro, there were two launch models of the Pi – A and B. B was the most popular, based around a Broadcom chipset that included an ARM CPU, RAM and all of the other silicon needed on a single chip. But perhaps the biggest breakthrough was the price – this complete computer system cost just $25 or the local equivalent for the simplest model.

Coincidentally, the ARM CPU in the Pi was originally designed by Acorn, whose experience with the 6502 (starting with the Acorn System 1 board computer) inspired them to create an inexpensive, simple but very fast processor based on similar principles.

The target market was initially education – instead of expensive laptops, students could simply plug their own Pi into a PSU, monitor, network socket, mouse and keyboard and do whatever they wanted with it. The easily swappable memory card meant that different configurations could be experimented with easily. But the appeal turned out to be far greater, everyone from hobbyists to engineers wanted to play with one and the Pi became a significant success. Raspberry Pi devices can be seen in almost any application from controllers to servers, often performing tasks as well as machines costing hundreds of times as much.

A decade on, the Raspberry Pi is still going strong. Later models offered more ports, a faster processor and more memory and even cheaper models such as the Pi Zero and Pi Pico slotted into the range below the fully-featured Pi. A wide range of peripherals are available for almost any application, and OS support has grown from Linux-only to include Windows 10 IoT and even a version of RISC OS (originally designed for the very first ARM-based computer, the Archimedes).

Raspberry Pi emulating a DEC PDP-8 and PDP-11

Millions of devices and a decade later, the Pi has proved to be an antidote to the anodyne world of modern personal computing. The Pi helped to re-ignite some of the early hacker ethic of early micros and taught a new generation that what they could do with a computer was only limited by their imagination. Not too shabby for just $25.

Image credits:
osde8info via Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0
Wolfgang Stief via Flickr – CC0

GRiD Compass (1982)

Released April 1982

Even though practical microcomputers had only been around for a few years by 1982, there was a growing market for portable devices such as the Kaypro II which offered all the computing power you probably needed in a luggable package.

Back then people accepted that a portable computer would weigh something like 13 kg and come in a huge case. Practically speaking you’d typically carry it between a desk and car. Unlike modern “laptop” computers, most portables of the early 1980s would possibly break your knees if you tried to use them on the sofa.

GRiD Compass

The first practical laptop computer is widely considered to be the GRiD Compass. A clamshell on the front of the device held a 320 x 240 pixel electroluminescent display and a keyboard in a format instantly recognisable today. Although the display was relatively small, it was sharp and clear compared to early LCD panels and the limited resolution was actually pretty competitive with most computers of the time.

Inside was an Intel 8086 CPU with an 8087 maths coprocessor, but this was no DOS-compatible computer. Instead the Compass ran a proprietary OS called GRID-OS which was menu-driven and quite friendly. One novelty was storage – the Compass used magnetic bubble memory giving 340Kb of non-volatile storage. Most production systems also included a modem, and an IEEE interface bus was standard. The lightweight but strong magnesium alloy case contributed to the relatively light weight of around 5 kg.

This was a highly advanced machine, and it came with a substantial price tag starting at $8500 in 1982 money which is around $25,000 today. OK, it is possible to spend more than that on a computer today (a high-end Mac Pro can cost $60,000 or more) but that was nearly six times the price of the Kaypro and to be honest it couldn’t do as much for a typical end user.

Where it did find a niche was in government sales. The tough but lightweight design lent itself well to military applications, and the Compass was also certified for use on board the Space Shuttle. Large corporations were drawn to it as a practical and highly portable device, but few found their way to private users due to the high price.

GRiD Compass running a spreadsheet

This was the first in line of several GRiD systems, and on top of healthy sales they also owned a patent for several of the elements of the clamshell design, meaning that other laptop manufacturers had to pay GRiD a fee for each system built. GRiD was taken over by Tandy in 1988 followed by a management buyout in 1993 which moved the company from California to the UK. The company – now called GRiD Defence Systems – still makes ruggedized laptops and other hardware.

The Compass set the pattern for all modern laptop designs, years before they became commonplace. Today first-generation GRiD Compass systems are very rare and you can expect to pay between £5000 to £10000 for a working system.

Image credits:
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Niall Kennedy via Flickr - CC BY-NC 2.0

Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1982)

Introduced April 1982

If you were a British child of the 1980s, the chances were that you possessed one of the holy trinity of the BBC Micro, Commodore 64 or the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. A rivalry leading to many playground arguments, these three machines duked it out for years with no clear winner.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum

Out of the three, the cheapest and most popular (for a while) was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Sinclair’s follow-on to the ultra-low-cost ZX81 launched the year before, the Spectrum added rudimentary but usable colour, graphics and sound in a package with either 16kB or more desirably 48Kb of RAM in a stylish package – all at a very attractive price.

Like the ZX81, the Spectrum was based on a Z80 processor. But where the ZX81 struggled to do anything due to its clever-but-simple design, the Spectrum was highly competitive with the new generation of early 1980s home computers.

It wasn’t a big machine – roughly the size of a sheet of A5 paper and weighing around 550 grams – but Rick Dickinson’s industrial design consisting of a black case, grey keys and the 1980s-on-a-stick rainbow flash on the corner looked far more impressive than the competition. Those keys were something else though – each one performed up to six functions in the Spectrum’s capable BASIC environment, but the strange rubberiness of the keys felt like touching dead flesh.

The multifunction keys bear some examination. All the BASIC keywords were assigned to a key which would activate depending on context, or with the CAPS SHIFT and SYMBOL SHIFT keys. This layout was first seen on the ZX80 and while it reduced errors and made programming more accessible, it was becoming more fiddly as the version of BASIC evolved. The Spectrum’s version of BASIC was pretty sophisticated – not as good as the one in the BBC but better than the Commodore 64. Budding programmers took to the Spectrum and coded furiously from their bedrooms.

As standard the Spectrum loaded and save programs to a cassette, which was quite slow. Video output was to a domestic TV set, so the Spectrum could easily plug into what you probably already had in the house. The desirable 48Kb version cost just £175 at the time (equivalent to around £650 today) but you really didn’t need anything else if you had a TV and cassette recorder.

Like the BBC, the Spectrum could address only 64Kb of memory. The ROM was simpler than the BBC, taking up just 16Kb which left up to 48Kb of RAM available. The Spectrum’s curious colour graphics mode didn’t eat up much memory either, meaning that there was quite a decent amount of RAM available for programs, something that the BBC struggled with.

The colour graphics were rather strange. The 256 x 192 pixel resolution could display up to 15 colours, but you could only have one foreground (INK) and one background (PAPER) could in each 32x24 pixel character grid. This made it tricky to code colour games (for example) but it was very memory efficient. Sound output was fairly simple with a one channel output, but it was good enough for most purposes.

Like the ZX81 and ZX80, and edge connector on the back of the machine allowed access to pretty much all hardware functions. Sinclair’s official accessories on launch included a tiny thermal printer and the ZX Microdrive, which was a high-speed tape cartridge which was plagued with delays. Popular third-party addons included the Kempston Micro Electronics joystick interface but also various adapters for disk drives, speech, serial and parallel ports and perhaps most important a variety of aftermarket keyboards that improved on the Spectrum’s unpleasant chicklet affair.

Spectrum with daisy-chained ZX Microdrives and sound enhancements

The Spectrum was an enormous success - the combination of pricing, features and the brand recognition of the “Sinclair” name were key factors. Success bred success with huge variety of games and other applications along with hardware enhancements coming to market. Few competitors had a fraction of the third-party support that the Spectrum did.

1982 and 1983 were probably the peak years for the home computer market in the UK. Sinclair found itself up against increasing competition from less well-known machines which were often better (though rarely cheaper). In 1984 the Spectrum+ was launched, essentially a 48K Spectrum in a Sinclair QL-style case. A 128Kb version dubbed the Spectrum 128 was launched the year after, using memory paging to break the 64Kb limit. In 1986 Sinclair found itself in difficulties and was bought by Amstrad who styled new models after their popular CPC range leading to the Spectrum +2 with an integrated cassette recorder in 1986 and the Spectrum +3 which included a built-in 3” floppy disk drive, launched in 1987. This +3 was the ultimate development of the Spectrum platform, capable of running CP/M but it wasn’t 100% hardware compatible with the original which caused problems. The last Spectrum models in production were the +2B and +3B which were basically hardware fixes of previous versions, production ended in 1992 giving the Spectrum platform an impressive ten year lifespan.

ZX Spectrum +3 with 128Kb RAM and a 3" floppy drive

In addition to the official Sinclair version, licensed and unlicensed clones proliferated – notably licensed variants made Timex in the US and Europe, and a huge number of bootleg clones in Eastern Europe and South America into the 1990s. In the 2010s there were several attempts to recreate the Spectrum with modern technology, perhaps most significantly with the ZX Spectrum Next.

Despite the success of the Spectrum in the market, ultimately it was something of a dead end – even though fondness for the platform lingers on four decades later. However, the significance of the Spectrum was profound in the markets it succeeded in: this low-cost, easy-to-use and versatile device inspired a generation of programmers and computer enthusiasts, many of whom went on to carve careers out in the IT industry. This simple but effective machine not only help to shape lives, but also whole economies. Not bad for a cheap computer with a nasty rubber keyboard.

Image credits:
Bill Bertram via Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 2.5
ccwoodcock via Wikimedia Commons – CC BY 2.0
ccwoodcock via Wikimedia Commons – CC BY 2.0

Fiat 127 vs Morris Marina (1971)

Introduced April 1971

Two cars, two different design philosophies – the Fiat 127 and Morris Marina were both introduced in April 1971. One ended up being celebrated, the other derided. But which is which?

Fiat 127

Ah yes – the Fiat 127, the cute and inexpensive Italian hatchback of the 1970s. But it wasn’t a hatchback… well, not at launch, in 1971 you had a two-door saloon that had a boot at the back. Remember than even in the 1970s, the idea of the hatchback was a radical one… even though today it is an obviously versatile way to build a small car. The little 900cc engine gave a respectable 46 horsepower for such a car weighing about 700kg. The design was innovative enough, with crumple zones and excellent road holding – helped by the car’s front-wheel drive - with decent interior space as well.

Fiat 127

A year later the hatchback version arrived – this is the version that really sold well – a major facelift in 1977 gave a more modern look and better engines. A further revision in 1982 sneaked in just before the launch of the Fiat Uno in 1983, and licenced versions built overseas lasted even longer.

This radical car was designed by Pio Manzù, who was tragically killed in a car accident before the 127 came into production. Manzù was an exceptionally talented young designer of lamps, clocks and furniture before turning his hand to automotive design. Just 30 years old when he died, it is likely that Manzù would have become one of the great car designers given the chance.

The Fiat 127 was massively influential – arguable the first modern hatchback design (well, eventually) – it set a pattern for small cars that it still in use today. Despite selling in huge numbers, only about 100 are still on British roads.

Morris Marina

Where the Fiat 127 predicted the future, the Morris Marina was instead a quick fix to British Leyland’s problems in the late 1960s with competing with the Ford Cortina. Available as a traditional four-door saloon or a rather rakish coupé, the Marina used tried-and-tested components to come up with something that wasn’t all that exciting, but for a while was certainly successful.

Morris Marina

A reputation for unreliability and variable build quality, the Marina fell out of favour by the late 1970s and quickly became something of a joke, but this was probably unfair. It had been designed in a hurry and with a minimal budget, and yet it did everything that an early 1970s fleet buyer would want. It was certainly competitive with the Cortina.

The Marina’s Cortina-like capabilities were perhaps no coincidence. Designer Roy Haynes who created the Marina was also largely responsible for the Mark II Cortina. Haynes went on to other things before the Marina was launched however, and again here was another designer who had a chance to be one of the all-time greats but things didn’t quite pan out.

The Marina continued on until 1980 when it was replaced by the Ital – essentially a heavy facelift of the Marina – which continued until 1984. The Ital was the end of the line for Morris though, in the end the Marina was a dead end. Fewer than 400 Marinas are still on British roads.

Well, almost – the Ital briefly emerged again as the Huandu CAC6430 in China in the late 1990s. But it was the utterly magnificent door handles that had a life of their own, turning up in all sorts of exotic designs such as Lotuses and Ginettas.

Image credits:
Robert Capper via Flickr – CC BY-NC 2.0
Qropatwa via Flickr - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Hayes Smartmodem (1981)

Introduced April 1981

The sound of modems belongs to a certain era before ubiquitous broadband. The characteristic screeching noise – a bit like a fax – joined in the rat-a-tat of dot matrix printers and the clunk clunk of mechanical disk drives. Modems had been around since the 1950s, a way of connecting computers together over the omnipresent telephone network. But initially they were very expensive and aimed at really big computer systems. As time went on, they became more affordable.. but not very usable.

By the late 1970s modems for computers had developed in two different ways – the acoustic coupler was a device where the screeching noise was fed into the telephone handset (often via a serial cable) or alternatively where it was permitted, the modem would be a card inside the computer with a telephone connection built in. But the acoustic coupler was bulky and slow, but the alternatively tended to need a modem designed specifically for every model of computer on the market – and these were only available for large systems and not the booming microcomputer market. There had to be a better way.

What was needed was a modem that could work with just about anything. That was the Hayes Smartmodem.

Hayes Smartmodem

The “Smart” in Smartmodem wasn’t just marketing speak. It took advantage of the fact that almost every microcomputer system on the market had a serial port fitted, or one available as an optional extra. By using a serial port, all you needed to connect the Smartmodem to your micro was the appropriate cable, which if you couldn’t buy you might be able to make yourself.

But the implementation of serial ports varied from computer to computer, the Smartmodem needed to know (for example) when to hang up the connection. More sophisticated computers used pins to indicate when the connection was up or down, but cheaper ones didn’t. The serial port could also be running at a variety of speeds, so matching the port with the modem could be tricky on some devices.

Hayes designed a series of commands to control the modem, all beginning with “AT” for “attention”. But because all the commands started with the same two latters, the modem would attempt to use this to automatically match the baud rate of the computer with the modem. This made setting up the Smartmodem much simpler, but there was a more tricky problem… how could you tell the modem to hang up if you had a basic serial port that didn’t have the right wires to signal that to the modem?

To achieve this, the Smartmodem would look for a sequence “+++” followed by a once-second pause. This would break out of the communications sequence and make the modem ready to receive a command. If that command was ATH then the modem would hang up. It was an elegant solution, the pause minimised the possibility of it happening by accident. When competitors tried to copy the functionality of the Smartmodem, this was often implemented badly (in part because Hayes had patented it and demanded a fee). This meant that on some non-Hayes modems could hang up completely at random if they were sent the +++ sequence accidentally.

In these pre-internet days, modems would be use to connect computer directly to another computer, or perhaps to a BBS (bulletin board system) or if you were one of a small number of privileged people, they could act as a gateway to what was to become the internet.

The original Hayes Smartmodem was a 300 baud unit, but as technology improved the Hayes modems became faster. However, competition was also becoming fierce and although Hayes products were expensive, they were also very reliable and they carved themselves a healthy share of the market.

All good things come to an end though, and in the 1990s Hayes bet the barn on ISDN products, a market that never materialised. Competitors such as USRobotics were taking the analogue modem market. By the mid-1990s Hayes were in serious trouble. Bankruptcy and mergers led to them being subsumed into rivals Zoom Telephonics, where the brand eventually vanished. However, the Hayes website is still available although it was last updated in 2013.

Surprisingly, analogue modems are not quite a dead technology but their heyday has certainly passed. However, Hayes certainly made it easier to connecting disparate computer systems together and in part that drove the uptake of the internet in the 1990s.

Image credit:
Michael Pereckas via Flickr - CC BY-SA 2.0

Xerox Star 8010 (1981)

Introduced April 1981

By the early 1980s, hardware and software designers had great dreams about what they wanted products to be. Portable perhaps, affordable or business-oriented… but all of these were constrained by technology and price. But what if you dreamed big and without compromise, and built the best computer system you possibly could? This is what Xerox did.

The catchily-named Xerox 8010 Information System – more commonly known as the Xerox Star – introduced potential customers to the graphical user interface, mouse, Ethernet, servers and email. A great deal of modern computing technology was first available in the Star, but it certainly came at a price.

Xerox Star 8010

It had been a very long journey. Doug Engelbart’s Mother of All Demos in 1968 had introduced many of these modern concepts, but running on primitive hardware. Many of Engelbart’s team migrated away to the giant Xerox corporation which had pioneered photocopiers and laser printers. The fortunes of Xerox were very much based in paper, but the concept of the paperless office loomed large and Xerox wanted to still be in business when paper was consigned to museums.

The Xerox Alto was their first attempt, launched in 1973 it incorporated a GUI (graphical user interface) and a mouse, but it was never sold commercially. Instead the Alto was deployed around the Xerox PARC as well as some universities and research organisations. It took another eight years for Xerox to realise a commercial product – the 8010 – but even though it had taken over a decade since Engelbart had shown the concepts, the Star was still way ahead of everyone else.

Strictly speaking, “Star” referred to the software rather than the hardware. And this wasn’t simply a computer you could buy and take home. Doing anything required a network, some servers and perhaps $100,000 in 1981 money for a small installation (about $250,000 today).

Japanese market Fuji Xerox 8012-J

The price like the name was astronomical. But what that substantial wedge of cash bought you was a computer system with a high-resolution 17” monitor, a carefully thought out software interface that could work collaboratively with others, based on the high-end AMD Am2900 CPU. And the software was like nothing else.

Everything was WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) – you could edit two pages of a document side by side, including charts and tables from other applications and when they printed out they matched what was on the screen. You’d expect that today, but in 1981 it was revolutionary. The clever object-oriented operating system delivered features to the desktop that wouldn’t be common until a decade later.

There’s a problem with trying to sell customers a product that they don’t know they want at a price they can’t afford... all the efforts of Xerox to create an advanced computer system did not translate into many sales. Xerox tried to reposition the 8010 into a desktop publishing platform called the 6085 (aka Daybreak) which included a laser printer, and although this was a capable system it was still expensive and sales were slow. Later attempts to port the software to OS/2 and other platforms also failed. Xerox weren’t done with WYSIWYG though, a spin-off created the iconic Ventura Publisher, but that was only a passing success.

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Xerox Star UI

Despite being a sales failure, the Star was a technological success. In particular elements from the Star user interface found their way into the Macintosh, Windows and a host of other platforms. The networked environment too was increasingly emulated by competitors. As is sometimes the case with big, sprawling companies the Xerox Corporation itself did not seem to understand or be able to protect its own intellectual property. As with many pioneers, it was other adapting their idea that made it a success. Today elements of the Star user interface are pretty much everywhere, but this pioneering system is long dead.

Image credits:
Rhys Jones via Flickr - CC BY-NC 2.0
Fuji Xerox - Courtesy of FUJIFILM Business Innovation Corp
Amber Case / Digibarn via Flickr - CC BY-NC 2.0

Victor 9000 / ACT Sirius 1 (1981)

Introduced April 1981

By 1981 the business microcomputer market was developing very rapidly. First generation 8-bit systems were giving way to more powerful 16-bit systems, and so too a new generation of computer companies were challenging the early pioneers.

One of these companies was Sirius Systems Technology, founded by (among others) the legendary Chuck Peddle who had designed the Commodore PET and MOS Technology 6502. Peddle and his team then set about designing a next-generation computer system based around Intel’s 8/16-bit CPU, the 8088, called the Victor 9000.

Now you’ve probably heard about the IBM PC, also launched in 1981 and eventually finding its descendants on just about every work desk everywhere. The Victor 9000 was better and hit the market first, but would it be enough to succeed? The answer is complicated.

Victor 9000

It was based around a 5MHz 8088 CPU with between 128Kb to 896Kb of RAM, a high-resolution 800 x 400 pixel display, clever variable-speed floppies with up to 1.2Mb of storage, a bunch of interface ports and a very pleasing industrial design. On top of this the Victor 9000 could run CPM/86 (the 8086/8088 version of CP/M) and could also run Microsoft’s new (although slightly recycled) MS-DOS operating system. A useful wordprocessor, spreadsheet and financial management software could be bought to run on it.

Overall, this was a good and extremely competitive system… and perhaps it could have been a world leader if it wasn’t for the launch of the IBM PC in the US in August 1981. The PC was more expensive and less capable, but the magic three letters “IBM” ensure that larger corporations went out and bought it. Sales of the Victor 9000 were disappointing in the United States… but IBM waited another 18 months to launch the PC in Europe where the market was wide open.

Sleeker Victor 9000 with half-height drives

In Europe, the Birmingham-based Applied Computer Techniques (ACT) acquired a licence to sell the Victor 9000 as the ACT Sirius 1. With little competition, the Sirius 1 became a major success in the UK and Germany in particular, even though it wasn’t really PC compatible in any meaningful way. Of course when IBM did start shipping into Europe, sales of the Sirius I were hit badly.

ACT Sirus 1 advertisement

For the US-based Sirius Systems, their history was short one that followed a traditional path – only three years after the launch of the Victor 9000 they were bankrupt. It was a different story for ACT who launched several generations of advanced but not-quite-PC-compatible computers under the “Apricot” brand afterwards including the world’s first production system based on a 486 CPU. A takeover by Mitsubishi in 1990 was effectively the end of the independent Apricot brand - indeed Mitsubishi shuttered operations in 1999 – but it outlasted Sirius Systems, and along the way ACT kept innovating and was probably far more influential than its American partner.

Image credits:
Samuel via Flickr - CC BY-NC 2.0
Bradford Timeline via Flickr - CC BY-NC 2.0
The Henry Ford Museum - CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Osborne 1 (1981)

Introduced April 1981

These days we take our computers everywhere – powerful smartphones, big-screen tablets and for more serious work, laptop computers that can do anything that a desktop machine can do. But if you wanted to take your computer with you forty years ago, then it was a serious hassle to disassemble everything and then assemble it all on the other end – travelling with a computer was just not a practical proposition.

That wasn’t the only issue in the early ‘80s. Even if you bought a computer, at best you’d have the operating system on a floppy disk and really nothing else. To get the most of it you would need to buy software for it, which could often cost more than the substantial amount of money you had already spent on the machine.

Launched in April 1981, the Osborne 1 attempted to tackle both of these issues. A self-contained “luggable” computer, you could simply unplug it from the wall socket and take it with you. Although it weighed a hefty 10.7 kilograms, it was packaged in such a way that you could stow it under an airline seat and potentially take it anywhere. The hardware had its appeals, but it was the bundled software – nominally worth $1500 – which had even more appeal, especially given that the Osborne 1 was priced at $1795. It seemed like a bargain.

Osborne 1

The bundled software included WordStar (the leading wordprocessor of its time), dBASE II (the leading database package), SuperCalc (a spreadsheet), PeachTree accounting software, two versions of BASIC, some tutorials and a couple of games: Infocom’s Deadline and a version of Colossal Cave.

Inside the Osborne 1 was a Z80 CPU with 64Kb of RAM, running CP/M 2.2 which was pretty typical for its time. A pair of full height floppies were on either side of a tiny 5” CRT display – smaller than most modern smartphones. The small screen size was in part due to the limited space left in the case due to these drives, which were chosen for robustness rather than capacity and as a result could only store 90Kb. An external monitor interface was available, so you could have a screen both in the office and at home which is still a common solution to portable displays today.

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It's a "portable" computer. You can move it. Not put it on your lap.

Despite its flaws, the Osborne 1 found its niche. No other company made a viable portable computer, and the software package made it a compelling buy even if you didn’t want to lug it about. It was somewhat expandable too, including a 300 baud modem that could fit into one of the diskette storage bays which made the Osborne 1 viable for rudimentary remote working.

Although the shine was coming off CP/M with the launch of the IBM PC later in 198, Osborne was still selling these in quite large numbers and at a profit. They also had more machines in the pipeline, including the Osborne Executive which had a bigger screen, more storage and more RAM. Things were going well, but then a disaster occurred.

The disaster was a human one. Adam Osborne - a prolific writer of computer books who had founded the Osborne Computer Corporation – announced the follow-on models a significant time before they were ready. Customers and distributors stopped buying the Osborne 1 in anticipation of the better models. This cutting away of their customer base also coincided with the launch of the Kaypro II and eventually the PC-compatible Compaq Portable for high-end users. The company declared bankruptcy in 1983 – just two and a half years after the release of the Osborne 1 – trying a last-ditch attempt to get back in the market with the Executive and the more advanced Osborne Vixen. Ultimately it failed to re-establish a foothold in the market it created, although Osborne limped on until 1985 ultimately producing the Osborne 3 which was based on the Morrow Pivot.

One you added a couple of full-height floppy drives there wasn't much space for anything else

Today the infamous “Osborne Effect” is probably better known that the computers that presaged it. Most collectable models are in the United States, but prices for one in working condition are typically just a few hundred dollars.

Image credits:
Tomislav Medak via Flickr – CC BY 2.0
Thomas Conté via Flickr - CC BY-SA 2.0
Dave Jones via Flickr – CC0

LG KG800 Chocolate (2006)

Released April 2006

Today LG announced that they were pulling out of the mobile phone business, a market that they had competed in for two decades. The loss-making unit struggled to compete with the likes of archi-rivals Samsung (a Korean company like LG) and increasingly competitive Chinese manufacturers are taking substantial market share in the Asia-Pacific region.

Recent LG devices have been slabby and competent smartphones, but did they ever make an iconic device? Possibly the most memorable phone they made was 2006’s LG KG800 “Chocolate”.

LG KG800 Chocolate

An elegant slider phone, coming to market 15 years ago, the KG800 came from the golden age of mobile phone design. The smooth almost featureless phone slid open to reveal a keypad that had a passing resemblance to the squares on a bar of chocolate – hence the “Chocolate” name the phone was marketed under. An adaptation of a Korean-only phone launched the previous year, the KG800 was sold worldwide in one form or another and was a huge hit.

What interesting feature were the touch-sensitive buttons on the front of the phone which were normally invisible but lit up when they were active. This gave the device a sleek, mysterious form factor. Unfortunately they could also be easily triggered accidentally, one common problem being that it was easy to trigger the sequence to delete all the contacts in your phone. Ooops.

In these pre-iPhone days, expectations about technical specs were not very high but the Chocolate didn’t really meet up with those, even by 2006 standards. A 2.0” 176 x 220 pixel display, 1.3 megapixel camera, 128Mb of non-expandable storage, no 3G support… it wasn’t great. But primarily this was a fashion phone and the sleek looks were the appealing factor.

Where the Chocolate may have been the most memorable, there were some other interesting devices too. LG’s U8000 series of clamshells were among the first 3G phones to be widely available on the market, the GD900 had a very cool transparent keypad, there was the GD910 watch phone, the PRADA phone that might have been an iPhone rival under different circumstances, the LG Optimus 3D (which you might guess had a 3G display), indeed looking back LG weren’t short of innovation, but they could never quite create the “must have” phone that they needed for real success.

LG tried to follow up the success of the Chocolate with a number of other devices such as the BL20, BL40, KU800 plus also the Secret and the Shine. They met with limited success in a market that was shifting towards smartphones rather than feature phones.

While it’s sad to see LG go, it’s unlikely that most people will notice. But if you want a device to remember them by, the KG800 is typically priced at only £10 to £25 in decent condition.

Image credit: LG

From the archives: Microsoft KIN, Nokia N70, N90, N91, N8, 5140i, 8800, BlackBerry Pearl 9100

Some product launches are merely bad but the Microsoft KIN (2010) cratered so badly that you you could see it from space. On the other hand, the Nokia N-Series  represented Nokia at its best, starting with the Nokia N70, N90 and N91 (2005) and ending (at least for the Symbian N-Series line) with the N8 just five years later.

April 2005 was a great year for Nokia, with the somewhat rubbery but almost indestructible Nokia 5140i and the elegant Nokia 8800. Back to 2010, and the BlackBerry Pearl 9100 combined RIM's smartphone know-how with a traditional form factor that made it a success.

Image credits: Microsoft, Nokia, RIM

Nintendo Game & Watch (1980)

Nintendo Game & Watch - original "Ball" game

Launched April 1980

Legend has it that one day Nintendo engineer Gunpei Yokoi was observing a Japanese worker playing with a pocket calculator when he suddenly had an idea to take the basic components of a calculator and turn them into a handheld game.

It wasn’t an entirely new idea. Mattel’s rudimentary Auto Race game in 1976 was arguably the first, with the Coleco Electronic Quarterback machine of 1978 also proved popular. Both of those games were bulky and used simple LED displays, however technology had moved on and by the end of the 1970s inexpensive LCD displays were appearing all over the place – including in a range of low-cost and very portable pocket calculators. There were even pocket calculator game books which – with some effort – could make these little gadgets more entertaining.

Yokoi’s design took the LCD display, but instead of having it display numbers it could display a series of predefined graphics instead. Inside was a 4-bit Sharp calculator battery, and power was provided by button cells which kept the size and weight down. This was launched as the Nintendo Game & Watch (as it also included a clock).

The first game was simply called “Ball” and it was a simple enough game where you had to throw and catch a ball, but many more followed. Each game required its own hardware, typically with “A” and “B” variants with different gameplay. At first the games had a single screen and simple control buttons, but dual screen ones followed and in 1982 a handheld version of Donkey Kong also introduced the now ubiquitous D-pad controller. Screens also got bigger and layer ones had coloured sections printed onto the display to give a bit more visual interest.

Rare Super Mario Bros Game & Watch

Dozens of different versions came to market over the next decade or so with games titles many of which featured the Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong, plus a whole lot of Disney characters and ports of arcade games. Nintendo placed a lot of emphasis on gameplay because of the strictly limited hardware, which had the effect of making the games both addictive and relatively inexpensive.

Millions of Game & Watch devices were sold, but in the end technology had moved on. Yokoi had also designed the Nintendo Game Boy, using lessons learned from the Game & Watch but in a much more flexible package where new games could be loaded on with a cartridge.

In fact Gunpei Yokoi had been a prolific designer of products for Nintendo, starting with successful toys such as the Ultra Hand in the 1960s. Not all the products were successful, but his design philosophy of (roughly translated) “lateral thinking with seasoned technology” is still an important part of the way Nintendo designs products – in other words, using existing and inexpensive technologies in innovative ways rather than pursuing the highest technology available. Yokoi left Nintendo in 1996 to form his own company, but he was killed in a car accident in October 1997. However, his influential legacy lives on.

Today Game & Watch devices are very collectable, with rare items such as the yellow Super Mario Bros (YM-901) selling for thousands of pounds, with more common or later ones such as Donkey Kong 3 selling for less than £100.

Image credits:
masatsu via Flickr - CC BY-SA 2.0
Sturmjäger via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 3.0

Sun SPARCstation (1989)

SPARCstation 10 (1992)

Introduced April 1989

If you wanted to do serious computing on your desktop 30 years ago, your choices were a bit limited. The state-of-the-art in the PC world was Windows/386 running on a PC with an 80386 processor. It was pretty rubbish. Apple had it a bit more together with devices such as the Macintosh II line, but although Mac OS was pretty to look at it was also pretty basic underneath.

In universities and other research facilities, minicomputers and mainframes provided the speed and sophistication needed to get things done. But you had to share these systems with others, and plugging away at a dumb terminal could be pretty unrewarding.

What if you could have all that power on your desk? Something as capable as a big departmental computer all to yourself? With a graphical interface? And something that you could still work collaboratively on?

Welcome to the world of the Unix workstation. This particular market was dominated by Sun Microsystems who had grown throughout the 1980s to become the company to beat. Starting off with systems based on the Motorola 68000 series of processors (as used in the Mac) they eventually designed their own high-speed RISC processor, the SPARC.

In 1989 Sun introduced their SPARCstation line of Unix workstations and servers. Initially featuring a SPARC running at a leisurely 20 or 25 MHz with up to 64MB of AM, the SPARC was nonetheless faster and more powerful than pretty much anything you could put on your desk.

But it wasn’t just what was inside the box that was important, it was how it looked. House in a wide but flat “pizza box” case with a large monitor on top, a typical SPARCstation install looked both serious and elegant at the same time. The “pizza box” case itself could either be placed on a desk or rack-mounted, depending on what you wanted to do with it.

The SPARCstation evolved over six years it was in production until replaced by the Sun Ultra series. SPARCstations rarely make it onto eBay – probably because they tended to be bought by large organisations – but can command fairly decent prices. For example, a fully-equipped SPARCstation 5 can be £1000 or more.

Image credit: Thomas Kaiser via Wikimedia Commons

Intel 80486 (1989)

Intel 80486DX-25

Announced April 1989

Early PCs were slow. Really slow. Even in the late 1980s, many were still based on the decade-old Intel 8086. Successive generations of CPU were better, the 80286 was faster, the 80386 helped to bring in multitasking but it wasn’t until 1989 that Intel finally came out with a processor that could considered as fast – the Intel 80486.

The 80486 (often known as the “486”) built on the architecture of the 80386, combining it with an 80387 maths co-processor, 80385 cache controller plus a whole lot of other optimisations to come up with something that was twice as fast as the 80386 for any given clock speed. Initially launched running at 20 and 25MHz, by 1994 the clock rate was pushed up to 100MHz in the IntelDX2. For users on a budget, the maths co-processor was removed to create the 486SX.

Hand-in-hand with the 486 was the VESA Local Bus (VL-Bus) which was used primarily with graphics cards to bypass the bottlenecks in the old 16-bit ISA bus that most PCs had. This made 486 PCs significantly better for games and other graphically-intensive work, although the VL-Bus itself was very much tied to the 486 architecture and effectively became extinct when the Pentium first came out.

It took until 1990 until the 486 was available in quantity, however the first 486-based computer was the British Apricot VX FT server, launched in September 1989. The 486’s architecture helped to introduce plug-and-play into Windows, and it remained competitive even when its successor was launched, with the cheaper 100 MHz 486 outpacing the expensive 60 MHz Pentium. But of course times would change. Intel kept various models of the 486 in production until 2007. Rival companies also made 486s, some under licence and others reverse-engineered in some way.

It turns out that old processors are somewhat collectable, but generally these tend to be 1970s CPUs rather than later ones. Still, if you find yourself in need of a particular 486 for some reason, you can probably find one on eBay.

As for the name… the 80486 was the last processor of its type to be named with a number, following on from the 8086 launched 11 years earlier. The reason for this was that numbers cannot be trademarked in many jurisdictions, so the next generation was named the “Pentium” which was a nod to the “5” in 80586 if Intel had continued with their naming pattern.

Image credit: Andrzej w k 2 via Wikimedia Commons

T-Mobile Sidekick LX 2009 (2009)

T-Mobile Sidekick LX 2009

Launched April 2009

For the best part of the decade one of the most popular smartphones in the US was the T-Mobile Sidekick range. A versatile and easy-to-use platform, the Sidekick appealed especially to younger users… but it also turned out to be a great messaging device for hearing-impaired customers too.

The Sidekick was actually a T-Mobile branded Danger Hiptop device. Originally launched in 2002, the platform evolved over the years to become the catchily-named T-Mobile Sidekick LX 2009.

Like most other Sidekicks, this had a decently-sized display that slid back to reveal a relatively large QWERTY keyboard underneath. The LX 2009 was the first one in the range with 3G support and GPS, on top of which it had Bluetooth and a 3.2 megapixel camera.

But what the Sidekick really excelled at was apps, in particular messaging. If combined with a data-only plan, it was possible for users to keep in touch with their friends either through the built-in messaging app or the integrated social networking support. This also appealed to deaf users because of its convenience, ease-of-use and relatively low cost. All data was backed up to what we would call a “cloud” today, so it didn’t matter if you lost your device… you could simply get another one.

The Sidekick wasn’t just limited to the US, T-Mobile carried it in other countries too and other carriers branded variants of the Danger Hiptop devices with their own names. But the US was the biggest market, and T-Mobile was the exclusive carrier there.

It looked like the Sidekick had carved out an important market niche, and even upcoming smartphones such as the iPhone and Androids didn’t really look like they compete with what the Sidekick excelled at.

But there was trouble brewing. In 2008, Danger was bought by Microsoft who then promptly started to leach people and resources out of the company to work on Microsoft’s own projects. A catastrophic failure of Danger’s own servers in late 2009 led to an embarrassing data loss which it took months to recover from, and even then it didn’t get back everything. It was a devastating blow for T-Mobile Sidekick brand.

T-Mobile dropped the Sidekick platform in 2010, and although it laboured on with different carriers for a while, by 2011 the service was discontinued completely.

And what did Microsoft do with all the employees they took from Danger? They developed the Microsoft KIN, which turned into one of the biggest handset disasters of all time. Two catastrophes for the price of one.

In mid-2011, T-Mobile tried to revive the Sidekick concept with a Samsung-designed Android phone. Although it was a decent facsimile of what a Sidekick could be, T-Mobile were really trying to flog a dead horse and it was not a success.

Today there are quite a few Sidekicks about on the second-hand market, mostly from the US. Because Danger’s cloud service shut down long ago, they are not really very useful for much except as an example of what might have been had Danger not messed up.

Image credit: T-Mobile

OnePlus One (2014)

OnePlus One

Launched April 2014
Five years after the launch of the first generation of Android phones we saw Samsung firmly established as the market leader, with the Samsung Galaxy S5 being the one to beat. Challengers such as HTC were putting up a good fight, and overall the technological features that were on offer with these high-end devices were really impressive. But the problem was that they came at quite a price.

If you wanted a SIM-free Galaxy S5 then you would be looking at shelling out £600 or more. Five years ago that was a lot of money (although you can easily spend even more today). But was it really necessary to charge that much?

Chinese startup OnePlus didn’t think so and set out to make a flagship device that could challenge the market leaders, but make it much cheaper. With the OnePlus One - announced in April 2014 – they succeeded.

OnePlus was set up as part of the giant BBK Electronics in China, who already had the OPPO smartphone brand. While OPPO phones were mostly sold in Asia, the idea with OnePlus was to come up with a different sort of product that could be sold worldwide. But it’s difficult to set up a new brand from scratch, and there’s always the risk that it could crash and burn… taking a huge pile of cash with it.

The OnePlus One itself was impressive. A 5.5” 1080p display, 13 megapixel camera, quad core CPU, 3GB of RAM and 16 or 64GB of internal memory. LTE and NFC support were included. The operating system was interesting: Cyanogen OS was a commercial version of the Android-based CyanogenMod and it was a clean, responsive and elegant platform that won fans in its own right. The packaging showed real attention to detail, and you could customise your One with all sorts of unusual materials including wood and fabric backs.

The price for all this? It was half the price of the Samsung, for arguably a better specification.

So, you might reasonably get excited by all this and want to rush out and buy one.

Not so fast.

You couldn’t actually just go and buy one of the things, you had to be invited to buy one. Because OnePlus didn’t want to build loads of these only to find out that they couldn’t sell them, the invite system allowed them to ramp up production in a steady way. And to begin with, getting an invite involved jumping through all sorts of hoops including following OnePlus on social media… just to join the waiting list for an invite. Eventually invites got more and more common, and OnePlus One owners could send them out to their friends.

OnePlus One optional covers

This turned out to be marketing genius. One way to make a product desirable is to restrict availability, and either deliberately or accidentally this helped build up the hype. When customers finally did receive their OnePlus One devices, they were beautifully packaged and just as good and they’d hoped.

There were a few problems, notably an issue with the displays turning yellow at the bottom due to a rushed manufacturing process. Customer service wasn’t brilliant. The Cyanogen OS eventually crashed and burned, leaving the One pretty much orphaned. Still, even flagship phones costing more than twice as much can have worse problems and the One was certainly good enough for OnePlus to get a significant fan base.

The (mostly) improved OnePlus 2 was launched the following year, still using the invite system. But this was eventually dropped and successive OnePlus devices launched every six months or so keep improving the line-up… but as the company has matured, the price of the products has also risen considerably.

Prices vary, but a OnePlus One in excellent condition can be around £100 or so. Tinkerers can update the built-in OS to the latest version of Android using LineageOS – a descendant of the Cyanogen OS the One originally shipped with. It seems there’s plenty of life left in the One yet.

Image credits: OnePlus

OnePlus One: Video

Samsung I7500 Galaxy (2009)

Samsung I7500 Galaxy

Announced March 2009

Pretty much anyone who has been interested in consumer technology for 12 years or more will remember the launch of the original iPhone. A hugely significant device, it shifted the market and it started Apple’s impressive dynasty of smart devices.

A little over two years later another smartphone was launched by a rival company, perhaps one that was just as influential or arguably even more so. That company was Samsung, and the smartphone was the Samsung I7500 Galaxy.

This is the original Galaxy smartphone. No letters or numbers after its name, the “Galaxy” tag seemed a bit of an afterthought after the “I7500”. There was some excitement over the launch of the I7500, mostly because Android handsets were a bit thin on the ground with a couple of handsets from HTC and nothing else.

It was hardly an iconic design, with the 3.2” QVGA screen taking up less than half the front and with some buttons seemingly from some Samsung feature phone being quite prominent underneath. But it was what it could *do* rather than the way it looked that attracted attention. With 3.5G data support, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, expandable memory and of course a whole bunch of applications you could download, the I7500 was a capable modern smartphone.

Crucially, both Apple and HTC had entered into carrier-exclusive deals in many markets, meaning that you might have to swap your mobile phone company to get one. The I7500 was much more widely available and it was instrumental in bringing this new generation of technology to a wider audience.

It also launched the Galaxy range, including the range-topping Galaxy S a year later. According to GSMArena, in the space of a decade there have been 442 devices launched under the “Samsung Galaxy” name, twenty times the number of Apple iPhone models. There’s no doubt that despite the odd hiccup, the Galaxy range has been a huge success.

The I7500 isn’t particularly common today with prices appearing to be £100 and upwards. Despite its rather un-iconic styling, it might just be important enough to add to your collection.

Image credits: Samsung

Video: Samsung I7500 Galaxy

Land Rover (1948)

Land Rover Series I

Introduced April 1948

There’s a lot you could write about the iconic Land Rover, but we’ll try to keep it brief. After the Second World War, the chief designer of the Rover car company came up with an idea to build an off-road vehicle, inspired by the war-surplus Jeep that he kept on his farm. Designed with export markets in mind, the Land Rover used a great deal of aluminium in its bodywork as steel was rationed. With capable four wheel drive, a sturdy and reliable construction and the ability to be adapted to a huge number of tasks, the Land Rover became a huge success.

A boxy looking thing with no regard for aerodynamics, the Land Rover evolved very slowly over the 67 years that it was in production. The original Series I was followed by a larger Series II then Series IIA in 1958, Series III in 1971, then the Land Rover Ninety and One-Ten in 1983 which became the Defender in 1990, and this continued in production until 2016. Over the years the Land Rover became a bit smoother, a bit more comfortable and with better engines in each generation.

The design adapted well to military service, ending up in armed forces all other the world in a huge variety of guises. Emergency services, utility companies and just about anyone who needed a practical off-road vehicle also used them, as well as farmers and the general public.

Late model retro-themed Land Rover Defender

Increasingly the Defender became a popular (and expensive) leisure vehicle, again with a huge range of modifications and custom-built versions. But by 2016 the Defender was struggling to keep up with environmental and safety legislation and was finally put out to grass. Well, sort of… because in 2018 Land Rover came up with a Defender Works V8 which cost an eye-watering £150,000 or more.

Although Land Rovers are still popular for those jobs that other vehicles cannot manage, they are also high collectable. In the UK a Series I Land Rover in good condition will set you back around £30,000 or more, with similar prices for late model Defenders. Customised ones can cost £100,000 or more, but it is possible to finder older and more basic models for less than £10,000. In the US the Defender has become a cult classic which was only officially available for a few years in the 1990s. Prices there are buoyant, with a typical price for a mid-1990s model being $60,000 to $70,000.

The Land Rover is an example of a product that got it largely right first time, and although it evolved over the years it never really strayed far from that original idea. The Land Rover marque itself outlived the Rover Car Company (having been through several owners) and now there are six vehicles in the Land Rover stable, not including the Defender itself.  Somewhere along the line this niche vehicle adapted into the mainstream, with SUVs being a commonplace site of city streets. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on your point of view, but there’s no doubt that the original Land Rover had a great deal of influence in today’s popularity of these cars.

Image credits: Allen Watkin via Flickr and GPS 56 via Flickr