Gonna add my two cents to the casting suggestions: Danny DeVito as the Fox.
A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
- Start date
- Status
You mean Honest John? Well, if you ask me, that could actually work.
Tech Grrls
Sweet 16 and Sweating Circuits
Excerpt from Tech Grrls: The Rise of the Female Technologists 1980-2015 by Dr. Marina Sparks, PE
Picture a teenage girl from the 1980s in your head and what do you see: pink, loose-fitting shirt? Hoop earrings? Leggings? Bubblegum? Posters of boy bands on her wall?
Yea, not these girls.
Tech Grrls in the ‘80s were more than happy to look past the latest copy of Tiger Beat and grab Popular Mechanics instead. A quality set of needle nose pliers was the preferred accessory to any outfit. And they were just as likely to be under the hood of a convertible as behind the wheel.
Valley girl stereotypes aside, life for a teenage girl in the 1980s was not simple or easy, even in the Valley. Torn between a postfeminist world that valued a form of masculine independence marked by the pant suit on one end and a glam, preppy world that pushed soft and effeminate things on the other, the emerging Gen-X woman was struggling to find a balance between these competing poles. Eventually a third wave feminist movement in the 1990s would become the synthesis of this feminist thesis and postfeminist antithesis, but for an intelligent young woman in the 1980s getting taken seriously without going to one extreme or the other became a challenge.
And neither of these directions typically featured turning a wrench or coding in Fortran.
For the Tech Grrl at the time, opportunity and support structures became the critical gateways for finding success in science and engineering. And Nerd Culture at the time wasn’t exactly welcoming, as witnessed by the casual misogyny and rape culture on display in Revenge of the Nerds. Two illustrative examples of the Tech Grrls who broke through the Silicon Ceiling, and whose lives crossed paths more than once in the 1980s, are Heather Henson and Jeri Ellsworth. One was a child of privilege whose father became an entertainment icon and one was a blue collar, small town girl who never fit in.
Heather grew up a millionaire, although you’d never know it. “I spent my childhood in modest houses in suburbia,” she said in our interview. “It never really dawned on me that we were rich. Sure, Dad would fly us out to Italy or Japan over Summer Break and we always had the latest home gadgets, but I never really felt like a rich person. We never lived in a mansion in Beverly Hills, even when we lived in LA when dad went to work for Disney.”
And Heather’s journey into technology was almost accidental. “My brother John and I got free rein to walk around Disneyland when we lived in LA [in the early 1980s] and I got to see all the behind-the-scenes stuff [there]. I grew up seeing how the animatronics worked, helping out my brother Brian in rigging up a waldo or helping Dad frame a shot or helping Caroly [Wilcox] perform Muppet Surgery between takes. It was really the Big Picture of it all that resonated with me, not specifically the production, but the crossover, you know; like how the lighting and sound and colors and movement played together to make the full experience. They call it ‘immersive multimedia’ today, but it didn’t have a name that I’m aware of at the time.”
Heather returned to Connecticut with her mother following her parent’s separation, and thus got cut off from the experiences. “I was like an addict cut off from my source,” she said. “So, when mom and dad sent me to the George School [in Pennsylvania], I joined the AV Club and poked around at the Computer Lab. But it was like riding the birthday party pony after being a cowgirl on the open range. Dad let me intern at Disney over Summer Break where I helped Brian in animatronic effects for The Land Before Time, and I got sidetracked into helping Dad and Frank [Oz] integrate the sound in post. That in turn got me selected to work with Nintendo when we made the videogame. I knew just enough about coding to squeak by and helped code in the Sound effects for the Land Before Time game. If you watch the game’s credits I’m there as ‘H.H.’,” she added with a laugh.
“Yea, Land Before Time, I played that,” said Jeri Ellworth. “I didn’t know that ‘H.H.’ was ‘Heather Henson’ just like I didn’t know that she was the little girl talking to Bit & Byte in the [Disney’s] World of Magic special. I watched a worn-out VHS tape I made of that episode about a thousand times as a kid and I loved every second. When Dad bought my brother a Commodore 64, I ended up being the one who used it.”
Jeri Ellsworth is the type of engineering prodigy that, had she been a boy born in suburbia, she would have had the world handed to her on a silver plate. She taught herself how to use the Commodore 64 by reading the manuals and helped out her dad in the garage. The small town of Yamhill, Oregon, was not exactly a high-tech mecca, though. As it was, her talents with a computer and the internal combustion engine were not ones appreciated by her peers, and she was badly picked on in school. “I was getting mercilessly harassed by this boy in the library,” she said. “He started flicking at my ears, and I just sort of snapped and hit him square in the face with my science book. His nose started bleeding all over the floor. His parents wanted me expelled and the principal gave me an ultimatum to ‘shape up or ship out’, so I joined the science fair as a sort of academic Hail Mary.”
Jeri did an exhibit on, naturally enough, computers, but couldn’t help but to throw in an automotive angle. “I put up magazine pictures of Bit & Byte and polaroids I made of the motherboard inside my C64. I had the computer with me for the presentation and I ran a little graphics loop of an engine piston going through the four-stroke process. The judges were kind of mixed because some of them didn’t think computers were science, but I explained the binary math of it and how binary was translated as hexadecimal assembly code and how a high-level language like BASIC got assembled into [the hexadecimal] and they gave me a ribbon and a trip to Portland for the State competition.”
While at the State competition she caught the eye of a recruiter for Benson Polytechnic High School in Portland. “He came up to dad and me and told us about the new computer program that they had. My grades in Yamhill sucked because I really didn’t care, but I was offered a full ride scholarship anyway. Nintendo was at the time sponsoring ‘promising young minds’ or some crap, so Dad took a job in the Portland City motor pool so that we could afford an apartment. Leaving Yamhill was hard for Dad and my brother, country boys through and through who’d laid down roots, but it was heaven for me. I had little to look forward to in Yamhill but working at Dad’s garage, or maybe opening up a computer store or something[1]. Now they were telling me I’d be writing games for Nintendo or developing a GUI for GEOsoft.”
But Benson had its challenges too. Women had only begun to enter the school in the ‘70s and for Jeri, particularly in the male dominated computer science curriculum, she was a standout. “Part of it was cool, like all the boys were fawning over me. But part of it sucked too. There was this subtle sexism. ‘Oh, how cute, she codes!’ When the boys weren’t trying awkwardly to get down my pants, they were trying to teach me basic shit like it would impress me that they knew how to do a For-While loop. I wasn’t having it. I won the school BASIC coding competition, which totally pissed them off. That’s when the ‘quota’ talk began. Denial much? So, instead I hung out with the garage kids and greasers. We built and raced our own go cart and for a while I was considering dropping out to pursue Formula One. But my Dad felt like we owed Nintendo since they were footing the bill, so he convinced me to do the limited internship up in Redmond.”
If the “boys” in Benson were obnoxious and dismissive, the men at Redmond were actually impressed with her. “Instead of ‘oh, she can code!’ it was ‘holy shit, she actually can code!’ It was a totally different experience. I was everyone’s ‘little sister’ and they were very protective of me. Some of the old men sneered…and by ‘old men’ I mean like 30,” she laughed, “But when I successfully managed the motion tracking algorithm for the Game Boy port of Tetris, even the hardest asses considered me one of the team.”
Heather Henson and Jeri Ellsworth first crossed paths in the summer of 1990. Jeri was working as a summer intern and Heather had just finished up her first year at the California Institute of Arts, where she’d faced the subtle sexism of the animation industry. “They had a subtle way of pushing the girls towards ‘girly’ things like color pallets and the boys towards direction and animation,” Heather noted. “My friends Genndy [Tartakovsky] and Craig [McCracken] would do a project and the professor would complement them on their storyboards and art direction but he’d compliment me and Leslie [Iwerks] on our color choices. Even Craig and Genndy were calling B.S.”
“When I met Heather, I had no idea who she was,” said Jeri. “I had no idea that she’d done the sound on Land Before Time and no idea she was the girl learning binary with Bit & Byte. She was ‘Heather from Disney’ and she was just this super-sweet curly-haired twenty-year-old. She worked with me to develop the color-to-sound timing coordination for the big crystal-stealing-lifeforce cut-screen on our version of Curse of the Dark Crystal for NES Disk and Super NES. I heard that she knew Jack Tramiel, which was cool. I even heard that her last name was ‘Henson’ at some point, but the pieces didn’t come together until much later.”
“I remembered Jeri very well,” said Heather. “I took her under my wing because ‘sisters got to stick together’, right? She was 16, which was the same age I was when I worked on Land Before Time. And even though our personalities were polar opposites – she was really sarcastic and cynical and kind of reminded me of Frank [Oz], honestly – I guess I saw a kindred spirit.”
Neither at the time realized that fate had big things in store for them.
[1] This is what she did in our timeline after dropping out of High School. Computers Made Easy built up a small local chain before she decided to try college, only to drop out as “not her thing”. Eventually her technical genius was revealed to the world in 2002 thanks to developing the C64-DTV single board computer that let you play numerous Commodore 64 games on a single plug-into-the-TV joystick.
Excerpt from Tech Grrls: The Rise of the Female Technologists 1980-2015 by Dr. Marina Sparks, PE
Picture a teenage girl from the 1980s in your head and what do you see: pink, loose-fitting shirt? Hoop earrings? Leggings? Bubblegum? Posters of boy bands on her wall?
Yea, not these girls.
Tech Grrls in the ‘80s were more than happy to look past the latest copy of Tiger Beat and grab Popular Mechanics instead. A quality set of needle nose pliers was the preferred accessory to any outfit. And they were just as likely to be under the hood of a convertible as behind the wheel.
Valley girl stereotypes aside, life for a teenage girl in the 1980s was not simple or easy, even in the Valley. Torn between a postfeminist world that valued a form of masculine independence marked by the pant suit on one end and a glam, preppy world that pushed soft and effeminate things on the other, the emerging Gen-X woman was struggling to find a balance between these competing poles. Eventually a third wave feminist movement in the 1990s would become the synthesis of this feminist thesis and postfeminist antithesis, but for an intelligent young woman in the 1980s getting taken seriously without going to one extreme or the other became a challenge.
And neither of these directions typically featured turning a wrench or coding in Fortran.
For the Tech Grrl at the time, opportunity and support structures became the critical gateways for finding success in science and engineering. And Nerd Culture at the time wasn’t exactly welcoming, as witnessed by the casual misogyny and rape culture on display in Revenge of the Nerds. Two illustrative examples of the Tech Grrls who broke through the Silicon Ceiling, and whose lives crossed paths more than once in the 1980s, are Heather Henson and Jeri Ellsworth. One was a child of privilege whose father became an entertainment icon and one was a blue collar, small town girl who never fit in.
Heather grew up a millionaire, although you’d never know it. “I spent my childhood in modest houses in suburbia,” she said in our interview. “It never really dawned on me that we were rich. Sure, Dad would fly us out to Italy or Japan over Summer Break and we always had the latest home gadgets, but I never really felt like a rich person. We never lived in a mansion in Beverly Hills, even when we lived in LA when dad went to work for Disney.”
And Heather’s journey into technology was almost accidental. “My brother John and I got free rein to walk around Disneyland when we lived in LA [in the early 1980s] and I got to see all the behind-the-scenes stuff [there]. I grew up seeing how the animatronics worked, helping out my brother Brian in rigging up a waldo or helping Dad frame a shot or helping Caroly [Wilcox] perform Muppet Surgery between takes. It was really the Big Picture of it all that resonated with me, not specifically the production, but the crossover, you know; like how the lighting and sound and colors and movement played together to make the full experience. They call it ‘immersive multimedia’ today, but it didn’t have a name that I’m aware of at the time.”
Heather returned to Connecticut with her mother following her parent’s separation, and thus got cut off from the experiences. “I was like an addict cut off from my source,” she said. “So, when mom and dad sent me to the George School [in Pennsylvania], I joined the AV Club and poked around at the Computer Lab. But it was like riding the birthday party pony after being a cowgirl on the open range. Dad let me intern at Disney over Summer Break where I helped Brian in animatronic effects for The Land Before Time, and I got sidetracked into helping Dad and Frank [Oz] integrate the sound in post. That in turn got me selected to work with Nintendo when we made the videogame. I knew just enough about coding to squeak by and helped code in the Sound effects for the Land Before Time game. If you watch the game’s credits I’m there as ‘H.H.’,” she added with a laugh.
“Yea, Land Before Time, I played that,” said Jeri Ellworth. “I didn’t know that ‘H.H.’ was ‘Heather Henson’ just like I didn’t know that she was the little girl talking to Bit & Byte in the [Disney’s] World of Magic special. I watched a worn-out VHS tape I made of that episode about a thousand times as a kid and I loved every second. When Dad bought my brother a Commodore 64, I ended up being the one who used it.”
Jeri Ellsworth is the type of engineering prodigy that, had she been a boy born in suburbia, she would have had the world handed to her on a silver plate. She taught herself how to use the Commodore 64 by reading the manuals and helped out her dad in the garage. The small town of Yamhill, Oregon, was not exactly a high-tech mecca, though. As it was, her talents with a computer and the internal combustion engine were not ones appreciated by her peers, and she was badly picked on in school. “I was getting mercilessly harassed by this boy in the library,” she said. “He started flicking at my ears, and I just sort of snapped and hit him square in the face with my science book. His nose started bleeding all over the floor. His parents wanted me expelled and the principal gave me an ultimatum to ‘shape up or ship out’, so I joined the science fair as a sort of academic Hail Mary.”
Jeri did an exhibit on, naturally enough, computers, but couldn’t help but to throw in an automotive angle. “I put up magazine pictures of Bit & Byte and polaroids I made of the motherboard inside my C64. I had the computer with me for the presentation and I ran a little graphics loop of an engine piston going through the four-stroke process. The judges were kind of mixed because some of them didn’t think computers were science, but I explained the binary math of it and how binary was translated as hexadecimal assembly code and how a high-level language like BASIC got assembled into [the hexadecimal] and they gave me a ribbon and a trip to Portland for the State competition.”
While at the State competition she caught the eye of a recruiter for Benson Polytechnic High School in Portland. “He came up to dad and me and told us about the new computer program that they had. My grades in Yamhill sucked because I really didn’t care, but I was offered a full ride scholarship anyway. Nintendo was at the time sponsoring ‘promising young minds’ or some crap, so Dad took a job in the Portland City motor pool so that we could afford an apartment. Leaving Yamhill was hard for Dad and my brother, country boys through and through who’d laid down roots, but it was heaven for me. I had little to look forward to in Yamhill but working at Dad’s garage, or maybe opening up a computer store or something[1]. Now they were telling me I’d be writing games for Nintendo or developing a GUI for GEOsoft.”
But Benson had its challenges too. Women had only begun to enter the school in the ‘70s and for Jeri, particularly in the male dominated computer science curriculum, she was a standout. “Part of it was cool, like all the boys were fawning over me. But part of it sucked too. There was this subtle sexism. ‘Oh, how cute, she codes!’ When the boys weren’t trying awkwardly to get down my pants, they were trying to teach me basic shit like it would impress me that they knew how to do a For-While loop. I wasn’t having it. I won the school BASIC coding competition, which totally pissed them off. That’s when the ‘quota’ talk began. Denial much? So, instead I hung out with the garage kids and greasers. We built and raced our own go cart and for a while I was considering dropping out to pursue Formula One. But my Dad felt like we owed Nintendo since they were footing the bill, so he convinced me to do the limited internship up in Redmond.”
If the “boys” in Benson were obnoxious and dismissive, the men at Redmond were actually impressed with her. “Instead of ‘oh, she can code!’ it was ‘holy shit, she actually can code!’ It was a totally different experience. I was everyone’s ‘little sister’ and they were very protective of me. Some of the old men sneered…and by ‘old men’ I mean like 30,” she laughed, “But when I successfully managed the motion tracking algorithm for the Game Boy port of Tetris, even the hardest asses considered me one of the team.”
Heather Henson and Jeri Ellsworth first crossed paths in the summer of 1990. Jeri was working as a summer intern and Heather had just finished up her first year at the California Institute of Arts, where she’d faced the subtle sexism of the animation industry. “They had a subtle way of pushing the girls towards ‘girly’ things like color pallets and the boys towards direction and animation,” Heather noted. “My friends Genndy [Tartakovsky] and Craig [McCracken] would do a project and the professor would complement them on their storyboards and art direction but he’d compliment me and Leslie [Iwerks] on our color choices. Even Craig and Genndy were calling B.S.”
“When I met Heather, I had no idea who she was,” said Jeri. “I had no idea that she’d done the sound on Land Before Time and no idea she was the girl learning binary with Bit & Byte. She was ‘Heather from Disney’ and she was just this super-sweet curly-haired twenty-year-old. She worked with me to develop the color-to-sound timing coordination for the big crystal-stealing-lifeforce cut-screen on our version of Curse of the Dark Crystal for NES Disk and Super NES. I heard that she knew Jack Tramiel, which was cool. I even heard that her last name was ‘Henson’ at some point, but the pieces didn’t come together until much later.”
“I remembered Jeri very well,” said Heather. “I took her under my wing because ‘sisters got to stick together’, right? She was 16, which was the same age I was when I worked on Land Before Time. And even though our personalities were polar opposites – she was really sarcastic and cynical and kind of reminded me of Frank [Oz], honestly – I guess I saw a kindred spirit.”
Neither at the time realized that fate had big things in store for them.
[1] This is what she did in our timeline after dropping out of High School. Computers Made Easy built up a small local chain before she decided to try college, only to drop out as “not her thing”. Eventually her technical genius was revealed to the world in 2002 thanks to developing the C64-DTV single board computer that let you play numerous Commodore 64 games on a single plug-into-the-TV joystick.
This Tech Grrl idea/movement really sounds like the stuff we will see a movie about in the late 90's/00's...
I wonder where Heather and Jeri are heading? Computer animation? Aladdin or B&tB? Oscar territory?
More please @Geekhis Khan More!
P.S. Does the Beauty and the Beast TV show still happen? Are the effects changed? Can you please change the ending?
I wonder where Heather and Jeri are heading? Computer animation? Aladdin or B&tB? Oscar territory?
More please @Geekhis Khan More!
P.S. Does the Beauty and the Beast TV show still happen? Are the effects changed? Can you please change the ending?
Another great article Geekhis, I knew Genndy and Craig would show up at some point. Though with their connection to 'H.H.' I am wondering if this will effect their shows. Interested where the Henson Princess and her country girl bestie will be going next.
If a direct relative of Jim Henson is working at Nintendo, could we see Star Fox with help from the Muppeteers, as taken from @RySenkari's timeline?
So the Famicom Disk System saw release in North America. That would considerably change things. For one, I could see Super Mario Bros. 2 and Adventures of Link as NES Disk System exclusives, though the former would most likely still be a re-skinned Doki Doki Panic given the Japanese version was essentially an expansion pack. It would also come with many problems of its own, not the least of which is that parents would likely be reluctant to pay for an expensive peripheral for their child to play the latest games. That is to say how fragile the disks are (they lack a shutter do dust could render the game unplayable), extremely easy to pirate, and that cartridge sizes increased. A Famicom disk could hold 112kb and Capcom released Ghosts 'n Goblins on a 128kb cart. Given the high royalties Nintendo demanded on FDS titles, many developers would likely refuse to release any games for it as was the case for Namco and Hudson Soft. I doubt many American or European developers would as well.
I could see the NES Disk as an expensive boondoggle for the company as it was effectively obsolete by 1989 and discontinued in 1990. Not enough to bring the Big N down, but potentially enough to shake costumer confidence to give Virgin/Atari and Sega to get a foothold.
I'm interesting to see where both of their career paths are going to lead ITTL. The Henson family is already so fascinating with how much they're fraying as a result of Henson working for Disney: Lisa as a producer, Brian as an imagineer, John as a social worker, and now Heather as an animator? Love it.
As for Jeri, she definitely has a natural affinity for computers, but I think that once she has actual formal education and work experience in gaming, she could go very far in the industry. But where though? Disney or Nintendo? 🤷♂️
Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken are names to look out for, now that's for sure. Would they gravitate towards working for Disney ITTL or work for CartoonTV?
Overall, I'll be looking at their careers with great interest.
As for Jeri, she definitely has a natural affinity for computers, but I think that once she has actual formal education and work experience in gaming, she could go very far in the industry. But where though? Disney or Nintendo? 🤷♂️
Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken are names to look out for, now that's for sure. Would they gravitate towards working for Disney ITTL or work for CartoonTV?
Overall, I'll be looking at their careers with great interest.
@Geekhis Khan If I may ask, and this might be a weird question, but why are they called Tech Grrls and not called Tech Girls.
It feels like a very "90's Kewl" name given to the community when it really gets going in said decade. Otherwise, I have no idea.
Grrrr, baby, yea!
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I don't think the world's ready for a Krystal Muppet...
Considering the direction Disney (who owns buff) is going ITTL I wonder if this will still get cancelled:
www.denofgeek.com
Back to the Future Manga Cancelled
The Back to the Future manga would have been drawn by the artist of One-Punch Man, but sadly won't see the light of day.
www.denofgeek.com
Wait, wait, wait. Hold up.Considering the direction Disney (who owns buff) is going ITTL I wonder if this will still get cancelled:
Back to the Future Manga Cancelled
The Back to the Future manga would have been drawn by the artist of One-Punch Man, but sadly won't see the light of day.
You're telling me that the mangaka behind One Punch Man nearly made a manga based on BACK TO THE FUTURE?!?!?
I have no words for this.
Seems like an awfully long time for this to happen, but if Universal could've worked out the rights then perhaps Disney could've done so as well.Considering the direction Disney (who owns buff) is going ITTL I wonder if this will still get cancelled:
Back to the Future Manga Cancelled
The Back to the Future manga would have been drawn by the artist of One-Punch Man, but sadly won't see the light of day.
I've always wanted Disney to release manga along with comics, and Back to the Future seems like a great fit along with the Dark Crystal.
EDIT #1: WAIT. THIS IS A THING.
Legends of the Dark Crystal - Wikipedia
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These two manga ideas just make me even happier that a Henson-led Disney gave rise to an even bigger Totoromania.Seems like an awfully long time for this to happen, but if Universal could've worked out the rights then perhaps Disney could've done so as well.
I've always wanted Disney to release manga along with comics, and Back to the Future seems like a great fit along with the Dark Crystal.
EDIT #1: WAIT. THIS IS A THING.
Legends of the Dark Crystal - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
And Marvel did this:EDIT #1: WAIT. THIS IS A THING.
Legends of the Dark Crystal - Wikipedia
But personally I kinda like this, which could've been made into anthology mini series:
Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal Creation Myths: The Complete Collection
The complete prequel trilogy to Jim Henson’s cult classic fantasy film The Dark Crystal, with a story by the film’s original concept designer, Bria...
www.simonandschuster.com
Overall it's a very positive development, but we shouldn't underestimate at how the popularity of The Dark Crystal in Japan could easily lead to a manga and perhaps even an anime, both of which could be exported to the West along with future Western-made media (Marvel Comics, DisneyDirect series, Video Games, etc.) in an ATL anime/manga frenzy.
I'd honestly prefer if Marvel did the anthology series or an original story like what the OTL Manga did for any ITTL stuff. Regardless, almost any expansion to The Dark Crystal IP is a net positive for both Jim Henson and Disney.
Going to Back to the Future, a possible scenario for it to happen is that Disney would seek a mangaka like Yuusuke Murata to adapt the series after seeing The Dark Crystal manga become extremely popular in both Japan and the West. I think that's very likely and one where Disney works harder towards finalizing an agreement and green-lighting the series.
Computers IV: An Increasingly Crowded Field
An Increasingly Crowded Field
Excerpt from Computer Wars! by Calvin Threadmaker
After losing significant market share due to the disastrous reception of the PC Jr., IBM found itself suddenly a minor player within its own PC architecture. After a massive purge of leadership following this disastrous rollout, IBM Vice President of Manufacturing Don Estridge was named the new company President[1]. Estridge took over at a volatile time in the personal computer business. IBM was facing serious and growing competition by Virgin/Atari, Apple, Commodore, Tandy, and Toshiba, the latter two in particular competing directly within the PC market. Estridge proclaimed that IBM under his watch would continue to set the PC Standard. His immediate answer to this lost share was the IBM PS/2, released in 1987. Based on an Intel 80286 processor, upgradable to an 80486, the PS/2 had the raw power that once again made IBM the PC King [2].
IMB PS/2 (Image Source “computinghistory.org.uk”)
Though rather pricey compared to competitors, the IBM PS/2’s brute force and versatility of configuration options carved out a strong market share, particularly in business and industry. IBM was back in the game. Under Estridge’s leadership, IBM reclaimed the PC throne, becoming the example to beat, the “Once and Future King” of the PC architecture, according to PC Magazine. But success, as it tends to, breeds competition.
Increasingly, this competition was from the “two Ts” of Toshiba and Tandy. Toshiba had emerged with the TOPS line, bolstered by Hi Toro chipsets. The TOPS RX series, known as the “T-Rex”, naturally, appeared in 1988 and made a splash on both sides of the Pacific. At half the price on average than a roughly-equivalent PS/2, the T-Rex made inroads in the home PC and small business markets, offering stiff competition to Tandy in particular.
Meanwhile, Tandy’s sins were coming back to haunt them. Late in 1986, the management board of Fujitsu discovered that someone had plagiarized their computer architecture! This was discovered from reading the latest issue of Computer World. The culprit was, of course, Radio Shack, the electronics store chain, or, rather, its corporate owner Tandy, whose third edition of the TRS-80 Color Computer bore far too many similarities to the Fujitsu FM-77 to be coincidental. Ironically, it appeared that Tandy had even improved on the design, at least somewhat. The joystick ports were read from the main CPU rather than the Video processor, for example. Nonetheless, anyone who wrote software in BASIC, stuck to Roman alphabet text, and bound sound via .vgm and .mml files, was effectively writing for both files.
But what could be done? Legally speaking, very little. The Color Computer 3 lacked any and all ports and interfaces under Fujitsu patent, except where they purchased Fujitsu chips at full price from reputable distributors[3]. Meanwhile, Tandy appeared to have idiomatically crossed all its “Ts,” “Xs,” and “Fs” and dotted all its “Is” and “Js” with Microsoft and Microware, meaning that lawsuits in American courts over software copyrights would fail the laugh test once things entered the Discovery phase.
But hope was not lost entirely. Fujitsu fired off a Cease-and-Desist letter to Tandy's legal department, threatening bad legal consequences on very vague terms if the Color Computer 3 saw availability in the Western Pacific Rim without Fujitsu's approval, even if they went through “licensees and/or cutouts.”
Perhaps having anticipated this development, the Fujitsu board of directors and Japanese home office legal department soon received a message via courier, signed by the chairman of the Tandy board of directors. It implored its receivers not to enter into any rash legal process, and explained that they were working on the next generation of the series with Hitachi. In fact, rather than cross swords, perhaps a trans-Pacific alliance was called for? Thus, what began as a theft soon became a partnership, and in 1988 the first fruit of the Fujitsu-Tandy-Hitachi partnership, the FM-77 AVR/CoCo 4, was born.
Fujitsu FM-77/TRS-80 CoCo 4 (Image source “museum.ipsj.or.jp”)
The release of the Hitachi H8 powered Fujitsu FM-77 AVX40/Tandy Color Computer 4 in April 1988, or rather the end or their production runs in early 1992, would mark the end of an era. That year would also see the end of production for the Apple IIc+ and IIe+, Commodore 640, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and Orange Logic Sanguinello. Also, Atari, Acorn, and Sharp would cease software, warranty and legacy support for the 14X0, BBC Master, and X1 series of 8-bit home computers. That year marked the end of (relatively) simple machines with built-in high-level languages, meant for enjoyment by the programmer-hobbyist, with only MICKEY machines in schools, and some winning bidders at surplus auctions, left to carry the torch until MICKEY too ceased production in 1995.
Yet, even as Tandy and Fujitsu were releasing one of the last of the old, they were developing something new, a machine seemingly out of left field, that took the world by storm, revitalized a stagnant niche, and inspiring a generation of coders, and a generation of copycats, too. Fujitsu and Tandy continued their partnership with the FM-Towns/Tandy 5000/10,000, a series with numerous sound and video options, making it popular with home gamers. But the big advantage of the FM-Towns/Tandy 5000/10,000 was its inherent flexibility of its modular design, which allowed for easy upgrades to processors, memory, video, and audio. As such, the Towns/5000/10,000 had real staying power, managing to live on for nearly a decade, and unheard-of lifespan for a computer line.
Fujitsu FM-Towns/Tandy 5000/10,000 (Image source “old-computers.com”)
And not only were corporations increasingly flooding the PC market with both home and office PC clones, but small “Hack Shops” began popping up around the world in garages and flea markets, the nerdy equivalent of motorcycle chop shops, where unholy blends of different manufacturers’ chipsets and boards and hard drives were used with various cracks and clones of operating systems. “Hacker”, a word that began at MIT to refer to pranksters and not to be confused with the malicious or criminal “cracker”, soon became a subculture in its own right with its own style, language, and conventions, at once nerdy, shady, egalitarian, and elitist. “Hacker” could now refer to hobbyists, hack shop gurus, pranksters, criminals, or “chip chucker” hacker wannabes. This began to take on artistic as well as technical pathways, with “pimped out” and individualized towers and peripherals becoming as much a part of the challenge as seeing how insane of an overclock you could pull off without “letting the magic smoke out”. For example, one (in)famous Hacker, “Gram Crakr”, souped up an old TRS-80 CoCo 4, gave it a black-and-white color scheme, and called it the “Trash Panda”[4].
Commodore, PC, and Virgin/Atari systems were the frequent subjects of hacks, with even the venerable Commodore 64 still living on in increasingly “Frankensteined” kits and hacks. Commodore’s X816/X832 series, another popular computer with Hackers, would hit the market in 1987 in partnership with Sharp.
Virgin/Atari, meanwhile, was staying in the game with the sleek, futuristic 3000X, another high-end machine worth the high price tag, which was making a name for itself within start-ups and high-brow businesses from Paris galleries to Zurich financial offices to Manhattan advertising firms to Tokyo corporations to Silicon Valley software companies. Virgin became a market in and of itself, taking deep bites into both the Macintosh and PC markets, and properly hacked 2000X/3000X systems even worked as a reasonable placeholder in audio-video startups until a DIS or Silicon Graphics station could be acquired.
Apple, meanwhile, was struggling. The venerable Apple II lines were fading away and the Macintosh had carved out a respectable market share, but the closed architecture and “not playing well with others” approach to software development were causing the “Mac” to lose market share to Virgin and PC while the end of the Apple II line essentially ceded the low-end home market to Commodore and Tandy.
Apple Macintosh II
While Apple continued to produce the Macintosh in his absence, Steve Jobs continued to move forward with Beacon Computers, releasing the Cornet in 1988 with its Overture OS and ARIA GUI [5]. While networking and modems were practically an afterthought with most computers of the era, Beacon, anticipating the power of the Internet to come, was building a machine that was designed for networking. The Cornet was a generation ahead of its time, a system preconfigured for the burgeoning internet age, capable of working as a net crawler or a net server. The handful of public websites available on the Usenet found the perfect server host in the Cornet. As such, the Beacon gained a lot of attention from professionals, but it was having a hard time carving a market share out from Apple, IBM, and Virgin/Atari when few companies or private individuals were spending much time on the fragmented and limited “Net” of the late ‘80s.
Beacon Cornet (Image source “prepressure.com”)
But Jobs had more than one job, as it were. While Disney computers were becoming best known for their high-end graphics and sound users, Jim Henson and Steve Jobs were growingly increasingly interested in a much humbler audience: kids. Specifically, Henson wanted to produce a small, cheap, simple windowing-GUI-based system that “even a 4-year-old can figure out.” Much as he had with Sesame Street, Henson wanted to give the underprivileged children a fighting chance at education, this time computer literacy, and thus he and Jobs brainstormed a new closed system with big, colorful, and soft keys, an extremely simple and intuitive mouse-and-GUI system, and a colorful, non-threatening appearance. Furthermore, it would be dirt cheap, with bulk discounts for educators and some charity discounts or giveaways such that “every elementary school in the world” should be able to afford a lab of a couple dozen computers. Jim quickly sketched out a small, dome-shaped computer with Mickey Mouse ears on the monitor. Jobs took it to the Imagine, Inc., team, and they set to work.
The idea grew into “Project Mickey”, an idea that was quickly blessed by both Consumer Products VP Bo Boyd and Marketing VP Jack Lindquist due to the positive branding and potential profits that came with it. The Imagine, Inc., team soon developed the Magical Integrated Computer Kernels for the Education of Youth (MICKEY) system, a fully integrated computer system with mouse ears on the monitor and the mouse alike, and the red, yellow, white, and black color pallet of the eponymous mouse. It had limited expansion capability and only a relative handful of software applications (the games were universally educational), but the primary goal was to teach basic computer literacy to the very young. Introduced at the 1988 Disney EXPO, schools across North America bought the system, as did some schools in South America, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Nintendo even began license-builds of MICKEY for the Asian market. Private sales were noteworthy as well, with an entire secondary market emerging for “used MICKEYs”. [6]
It’s been said that an entire generation learned computer literacy on MICKEY systems, which became alternately beloved or despised depending on the level of computer snobbery of the user. MICKEY became a cultural icon of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s with MICKEY Clubs and nostalgia netsites popping up at the turn of the millennium. There was even a bizarre sub-subculture of “MICKEY Hackers”, a.k.a. “Mackers”, “Hackeys”, or “RATZ” (a name, not an acronym), with “what can you do with the Mouse, bra?” becoming the running challenge for Hackers and RATCON becoming an event in its own right. Needless to say, several ironic and bathos-filled physical transformations of the MICKEYs began to appear, the iconic ears a frequent target of transformation and abuse [7].
[1] Estridge and his wife and several other IBM employees were killed in our timeline on August 2nd, 1985, after their flight crashed on landing following a rare microburst weather event. Even the tiniest of literal butterfly flaps can change this, so as such he and his wife are still alive in this timeline.
[2] The CPU selection is Estridge and IBM recognizing Atari, Apple, and Commodore as competition. In OTL, IBM refused to acknowledge the cloners, and thus never put better than a 286 on the motherboard. Better CPUs were a do-it-yourself job, requiring a riser socket due to different pinouts (because the 386 and above were 32 bit processors).
RAM is Based on our timeline; you gotta’ love that 640K System RAM limit on MS-DOS!
GPU: There are secret sauce differences from our timeline: the Intel graphics chips permit localized graphics interrupts during VBlank, allowing for a crude form of blitting. The ROMP in the XGA card is effectively IBM's take on the Fujitsu-Tandy method of object generation. Also, more Video RAM overall compared to our timeline.
I/O Ports: This is Estridge's biggest contribution compared to our timeline: the MCA bus and slots are still physically, electrically, and bus signal backward compatible with 8 and 16-bit interface PC Bus (ISA) expansion cards while being up to 32 times as fast in full native mode at 32 bits wide (386 and 486 models only, of course). More typical bandwidth gains are on the order of X8. This combined with fewer overall cloners will keep IBM on top.
[3] Fujitsu's management might have been legalistic hard-asses, but they weren't ARM or Qualcomm in the ‘00s and New Teens.
[4] As requested, @GrahamB.
[5] Resembles our timeline’s NExTSTEP.
[6] In our timeline the MicroMIPSa CPU extension was developed in 1996. The Sound CPU is essentially the Hudson HuC6280, complete with the mass move instructions, but minus the built-in sound channels, and a different port and bus architecture.
[7] And, as always, hat tip to @Kalvan for the Computer help!
Excerpt from Computer Wars! by Calvin Threadmaker
After losing significant market share due to the disastrous reception of the PC Jr., IBM found itself suddenly a minor player within its own PC architecture. After a massive purge of leadership following this disastrous rollout, IBM Vice President of Manufacturing Don Estridge was named the new company President[1]. Estridge took over at a volatile time in the personal computer business. IBM was facing serious and growing competition by Virgin/Atari, Apple, Commodore, Tandy, and Toshiba, the latter two in particular competing directly within the PC market. Estridge proclaimed that IBM under his watch would continue to set the PC Standard. His immediate answer to this lost share was the IBM PS/2, released in 1987. Based on an Intel 80286 processor, upgradable to an 80486, the PS/2 had the raw power that once again made IBM the PC King [2].
IMB PS/2 (Image Source “computinghistory.org.uk”)
| NAME | PS/2 |
| MANUFACTURER | IBM |
| TYPE | Business or Home Computer |
| ORIGIN | Japan/U.S.A. |
| YEAR | 1987-1991 (Replaced by Aptiva and PS/3) |
| CPU | Intel 80286 (or second-source variants from AMD, IBM, Rockwell Semiconductor, or NEC), Intel 80386 (or second-source variants from IBM, AMD, or Cyrix), Intel 80486 (or second-source variants from IBM, AMD, or Cyrix, 1989 refresh), Intel 80486DX (Built-in FPU), Optional 80x87 FPU |
| CLOCK SPEED | 12 Mhz (8520) to 45 MHz (8540/45 models featuring 80486 only) |
| BUILT IN LANGUAGE | Microsoft Q-Basic, upgradable to Microsoft Visual Basic (1990) |
| RAM | 640K (Standard), expandable up to 3 3/8 MB Extended, 4 MB total (286), 32 MB (386 and 486), or 2 GB (via expansion cards), IBM pioneered the 72 pin SIMM module for RAM |
| VIDEO RAM | 384K (1987), 2 MB total (XGA, 1989) |
| GPU | VGA+x2 Intel 83720 (Based on the NEC uPD72120), Maximum Resolution of 720×400 (70 Hz), 640x512 (60 Hz), or 800x500 (49.96 Hz), capable of displaying up to 2,048 colors onscreen (256x240 and 320x196 resolutions only, 256 colors at maximum resolutions) out of a master palette of 262,144. Optional XGA Graphics Card (1989) extended colors onscreen to 65,536 colors onscreen at 640x480, and added support for up to 1280x800 (256 Colors). There were also numerous third-party graphics card solutions, including the ATI Video Wonder and Microsoft MSGX series |
| VIDEO CPU | IBM ROMP (XGA in 1989) |
| SOUND | Beeper, (An amazing plethora of optional sound cards, most famously the Roland Ad-Lib and Sound Canvas families, and the Creative Labs SoundBlaster series) |
| I/O | EGA (7 pin) monitor out, VGA (15 pin) monitor out, PS/2 8 pin Keyboard and Mouse, x2 RS-232 Serial port, x2 to x4 720K-1440K 3.5" or 640K-1280K 5.25" floppy drives (mix and match), and several hard drive options. And anywhere from 4 to 12 MCA expansion ports. |
| FORM FACTOR | Pizza Box (8520), Horizontal Upright (8525, 8530, 8540), Full Tower (8535, 8545) |
| OS | OS/2, Optional IBM AIX and Microsoft XENIX (UNIX distributions based on AT&T System V) |
| MSRP | $1,350 (8520) to $4,200 (8535), $5,000+ (8545, 1989) |
Though rather pricey compared to competitors, the IBM PS/2’s brute force and versatility of configuration options carved out a strong market share, particularly in business and industry. IBM was back in the game. Under Estridge’s leadership, IBM reclaimed the PC throne, becoming the example to beat, the “Once and Future King” of the PC architecture, according to PC Magazine. But success, as it tends to, breeds competition.
Increasingly, this competition was from the “two Ts” of Toshiba and Tandy. Toshiba had emerged with the TOPS line, bolstered by Hi Toro chipsets. The TOPS RX series, known as the “T-Rex”, naturally, appeared in 1988 and made a splash on both sides of the Pacific. At half the price on average than a roughly-equivalent PS/2, the T-Rex made inroads in the home PC and small business markets, offering stiff competition to Tandy in particular.
| NAME | Toshiba TOPS RX |
| MANUFACTURER | Fujitsu/Tandy |
| TYPE | Personal Computer |
| ORIGIN | Japan/U.S.A. |
| YEAR | 1988-1992 |
| CPU | Toshiba TMP 68010-68030 (Licensed CMOS second-source variants of the Motorola 68000 series) |
| CLOCK SPEED | 6.38 MHz (TOPS RX EXL in Legacy Mode), 10.74 MHz (EXL in maximum native mode clock speed), 16.06 MHz (RX Pro, 68020), 25 MHz (RX SuperPro, 68030) |
| KEYBOARD | Full-stroke 102 keys with numeric keypad, function and arrow keys |
| BUILT IN LANGUAGE | Tandy Color/Disc Basic 3.5 (Based on Fujitsu and Microsoft F-Basic) |
| RAM | 768K (EXL) to 2 MB "Fast RAM" (SuperPro) |
| AUDIO/VIDEO RAM | 768K-2MB “Fast RAM” (Stacked Pseudo-SRAM) |
| GPU | AGNES II (Video MMU, Blitter, and Sprite Generator)+ DENISE II (Video Adaptor and Color Generator) |
| VIDEO CPU | Second Hitachi H8-500 @7.14 Mhz |
| RESOLUTION | 1024x1024 or 1280x800* (128 Colors), 512x512 or 640x400 (2048 Colors) Capable of displaying 16 instantiations of 16 unique sprites, for a total of 256 onscreen at once. 16 times the blitter bandwidth, Up to four separate scrolling fields, each with its own blitter functionality** |
| SOUND | PAULA (Also controls the keyboard, joystick/mouse jacks, and floppy drives) + SEGA PCM (16 Channels 10-12 Bit PCM) and Yamaha YM2610A+YM3016 DAC: Six concurrent FM channels (voices), four operators per channel Three SSG channels: compatible with YM2149 (Atari ST) One programmable noise channel ADPCM-A: Six ADPCM channels, fixed pitch, 18.5 kHz sampling rate at 12-bit from 4-bit data ADPCM-B: One ADPCM channel, variable pitch, 18.5–55.5 kHz sampling rate |
| OTHER CHIPS | ZORRO II (Expansion I/O) |
| STORAGE | x2 3 1/3" Floppy Disc Drives, Several Toshiba and Hitachi Hard Drive Options. |
| I/O | 2 to 5 x Zorro II slots, Video slot, Serial/RS232, Parallel/Centronics, RGB & composite video outputs, x2 Joystick/Mouse, 2 x Stereo audio, Keyboard@, External floppy, x2 66 Pin Generic SCSI ports |
| FORM FACTOR | Keyboard Console (EXL), Horizontal Upright (Pro and SuperPro) |
| OS | WorKBench 1.3+ Kickstart 1.3, Kanji/Kana/Hangul fonts package in Far Eastern Markets |
| MSRP | $675-$2,450 or 105 times that in Yen, or 1050 times that in South Korean Won (1989) |
| NOTES | * Pro and Super Pro only, Master Palette is still 4096 colors ** when all four fields are in use, blitter speed per field is a "mere" 4X the AX/OCS chipset. |
Meanwhile, Tandy’s sins were coming back to haunt them. Late in 1986, the management board of Fujitsu discovered that someone had plagiarized their computer architecture! This was discovered from reading the latest issue of Computer World. The culprit was, of course, Radio Shack, the electronics store chain, or, rather, its corporate owner Tandy, whose third edition of the TRS-80 Color Computer bore far too many similarities to the Fujitsu FM-77 to be coincidental. Ironically, it appeared that Tandy had even improved on the design, at least somewhat. The joystick ports were read from the main CPU rather than the Video processor, for example. Nonetheless, anyone who wrote software in BASIC, stuck to Roman alphabet text, and bound sound via .vgm and .mml files, was effectively writing for both files.
But what could be done? Legally speaking, very little. The Color Computer 3 lacked any and all ports and interfaces under Fujitsu patent, except where they purchased Fujitsu chips at full price from reputable distributors[3]. Meanwhile, Tandy appeared to have idiomatically crossed all its “Ts,” “Xs,” and “Fs” and dotted all its “Is” and “Js” with Microsoft and Microware, meaning that lawsuits in American courts over software copyrights would fail the laugh test once things entered the Discovery phase.
But hope was not lost entirely. Fujitsu fired off a Cease-and-Desist letter to Tandy's legal department, threatening bad legal consequences on very vague terms if the Color Computer 3 saw availability in the Western Pacific Rim without Fujitsu's approval, even if they went through “licensees and/or cutouts.”
Perhaps having anticipated this development, the Fujitsu board of directors and Japanese home office legal department soon received a message via courier, signed by the chairman of the Tandy board of directors. It implored its receivers not to enter into any rash legal process, and explained that they were working on the next generation of the series with Hitachi. In fact, rather than cross swords, perhaps a trans-Pacific alliance was called for? Thus, what began as a theft soon became a partnership, and in 1988 the first fruit of the Fujitsu-Tandy-Hitachi partnership, the FM-77 AVR/CoCo 4, was born.
Fujitsu FM-77/TRS-80 CoCo 4 (Image source “museum.ipsj.or.jp”)
| NAME | Fujitsu FM-77 AVR/Radio Shack/Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer 4 |
| MANUFACTURER | Fujitsu/Tandy |
| TYPE | Personal Computer |
| ORIGIN | Japan/U.S.A. |
| YEAR | 1988-1992 |
| CPU | Hitachi H8-500, 16/24-bit extension of the 6308, featuring 24-bit sized registers and 16-bit instruction length. |
| REAL TIME CLOCK | Ricoh RP5C15 |
| KEYBOARD | 92 Key Keyboard with Number Pad, Arrow Keys, and 10 Function Keys |
| SPEED | 8.184 Mhz |
| BUILT IN LANGUAGE | Tandy Color/Disc Basic 3.5 (Based on Fujitsu and Microsoft F-Basic) |
| RAM | 256 K (expandable to 1MB through expansion modules, or up to 8MB through third-party expansions) |
| VIDEO RAM | 384K, Expandable to 1 MB |
| GPU | GIME II (Fabbed By Microchip Technologies, Based on the Motorola 6847) All graphics modes of the CoCo 3, plus 320x200 (262,144 Colors Onscreen), 440X200 (65,536 Colors), 640x200 (4096 Colors), 640zx400 (256 Colors), 896x560 (64 Colors) |
| VIDEO CPU | Second Hitachi H8-500 @7.14 Mhz |
| SOUND | Yamaha YM2610 (FM-77) or Tandy CR 8496 (Clone of the Texas Instruments SN76496) Three Channels Geometry Synthesis, One Channel White Noise) + Yamaha Y8950 and custom 8-bit DAC, (CoCo4) |
| STORAGE MEMORY | x2 Double Sided, Double Density3 1/" floppy drives. 640K capacity. |
| I/O | Tape, A/V Multi-Out, 15 pin VGA out, 2 joystick ports, x3 RS232, Cartridge Slot, numerous other I/O on FM-77 |
| FORM FACTOR | Pizza Box with Separate Keyboard (FM-77), Keyboard Console (Resembles a Tandy 1000 HX but with the CoCo3 keyboard layout) |
| OS | Microware OS-9, level 3.x |
| MSRP | $449.95 (CoCo 4), ¥89,750 (FM-77) |
| NOTES | Tandy also marketed the "Tandy Video 3" video card for ISA and MCA form factors as a compatibility upgrade for its own 1000 MSDOS machines, and other PC Clones as well. *Used in subsequent iterations of Creative Soundblaster cards until the debut of Sound Blaster Live! |
The release of the Hitachi H8 powered Fujitsu FM-77 AVX40/Tandy Color Computer 4 in April 1988, or rather the end or their production runs in early 1992, would mark the end of an era. That year would also see the end of production for the Apple IIc+ and IIe+, Commodore 640, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and Orange Logic Sanguinello. Also, Atari, Acorn, and Sharp would cease software, warranty and legacy support for the 14X0, BBC Master, and X1 series of 8-bit home computers. That year marked the end of (relatively) simple machines with built-in high-level languages, meant for enjoyment by the programmer-hobbyist, with only MICKEY machines in schools, and some winning bidders at surplus auctions, left to carry the torch until MICKEY too ceased production in 1995.
Yet, even as Tandy and Fujitsu were releasing one of the last of the old, they were developing something new, a machine seemingly out of left field, that took the world by storm, revitalized a stagnant niche, and inspiring a generation of coders, and a generation of copycats, too. Fujitsu and Tandy continued their partnership with the FM-Towns/Tandy 5000/10,000, a series with numerous sound and video options, making it popular with home gamers. But the big advantage of the FM-Towns/Tandy 5000/10,000 was its inherent flexibility of its modular design, which allowed for easy upgrades to processors, memory, video, and audio. As such, the Towns/5000/10,000 had real staying power, managing to live on for nearly a decade, and unheard-of lifespan for a computer line.
Fujitsu FM-Towns/Tandy 5000/10,000 (Image source “old-computers.com”)
| NAME | Fujitsu FM-Towns/Tandy 5000/10,000 |
| MANUFACTURER | Fujitsu/Tandy |
| TYPE | Personal Computer |
| ORIGIN | Japan/U.S.A. |
| YEAR | 1989-1997 |
| CPU | 1989: Intel 80386DX (32-bit) @ 16 MHz 1993: Intel i486DX @ 33-66 MHz / Intel i486SX @ 25 MHz 1994: Intel i486DX @ 33-66 MHz / Intel i486SX @ 33 MHz 1995: Intel Pentium @ 90-120 MHz 1996: Intel Pentium Pro@ 133-200 MHz |
| REAL TIME CLOCK | Ricoh RP5C15 |
| SYSTEM CONTROLLER | BUDDHA (1987), MESSIAH (1988), SCOTCH (1989), DOSA (1991) |
| SPEED | 25Mhz (Equivalent to a 100Mhz Intel 80386 or 80486, or Motorola 68020, or 50 Mhz Motorola 68030) |
| RAM | Default: 1-2 MB (1989), 4 MB (1993), 6 MB (1994), 8-16 MB (1995) Upgradable: 10 MB (1989), 64 MB (1993), 128 MB (1995) |
| VIDEO RAM | 656 KB Main VRAM: 512 KB Sprite RAM: 128 KB (1024 sprites) |
| TEXT RAM | 16 KB |
| GPU | Sprite controller: CYNTHIA (1987), CYNTHIA II (1988), BETHANY (1993); CRT controller: VINAS 1 + 2 (1987), VICON (1988); Video controller: VSOP (1987), VIPS (1988); Video data selector: RESERVE (1987), CATHY (1988); Consolidated Video Controller: POLICE (1993) |
| RESOLUTION | 256x256, 320x240, 352x232, 360x240, 640x400, 640x480, 1024x768, 1024x1024, 1120x750 |
| COLOR PALLETE | 12-bit (4096 colours) @ 640x480 / 640x400 (2 planes) 15-bit (32,768 colours) @ 320x240 (2 planes) 24-bit (16.78 million colours) @ 640x480 (1 plane) Simultaneous colours: 1989: 4-bit (16 colours) @ 1024x1024 / 1120x750 (1 plane) 4-bit (16 colours) @ 640x480 / 640x400 (2 planes) 8-bit (256 colours) @ 640x480 (1 plane) 15-bit (32,768 colours) @ 320x240 (1 plane) 1994: 15-bit (32,768 colours) to 24-bit (16.78 million colours) Sprites: Up to 1024 sprites @ 16x16 pixels each |
| SOUND | CD audio: 16-bit sampling @ 44.1 KHz, Redbook audio FM synthesis audio: Yamaha YM2608 sound chip+YM3016 DAC, 6-channel stereo (FM Towns) Yamaha YM3812+YM3014 DAC (Tandy), Upgraded to YMF262 (1992) and YMF278 (1995)* PCM audio: 1989: Ricoh RF5c68 sound chip, 8-channel stereo, 8-bit sampling @ 19.2 Hz 1994: 16-bit sampling @ 48 KHz, stereo Optional sound card: Creative Sound Blaster AWE32 (1994) |
| STORAGE MEMORY | CD-ROM (540 MB), 2x 3.5" floppy disk (1.2 MB) drives, hard disk drive Optional storage: 5.25" floppy disk drive, hard disk drive CD-ROM drive speed: 1x (1989), 2x (1993), 4x (1995) |
| HARD DISK DRIVE | Default: 20-40 MB (1989), 170-340 MB (1993), 850 MB (1995) Upgradable: 45 MB (1989), 3.2 GB (1997) |
| I/O | Keyboard, mouse, gamepad, joystick |
| OTHER OPTIONS | Video card, microphone, modem, SCSI card, VGA card, dual-monitor support |
| OS | Default: Towns OS (1989), Towns OS 2.1 (1995), Digital Research DRDOS+Tandy Desk Mate GUI Supported: MSDOS 4.X (1990), Windows 3.1 (1991), Windows NT (1993) Windows 95 (1995) |
| NOTES | Tandy also marketed the "Tandy Video 3" video card for ISA and MCA form factors as a compatibility upgrade for its own 1000 MSDOS machines, and other PC Clones as well. *Used in subsequent iterations of Creative Soundblaster cards until the debut of Sound Blaster Live! |
And not only were corporations increasingly flooding the PC market with both home and office PC clones, but small “Hack Shops” began popping up around the world in garages and flea markets, the nerdy equivalent of motorcycle chop shops, where unholy blends of different manufacturers’ chipsets and boards and hard drives were used with various cracks and clones of operating systems. “Hacker”, a word that began at MIT to refer to pranksters and not to be confused with the malicious or criminal “cracker”, soon became a subculture in its own right with its own style, language, and conventions, at once nerdy, shady, egalitarian, and elitist. “Hacker” could now refer to hobbyists, hack shop gurus, pranksters, criminals, or “chip chucker” hacker wannabes. This began to take on artistic as well as technical pathways, with “pimped out” and individualized towers and peripherals becoming as much a part of the challenge as seeing how insane of an overclock you could pull off without “letting the magic smoke out”. For example, one (in)famous Hacker, “Gram Crakr”, souped up an old TRS-80 CoCo 4, gave it a black-and-white color scheme, and called it the “Trash Panda”[4].
Commodore, PC, and Virgin/Atari systems were the frequent subjects of hacks, with even the venerable Commodore 64 still living on in increasingly “Frankensteined” kits and hacks. Commodore’s X816/X832 series, another popular computer with Hackers, would hit the market in 1987 in partnership with Sharp.
| NAME | Sharp X650X0/Commodore X816/X832 |
| MANUFACTURER | Sharp/Commodore |
| TYPE | Business/Home Computer |
| ORIGIN | Japan/U.S.A. |
| YEAR | 1987-1994 |
| CPU | 1987: Ricoh 5A26 or WDC 65832 @ 10.74-14.28 MHz (Sharp) MOS Technology 12510-12520 (pin compatible, but several minor timing changes and upgrades) 1991: 16-bit CPU Dropped, 32-bit CPU upclocked to 25 MHz 1993: CPU respun to .8u, Upclocked to 45 MHz |
| FPUa | 1990: Banchu Bronta 6 / Banchu Cammago 4007 (based on AMD/Intel) 1991: SharpCZ-6BP1 / CZ-6BP1A (based on 32-bit Motorola MC 68881) @ 16-25 MHz (160-240 kiloFLOPS) 1992: Motorola MC 68882 (32-bit) @ 25-50 MHz (254-528 kFLOPS) |
| REAL TIME CLOCK | Ricoh RP5C15 |
| SYSTEM CONTROLLER | BUDDHA (1987), MESSIAH (1988), SCOTCH (1989), DOSA (1991) |
| SPEED | 25Mhz (Equivalent to a 100Mhz Intel 80386 or 80486, or Motorola 68020, or 50 Mhz Motorola 68030) |
| RAM | 1.5 MB, Expandable to 8 MB, or up to 2 GB via expansion cards |
| VIDEO RAM | 1987: 1072 KB Graphics (bitmapped) memory: 512 KB Text (bitmapped) memory: 512 KB (omitted on Commodore) Sprite memory: 32 KB Static RAM (SRAM) memory: 16 KB 1994: 3120 KB |
| STATIC RAM | 16 KB (1987), 128 KB (1992) |
| ROM | 1 MB (256 KB BIOS, 768 KB character generator, 64KB on Commodore) |
| GPU | Sprite controller: CYNTHIA (1987), CYNTHIA II (1988), BETHANY (1993); CRT controller: VINAS 1 + 2 (1987), VICON (1988); Video controller: VSOP (1987), VIPS (1988); Video data selector: RESERVE (1987), CATHY (1988); Consolidated Video Controller: POLICE (1993) |
| RESOLUTION | All Commodore Vic-20, 64, and 256/640 resolutions, plus: 1987: 256x240, 256x256, 320x200, 512x240, 512x256, 512x512, 640x400, 768x512, 960x600, 1024x1024, 1280x800 1994: 256x240, 256x256, 320x200, 512x240, 512x256, 512x512, 640x400, 768x512, 960x600, 1024x1024, 1280x800, 1280x1024, 2048x1280 (30 Hz) |
| COLOR PALLETE | 1987: 16-bit (65,536 colors) 1993: 24-bit (16.78 million colors) |
| COLORS ON SCREEN | 1987: 4-bit (16 colors @ 1024x1024) to 8-bit (256 colors @ 512x512) 1988: 4-bit (16 colors @ 1024x1024); 9-bit (512 colors @ 512x512, 2 planes); 16-bit (65,536 colors @ 512x512, 1 plane) 1994: 8-bit (256 colors @ 1280x1024) to 24-bit (16.78 million colors @ 1024x768) Sprites: 256 hardware sprites on screen @ 64x64 pixels each (1987); 1024 sprites @ 256x256 Pixels (1988); 4096 sprites @ 256x256 Pixels (1993) Planes: 4 (@1024x1024) to 16 (@ 512x512) |
| POSSIBLE AV OUTPUTS | VGA (Monitor Output) Component (RGB) |
| GRAPHICS HARDWARE | Hardware scrolling, priority control, super-impose |
| DISPLAY MONITOR | 15" to 21" CRT monitor |
| SOUND CPU | SHERRI, Based on the Zilog Z280 (Sharp), MOS Technology 8510 (Commodore) FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis sound ship: Yamaha YM2151 @ 3.5 MHz Features: Stereo, 8 channels, 4 operators, 8 double-octave chords, noise generator DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter) sound chip: Yamaha YM3012 PCM (Pulse-Code Modulation) sound chip: Oki MSM6258V @ 15.6 KHz (Sharp Only) Features: 4-bit mono ADPCM (Adaptive Differential PCM), 1 voice Sampling rate: 22 KHz PSG/Geometry Synthesis+PCM: SID III (Commodore Only) 8 Channels Geometry Synthesis. Each Channel can also do 8 bits PCM Synthesis, or two adjacent channels can be consolidated to do 16 bit PCM Samples. 22 KHz Maximum Sample Rate MML (Music Macro Language) format: MDX |
| SOUND MEMORY | 64 KB |
| PCM SOUND EXPANSION | PCM-8 Mercury Unit (8 channel PCM), Introduced 1990, becomes part of stock sound system 1993 MIDI modules: Roland MT-32, Roland Sound Canvas (SC-55, SC-155, SC-88VL, SC-88 Pro), Yamaha MU series MIDI cards: Sharp CZ-6BM1, System Sacom SX-68M / SX-68M-2, Creative Labs |
| MEMORY CONTROLLER CHIPS | Memory controller: ET (1987), OHM (1988), OHM2 (1989), McCOY (1989) DMA (Direct Memory Access) controller: Hitachi HD63450 Main RAM (Random Access Memory) memory: Default: 1 MB (1987), 2 MB (1989), 4 MB (1992), 8 MB (1994) Upgradable: 12-16 MB |
| STORAGE MEMORY | Floppy disk (1.2 MB), hard disk drive |
| HARD DISK DRIVE | 10 MB (1987), 20 MB (1988), 40 MB (1989), 81 MB (1990), 324-500 MB (1994), 500 MB (1995), 1-2 GB (1997) |
| FLOPPY DISK DRIVE CONTROLLER | NEC 72065 |
| HARD DISK DRIVE CONTROLLER | Fujitsu MB89352A SCSI HDD Controller |
| I/O CONTROLLER CHIP | SICILIAN (1987), IOSC (1988), IOSC-2 (1989), PEDEC (1990) |
| SERIAL PORT CONTROLLER | Zilog Z85C30 dual-channel serial controller |
| PRINTER PORT CONTROLLER | NEC 8255 |
| MULTIFUNCTION PERIPHERAL CONTROLLER | Motorola 68901 |
| EXPANSION SLOTS | 2 (1987), 4 (1989); Keyboard input, two joystick inputs, TV tuner control, NTSC video image decoder, AUX stereo inputs/outputs, Two floppy disk drives (5.25 drives or 3.5 drives depending on the model), Media disk drive, 3D goggles port |
| OTHER OPTIONS | Mouse, trackball, online modem, LAN card, SCSI card, hard disk drive |
| OS | GEOS (various versions) |
| MSRP | $1350 |
| NOTES | a) Floating Point Unit math co-processor b) Micro-Controller Unit co-processor This was the last Commodore Series in the 6502/PET compatibility chain. |
Virgin/Atari, meanwhile, was staying in the game with the sleek, futuristic 3000X, another high-end machine worth the high price tag, which was making a name for itself within start-ups and high-brow businesses from Paris galleries to Zurich financial offices to Manhattan advertising firms to Tokyo corporations to Silicon Valley software companies. Virgin became a market in and of itself, taking deep bites into both the Macintosh and PC markets, and properly hacked 2000X/3000X systems even worked as a reasonable placeholder in audio-video startups until a DIS or Silicon Graphics station could be acquired.
| NAME | Virgin/Atari 3000X |
| MANUFACTURER | Virgin-Atari Computers |
| TYPE | Business/Home Professional Computer |
| ORIGIN | UK/U.S.A. |
| YEAR | 1988-1992 |
| CPU | MIPS R3000+MIPS R3010 FPU, 21 MHz, Optional 30 MHz version |
| SPEED | 25Mhz (Equivalent to a 100Mhz Intel 80386 or 80486, or Motorola 68020, or 50 Mhz Motorola 68030) |
| RAM | 1.5 MB, Expandable to 8 MB, or up to 2 GB via expansion cards |
| VIDEO RAM | 1.5 MB, Expandable to 8 MB, or by video card |
| GPU | HEATHER II (Display Controller/Video Data Selector) + VIVIAN (Video MMU/DMA) + x2 QUARTER (32 SILVER Object generators and 192 PENNY Sprite engines total) Capable of displaying a maximum of 65536 Colors on screen AT 640X480 out of a master palette of 715264, With a maximum resolution of 960x720. Optional Texas Instruments TMS32010 DSP+TMS32015 Video FPU |
| SOUND CPU | Synertek 65010 (65816 with 3 16-bit data busses) |
| SOUND CHIPS | PORKEY (CMOS version of QuadPOKEY, adds 10 bit wavetable functionality per channel), Yamaha YM2414 (FM Synthesis Chip, 8 channels, 4 operators each, eight possible waveforms)+YM3014 DAC, AMY II (Sixteen Channels Additive Synthesis, Eight Operators Each) |
| OTHER CHIPS | 3rd AMD Am29101 (I/O Controller), AMD Am29114 (Keyboard, Joystick, and Mouse Interface), x2 AMD Am29982 4x4 bus exchangers (MIT NUBUS based), x4 Fujitsu MB89352A (SCSI controllers) |
| I/O PORTS | x4 21 (7, 7, 7) Pin Mouse/Joystick jacks, 8-pin radial keyboard port (not compatible with PC/XT or PS/2 keyboard jack) RF, A/V Multiout, Coaxial Cable TV, 40+10 Digital/Analog Monitor Port, X2 840/1680K 3 1/2" Floppy Drive, x3 3.5 mm speaker jack, x2 49 Pin(7x7) 8-bit SCSI Floppy Drive Port, 72 Pin SCSI Hard Drive Port, 72 Pin (inverted alignment) Printer Port, x6 Expansion Slots, Based on the MIT NUBUS Standard |
| OS | ATX, BSD Kernel Based, C and BASH Shells, SNOW GUI |
| FORM FACTOR | Upright horizontal, separate keyboard (Resembles the Steel Series APEX A300) |
| MSRP | $1750 |
Apple, meanwhile, was struggling. The venerable Apple II lines were fading away and the Macintosh had carved out a respectable market share, but the closed architecture and “not playing well with others” approach to software development were causing the “Mac” to lose market share to Virgin and PC while the end of the Apple II line essentially ceded the low-end home market to Commodore and Tandy.
Apple Macintosh II
| NAME | MACINTOSH II |
| MANUFACTURER | Apple |
| TYPE | Business Computer/Professional Workstation |
| ORIGIN | U.S.A. |
| YEAR | 1987-1989 |
| BUILT IN LANGUAGE | None |
| KEYBOARD | Full stroke 81 keys with numeric keypad and cursor keys Optional extended 105 key keyboard with 15 function keys ($229) Optional extended 105 key keyboard with Cherry mechanical keyswitches ($349) |
| CPU | Motorola 68020, Optional Motorola 68030 ($750) |
| SPEED | 15.66 MHz |
| CO-PROCESSOR | Motorola 68881 (numeric coprocessor) |
| RAM | 1 MB, up to 8 MB on board and 2 GB via NuBus add-on slots |
| ROM | 256 KB |
| GRAPHIC MODES | 640 x 480 (The MAC II uses a NUBUS video card, this card could be replaced with any other more powerful one). |
| COLORS | 16 or 256 among 16.7 millions |
| SOUND | Custon 8-bit DAC, Several Apple and Third-Party Sound Cards. Macintosh Music System (Imagine DOC+X2 Yamaha YM2149) a frequent optional pack-in |
| SIZE / WEIGHT | 47.4 (W) x 36.4 (D) x 14 (H) cm / 12 Kg |
| I/O PORTS | Six Internal MIT NUBUS slots (10 MHz, 32 bits), ADB (2: Keyboard, mouse), RS232/422 (2), Disk, Monitor |
| BUILT IN MEDIA | 1 or 2 3.5'' floppy disc drives |
| OS | Macintosh System 4.0 + Finder 5.4 (can boot up to System 7.5.5) |
| POWER SUPPLY | Self-configuring switching power supply unit |
| PERIPHERALS | 20 to 80 MB SCSI hard disk |
| MSRP | $3769 (1 x 800 KB FDD, 1 MB of RAM) Hard discs: 20 MB ($999), 40 MB ($1599), 80 MB ($2699) |
While Apple continued to produce the Macintosh in his absence, Steve Jobs continued to move forward with Beacon Computers, releasing the Cornet in 1988 with its Overture OS and ARIA GUI [5]. While networking and modems were practically an afterthought with most computers of the era, Beacon, anticipating the power of the Internet to come, was building a machine that was designed for networking. The Cornet was a generation ahead of its time, a system preconfigured for the burgeoning internet age, capable of working as a net crawler or a net server. The handful of public websites available on the Usenet found the perfect server host in the Cornet. As such, the Beacon gained a lot of attention from professionals, but it was having a hard time carving a market share out from Apple, IBM, and Virgin/Atari when few companies or private individuals were spending much time on the fragmented and limited “Net” of the late ‘80s.
Beacon Cornet (Image source “prepressure.com”)
| NAME | Beacon Cornet |
| MANUFACTURER | Beacon |
| TYPE | Business Computer/Professional Workstation |
| ORIGIN | U.S.A. |
| YEAR | 1988-1991 |
| BUILT IN LANGUAGE | C shell is a full, Turing Complete, ANSI/ISO C compiler with certain additional packages for Cornet hardware. |
| KEYBOARD | 95 Key keyboard with number pad and function keys, Cherry mechanical keyswitches |
| MOUSE | Two button laser mouse. |
| CPU | AMD Am29000, 32 Bit RISC+AMD Am29433 (Hardware 32x32bit=64bit multiplyer)+optional AMD Am29325 or 29027 FPUa |
| SPEED | 25Mhz (Equivalent to a 100Mhz Intel 80386 or 80486, or Motorola 68020, or 50 Mhz Motorola 68030) |
| RAM | 2 MB (standard), up to 64 MB possible by populating all system RAM slots with the densest memory of the dayb. |
| VIDEO RAM | 2 MB (Standard), up to 64 MB possible by populating the VRAM slots, or by graphics card. |
| VIDEO CPU/GPU | x2 AMD Am29101 16-bit Microprocessor+x2 AMD Am29130 24-bit shifter (2D System), AMD Am29501 DSP+x4 AMD Am29510 16x16 bit=32 bit multiplyers, x4 AMD Am29520 pipeline registers, x2 AMD Am29526 trigonometry generators. (3D System)c |
| RESOLUTION | 2304x1536 (Monochrome), 1152x768 (1 field of 16 colors, or 2 fields 4 colors each), 576x384 (one field of 65536 colors, two fields 256 colors each, or four fields 16 colors each) , 288x192 (one field 262,144 colors, two fields, 512 colors each, three fields, 64 colors each, six fiekds, 8 colors each)d |
| COLORS | 2,097,152 (seven levels each of RGB, plus one bit of color blending and two bits of translucency) |
| SOUND CPU | Motorola 56000 Audio DSPe |
| SOUND CHIPS | Yamaha YM3812f (Nine Channels FM Synthesis, 4 operators each), National Semiconductor LMC 1992, Imagine DOC IIg |
| AUDIO BUFFER | 256K+system RAM as reallocated by software, or by sound card. |
| OTHER CHIPS | 3rd AMD Am29101 (I/O Controller), AMD Am29114 (Keyboard, Joystick, and Mouse Interface), x2 AMD Am29982 4x4 bus exchangers (MIT NUBUS based), x4 Fujitsu MB89352A (SCSI controllers) |
| I/O PORTS | x4 50 pin 8-bit SCSI connectors, x4 66 pin16-bit SCSI connectors, x4 9 pin circular keyboard, mouse, and joystick ports, 76 pin proprietary Laser Printer port, 8 (6 open) custom pinout NUBUS expansion slots, x2 token ring ports. |
| BUILT IN MEDIA | Sony Magneto-Optical Disc Driveh, X2 double sided, extended density 3 1/2" floppy drives (2, 880K capacity), x2 40MB Seagate Hard Drive |
| OS | OVERTURE, A POSIX-compliant UNIX distribution based on the Carnegie-Mellon MACH kernel, "Aria" GUI, C and BASH Shells. |
| POWER SUPPLY | Self-configuring switching power supply unit |
| MSRP | $5800 |
| NOTES | a) The AM29325 had roughly 8/5 the FLOPs, but the Am29027 features an extra 16 bits of spillover (80 vs. 64) internal precision, for when results have to be quickly reused by software. b) OVERTURE's memory map could address up to 2GB of System RAM. c) The 3D system's rasterization power is roughly comparable to the Atari Hard Drivin'/Namco System 21 Arcade hardware, but somewhat less versatile due to only outputting triangles. d) fairly tricky dividing a total of 18 display color registers to get even results. e) The 56000 also provided DAC functionality, so Jobs could keep the usual YM3012/14/18 off the motherboard at the expense of an extra 512 bytes or so of sound stack code. f) Also used in the Roland Ad Lib and Creative Labs Sound Blaster cards, g) Based on the DOC, but with bit width per channel doubled to 16. h) Optical disc format provides capacities from 128 MB (Single Sided, Single Density) to 512 MB (Double Sided, Double Density), but that last did not become standard until 1990, necessitating an upgrade to earlier machines. |
But Jobs had more than one job, as it were. While Disney computers were becoming best known for their high-end graphics and sound users, Jim Henson and Steve Jobs were growingly increasingly interested in a much humbler audience: kids. Specifically, Henson wanted to produce a small, cheap, simple windowing-GUI-based system that “even a 4-year-old can figure out.” Much as he had with Sesame Street, Henson wanted to give the underprivileged children a fighting chance at education, this time computer literacy, and thus he and Jobs brainstormed a new closed system with big, colorful, and soft keys, an extremely simple and intuitive mouse-and-GUI system, and a colorful, non-threatening appearance. Furthermore, it would be dirt cheap, with bulk discounts for educators and some charity discounts or giveaways such that “every elementary school in the world” should be able to afford a lab of a couple dozen computers. Jim quickly sketched out a small, dome-shaped computer with Mickey Mouse ears on the monitor. Jobs took it to the Imagine, Inc., team, and they set to work.
The idea grew into “Project Mickey”, an idea that was quickly blessed by both Consumer Products VP Bo Boyd and Marketing VP Jack Lindquist due to the positive branding and potential profits that came with it. The Imagine, Inc., team soon developed the Magical Integrated Computer Kernels for the Education of Youth (MICKEY) system, a fully integrated computer system with mouse ears on the monitor and the mouse alike, and the red, yellow, white, and black color pallet of the eponymous mouse. It had limited expansion capability and only a relative handful of software applications (the games were universally educational), but the primary goal was to teach basic computer literacy to the very young. Introduced at the 1988 Disney EXPO, schools across North America bought the system, as did some schools in South America, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Nintendo even began license-builds of MICKEY for the Asian market. Private sales were noteworthy as well, with an entire secondary market emerging for “used MICKEYs”. [6]
| NAME | MICKEY |
| MANUFACTURER | Imagine, Inc. |
| TYPE | Early Education/Youth |
| ORIGIN | U.S.A. |
| YEAR | 1988-1995; replaced by MICKEY 2.0, with DONALD internet service |
| BUILT IN LANGUAGE | LOGO, Assembly Monitor, and Mayhem (interactive sound stack reading and exporting as .mml and .vgm sound files) |
| KEYBOARD | (104-key rubber dome keyboard with function keys, Mickey and Minnie keys, 7 different lockable shift keys, and a number pad) |
| CPU | MicroMIPSa |
| SPEED | 8.95 Mhz |
| RAM | 196K |
| VIDEO RAM | 80K (60K frame buffer, 16K Sprite RAM, 4K Tile RAM) |
| GPU | YENSID, Resolution: 256x240 (256 Colors), up to 3 tile-based scrolling fields, or 1 tile and one bitmap, capable of displaying up to 64 16x16 pixel sprites on screen (no scanline limits) with a master palette of 4096 colors. |
| SOUND CPU | Western Design Center 65C108 |
| SOUND CHIPS | x2 Phillips SAA 1099b + Imagine DOC |
| AUDIO BUFFER | 48K |
| OTHER CHIPS | MINNIE (Bus Driver and I/O Controller), Intel 8048/51 (Keyboard Interface), x2 NEC 27065 (SCSI controllers), Motorola 68901 (Joystick and Mouse interface) |
| I/O PORTS | Cartridge Slot (pinout based on Commodore User Port), Monitor Port (Based of 15 pin VGA, but not physically or electrically compatible with it, x4 Apple II style joystick/mouse ports (mouse pointer keyed to port 4 by default), x2 3 mm audio jack, x3 66 pin generic SCSI ports, x6 expansion slots (based on an inverted, half height IBM ISA mechanical and electrical pinout) |
| OS | MAGIC (Programming Language command prompt or windowing GUI, uses ConTiki for screen shots) |
| FORM FACTOR | Keyboard Console between classic Apple II and Atari 800XL in size. |
| MSRP | 1988 $325 (Console, Monitor, and one 3 1/2" disc drivec) |
| NOTES | a) 16 Bit processor based on the MIPS Architecture. b) 6 channels each of geometry synthesis. Used in the SAM Coupe, the Phillips Diamond series of not-quite PC Clones, Several arcade games by Century Electronics, and in the Creative Labs Game Blaster and Sound Blaster sound cards. c) MAGIC's floppy format means a Double Sided, Double Density disc could hold 800K, and a Double Sided, High Density disc could hold 1600K. |
It’s been said that an entire generation learned computer literacy on MICKEY systems, which became alternately beloved or despised depending on the level of computer snobbery of the user. MICKEY became a cultural icon of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s with MICKEY Clubs and nostalgia netsites popping up at the turn of the millennium. There was even a bizarre sub-subculture of “MICKEY Hackers”, a.k.a. “Mackers”, “Hackeys”, or “RATZ” (a name, not an acronym), with “what can you do with the Mouse, bra?” becoming the running challenge for Hackers and RATCON becoming an event in its own right. Needless to say, several ironic and bathos-filled physical transformations of the MICKEYs began to appear, the iconic ears a frequent target of transformation and abuse [7].
[1] Estridge and his wife and several other IBM employees were killed in our timeline on August 2nd, 1985, after their flight crashed on landing following a rare microburst weather event. Even the tiniest of literal butterfly flaps can change this, so as such he and his wife are still alive in this timeline.
[2] The CPU selection is Estridge and IBM recognizing Atari, Apple, and Commodore as competition. In OTL, IBM refused to acknowledge the cloners, and thus never put better than a 286 on the motherboard. Better CPUs were a do-it-yourself job, requiring a riser socket due to different pinouts (because the 386 and above were 32 bit processors).
RAM is Based on our timeline; you gotta’ love that 640K System RAM limit on MS-DOS!
GPU: There are secret sauce differences from our timeline: the Intel graphics chips permit localized graphics interrupts during VBlank, allowing for a crude form of blitting. The ROMP in the XGA card is effectively IBM's take on the Fujitsu-Tandy method of object generation. Also, more Video RAM overall compared to our timeline.
I/O Ports: This is Estridge's biggest contribution compared to our timeline: the MCA bus and slots are still physically, electrically, and bus signal backward compatible with 8 and 16-bit interface PC Bus (ISA) expansion cards while being up to 32 times as fast in full native mode at 32 bits wide (386 and 486 models only, of course). More typical bandwidth gains are on the order of X8. This combined with fewer overall cloners will keep IBM on top.
[3] Fujitsu's management might have been legalistic hard-asses, but they weren't ARM or Qualcomm in the ‘00s and New Teens.
[4] As requested, @GrahamB.
[5] Resembles our timeline’s NExTSTEP.
[6] In our timeline the MicroMIPSa CPU extension was developed in 1996. The Sound CPU is essentially the Hudson HuC6280, complete with the mass move instructions, but minus the built-in sound channels, and a different port and bus architecture.
[7] And, as always, hat tip to @Kalvan for the Computer help!
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