Pre home computer era --------------------- DEC PDP-11/20 appears and runs Unix (1970) home computer era begins ------------------------ MITS Altair 8800 (1975) Intel 8080 cpu, Microsoft develops Altair BASIC for it CP/M for 8080 also exists around this time IBM 5100 (Sept 1975) Palm cpu, 5" CRT, 64x16 text, BASIC and APL available Cromemco Z-1 (1977) front panel, 22 slots, 4 mhz z80 cpu, 8k ram, 80x25 text, S100 bus IBM PC 5150 (1981) Intel 8088 cpu, 256K of ram, 5 ISA slots after this CP/M is largely displaced by MS DOS Vic 20 First released January 1981 Original Price $299 I acquire my first vic-20 Christmas 1982 Columbia Data Products MPC 1600 (1982) first clone of IBM PC, floppy interface on motherboard, intel 8088 cpu Sun Microsystems Sun-1 (1982) 68000 cpu 10 mhz, Unix workstation running SunOS 1.0 TRS-80 Model 4 (1983) 4 mhz z80 cpu, 80x24 text, 64k to 128k ram, TRS-DOS 6 CP/M Plus option for $150 MicroPDP-11/73 appears (1983) but it's price at $14K is too expensive for home use AT&T 3B1 (1984) 68010 cpu, Unix v3.51, MFM hard drive, Mono+10 MB HDD $3975 Commodore Amiga 1000 (Sept 1985) Amigados 1.0 My use of Xenix and Venix beings (1986) Amiga 500 launched Oct. 1987 $595.95 US without a monitor Commodore Amiga 3000UX (1990) Amiga 3000 with Amix, Unix System V Windows 3.0 is released (1990) BeOS for BeBox (1991) but it doesn't gain traction Simh emulator appears (1993) Commodore goes out of business (1994) Linux 1.0 and NetBSD 1.0 are released (1994) The FOSS era begins I start dabbling with Linux, Minix and BSD but keep using windows Redhat Linux 1.0 released (Nov 3, 1994) Microsoft tries to tax every computer (2000) that goes out the door via Windows Tax of $30 to $50 or more, height of the dark ages? Caldera licenses Ancient Unix (2002) with BSD license, includes Unix v1 to v7 and Unix 32/V My personal FOSS era begins (2003) Redhat Linux 8.0 becomes my main operating system Android is released (2008) but has some proprietary components The new era of FOSS hardware begins... Chromebooks start shipping on June 15, 2011