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Osborne 1

Osborne 1

The Osborne 1 was the first portable "all-in-one" microcomputer, released in April, 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. It weighed 23.5 pounds (12 kg), cost US$1795, and ran the then-popular CP/M 2.2 operating system. Its principal deficiencies were a tiny 5 inch (13 cm) display screen and single sided, single density floppy disks that could not contain sufficient data for practical business applications. Besides being the first portable computer, the Osborne 1 was also the first computer that "bundled" software; the included WordStar wordprocessor, SuperCalc spreadsheet, dBase II database program, and CBASIC + MBASIC had a retail value of more than $2,000. The machine's hardware features included dual 5¼-inch floppy disk drives, a 4 MHz Z80 CPU, a fold down keyboard which doubled as the computer case's lid, and the 5 inch, 52 character × 24 line monochrome CRT display. At its peak, Osborne Computer Corporation shipped 10,000 Osborne 1 units per month. The computer was widely imitated as several other computer companies started offering low-priced portable computers with bundled software. Compared to smaller and lighter laptop portable computers manufactured later, the luggage size Osborne 1 may be more accurately described as a luggable or transportable computer. The Osborne's popularity was superseded by the similar Kaypro II which had a much more practical 9 inch (23 cm) CRT that could display the standard 80 characters on 24 lines as well as double density floppies that could store twice as much data. Osborne Computer Corporation was unable to effectively respond to the Kaypro challenge until after the market window had closed and the day of the 8-bit, CP/M-based computer had ended. Later Compaq broke through with a portable computer (the Compaq Portable) with a 9 inch CRT, that was software compatible with the IBM PC (the Compaq was the first PC clone).

External link


- [http://oldcomputers.net/osborne.html Osborne 1 at oldcomputers.net] Category:Portable computers Category:Personal computers ja:Osborne 1

Portable computer

A Portable computer is a computer that is designed to be moved from one place to another (in other words, it is a computer that is portable). Portable computers, by their nature, are microcomputers. Early portables were unkindly referred to as "luggables," referring to their great size and weight (owing partly to the need to include a full-blown CRT monitor, as LCD technology was not yet mature). LCD.]] The term portable computer is now almost exclusively used to refer to portable computers that are larger than a laptop, often use conventional parts and usually do not run on batteries. Smaller portable computers are referred to by their more specific terms:
- The laptop (or desknote or notebook) with a flat panel display and keyboard, requiring a seated position and both hands. A relatively recently introduced modification has been the Tablet PC, which essentially is a laptop operated with a stylus on a touch-sensitive screen.
- The palmtop which is something between a laptop and a PDA (q.v.).
- The pocket computer, which was mostly a phenomenon of the 1980s, and combined the features of an alphanumeric calculator, a small home computer (usually programmable in BASIC), and a PDA (q.v.). Manufacturers of these included Tandy/Radio Shack, Hewlett-Packard, Casio, and Sharp Corporation.
- The personal digital assistant (PDA), usually held in one hand and operated with the other.
- The wearable computer with handsfree interface, and usually some voice capability (speech recognition and speech synthesis). Portable computers have been increasing in popularity over the past decade, as they do not restrict the user in terms of mobility as a desktop computer would. Wireless Internet, extended battery life and more comfortable ergonomics have been factors driving this increase in popularity. The first portable computer was the Osborne 1, developed by Adam Osborne. The first IBM PC compatible portable computer (and indeed the first IBM PC compatible, or "clone," of any kind) was the Compaq Portable. The first full-color portable computer was the Commodore SX-64.

See also:

Laptops Palmtops PDA
- Portable ko:휴대용 컴퓨터

April

April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days. April begins (astrologically) with the sun in the sign of Aries and ends in the sign of Taurus. Astronomically speaking, the sun begins in the constellation of Pisces and ends in the constellation of Aries. The derivation of the name (Latin aprilis) is uncertain. The traditional etymology from the Latin aperire, "to open," in allusion to its being the season when trees and flowers begin to "open," is supported by comparison with the modern Greek use of ἁνοιξις (opening) for spring. This seems very possible, though, as all the Roman months were named in honour of divinities, and as April was sacred to Venus, the Festum Veneris et Fortunae Virilis being held on the first day, it has been suggested that Aprilis was originally her month Aphrilis, from her Greek name Aphrodite, or from the Etruscan name Apru. Jacob Grimm suggests the name of a hypothetical god or hero, Aper or Aprus. On the fourth and the five following days, games (Ludi Megalenses) were celebrated in honour of Cybele; on the fifth there was the Festum Fortunae Publicae; on the tenth (?) games in the circus, and on the nineteenth equestrian combats, in honour of Ceres; on the twenty-first--which was regarded as the birthday of Rome--the Vinalia urbana, when the wine of the previous autumn was first tasted; on the twenty-fifth, the Robigalia, for the averting of mildew; and on the twenty-eighth and four following days, the riotous Floralia. The Anglo-Saxons called April Oster-monath or Eostur-monath, the period sacred to Eostre or Ostara, the pagan Saxon goddess of spring, from whose name is derived the modern Easter. St George's day is the twenty-third of the month; and St Mark's Eve, with its superstition that the ghosts of those who are doomed to die within the year will be seen to pass into the church, falls on the twenty-fourth. In China the symbolical ploughing of the earth by the emperor and princes of the blood takes place in their third month, which frequently corresponds to our April; and in Japan the feast of Dolls is celebrated in the same month. The "days of April" (journées d'avril) is a name appropriated in French history to a series of insurrections at Lyons, Paris and elsewhere, against the government of Louis Philippe in 1834, which led to violent repressive measures, and to a famous trial known as the procès d'avril. April was originally the second month of the Roman calendar and had 29 days. Julius Caesar's calendar reform in 45 BCE resulted in April having 30 days and becoming the fourth month, as the year now began in January.

The Tragic Month of April

Wars that started/ended in April include
- American Revolution Started (Paul Revere's Ride: April 18-19 1775)
- American Civil War (Started April 1861, Ended April 1865, thus "Across 5 Aprils")
- The Rwandan Genocide began in April 1994
- The Bosnian War began in the first days April 1992
- World War II (Germany Surrenders in April, 1945) Other Tragedies that have occurred in the month of April include
- President Abraham Lincoln's Assassination (April 14,1865)
- 1906 San Francisco Earthquake (April 18, 1906)
- The sinking of the RMS Titanic (April 14-15,1912)
- Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated (April 4,1968)
- Super Tornado Outbreak (April 3-4,1974)
- Chernobyl nuclear accident (April 26,1986)
- The bloody end to the Branch Dividan siege in Waco, Texas (April 19,1993)
- The Oklahoma City Bombing (April 19, 1995)
- Columbine High School shooting (April 20,1999)
- Death of Pope John Paul II (April 2, 2005)
- The first use of poison gas at the second battle of Ypres in April 1915

Trivia


- April begins on the same day of week as July in all years and also January in leap years.
- April's flower is the daisy and sweet pea.
- April's birthstone is the diamond.

April Events

Monthlong events in April


- Chocolate Eaters Month
- Grass Month
- Pets Are Wonderful Month
- Uh-huh Month
- Cancer Control Month
- Marcus H. Birthday (National Holiday in Australia)
- Child Abuse Prevention Month
- Freedom Shrine Month
- International Guitar Month
- Keep America Beautiful Month
- Mathematics Education Month
- Multicultural Communication Month
- National Anxiety Month
- National Garden Month
- National Home Improvement Month
- National Humor Month
- National Occupational Therapy Month
- National Welding Month
- Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month
- Philatelic Societies Month
- VD Awareness Month
- National Food Month
- Stress Awareness Month
- Alcohol Awareness Month
- Holy Humor Month
- International Amateur Radio Month
- International Twit Award Month
- Month of the Young Child
- National Florida Tomato Month
- National Knuckles Down Month
- National Sexually Transmitted Diseases Education and Awareness Month
- National Woodworking Month
- Sea Cadet Month
- Thai Heritage Month
- Sports Eye Safety Month
- Community Services Month (California)
- Listening Awareness Month
- Autism Awareness Month

Weeklong events in April

1st Week in April
- Medic Alert Week
- Cherry Blossom Festival
- Publicity Stunt Week
- National Birthparents Week
- Week of the Young Child
- Straw Hat Week
- National Bake Week (begins 1st Mon)
- Consider Christianity Week
- National Reading a Road Map Week 2nd Week in April
- Be Kind to Animals Week
- Masters Golf Tournament
- National Medical Laboratory Week
- Private Property Week (10th-16th)
- National Library Week
- Harmony Week
- National Garden Week
- TV Turn-Off Week
- National Guitar Week
- National Building Safety Week
- National Home Safety Week 3rd Week in April
- National Police Week
- Boys and Girls Club Week
- National Coin Week
- Bike Safety Week
- National Bubblegum Week
- Pan American Week
- National Week of the Ocean
- National Crime Victims’ Rights Week
- National Volunteer Week
- National Adult Films Week Last Week in April
- Forest Week
- National Lingerie Week
- Canada-US Goodwill Week
- Big Brothers/Sisters Appreciation Week
- Consumer Protection Week
- National TV-Free Week
- Jewish Heritage Week
- Keep America Beautiful Week
- National YMCA Week
- Professional Secretaries Week
- Intergenerational Week
- Reading Is Fun Week
- Egg Salad Week
- Teacher Appreciation Week (begins Last Mon) A Week in April
- Astronomy Week (determined by 1st Quarter Moon)

April Movable Daily Holidays

1st Sunday
- Set-Your Clock-Forward-Day
- Daylight Saving Time begins in the United States; turn your clock ahead at 2:00 a.m.
- Budoha Day (Hawaii)
- Vesak (Buddha's Birthday) 1st Saturday
- Saturday Market Day (Oregon) 1st Saturday before 5th
- Tax Saturday (UK) 1st Thursday
- Glarus Festival (Switzerland) 1st Friday
- Student Government Day (Massachusetts) Friday after 1st
- Arbor Day (Apache, Navajo, Coconino, Mohave, Yavapai; Arizona) 2nd Friday
- Audubon Day 3rd Sunday & Monday
- Sechselauten (Six Ringing Festival; Switzerland) 3rd Monday
- Patriot's Day (Maine, Massachusetts)
- Boston Marathon Thursday between 19th & 26th
- First Day of Summer (Iceland) Saturday nearest St. George's Day (23rd)
- Peppercorn Day (Bermuda) Monday nearest Feast Day of St. George (23rd)
- St. George's Day (Newfoundland) Sunday after 1st full moon after vernal equinox following Passover
- Lambri (Bright Day; Greece) 3rd Monday
- Patriots' Day (Maine, Massachusetts) 4th Monday
- Fast Day (New Hampshire) 4th Thursday
- Take Our Daughters to Work Day 4th Weekend
- Just Pray No weekend Last Monday
- Confederate Memorial Day (Alabama, Mississippi) Last Friday
- Arbor Day
- Bird Day Wednesday of Last Full Week
- Professional Secretaries Day Last Saturday
- National Sense of Smell Day (USA)

April Indeterminate Holidays

Full Moon Day of 6th Buddhist month (@ Apr/May)
- Vesak Sun enters Aries
- Solar New Year (Southeast Asia)
- aka Thingyan (Burma)
- aka Songkran (Thailand) 10th through 15th Day of 2nd lunar month
- Paro Tsechu (Bhutan) During planting season (@ Apr/May)
- Tyi Wara (Mali) Early April to late July (every 4 years)
- Summer Olympics begin Late April or May
- Alp Aufzug (Switzerland) Before 1st rainfall (@ Apr/May)
- Bobo Masquerade (Burkina Faso) Sometime in April
- World Championship Cow Chip Throwing Contest
- Palm Sunday - Christian
- Palm Sunday - Armenian Christian
- Good Friday - Christian
- Easter - Christian
- Pesach (Passover) - Jewish

See also


- Historical anniversaries
- April-Fools' Day

References


- Chambers's Book of Days
- Grimm's Geschichte der deutschen Sprache. Cap. "Monate"
- Category:Months ko:4월 ms:April ja:4月 simple:April th:เมษายน

1981

1981 (MCMLXXXI) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar.

Events

January-February


- January - Sarawak chamber found
- January 1 - Greece enters the EEC
- January 1 - Palau becomes self-governing
- January 4 - Sheffield police arrests Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper
- January 13 - Donna Griffiths, a schoolgirl in Pershore, Worcestershire, UK, begins a uncontrollable series of sneezes that end September 16 1983 - after 978 days
- January 16 - Protestant gunmen shoot and wound Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and her husband
- January 19 - United States and Iranian officials sign an agreement to release 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity
- January 20 - Ronald Reagan succeeds Jimmy Carter as President of the United States of America. Minutes after Reagan becomes president, Iran releases 52 American hostages that had been held captive for 444 days - Iran hostage crisis ends.
- February 4 - Gro Harlem Brundtland becomes the Prime Minister of Norway
- February 9 - Polish Prime Minister Józef Pinkowski resigns and is replaced by General Wojciech Jaruzelski
- February 10 - A fire at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel-casino kills eight and injures 198
- February 14 - Australia withdraws recognition of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia
- February 23 - Antonio Tejero, with members of the Guardia Civil enters the Spanish Congress of Deputies, and stops the session, where Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo was going to be named president of the government. The coup d'état would fail thanks to King Juan Carlos.

March-April

Juan Carlos.]]
- March 1 - Bobby Sands, an IRA member, begins hunger strike for political status in Long Kesh prison - he dies May 5, the first of ten men.
- March 6 - After 19 years hosting the CBS Evening News Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time.
- March 7 - Colombian guerillas execute US bible translator Chester Allen Bitterman for being a CIA agent
- March 11 - Chilean president Augusto Pinochet sworn in for an eight-year term as president.
- March 19 - Three workers are killed and five injured during a test of the Space Shuttle Columbia.
- March 30 - President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr., whose family had connections with the vice president. Two police officers and James Brady are also wounded.
- April 11 - Riot in Brixton, South London - rioters throw petrol bombs, attack police and loot shops.
- April 12 - The first launch of a Space Shuttle: Columbia launches on the STS-1 mission.
- April 15 - The Australian Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock resigns from cabinet accusing the Australian Prime Minister Fraser of gross disloyalty.
- April 18 - A Minor League baseball game between the Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island becomes the longest professional baseball game in history: 8 hours and 25 minutes/33 innings (the 33rd inning was not played until June 23rd).

May


- May - Daniel K. Ludwig abandons the Jari project in the Amazon Basin
- May 6 - A jury of architects and sculptors unanimously selects Maya Ying Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial from 1,421 other entries.
- May 10 - In the second round of the presidential elections in France (French presidential election, 1981), François Mitterrand beats Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
- May 13 - Pope John Paul II is shot at and nearly killed by Mehmet Ali Ağca, a Turkish gunman, as he entered St. Peter's Square in Rome to address a general audience. (Two days after Christmas in 1983, Pope John Paul went to the prison to meet and forgive his would-be assassin)
- May 21 - In France, socialist François Mitterrand becomes president of the Republic.
- May 22 - Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, imprisoned for life for 13 counts of murder
- May 25 - In Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council is created between Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
- May 26 - The Italian government resigns over its links to the fascist Masonic cell P-2
- May 30 - Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman assassinated in Chittagong.

June-July

Chittagong return to Buckingham Palace following their wedding watched by over 1 billion people worldwide.]]
- June 5 - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems (these were the first recognized cases of AIDS).
- June 6 - Seven coaches of an overcrowded passenger train fall off the tracks into the River Kosi, in Bihar, India - about 800 dead
- June 7 - Israeli Air Force destroys Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor
- June 13 - At the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London, a teenager Marcus Sargeant fires six blank shots at Queen Elizabeth II.
- June 22 - Hamas attacks a travel agency in Greece - two dead
- June 22 - Iranian president Abolhassan Banisadr deposed
- June 29 - Morris Edwin Robert armed with a machine gun holds hostages in the FBI section in Atlanta Federal Building. After three hours the hostages are rescued - Robert is shot
- July 17 - Hyatt Regency walkway collapse: Two skywalks filled with people at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri collapse into a crowded atrium lobby killing 114
- July 17 - Israeli bombers destroy the PLO HQ in Beirut
- July 27 - Wheel of Fortune premiers in Australia on the Seven Network.
- July 29 - Lady Diana Spencer marries Charles, Prince of Wales.

August-October


- August 1 - MTV (Music Television) is launched.
- August 5 - Ronald Reagan fires 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers who ignored his order for them to return to work.
- August 7 - The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.
- August 12 - The original IBM PC released in the United States.
- August 19 - Gulf of Sidra incident (1981). Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi sends two Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jets to intercept two US fighters over the Gulf of Sidra. The American jets destroyed the Libyan fighters.
- August 19 - US President Ronald Reagan appoints the first female US Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor.
- August 28 - South African troops invade Angola.
- August 31 - A bomb explodes at the US Army base in Ramstein, West Germany injuring 20 people.
- September 4 - An explosion at a mine in Zalizin, Czechoslovakia - 65 dead.
- September 10 - Picasso's painting "Guernica" is moved from New York to Madrid.
- September 15 - The John Bull becomes the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world, at 150 years old, when it operates under its own power outside Washington, DC.
- September 18 - France abolishes capital punishment.
- October 6 - Egyptian president Anwar Sadat is assassinated during a parade by army members who were part of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization, who opposed his negotiations with Israel.
- October 10 - The Ministry for Education of Japan issues the jōyō kanji.
- October 14 - Vice President Hosni Mubarak is elected President of Egypt one week after Anwar Sadat was assassinated.
- October 21 - Andreas Papandreou becomes Prime Minister of Greece.

November-December

Prime Minister of Greece
- November 1 - Antigua and Barbuda gain independence from the United Kingdom
- November 13 - The first Friday the 13th event held by motorcyclists in Port Dover, Ontario, Canada
- November 23 - Iran-Contra scandal: Ronald Reagan signs the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the Central Intelligence Agency the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua
- November 25-November 26 - Group of mercenaries lead by Mike Hoare take over Mahe airport in the Seychelles in a coup attempt. Most of the mercenaries escape by a commandeered Air India passenger jet, six are later arrested
- November 30 - Cold War: In Geneva, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union begin to negotiate intermediate-range nuclear weapon reductions in Europe (the meetings ended inconclusively on Thursday, December 17)
- December 1 - A Yugoslavian DC-9 crashes into a mountain while approaching Ajaccio Airport in Corsica killing 178
- December 4 - South Africa grants "homeland" Ciskei independence (not recognized outside South Africa)
- December 11 - El Mozote massacre - in El Salvador, army units kill 900 civilians
- December 13 - Wojciech Jaruzelski declares the state of martial law in Poland to prevent dismantling of the communist system by Solidarity
- December 15 - A car bomb destroys the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 61 people. This is the first modern suicide bombing. Syrian intelligence is blamed.
- December 20 - The Penlee lifeboat disaster off the coast of South-West Cornwall
- December 28 - The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is born (Norfolk, Virginia)

unknown dates


- Millennium Renactment of the translation of Saint Edward the Martyr's relics from Wareham to Shaftesbury
- Mauritania abolishes the institution of slavery.
- James Tobin wins the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
- Mike Cooley, Bill Mollison and Patrick van Rensburg / Education with Production win the Right Livelihood Award
- The counter-culture wire service LNS ceases operations.
- Public funding of election Campaigns introduced in New South Wales, Australia
- The State Council of the People's Republic of China listed the four cities (Beijing, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Guilin) as where the protection of historical and cultural heritage as well as natural scenery should be treated as a prior project.
- Cuba suffers a major outbreak of Dengue hemorrhagic fever, with 344 203 cases. [http://w3.whosea.org/en/Section10/Section332/Section521_2454.htm]
- Computer and Video Games (magazine) begins publication.

Births

January-March


- January 1 - Zsolt Baumgartner, Hungarian race car driver
- January 3 - Eli Manning, American football player
- January 6 - Mike Jones, American rapper
- January 12 - Quentin Griffin, American football player
- January 15 - El Hadji Diouf, Senegalese footballer
- January 15 - Howie Day, American singer and songwriter
- January 17 - Scott Mechlowicz, American actor
- January 20 - Jason Richardson, American basketball player
- January 20 - Owen Hargreaves, Canadian-born footballer
- January 21 - Dany Heatley, German-born hockey player
- January 22 - Chantelle Anderson, American basketball player
- January 22 - Willa Ford, American singer, television hostess, and actress
- January 22 - Beverley Mitchell, American actress
- January 25 - Alicia Keys, American musician
- January 28 - Elijah Wood, American actor
- January 31 - Justin Timberlake, American musician
- February 3 - Alisa Reyes, American actress
- February 10 - Natasha St-Pier, Canadian singer
- February 11 - Kelly Rowland, American singer (Destiny's Child)
- February 14 - Erin Torpey, American actress
- February 15 - Jenna Morasca, American television personality
- February 17 - Paris Hilton, American actress and heiress
- February 18 - Andrei Kirilenko, Russian basketball player
- February 22 - Jeanette Biedermann, German singer and actress
- February 24 - Lleyton Hewitt, Australian tennis player
- February 27 - Josh Groban, American singer
- March 1 -Ana Hickmann, Brazilian model
- March 2 - Bryce Howard, American actress
- March 3 - Lil' Flip, American rapper
- March 9 - Antonio Bryant, American football player
- March 11 - David Anders, American actor
- March 11 - Lee Evans, American football player
- March 11 - LeToya Luckett, American musician (Destiny's Child)
- March 16 - Andrew Bree, Irish swimmer
- March 28 - Julia Stiles, American actress

April-June


- April 1 - Hannah Spearritt, British singer (S Club 7)
- April 2 - Bethany Joy Lenz, American actress and singer
- April 10 - Michael Pitt, American actor
- April 14 - Mary Castro, American model and actress
- April 17 - Hanna Pakarinen, Finnish singer
- April 19 - Hayden Christensen, Canadian actor
- April 19 - Catalina Sandino Moreno, Colombian actress
- April 19 - Troy Polamalu, American football player
- April 22 - Ken Dorsey, American football player
- April 28 - Jessica Alba, American actress
- May 5 - Craig David, British singer
- May 5 - Danielle Fishel, American actress
- May 11 - Lauren Jackson, Australian basketball player
- May 13 - Sunny Leone, Canadian entertainer
- May 15 - Jamie-Lynn DiScala, American actress
- May 19 - Klaas-Erik Zwering, Dutch swimmer
- May 20 - Sean Conlon, English musician (5ive)
- May 20 - Lindsay Taylor, American basketball player
- June 1 - Carlos Zambrano, Venezuelan Major League Baseball player
- June 7 - Anna Kournikova, Russian tennis player
- June 7 - Larisa Oleynik, American actress
- June 9 - Natalie Portman, Israeli-born actress
- June 13 - Christopher Robert Evans, American actor
- June 12 - Adriana Lima, Brazilian model
- June 21 - Brandon Flowers, American singer and keyboardist (The Killers)

July-September


- July 8 - Anastasia Myskina, Russian tennis player
- July 23 - Michelle Williams, American singer (Destiny's Child)
- July 24 - Summer Glau, American actress (Firefly)
- August 4 - Marques Houston, American singer and actor
- August 5 - Carl Crawford, baseball player
- August 5 - Kō Shibasaki, Japanese singer and actress
- August 8 - Vanessa Amorosi, Australian singer and songwriter
- August 8 - Roger Federer, Swiss tennis player
- August 8 - Meagan Good, American actress
- August 16 - Taylor Rain, American actress
- August 24 - Chad Michael Murray, American actor
- August 25 - Rachel Bilson, American actress
- September 1 - Clinton Portis, American football player
- September 4 - Beyoncé Knowles, American singer (Destiny's Child) and actress
- September 8 - Jonathan Taylor Thomas, American actor
- September 16 - Alexis Bledel, American actress
- September 21 - Nicole Richie, American actress
- September 22 - Rocco Baldelli, baseball player
- September 26 - Christina Milian, Afro-Cuban singer, songwriter and musician
- September 26 - Serena Williams, American tennis player
- September 30 - Dominique Moceanu, American gymnast

October-December


- October 1 - Jamelia, British singer
- October 3 - Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Swedish footballer
- October 11 - Beau Brady, Australian actor
- October 15 - Elena Dementieva, Russian tennis player
- October 20 - Willis McGahee, American football player
- October 22 - Michael Fishman, American actor
- October 28 - Milan Baros, Czech footballer
- October 29 - Amanda Beard, American swimmer
- October 30 - Ivanka Trump, American model
- October 31 - Irina Denezhkina, Russian writer
- October 31 - Frank Iero, American guitarist (My Chemical Romance)
- November 1 - LaTavia Roberson, American musician (Destiny's Child)
- November 3 - Jackie Gayda, American professional wrestler
- November 4 - Vince Wilfork, American football player
- November 8 - Azura Skye, American actress
- November 11 - Natalie Glebova, Canadian pageant winner (2005 Miss Universe)
- November 26 - Natasha Bedingfield, British singer
- November 26 - Aurora Snow, American actress
- December 2 - Britney Spears, American singer
- December 3 - Brian Bonsall, American actor
- December 4 - Lila McCann, American singer
- December 7 - Ben Adams, British singer (a1)
- December 13 - Amy Lee, American singer (Evanescence)
- December 15 - Kyle McKain, American Club DJ
- December 15 - Thomas Herrion, American football player (d. 2005)
- December 21 - Shizuka Arakawa, Japanese figure skater
- December 27 - Yuvraj Singh, Indian cricketer
- December 28 - Elizabeth Jordan Carr, first American test-tube baby
- December 28 - Sienna Miller, American-born actress
- December 29 - Angela Via, American singer
- December 30 - Haley Paige, American actress

Deaths


- January 5 - Harold C. Urey, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1893)
- January 5 - Lanza del Vasto, Italian-born philosopher, poet, and activist (b. 1901)
- January 6 - A.J. Cronin, Scottish novelist (b. 1896)
- January 10 - Katherine Alexander, American actress (b. 1898)
- January 23 - Samuel Barber, American composer (b. 1910)
- February 1 - Geirr Tveitt, Norwegian composer (b. 1908)
- February 9 - Bill Haley, American musician (b. 1925)
- February 15 - Karl Richter, German conductor (b. 1926)
- February 20 - Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, magazine editor, socialite (b. 1904)
- February 26 - Howard Hanson, American composer (b. 1896)
- March 6 - George Geary, English cricketer (b. 1893)
- March 7 - Kiril Kondrashin, Russian conductor (b. 1914)
- March 9 - Max Delbrück, German biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1906)
- April 7 - Norman Taurog, American film director (b. 1899)
- April 12 - Joe Louis, American boxer (b. 1914)
- April 27 - John Aspinwall Roosevelt, American businessman and philanthropist (b. 1916)
- May 9 - Nelson Algren, American author (b.1909)
- May 11 - Odd Hassel, Norwegian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1897)
- May 11 - Bob Marley, Jamaican singer and musician (b. 1945)
- May 18 - William Saroyan, American author (b. 1908)
- June 1 - Carl Vinson, U.S. Congressman (b. 1883)
- June 19 - Lotte Reiniger, German-born silhouette animator (b. 1899)
- June 28 - Terry Fox, Canadian athlete and cancer activist (b. 1958)
- August 14 - Karl Böhm, Austrian conductor (b. 1894)
- September 1 - Albert Speer, Nazi official (b. 1905)
- September 2 - Dame Enid Lyons, Australia politician (b. 1897)
- September 8 - Bill Shankly, Scottish football manager (b. 1913)
- September 8 - Hideki Yukawa, Japanese physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1907)
- September 9 - Sir Robert (Bob) Askin, Premier of New South Wales (b. 1907)
- September 12 - Eugenio Montale, Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1896)
- October 2 - Harry Golden, American journalist (b. 1902)
- October 6 - Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (assassinated) (b. 1918)
- October 16 - Stanley Clements, American actor (b. 1926)
- October 16 - Moshe Dayan, Israeli general (b. 1915)
- November 7 - Will Durant, American philosopher and writer (b. 1885)
- November 22 - Hans Adolf Krebs, German physician and biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1900)
- November 29 - Natalie Wood, American actress (drowned) (b. 1938)
- December 28 - Allan Dwan, Canadian-born film director (b. 1885)

Nobel Prizes


- Physics - Nicolaas Bloembergen, Arthur Leonard Schawlow, Kai M. Siegbahn
- Chemistry - Kenichi Fukui, Roald Hoffmann
- Medicine - Roger W. Sperry, David H. Hubel, Torsten N. Wiesel
- Literature - Elias Canetti
- Peace - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Templeton Prize


- Dame Cicely Saunders Category:1981 als:1981 ko:1981년 ja:1981年 simple:1981 th:พ.ศ. 2524

CP/M operating system

CP/M is an operating system created for Intel 8080/85 and Zilog Z80 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. CP/M was commonly understood in the latter half of the 1970s to represent Control Program for Microcomputers but originally the antecedent was Control Program/Monitor. Note that in Control Program for Microcomputers the / means for, as was common in the prevailing technical parlance of that era, as in Kildall's/Intel's PL/M, Programming Language for Microcomputers, and in Prime Computer's PL/P, Programming Language for Prime. Gary Kildall himself renamed CP/M in word form as part of the maturation of CP/M from personal project in 1974 to commercial enterprise in 1976. The combination of CP/M and S-100 bus computers patterned on the MITS Altair was an early "industry standard" for microcomputers, and was widely used through the late 1970s and into the mid-80s. By greatly reducing the amount of programming required to install an application on a new manufacturer's computer, CP/M increased the market size for both hardware and software.

Description: CCP, BDOS, BIOS

CP/M's command line interface, implemented in the CCP (Command Control Processor), was patterned after the operating systems from Digital Equipment, such as RSTS/E for the PDP-11. Commands generally took the form of a keyword followed by a list of parameters separated by spaces or special characters. If the command was not one of the internal commands built into the CCP, the currently-logged disk directory would be searched for a program file with the same name, and, if found, the program would be loaded and the rest of the command line passed to it. The commands themselves would sometimes be somewhat obscure; for instance, the command to duplicate files was named PIP (Peripheral-Interchange-Program), the name of the old DEC utility used for that purpose. One key innovation in CP/M was the use of an abstraction layer that separated the operating system into two main parts. The CCP translated user commands into a series of high-level instructions. These instructions were then fed into the BDOS (Basic Disk Operating System), which provided functionality like "open file". Application programs would likewise talk to the BDOS. The BDOS then translated these commands into a new series of lower-level instructions. These were then fed into the BIOS (Basic I/O System), which contained the hardware-specific code that carried out the instructions from BDOS. To illustrate the flow of commands, consider the PIP command mentioned earlier. When a PIP command was entered into the CCP it was broken down into a series of instructions for the BDOS, which would be similar to "locate the file named foo.txt, open it, create a new file named bar.txt...". The BDOS commands in turn were sent to the BIOS as a string of even simpler instructions, like "move the disk head to this sector, read raw data from sector..." etc. The BIOS would then do the actual controlling of the hardware, such as sending pulses to the stepper motor of the drive. The vast majority of the complexity in CP/M was isolated in the BDOS, and to a lesser extent, the CCP. This meant that by porting the limited number of simple commands in the BIOS to a particular hardware platform, the entire OS would work. This significantly reduced the development time needed to support new machines, and was one of the main reasons for CP/M's widespread use. Today this sort of abstraction is common to most OSs, but at the time of CP/M's birth, OSs were typically intended to run on only one machine platform, and multilayer designs were considered unnecessary.

History

The beginning and CP/M's heyday

For a time after December 1974, the date of first use of CP/M, Control Program/Monitor was what CP/M stood for. This ended some time prior to 15 November 1976, the date of first use of the mark CP/M in commerce. By the time that CP/M was a mark in commercial use, CP/M stood for Control Program for Microcomputers. These dates are recorded in trademark registration number 1112646 serial number 73149955 at the United States Patent Office as filed by Intergalactic Digital Research, Inc. doing business as Digital Research Corporation on 25 November 1977 by an attorney acting on behalf of Gary Kildall himself. This renaming of CP/M was part of a larger effort by Kildall and his business-partner wife to convert Kildall's personal project of CP/M and the Intel-contracted PL/M compiler into an ever-more-serious commercial enterprise, where "micro", as in microcomputer, was a consistent branding, including not only Control Program for Microcomputers and Programming Language for Microcomputers but also a few years later Digital Research's Microport Unix that competed against Microsoft's Xenix. The Kildalls astutely intended to establish the Digital Research brand and its product lines as synonymous with "microcomputer" in the consumer's mind, similar to what IBM and Microsoft together later successfully accomplished in making "personal computer" synonymous with IBM and Microsoft product offerings. As further evidence that the renaming of CP/M in word form was part of a larger effort of keeping the CP/M and Digital Research Corporation brands stable in the public's mind while evolving the underlying business behind the scenes, the Kildalls effectively publicly renamed Intergalactic Digital Research, Inc. for use in commercial activities, via only a doing-business-as filing, to Digital Research Corporation. Intergalactic Digital Research, Inc. was later renamed via a corporation change-of-name filing to Digital Research, Inc., which itself continued to do business publicly as Digital Research Corporation for a time into the 1980s, after which Digital Research, Inc. did business under its own name. CP/M was originally distributed on 8 inch floppy disks, and ran on the Intel 8080 CPU (as well as the compatible and very popular Zilog Z80). Eventually, the industry moved to the 5¼ inch disk format, and CP/M followed -- however many companies developed their own, incompatible 5¼ inch disk formats, which made the exchange of disks between different CP/M-systems difficult in practice. Popular CP/M systems sometimes supported at least one other disk format than their own native format. Translation programs existed to allow interchange of files between disk formats. IBM never used CP/M in any of their computers, nor was there any other company with the domination of the market that IBM was to have in the early 1980s. This is the reason that there was such diversity of 5" disk formats under CP/M. A software manufacturer had to prepare a separate version of the program for each brand of hardware on which it was to run. With some manufacturers (Kaypro is an example), there was not even standardization across the company's different models. Because of this situation, disk format translation programs which allowed a machine to read many different formats became popular and reduced the confusion. With MS/DOS having a standard 5" disk format, a publisher could prepare one version of the program with the confidence that machines from different manufacturers could use it, at least with basic character mode video, because custom video graphics were still the norm until the introduction of IBM's EGA graphics with the model AT. CP/M was described as a "software bus", allowing multiple programs to interact with different hardware in a standardized way. Programs written for CP/M were typically portable between different machines, usually only requiring specification of the escape sequence for control of the screen and printer. This portability made CP/M popular, and much more software was written for CP/M than for operating systems that only ran on one brand of hardware. One restriction on portability was that certain programs used the extended instruction set of the Z80 processor and would not operate on an 8080 or 8085 processor. Hundreds of different brands of machines ran CP/M, some notable examples being the above-mentioned Altair, the IMSAI 8080, the Osborne 1 and Kaypro portables, and even the Apple II when an extra Z80-card was installed. The best selling CP/M capable system of all time was probably the Commodore 128, although few people actually used its CP/M abilities. In the UK, CP/M was also available for the BBC Micro— which could also be equipped with a Z80 co-processor. Furthermore, it powered the popular Amstrad PCW word-processing system. WordStar, one of the first widely used word processors, and dBASE, the first widely-popular database program for small computers, were originally written for CP/M.

The 16-bit world

Versions of CP/M were later completed for some 16-bit CPUs as well, although they required the application programs to be re-compiled for the new CPUs -- or, if they were written in assembly language, to be largely rewritten from scratch. One of the first was CP/M-86 for the Intel 8086, which was soon followed by CP/M-68k for the Motorola 68000. At this point the original 8-bit CP/M became known as CP/M-80 to avoid confusion. CP/M-68k was widely used only in one application: it formed the basis of the Atari ST computer. CP/M-86 had the potential of becoming the standard operating system of the new IBM PCs, but minor legal issues made IBM turn to Microsoft instead (although it was still offered on the original IBM PC). Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone known as QDOS, and used it to create PC-DOS/MS-DOS which went on to become the "official" PC operating system. CP/M-86 never became popular.

MS-DOS takes over

Many of the basic concepts and internal mechanisms of early versions of MS-DOS were patterned after those of CP/M. Internals like file-handling data structures were identical, and both referred to disk drives with a letter (A:, B:, etc.). The main innovation was MS-DOS's FAT file system. This intentional similarity made it easier to port popular CP/M software like WordStar and dBase. However, CP/M's concept of separate user areas for files on the same disk was never ported to MS-DOS. Since MS DOS had access to more memory, more commands were built-in, most usefully the file COPY command. This made the command-line user interface of MS-DOS somewhat easier to use. CP/M rapidly lost market share as the microcomputing world moved to the PC platform, and it never regained its former popularity. Byte Magazine, at the time one of the leading industry magazines for microcomputers, essentially ceased coverage of CP/M products within a couple of years of the introduction of the IBM PC. For example, in 1983 there were still a few advertisements for S100 boards and articles on CP/M software, but by 1987 these were no longer found in the magazine. Later versions of CP/M-86 made significant strides in terms of performance and usability however, and for some time in the 1980s was considered to be a better x86 OS than MS-DOS. To reflect this compatibility the name was changed, and CP/M-86 became DOS Plus, which in turn became DR-DOS.

See also


- List of machines running CP/M
- MP/M
- Multiuser DOS

References


- Zaks, Rodnay (1980). The CP/M Handbook With MP/M. SYBEX Inc. ISBN 089588-048-2.

External links


- [http://science.kennesaw.edu/~khoganso/CS8422/4-23-03-Wednesday.ppt History/Development and Demise of CP/M] – A PowerPoint (PPT) presentation
- [http://www.khet.net/gmc/docs/museum/en_cpmName.html The origin of CP/M's name]
- [http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/CPM/ Category at ODP]
- [http://www.retromadness.com/ Computer History Museum] - Museum of home computing and gaming.
- [http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Cpm/ CP/M Main Page] - Information site on CP/M.
- CP/M Category:DOS Cp/m Category:Operating systems ja:CP/M

WordStar

WordStar was a word processor application, published by MicroPro, originally written for the CP/M operating system but later ported to DOS, that enjoyed a dominant market share during the early-to-mid-1980s. Seymour I. Rubinstein was the principal owner of the company.

History

WordStar was originally developed for CP/M, one of the most popular microcomputer operating systems of the pre-MS-DOS era. It was the most feature-rich and easy-to-use word processor available for this OS, and became a de facto standard. Notably, WordStar was the last commercial word processor supporting the CP/M operating system. Release 4, the final CP/M compatible version was sold with 5-1/4" floppy disk as a default, and an 8" version as an option. The DOS version was very similar to the original, and although the IBM PC featured arrow keys and separate function keys, the traditional "WordStar diamond" and other Ctrl-key functions were retained, leading to rapid adoption by former CP/M users. The first DOS version was a direct port of the CP/M version, and therefore only used 64K of RAM even though DOS supported up to 640K. Users quickly learned they could make this version of WordStar run dramatically faster by using the ability of DOS to create a "RAM disk" in memory, and copy the WordStar program files into it. WordStar would still access the "disk" repeatedly, but the far faster access of the RAM drive compared to a floppy disk yielded a substantial speed improvement. However, edited versions of a document were "Saved" only to this RAM disk, and had to be copied to physical magnetic media before rebooting. By the mid-1980's WordStar was the most popular word processing software in the world. But IBM dominated the "dedicated word processor" market with its "DisplayWrite" application, which ran on machines dedicated to writing and editing documents. There were many dedicated word processing machines at the time, but IBM's main competition was Wang Laboratories. Such machines were largely expensive and were generally accessed through terminals connected to central mainframe or midrange computers. When IBM announced it was bringing to market a PC version called "DisplayWriter", MicroPro focused on creating a clone of it which they marketed as "WordStar 2000". Neither program was as successful as its developers had hoped, and the lack of attention MicroPro had paid to the original WordStar in the meantime had allowed competing products an opportunity to take over market share. WordPerfect especially took much of the word processing application market. Its default setting used a smaller portion of the screen for menus than WordStar, and had a much cleaner, uncluttered look. WordPerfect also used the same key sequences as the popular Wang line of dedicated word processor computers, which made it popular with secretaries switching from those to PCs. MicroPro International restructured as WordStar International, and rehired many of the WordStar programmers who had left the company during the WordStar 2000 diversion. WordStar then progressed through upgrades of 4.5 to 5.0 to 5.5 to 6.0, rebuilding some of its lost market share. An internal struggle between the "old timer" developers of version 6.5 (aimed at MS Word users), and the "young turks" working on version 7.0 (aimed at WordPerfect users), led to the former product being scrapped and the latter product released years ahead of its originally scheduled launch date. Like many other producers of successful DOS applications, WordStar International delayed before deciding to make a version for the commercially successful Windows 3.0. The company purchased Legacy, an existing Windows-based word processor, which was altered and released as WordStar for Windows in 1991. It was a well-reviewed product, and included many features normally only found in more expensive desktop publishing packages. However, its delayed launch meant that Microsoft Word had already firmly established itself as the corporate standard during the two previous years. WordStar is still actively used by several hundred people in the WordStar Users Group Community (see the External Links below). They provide technical support, updated macros and scripts, printer and mouse drivers, and so forth for each other via the long-running WordStar mailing list which started in May 1996 and has continued without interruption (but with one move from Cuenet to WordStar2 in 2002).

Interface

WordStar is still considered by many to be one of the best examples of a "writing program". Because it was designed for text-only display devices with only a single, functional typeface, the primary focus was on the text, without direct onscreen WYSIWYG formatting. Because typesetting and layout were secondary or tertiary functions left for after the document was written, edited, and proofread, the writer was not distracted by the many formatting possibilities presented by later word processors. The original machines for which WordStar was developed did not have an array of separate function keys or cursor control keys (e.g. arrow keys, Page Up/Down), so WordStar used sequences of alphabetic keys combined with the "Control" key. For touch typists, in addition, reaching the function and cursor keys generally requires them to take their fingers off the "home keys" with consequent loss of typing rhythm. For example, the "diamond" of Ctrl-S/E/D/X moved the cursors one character or line to the left, up, right, or down. Ctrl-A/F (to the outside of the "diamond") moved the cursor a full word left/right, and Ctrl-R/C (just "past" the Ctrl keys for up and down) scrolled a full page up/down. Prefacing these keystrokes with Ctrl-Q generally expanded their action, moving the cursor to the end/beginning of the line, end/beginning of the document, etc. Ctrl-H would backspace and delete. Commands to enable bold or italics, printing, blocking text to copy or delete, saving or retrieving files from disk, etc. were typically a short sequence of keystrokes, such as Ctrl-P-B for bold, or Ctrl-K-S to save a file. Formatting codes would appear on screen, such ^B for bold, ^Y for italics, and ^S for underscoring. Although many of these keystroke sequences were far from self-evident, they tended to lend themselves to mnemonic devices (e.g. Ctrl-Print-Bold, Ctrl-blocK-Save), and regular users quickly learned them through physical memory, enabling them to rapidly navigate documents by touch, rather than memorizing "Ctrl-S = cursor left". Some users believe that the relocation of the Ctrl key from the position just to the left of the A key on the PC XT-era keyboard (where Caps-Lock is found on modern keyboards), to the far lower left, interferes with this tactile approach, unless the keyboard is remapped in software to swap these keys. Other users prefer to have two control keys on either side of the space bar, which facilitates eight-finger touch typing. Indeed, WordStar can be regarded as a third keyboard interface: 1) the lower-case letters and numbers, 2. upper-case letters and symbols accessed by the Cap key, and 3) editing and formatting made possible by the Ctrl keys. WordStar had relative weaknesses, such as an inability to reformat line justification as text was typed or deleted. Thus paragraphs had to be reformatted by command after edits and changes. But a command could be given to reformat the entire document after it had been edited or re-written. The WordStar interface left a large legacy. This includes many text editors running under MS-DOS, Linux, and other UNIX variants, which can emulate the WordStar keyboard commands using Ctrl-key combinations. The popular Turbo Pascal compiler used WordStar keyboard commands in its IDE editor. WordStar Keyboard Command Emulators exist for current versions of Microsoft Word, and Word in turn can open WordStar documents when the appropriate filter is added, enabling users to move back and forth between the old standard and the new one.

Features

MailMerge was an add-on program which allowed a "merge printing" for mass mailings of letters. Pertinent data, like name, address, city, state, zipcode, and so on was stored in non-document datafiles. Documents like business letters could be printed in series by inserting data fields in "master documents". These master documents contained "boilerplate" text, like business letters, with data fields in place of addressee pertinent information. By printing "x" number of versions of the master document, for example, letters customized for various recipients could be printed in series by drawing information from the datafiles and inserted in place of the fields. Thus mass mailings could be prepared with each letter being individually addressed. Other add-on programs included SpellStar, a spell checker program, later incorporated as a direct part of the WordStar program; and DataStar, a program whose purpose was specifically to expedite creating of the datafiles used for merge printing. These were revolutionary features for personal computer users during the early-to-mid-1980s. WordStar identified files as either "document" or "nondocument", which led to some confusion among users. "Document" referred to WordStar text files containing embedded and hidden word processing and formatting commands. "Nondocument" files were pure ASCII text files containing no embedded formatting commands. Using WordStar in "Nondocument Mode" was essentially the same as using a traditional "text editor", but with more advanced text editing features than found in some mainframe-based editors.

Filename extensions


- DOS WordStar files by default have no extension; some users adopted their own conventions, such as the letters WS followed by the version number (for example, WS3). Backup files were automatically saved as BAKs.
- WordStar for Windows files use the extension WSD
- WordStar for Windows templates use the extension WST
- WordStar for Windows macros use the extension WMC
- WordStar for Windows temporary files use the extension !WS
- WordStar 2000 for DOS and UNIX PC don't have a fixed extension but DOC was common Note:
- There isn't a WordStar 2000 for Windows.
- WordStar for Windows was also released under the name WordStar Personal Writer, and is a development of WordStar Legacy itself developed from a program called Legacy. Xoom also released a version of WordStar for Windows 2.0 called Xoom Word Pro. Information provided by the [http://www.wordstar.org WordStar Resource Site]

See also


- List of word processors

External links


- [http://wordstar2.com WordStar & GNU/Linux] – features lots of support and advice for those migrating their systems to Linux, with particular emphasis on using WordStar, both DOS and Windows releases, under Linux.
- [http://wordstar2.com/mailman/listinfo WordStar Mailing Lists] – information about the main WordStar Mailing List as well as the newer WordStar & GNU/Linux Mailing List
- [http://www.wordstar.org WordStar Support Site] – featuring a full (as far as is known) history of WordStar
- [http://wordstar2.com/WordStar_Users WordStar Users Group Community] – still active, this is the on-line WUG community site and homepages for the longest-running and most active technical support available for WordStar users, with lots of downloads like mouse drivers Category:CP/M software Category:DOS software Category:Windows word processors ja:WordStar

DBASE

dBASE was the first widely used database management system or DBMS for microcomputers, published by Ashton-Tate for CP/M, and later on the Apple II, Apple Macintosh and IBM PC under DOS where it became one of the best-selling software titles for a number of years. dBASE was never able to transition successfully to Microsoft Windows and was eventually displaced by newer products like Paradox, Clipper, FoxPro, and Microsoft Access. dBASE was sold to Borland in 1991, which sold the rights to the product line in 1999 to the newly-formed dBASE Inc. Starting in the mid 1980s many other companies produced their own dialects or variations on the product and language. These included FoxPro (now Visual FoxPro), Quicksilver, Clipper, Xbase++, FlagShip, and Harbour. Together these are informally referred to as xBase or XBase. dBASE's underlying file format, the dbf file, is widely used in many other applications needing a simple format to store structured data. dBASE was licensed to users for a term of fifty years in the unlikely event that a user would use their copy of dBASE for a long period of time.

History

dBASE's history can be traced back to the mid-1960s in the form of a system called RETRIEVE, which was marketed by Tymshare Corporation. One of RETRIEVE's users was the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and in the late 1960s they asked one of their programmers, Jeb Long, to produce their own customized version. The result was JPLDIS (Jet Propulsion Laboratory Display Information System) which was written in the FORTRAN programming language and ran on their UNIVAC 1108 mainframes. In 1978, C. Wayne Ratliff, another programmer at JPL and friend of Jeb Long, wrote a database program in assembly language for the CP/M operating system based on JPLDIS. He called it Vulcan, after Mr. Spock of Star Trek. According to an article written in 1982 by Stan Brin for Popular Computing, Vulcan was written to help him win the football pool at the office. After more work, and successfully using it to do his taxes, he felt it might have some commercial potential. In October 1979, and for four or five months thereafter, the first quarter-page ad for Vulcan appeared in BYTE magazine, offering the program for US$695. The commercial response was poor. By the summer of 1980 the stress of working his day job while enhancing the product was too much, and he decided to stop marketing it altogether, and only support those who had purchased it up to that time.

Ashton-Tate

A professor at the University of Washington and his wife were considering taking over marketing when George Tate and Hal Lashlee received a call from a Vulcan customer and went to see Ratliff and a demo of Vulcan. George and Hal already had a business called Discount Software, with one employee. They made an offer for exclusive marketing rights, and Wayne accepted. The partners renamed their company Ashton-Tate, with the fictitious name "Ashton" in place of the perhaps less euphonious "Lashlee." The program itself was renamed dBASE II, the owners suggesting that it sounded "more complete" than had they simply called it dBASE. At first the CP/M product didn't sell much better than it had for Ratliff, but the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981 changed this dramatically as dBASE II for PC-DOS/MS-DOS became one of the PC's killer apps. Along with its retail sales, dBASE was bundled with some computers, including the Osborne_1, which may have helped increase the program's visibility. By 1982 the company had hired Ratliff as the vice president of new technology. By 1983 the company was so successful that they did an IPO. The arrangement between Ratliff and Ashton-Tate continued for about two or three years. Ratliff was later the project manager for dBASE III, as well as designer and lead programmer. Jeb Long was also hired about this time, and worked there for 8 years. He was known as the guru of the dBASE products at Ashton-Tate, and was the architect of dBASE's internal programming language.

dBASE III

The original versions of dBASE were all coded directly in assembly language, but as the program grew the decision was made to re-write the next version, a major upgrade, in the C programming language. This proved to be fateful; while dBASE-III, released in June 1984, ran acceptably on newer machines, it was too slow on older PC's and most customers ignored it. Additional releases of the II product continued while they worked on the performance problems, eventually addressing most of them by late 1985.

dBASE Mac

Around 1986 Ashton-Tate caught "Mac fever" and started developing a full suite of Macintosh applications. Among these was a completely new database known as dBASE Mac. dBASE Mac was utterly unlike their PC products, including a full GUI that made some complex tasks much easier, as well as offering a full GUI editor for data input. The program was generally lauded as the right way to do a database, but with only passing ability to share data with their PC versions it had to compete with other Mac-only databases such as 4th Dimension, Helix and FileMaker which were considered easier to use by reviewers. After two years of dismal sales they threw in the towel and decided to release a direct port of then-current dBASE-III complete with a DOS interface.

dBASE IV

dBASE-IV was released in October 1988 and was incredibly buggy. Sales started to slump, notably due to the presence of dBASE clones such as FoxBase and Clipper. Ashton-Tate decided the proper response to FoxBase was to sue them. In the discovery phase it was learned that the intellectual property rights belonged to JPL, not Ashton-Tate, and the suit ended quickly. The company was soon insolvent, and was purchased by Borland in 1991. The problems with dBASE-IV were eventually fixed, and it was ported to a number of "high end" platforms such as the Sun SPARC, IBM's AIX and DEC's VMS. dBASE-IV remained their primary product until early 1993.

dBASE 5

Borland attempted for over a year to produce a dBase 5 version that would be both dBase-IV backward-compatible and have object orientation in the user interface. Eventually they gave up on the original dBase code and bought a competitor, WordTech, complete with programmers and software, and adopted their dBase clone, DBXL, as the basis for the new Borland version of dBase, dBase 5.0. DBXL had been written with a Virtual Machine, where they could use the same base code for many different platforms. dBASE 5.0 returned to their roots with a pure-PC version available both on DOS and Windows. By this point, 1994, dBASE's market share was plummeting. Borland eventually decided sales were small enough to stop production, but instead sold the rights to dBASE Inc., a small company dedicated to keeping the product alive. Although dBASE Inc. continues to release new versions of the dBASE platform — including an object oriented update for Windows platforms called dBASE Plus — dBASE is no longer a force in the database software market, and does not compete with products subscribing to the SQL standard.

dBASE programming language

According to Wayne Ratliff, the language in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's JPLDIS was a simple, command-driven language intended for interactive use on printing terminals. After Ratliff ported it to the IMSAI 8080 as "Vulcan" and later to CP/M and MS-DOS (as dBASE), he added commands to accommodate the video screen interface as well as commands for improved flow of control (such as DO WHILE/ENDDO) and conditional logic (such as IF/ENDIF). For handling data, dBASE provided detailed procedural commands and functions to open and traverse files (e.g., USE, SKIP, GO TOP, GO BOTTOM, and GO recno), manipulate field values (REPLACE and STORE), and manipulate text strings (e.g., STR() and SUBSTR()), numbers, and dates. Its ability to simultaneously open and manipulate multiple files containing related data lead Ashton-Tate to label dBASE a "relational database," even though it did not meet the criteria defined by Dr. Edgar F. Codd's relational model. dBASE used a runtime interpreter architecture, which allowed the user to execute commands by typing them in a command line "dot prompt." Upon typing a command or function and pressing the return key, the interpreter would immediately execute or evaluate it. Similarly, program scripts (text files with PRG extensions) ran in the interpreter (with the DO command), where each command and variable was evaluated at runtime. This made dBASE programs quick and easy to write and test because programmers didn't have to first compile and link them before running them. (For other languages, these steps were tedious in the days of single- and double-digit megahertz CPUs.) The interpeter also handled automatically and dynamically all memory management (i.e., no preallocating memory and no hexademical notation), which more than any other feature made it possible for a business person with no programming experience to develop applications. Conversely, the ease and simplicity of dBASE presented a challenge as its users became more expert and as professional programmers were drawn to it. More complex and more critical applications demanded professional programming features for greater reliability and performance, as well as greater developer productivity. Over time, Ashton-Tate's competitors introduced so-called clone products and compilers that introduced more robust programming features such as user-defined functions (UDFs) to supplement the built-in function set, scoped variables for writing routines and functions that were less likely to be affected by external processes, arrays for complex data handling, packaging features for delivering applications as executable files without external runtime interpreters, object-oriented syntax, and interfaces for accessing data in remote database management systems. Ashton-Tate also implemented many of these features with varying degrees of success. Ashton-Tate and its competitors also began to incorporate SQL, the ANSI/ISO standard language for creating, modifying, and retrieving data stored in relational database management systems. In the late 1980s, developer groups sought to create a dBASE language standard (IEEE 1192). It was then that the language started being referred to as "Xbase" to distinguish it from the Ashton-Tate product. Hundreds of books have been written on dBASE and Xbase programming. Today, implementations of the dBASE language can handle all the demands of professional development, including the manipulation of the graphical user interface, manipulation of remote and distributed data, Internet functionality, and interaction with modern devices. Despite its functionality and ease of use, the dBASE language's legacy of being "embedded" in a popular commercial product is one of the reasons it is not a dominant standard today.

Programming example

The following example opens an employee table ("empl"), gives every manager who supervises 1 or more employees a 10-percent raise, and then prints the names and salaries. use empl replace all salary with salary
- 1.1 FOR supervises > 0 list all fname, lname, salary to print dBASE was also one of the first business-oriented languages to implement string evaluation (long before Perl) i = 2 myMacro = "i + 10" i = &myMacro // i now has the value 12 Here the "&" tells the interpreter to evaluate the string stored in "myMacro" just like it was programming code. This is an example of a feature that made dBASE programming flexible and dynamic, but also problematic for pre-compiling and for writing "bulletproof" modular programs.

Niches

Although the language has fallen out of favor as a primary business language, some find it an excellent interactive ad-hoc data transformation tool. Unlike SQL, one can easily break data transformations into small steps to analyze and visually inspect. It allegedly fills the gap between formal RDBMS and array programming languages such as APL's modern derivatives (J, K, etc.)

.dbf file format

A major legacy of dBASE is its .dbf file format, which has been adopted in a number of other applications. For example, the shapefile format developed by ESRI for spatial data in a geographic information system uses .dbf files to store feature attribute data. The term XBase is often used for the group of applications. dBASE's database system was one of the first to provide a "header" section for describing the structure of the data in the file. This meant that the program no longer required advance knowledge of the data structure, but rather could ask the data file how it was structured.

External links


- [http://www.dbase.com/ dBASE, Inc.]
- [http://www.foxprohistory.org/interview_wayne_ratliff.htm An interview with C. Wayne Ratliff describing his career and history of Vulcan/dBASE]
- [http://www.clicketyclick.dk/databases/xbase/format/index.html Xbase ( & dBASE ) File Format Description]
- [http://adamgreen.org/ Adam Green - lectured on dBase for 12 years in the eighties]
- [http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExBase C2 Wiki Description of "XBase"]
- [http://www.hxtt.net/dbf/document.html HXTT DBF Package JDBC document] Category:XBase languages Category:Database management systems Category:DOS software Category:CP/M software Category:Microcomputer software ja:DBASE

MBASIC programming language

MBASIC is the Microsoft BASIC implementation of the BASIC programming language for the CP/M operating system on the 8-bit Intel 8080 processor. MBASIC is a descendant of the original Altair BASIC interpreters that were among Microsoft's first products. MBASIC was one of the two versions of BASIC bundled with the Osborne 1 computer. The name "MBASIC" is derived from the disk file name of the BASIC interpreter.

Environment

MBASIC version 5 required a CP/M system with at least 28 kB of random access memory (RAM) and at least one diskette drive. Unlike versions of Microsoft BASIC-80 that were customized by home computer manufacturers to use the particular hardware features of the computer, MBASIC relied only on the CP/M operating system calls for all input and output. Only the CP/M console (screen and keyboard), line printer, and disk devices were available. MBASIC in the uncustomized form had no functions for graphics, color, joysticks, mice, serial communications, networking, sound, or even a real-time clock function. MBASIC did not fully support the features of the host CP/M operating system, for example, it did not support CP/M's user areas for organizing files on a diskette. Since CP/M