Exidy eventually pulled it from the market in 1980.
Microsoft BASIC is the foundation product of the Microsoft company. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first BASIC by Microsoft and the first high level programming language available for the Altair 8800 microcomputer.
The IBM PCjr is a home computer that was produced and marketed by IBM from March 1984 to May 1985. The PCjr was positioned as a complement to the very successful IBM Personal Computer (PC), competing with other home computers such as the Apple II series and the Commodore 64. It retains the IBM PC's 8088 CPU and BIOS interface, but provides enhanced graphics and sound capabilities over the original IBM PC, ROM cartridge slots, joystick ports, and an infrared wireless keyboard. The PCjr supports expansion via "sidecar" modules, which are attached to the side of the unit. New software such as King's Quest I showcased its PC gaming capabilities.
The Tandy 2000 is a personal computer introduced by Radio Shack in September 1983 based on the 8 MHz Intel 80186 microprocessor running MS-DOS. By comparison, the IBM PC XT used the older 4.77 MHz 8088 processor, and the IBM PC AT would later use the newer 6 MHz Intel 80286. Due to the 16-bit-wide data bus and more efficient instruction decoding of the 80186, the Tandy 2000 ran significantly faster than other PC compatibles, and slightly faster than the PC AT. The Tandy 2000 was the company's first computer built around an Intel x86 series microprocessor; previous models used the Z80 and 68000 CPUs.
The Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) is a game engine developed by Sierra On-Line. The company originally developed the engine for King's Quest (1984), an adventure game which Sierra and IBM wished to market in order to attract consumers to IBM's lower-cost home computer, the PCjr.
The Amiga computer can be used to emulate several other computer platforms, including legacy platforms such as the Commodore 64, and its contemporary rivals such as the IBM PC and the Macintosh.
Corvus Systems was a technology company founded by Michael D'Addio and Mark Hahn in 1979 and located in San Jose, Silicon Valley, in the United States. Corvus was a pioneer of the early days of personal computers, producing the first hard disk drives, data backup, and networking devices, commonly for the Apple II series.
A ROM cartridge, usually referred to simply as a cartridge or cart, is a removable memory card containing ROM designed to be connected to a consumer electronics device such as a home computer, video game console and to a lesser extent, electronic musical instruments. ROM cartridges can be used to load software such as video games or other application programs.
Following the introduction of the IBM Personal Computer, or IBM PC, many other personal computer architectures became extinct within just a few years.
The TRS-80 Model II was a computer system launched by Tandy in October 1979, and targeted at the small-business market.
On the original IBM Personal Computer, and the IBM PCjr, an interface was provided to allow the use of a compact cassette tape recorder to load and save data and programs. In fact until the PC was discontinued in 1987, there was a Model 104 offered that was a 5150 from IBM without a floppy disk drive.
The floppy disk is a data storage and transfer device which was ubiquitous from the mid-1970s well into the 2000s. Besides the 3½-inch and 5¼-inch formats used in IBM PC compatible systems, or the 8-inch format that preceded them, many proprietary floppy disk formats were developed, either using a different disk design or special layout and encoding methods for the data held on the disk.
Several popular home computers existed before the 1981 IBM PC launch. But the regimented business world considered Apple, Commodore, and Radio Shack's Tandy products "toys."
Let’s not kid ourselves in a haze of nostalgia—there are very good reasons why things like Scratch and Processing were created, the same reasons why many, if not most, of those 8-bit machines wound up being used solely to play games. Tapping o