Computer History

Computers are machines that have been improved for many generations. IBM was the first Electronic consumer company that made the first computer near the 1960s, which was the IBM Mainframe. In the 1980s, most computers were operated on 8-Bit chipset processors, like the Zilog Z80 CPU chips. The Z80 was first introduced in 1976 and it is currently still in use for calculators, digital watches and digital alarm clocks. The Z80 was used for personal computers like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, but the Z80 was trying to compete against the MOS 6502 developed by Commodore International. Unlike the Z80, the MOS 6502 was the cost reduced processor with less power consumption that made it benifical for selling the MOS 6502 powered computers at a lower price. In the UK computer industry, the Commodore 64 with the MOS 6502 processors had addempted to compete which the ZX Spectrum 64K, with the Zilog Z80.

Zilog Z80 8-bit microprocessor
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By the time 8-Bit computers was considered not useful due to the lack of visual quality and loading performances, the 16-Bit CPU chipset was later introduced which had more clock cycles and can engage more RAM data for extra features. The Motorola 68000 chip is commonly used for 16-Bit technology near the late 1980's. Those were mainly used for Apple Macintosh 128K which was introduced in 1984 - other M68000 powered computers can be found in Amiga Commodore A500 serious, Atari ST, and the Sun-1 made by Sun Microsystems. Motorola had also introduced the low cost effective like the 68EC0x0 series that uses a lower data bus, and removed the FPU; which is a floating point unit co-processor math chip. FPU coprocessors are found in M68040 series, and also in Intel 80386 processors that will boost the loading cycles, based on the math operations - which will be benifical for calculators as those devices are for mathmatic purposes.

Motorola 68000 16/32-bit CPU
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In this digital revolution era, the current CPUs competing are the AMD processors and the Intel processors. As for the other processors, like Z80, and M68000, and the ARM, those processors had not evolved to primarily compete with the 32/64-bit processors, like AMD and Intel, but is still in use for portable electronics, like calculators and digital watches. The PowerPC designed by the IBM-Motorola-Apple alliance failed to compete with the Intel processors. In 2006, Apple had their iMac series powered by PowerPC processor from around 1996 when the iMac G3 was introduced. Because Apple was disappointed that PowerPC failed to match the improvements to the Intel PCs, they withdrawn their Apple Mac products in favour for the Intel CPUs by 2006. Unlike AMD and Intel, Apple also used ARM processors for iPhones, and iPods and iPads. Also Apple constructed a A5 ARM powered processor that have revolutionized the industry when the iPad 2 was introduced in 2011.

Apple iMac G3
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