Computers
V.90 Announced
February 6, 1998
The V.90 modem standard is announced and agreed upon. This ended a couple of years of customer confusion, as two competing 56k modem protocols (K56Flex and X2) were in common use at the time. The V.90 standard unified the protocols and was crafted specifically to allow both types of modems to be upgraded via firmware. V.90 was also called V.last by some, as it was expected to be the last possible upgrade to modem technology. It virtually was, because even though V.92 later supplanted V.90, it didn’t increase the top-end speed of modem bandwidth and by that time, broadband access was already eating away at dial-up marketshare.
Genesis of “Vaporware”
February 3, 1986
The term “vaporware” is first used by Philip Elmer-DeWitt in a TIME magazine article. The term is now commonly used to describe software that has been long announced but hasn’t actually been released. At the time, many experts believed Microsoft was guilty of using vaporware announcements to keep customers from purchasing software from other companies (by convincing them that a Microsoft version was just around the corner).
TRS-80 Born
February 2, 1977
The prototype of the TRS-80 computer is shown to Charles Tandy, the CEO of the Tandy Corporation, owner of the Radio Shack chain of stores. He agrees to begin production based on this demonstration and the computer goes on sale in August. “TRS” stood for Tandy Radio Shack. The relatively inexpensive TRS-80 helped to spur the acceptance of the personal computer in the home.
286 Processor Introduced
February 1, 1982
The Intel 80286 processor is introduced in 6 and 8 MHz versions. It was employed for the IBM PC/AT, introduced in 1984, and then widely used in most PC/AT compatible computers until the early 1990s. The “286”, as it was most commonly called, paved the way for the PC (and now Macintosh) as we know it today.