1975

IBM 5100 released.

1976

Apple Computer, Inc. founded, to Market Apple I computer. Designed by Stephen Wozniak and Stephen Jobs.

1976

First laser printer introduced by IBM - the IBM 3800. The first color versions came onto the market in 1988.

1976?

Introduction of 8085.

1976

Cray 1, the first commercially developed Supercomputer, it contained 200,000 integrated circuits and was freon-cooled. It could perform 150 million floating point operations per second - it is now the basis of an informal measurement of the power Supercomputers

1977 - May

Apple II computer introduced.

1978

Arcade Video game 'Space Invaders' released, starting a video game craze.

1979

Language Ada introduced by Jean Ichbiah and team at Honeywell.

1979

Commodore PET released. Based on a 1 MHz 6502 processor it displayed monochrome text on a 9" monitor and had just 8 Kb of RAM.

1979

compact disk was invented.

1979

IBM saw it's computer market dominance being eaten into by the new personal computers, such as the Apple and the Commodore PET.

1980

"DOS addresses only 1 Megabyte of RAM because we cannot imagine any applications needing more." Microsoft on the development of DOS.

1980 - October

Development of MS-DOS/PC-DOS began.

1980 - Early

Sinclair ZX80 was released for under £100.

1981

The Xerox 8010 ('Star') System, the first system to use a

1981

"640k ought to be enough for anybody.", Bill Gates

1981

Sinclair ZX81 was released, for a similar price to the ZX80 (see 1980).

1981?

Introduction of 80186/80188. These are rarely used on PCs as they incorporate a built in DMA and timer chip - and thus have register addresses incompatible with other IBM PCs.

1981 - August 12

IBM Announced PC, the standard model was sold for $2880. This had 64Kb of RAM

1981 - August 12

MDA (Mono Display Adapter, text only) introduced with IBM PC.

1981 - August 12

MS-DOS 1.0., PC-DOS 1.0.

First MS-DOS Program

1981

Pacman was written.

1982

The TCP/IP Protocol established, this is the protocol that carries most of the information across the Internet.

1982 - January

Commodore 64 released, costing just $595.

1982

Compaq released their IBM PC compatible Compaq Portable.

1982

Red Book on Audio CDs was introduced by Sony and Phillips.

1982 - March

MS-DOS 1.25, PC-DOS 1.1

1982 - May

IBM launch the double-sided 320K floppy disk drives.

1982 - December

IBM buys 12% of Intel.

1983 - January

IBM PC gets European launch 

1983

Borland Formed.

1983 - Spring

IBM XT released

1983 - March

MS-DOS 2.0, PC-DOS 2.0
 

1983 - May

MS-DOS 2.01

1983 - October

IBM released PC Junior

1983 - October

PC-DOS 2.1

1983 - October

MS-DOS 2.11

1984

DNS (Domain Name Server) introduced to the Internet, which then consisted of about 1000 hosts.

1984

Hewlett-Packard release the Laserjet printer

1984 - January

Apple Macintosh Released.

1984

IBM AT released.

1984 - August

MS-DOS 3.0, PC-DOS 3.0
 

1984 - September

Apple released a 512KB version of the Macintosh

1984 - End

Compaq started the development

1985 - January

Postscript introduced by Adobe Systems, used in the Apple Laserwriter printer. Adopted by IBM for their use in March 1987.

1985

Tetris was written by Russian Alexey Pazhitnov.

1985

CD-ROM, invented by Phillips, produced in collaboration with Sony.

1985

EGA released.

1985 - March

MS-DOS 3.1, PC-DOS 3.1
 

1985 - May

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 announced, released in February 1986. See Feb. 1986.

1985 - October

Version 2.25 included support for foreign character sets, and was marketed in the Far East.

1985 - December

MS-DOS 3.2, PC-DOS 3.2

.

1986 - January

Apple released another enhanced version of the Macintosh

1986 - February

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 released. It had 128 Kb of RAM

1987

Microsoft Windows 2 released

1987 - March 2

Macintosh II & Macintosh SE released.

1987

MCGA released (only for low end PS/2s, i.e. the Model 30) by IBM.

1987

The 8514/A introduced by IBM.

1987 - April

MS-DOS 3.3, PC-DOS 3.3
.

1987 - April

OS/2 Launched by Microsoft and IBM.

1987 - End

LIM EMS v4.0

1988

First optical chip developed, it uses light instead of electricity to increase processing speed.

1988

EISA Bus standard introduced.

1988

WORM (Write Once Read Many times) - disks marketed for first time by IBM.

1988 - June 16

80386 SX released as a cheaper alternative -to the 80386 DX.

1988 - November

MS-DOS 4.01, PC-DOS 4.01
 

1989

World Wide Web, invented by Tim Berners-Lee who saw the need for a global information exchange that would allow physicists to collaborate on research.

1989

CD-I released by Phillips and Sony.

1989 - March

The Macintosh IIcx released, with the same basic capabilities of the IIx.

1989 - April 10

DX released by Intel. It contains the equivalent of about 1.2 million transistors.

1989 - September

Macintosh IIci released based on a faster version of the 68030

1989 - November

Release of Sound Blaster Card, by Creative Labs

1990

Consortium of major SVGA card manufactures (called Video Electronic Standard Association, VESA) was formed and then introduced VESA SVGA Standard.

1990 - March

Macintosh IIfx released. Based on a 40 MHz version of the 68030 it achieved 10 MIPs. It also featured a faster SCSI adapter, which could transfer 3.0 Mb/sec.

1990 - May 22

Introduction of Windows 3.0 by Bill Gates & Microsoft.

1990 - October

Macintosh Classic released, an identical replacement to the Macintosh Plus of January 1986.

1990 - November

Macintosh LC released. This ran a 68020 processor at 16 MHz to achieve 2.6 MIPs, it had a slightly improved SCSI adapter and a 256 colour video adapter.

1991 - May

Introduction of Sound Blaster Pro.

1991 - June

MS-DOS 5.0, PC-DOS 5.0

1992

"Windows NT addresses 2 Gigabytes of RAM

1992

Introduction of CD-I launched by Phillips.

1992 - April

Introduction of Windows 3.1

1992 - May

Wolfenstein 3D released by Id Software Inc.

1992 - June

Sound Blaster 16 ASP Introduced.

1993

Commercial providers were allowed to sell internet connections to individuals. Its use exploded, especially with the new interface provided by the World-Wide Web (see 1989) and NCSA Mosaic.

1993

Doom was released by Id Software Inc. The PC began to be considered as a serious games playing machine.

1993

Novell purchased Digital Research

1993 - March 22

Intel Pentium released. At the time it was only available in 60 & 66 MHz versions which achieved up to 100 MIPs, with over 3.1 million transistors.

1993 - December

MS-DOS 6.0

1994 - March 7

Intel Release the 90 & 100 MHz versions of the Pentium Processor.

1994 - March 14

Linus Torvalds released version 1.0 of the Linux Kernel.

1994 - September

PC-DOS 6.3 Basically the same as version 5.0 this release by IBM included more bundled software, such as Stacker (the program that caused Microsoft so much embarrassment) and anti-virus software.

1994 - October 10

Intel Release the 75 MHz version of the Pentium Processor.

1994

Netscape 1.0 was written as an alternative browser to NCSA Mosaic.

1995 - March 27

Intel release the 120 MHz version of the Pentium processor.

1995 - June 1

Intel release the 133 MHz version of the Pentium processor.

1995 - August 21 [poss. 23]

Windows '95 was launched by Bill Gates & Microsoft.

1995 - November 1

Pentium Pro released.

1995 - December 28

CompuServe blocked access to over 200 sexually explicit sites, partly to avoid confrontation with the German Government. Access to all but 5 was restored on Feb. 13 1996.

1995 - December

JavaScript development announced by Netscape.

1996

Quake released - representing the dramatic increases in both software and hardware technology since Doom, of 3 years previous. Other notable releases included "Civilization 2", "Command & Conquer - Red Alert", "Grand Prix 2" and "Tomb Raider".

1996 - January

Netscape Navigator 2.0 released. First browser to support JavaScript.

1996 - January 4

Intel release the 150 & 166 MHz versions of the Pentium Processor.

1996 - October 6

Intel release the 200 Mhz version of the Pentium Processor.

1997

"Grand Theft Auto", "Quake 2" and "Blade Runner" were all released while Lara Croft returned in "Tomb Raider 2".

1997 - January 8

Intel released Pentium MMX

1997 - May 11

IBM's Deep Blue, the first computer to beat a reigning World Chess Champion, Gary Kasparov, in a full chess match.

1997 - May 7

Intel Release their Pentium II processor (233, 266 and 300 Mhz versions). It featured, as well as an increased instruction set, a much larger on-chip cache.

1997 - June 2

Intel release the 233 MHz Pentium MMX.

1998 - February

Intel released of 333 MHz Pentium II processor

1998 - April

A U.S. court has finally banned the long-running game of buying domain names relating to trademarks and then at selling them for extortionate prices to the companies who own the trademark.

1998 - June 25

Microsoft released Windows '98.

1999 - Aug 31

Apple release the PowerMac G4. It's powered by the PowerPC G4 chip from Apple, Motorola and IBM.

1999 - Nov 29

AMD release Athlon 750MHz version.

2000 - Jan 19

Transmeta launch their new 'Crusoe' chips. Designed for laptops these prvoide comparible performance to the mid-range Pentium II chips.

2000 - Feb 17

Offical Launch of Windows 2000 - Microsoft's replacement for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT. Claimed to be faster and more reliable than previous versions of Windows.

2000 - March 6

AMD Release the Athlon 1GHz.

2000 - March 8

Intel release very limited supplies of the 1GHz Pentium III chip.

2000 - June 20

British Telecom (BT) claim the rights to hyperlinks on the basis of a US patent granted in 1989.

2001 - Jan 4

Linux kernel 2.4.0 released.

2001 - March 24

Apple released MacOS X. At it's heart is `Darwin', an Open Source kernel based on FreeBSD.

2001 - October 25

Microsoft released Windows XP - the latest version of their Windows operating system

2001 - November 15

Release of the `X' Box - Microsoft's games console. It cost $299