Computer History: Pre- and Postserver

The history of servers is, naturally, a subset of the history of PCs in that the crucial events and dates that lead to the birth of electronic computing are all very similar. Consequently, the following time line is adapted from the 16th edition of the original book in this series, Upgrading and Repairing PCs. For time line data prior to 1960, please consult that work (we had to draw the line somewhere); only the server-specific dates and information here differ from that material.

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[Pages 9 - 12]

1960	Bell Labs designs its Dataphone, the first commercial modem, specifically for converting digital computer data to analog signals for transmission across its long-distance network.
1960	The precursor to the minicomputer, DEC's PDP-1, sells for $120,000.
1961	According to Datamation Magazine, IBM has an 81.2% share of the computer market in 1961, the year in which it introduces the 1400 series.
1964	CDC's 6600 supercomputer, designed by Seymour Cray, performs up to three million instructions per seconda processing speed three times faster than that of its closest competitor, the IBM Stretch.
1964	IBM announces System/360, a family of six mutually compatible computers and 40 peripherals that can work together.
1964	Online transaction processing makes its debut in IBM's SABRE reservations system, set up for American Airlines.
1965	Digital Equipment Corp. introduces the PDP-8, the first commercially successful minicomputer.
1966	Hewlett-Packard enters the general-purpose computer business with its HP-2115 for computation, offering a computational power formerly found only in much larger computers.
1969	The root of what is to become the Internet begins when the U.S. Department of Defense establishes four nodes on the ARPAnet: two at University of California campuses (one at Santa Barbara and one at Los Angeles) and one each at SRI International and the University of Utah.
1971	A team at IBM's San Jose Laboratories invents the 8-inch floppy disk.
1971	The first advertisement for a microprocessor, the Intel 4004, appears in Electronic News.
1971	The Kenbak-1, one of the first personal computers, is advertised for $750 in Scientific American.
1972	Hewlett-Packard announces the HP-35 as "a fast, extremely accurate electronic slide rule" with a solid-state memory similar to that of a computer.
1972	Intel's 8008 microprocessor makes its debut.
1973	Steve Wozniak builds his "blue box," a tone generator to make free phone calls.
1973	Robert Metcalfe devises the Ethernet method of network connection at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).
1973	The Micral is the earliest commercial, non-kit personal computer based on a microprocessor, the Intel 8008.
1973	The TV Typewriter, designed by Don Lancaster, provides the first display of alphanumeric information on an ordinary television set.
1974	Researchers at the Xerox PARC design the Alto, the first workstation with a built-in mouse for input.
1974	Scelbi advertises its 8H computer, the first commercially advertised U.S. computer based on a microprocessor, the Intel 8008.
1975	Telenet, the first commercial packet-switching network and the civilian equivalent of ARPAnet, is born.
1975	The January edition of Popular Electronics features the Altair 8800, which is based on Intel's 8080 microprocessor, on its cover.
1975	The visual display module (VDM) prototype, designed by Lee Felsenstein, marks the first implementation of a memory-mapped alphanumeric video display for personal computers.
1976	Steve Wozniak designs the Apple I, a single-board computer.
1976	The 5.25-inch flexible disk drive and disk are introduced by Shugart Associates.
1976	The Cray I makes its name as the first commercially successful vector processor.
1977	Tandy Radio Shack introduces the TRS-80.
1977	Apple Computer introduces the Apple II.
1977	Commodore introduces the PET (Personal Electronic Transactor).
1978	The VAX 11/780 from Digital Equipment Corp. features the capability to address up to 4.3GB of virtual memory, providing hundreds of times the capacity of most minicomputers.
1979	Motorola introduces the 68000 microprocessor.
1979	Novell Data Systems is founded, primarily as a manufacturer of computer hardware and disk operating systems.
1979	Cromemco introduces a 19-inch rack-mounted microcomputer built around the Z80 processor that gets widely used as a network server.
1980	John Shoch, at the Xerox PARC, invents the computer "worm," a short program that searches a network for idle processors.
1980	Seagate Technology creates the first hard disk drive for microcomputers, the ST-506.
1980	The first optical data storage disk is invented; it has 60 times the capacity of a 5.25-inch floppy disk.
1981	Novell introduces its first explicit network server product family, built around the Motorola 68000 processor.
1981	Xerox introduces the Star, the first personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI).
1981	Adam Osbourne completes the first portable computer, the Osbourne I, which weighs about 24 pounds and costs $1,795.
1981	IBM introduces its PC, igniting a fast growth in the personal computer market. The IBM PC is the grandfather of all modern PCs.
1981	Sony introduces and ships the first 3.5-inch floppy drives and disks.
1981	Philips and Sony introduce the CD-DA (compact discdigital audio) format.
1982	Sony puts the first CD player on the market.
1983	Novell is acquired and repositioned as a network operating system company, and the first version of NetWare is introduced.
1983	Apple introduces its Lisa, which incorporates a GUI that's very similar to the one first introduced on the Xerox Star.
1983	Compaq Computer Corp. introduces its first PC clone that uses the same software as the IBM PC.
1983	Sytek implements the first version of NetBIOS for IBM.
1984	Apple Computers launches the Macintosh, the first successful mouse-driven computer with a GUI, with a single $1.5 million commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl.
1984	IBM releases the PC-AT (PC Advanced Technology), which is three times faster than original PCs and based on the Intel 286 chip. The AT introduces the 16-bit ISA bus and is the computer on which all modern PCs are based.
1984	IBM releases PC Network Technical Reference 6422916, the first formal definition of NetBIOS.
1985	Philips introduces the first CD-ROM drive.
1985	Microsoft introduces MS-NET, which morphs into the first version of Microsoft LAN Manager.
1986	Compaq announces the Desktop 386, the first computer on the market to use what was then Intel's new 386 chip.
1986	OpenNET/Microsoft Networks file sharing protocols are released; they lay the foundation for 3COM's 3+Share and, ultimately, both SMB (in 1988) and the LAN Manager network operating system (the latter comes to life as an actual product this year as well).
1987	IBM introduces its PS/2 machines, which make the 3.5-inch floppy disk drive and VGA video standard for PCs. The PS/2 also introduces the MicroChannel Architecture (MCA) bus, the first plug-and-play bus for PCs.
1987	Microsoft, Intel, and IBM release RFCs 1001 and 1002, which define NetBIOS over TCP/UDP transport concepts and methods.
1988	Microsoft releases SMB File Sharing Protocol Extensions version 2.0 (document version 3.3), which publicly unveils SMB for general use.
1988	Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, who left Apple to form his own company, unveils the NeXT.
1988	Compaq and other PC-clone makers develop Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture (EISA), which, unlike MicroChannel, retains backward compatibility with the existing ISA bus.
1988	Robert Morris's worm floods the ARPAnet. The 23-year-old Morris, the son of a computer security expert for the National Security Agency, sends a nondestructive worm through the Internet, causing problems for about 6,000 of the 60,000 hosts linked to the network.
1989	Intel releases the 486 (P4) microprocessor, which contains more than one million transistors. Intel also introduces the 486 motherboard chipsets.
1989	Compaq ships its first PC-based server product, the Compaq System Pro (also the company's first Extended ISA, or EISA, 32-bit bus machine).
1990	The World Wide Web (WWW) is born when Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERNthe high-energy physics laboratory in Genevadevelops Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).
1992	Compaq introduces its first suite of server management and optimization tools (named Insight) and introduces its first low-cost server, the ProSignia.
1993	Intel Releases the Pentium 5 (P5) processor. Intel shifts from numbers to names for its chips after it learns that it's impossible to trademark a number. Intel also releases motherboard chipsets and, for the first time, complete motherboards as well.
1994	Compaq introduces the first rack-mountable server, the Rack Mountable ProLiant series.
1995	Microsoft releases Windows 95, the first mainstream 32-bit operating system, in a huge rollout.
1996	The one millionth Compaq server rolls off the company's assembly line.
1997	Intel releases the Pentium II processor, essentially a Pentium Pro with MMX instructions added.
1997	AMD introduces the K6, which is compatible with the Intel P5 (Pentium).
1997	Compaq acquires Tandem Computer (maker of the Non-Stop operating system and a proprietary, high-availability/reliability server hardware family) and begins to incorporate high-availability/reliability features into its top-of-the-line ProLiant servers.
1998	Microsoft releases Windows 98.
1998	Intel releases the Celeron, a low-cost version of the Pentium II processor. Initial versions have no L2 cache, but within a few months Intel introduces versions with a smaller but faster L2 cache.
1998	Compaq acquires Digital Equipment Corporation and also introduces first modular rack-mounted server architecture with the Compaq ProLiant 1850R server products.
1999	Intel releases the Pentium III, essentially a Pentium II with SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions) added.
1999	AMD introduces the Athlon.
1999	The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) officially approves the 5GHz band 802.11a 54Mbps and the 2.4GHz band 802.11b 11Mbps wireless networking standards. The Wi-Fi Alliance is formed to certify 802.11b products, ensuring interoperability.
2000	The first 802.11b Wi-Ficertified products are introduced, and wireless networking rapidly builds momentum.
2000	Microsoft releases Windows ME (Millennium Edition) and Windows 2000.
2000	Both Intel and AMD introduce processors that run at 1GHz.
2000	AMD introduces the Duron, a low-cost Athlon with reduced size L2 cache.
2000	Intel introduces the Pentium 4, the latest processor in the Intel architecture 32-bit (IA-32) family.
2000	Sun, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard (which now includes Compaq) introduce the first blade server product families.
2001	Intel releases the Itanium processor, its first 64-bit (IA-64) processor for PCs.
2001	The industry celebrates the 20th anniversary of the release of the original IBM PC.
2001	Intel introduces the first 2GHz processor, a version of the Pentium 4. It took the industry 28.5 years to go from 108KHz to 1GHz but only 18 months to go from 1GHz to 2GHz.
2001	Microsoft releases Windows XP Home and Professional, for the first time merging the consumer (9x/Me) and business (NT/2000) operating system lines under the same code base (an extension of Windows 2000).
2001	Atheros introduces the first 802.11a 54Mbps high-speed wireless chips, allowing 802.11a products to finally reach the market.
2002	Intel releases the first 3GHz-class processor, a 3.06GHz version of the Pentium 4. This processor also introduces to desktop computing Intel's HyperThreading (HT) technology, which enables a single processor to work with two application threads at the same time.
2002	AMD formally unveils its 64-bit server processor family, Opteron.
2003	Intel releases the Pentium M, a processor designed specifically for mobile systems, offering extremely low power consumption that results in dramatically increased battery life while still offering relatively high performance. The Pentium M becomes the cornerstone of Intel's Centrino brand.
2003	AMD releases the Athlon 64, the first 64-bit processor targeted at the mainstream consumer and business markets. The Opteron 64-bit server processor also ships this year.
2003	The IEEE officially approves the 802.11g 54Mbps high-speed wireless networking standard, which uses the same 2.4GHz band as (and is backward compatible with) 802.11b. 802.11g products reach the market quickly, some even before the official standard is approved.
2004	Intel introduces a version of the Pentium 4 code-named Prescott, the first PC processor built on 90-nanometer technology.
2004	Intel introduces EM64T (Extended Memory 64 Technology), which is a 64-bit extension to Intel's IA-32 architecture. EM64T is software compatible with and targeted at the same market as the AMD Athlon 64 and is not compatible with the 64-bit Itanium.