In 1980, Alan Shugart’s Seagate Technology shipped the first hard disk drive designed for microcomputers, a $1,500 unit that stored 5 MB of data. Roughly a dozen companies came out with their own hard disks over the next year. It was not until 1984, however, when IBM shipped the PC-AT with a 20 MB hard disk that the storage devices started to gain wider acceptance in the PC market.

By 1988, the typical business PC shipped with a 40 MB hard disk. If this doesn’t sound like much of an improvement over the 20 MB standard of four years earlier, it’s important to consider the limitations imposed by the operating systems of the time. The first release of MS-DOS (or PC-DOS) in 1981 had no support of any kind for hard disks. When DOS 2.0 released in March 1983, it could only support a single 10 MB hard disk. DOS 3.0, released in August 1984, made it possible to support multiple hard disks, but each was limited to a single 32 MB partition.

From 1985 to 1992, Lotus Development Corporation published Lotus, a monthly magazine, through its Lotus Publishing Corporation subsidiary. Lotus focused on “computing for managers and professionals,” especially users of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet. Daniel Gasteiger, one of the magazine’s editors and regular contributors, even appeared on a November 1986 Computer Chronicles episode to promote his work writing about 1-2-3 macros for Lotus.

Last year I acquired several copies of Lotus from the magazine’s first two years (1985 - 1986) for an ongoing research project. In addition to covering the world of spreadsheets, Lotus also published profiles of various individuals in the computer industry, some well-known at the time and others who worked outside the public eye. I decided to scan some of these pieces and publish them here, as they may be of use to other researchers.

The tenth fall COMDEX show was held in Las Vegas from November 14 to 18, 1988. During its first decade, COMDEX grew from a single ballroom with 157 exhibitors to dominate the Las Vegas Convention Center–and several nearby hotels–with over 1,700 exhibitors. Attendance had grown just rapidly, from about 4,000 visitors in 1979 to over 100,000 in 1988.

Christine Winter of the Chicago Tribune noted the product mix at COMDEX had also shifted from “large systems in the 1970s to an onslaught of personal computers in the early 1980s, followed by examples of the burgeoning ‘after market’ for add-on devices, peripherals and printers that grew up as PCs began to dominate the marketplace in the mid-1980s.” Now, in 1988, there was increased focus on laptops and low-end workstations.

Gregg Keizer, the editor of Compute! magazine, lamented in his editorial note for the December 1988 issue that, “There are not that many of us” who owned personal computers. He noted that “recent estimates tell us that no more than 20 percent of American households have a personal computer,” which was “not anywhere near the level of, say, VCRs.” Keizer imagined a world where computer software stores were as ubiquitous as video rental shops.

Apple Computer launched the Apple IIgs in September 1986 as the next generation of its venerable Apple II line. Strictly speaking, the IIgs was not an Apple II. The original Apple II designed by Steve Wozniak in 1977 was based on an 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor. Subsequent revisions, including the Apple IIe and IIc, were then built around the 65C02, an enhanced, lower-power version of the 6502 produced by Western Design Center, which continues to manufacture the chips to this day.

Veteran journalist Ernie Smith has written the newsletter Tedium since 2015, covering “the history of things that usually don’t have histories written about them.” Smith recently published an article on ACCESS.bus, which he described as a “forgotten attempt” to create a universal serial bus standard for computer peripherals before, well, the Universal Serial Bus standard. Apparently, ACCESS.bus was so forgotten that the only video evidence Smith could find of its existence came from a 1994 Computer Chronicles episode.

Founded by Frank Cifaldi in 2017, the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to “preserving, celebrating, and teaching the history of video games.” On January 30, VGHF library director Phil Salvador announced the “early access” launch of the organization’s new digital library. According to Salvador, the searchable online platform features a “curated selection” of materials from VGHF’s physical archive, including over 1,500 out-of-print video game magazines, directories and maps from the first 12 years of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and the personal papers of retired video game producer Mark Flitman.

In June 1978, George Morrow and Howard Fullmer made a formal presentation at the National Computer Conference in Anaheim, California, proposing an official standard for the S-100 bus. The S-100 bus originated nearly four years earlier with the MITS Altair, the Intel 8080-based microcomputer kit famously featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. The Altair’s success among the small community of computer hobbyists spawned a number of early companies dedicated to either cloning the Altair or producing peripherals compatible with the S-100 bus. This included Morrow’s Thinker Toys (later renamed Morrow Designs, Inc.) and Fullmer’s Parasitic Engineering, Inc.

On Saturday, October 4, 1953, the NBC Radio Network debuted a new program called College Quiz Bowl, which pitted teams of four students from two universities against one another in a general trivia conquest. Each school participated remotely from their local NBC affiliate, while the moderator, Allen Ludden, read the questions from network’s flagship station in New York City. The winning team received $500 and remained on the program until they were beaten.

Computer Chronicles returned for its sixth season in October 1988 with an episode covering the second Macworld Expo of the year, which was held from August 11 to 13 at Boston’s World Trade Center and Bayside Exposition Center. The show featured approximately 350 companies displaying products over 1,200 booths. The three-day attendance was estimated at around 40,000 people.

The Boston Macworld came at the mid-point of Apple CEO John Sculley’s tenure with the company. Steve Jobs was long gone, although as we’ll see later he was about to launch his comeback. The Macintosh II’s success finally enabled Apple to make significant inroads into the business market and report record sales in 1987. HyperCard, the software development tool that was the talk of last year’s Boston Macworld, continued to attract interest, even if it hadn’t quite taken the larger computing world by storm. And there was a growing sense that Apple could become the dominant personal computer company of the 1990s, especially as IBM and its clone makers continued to battle over new standards for the PC platform’s system bus.