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1986

Integrated software (Word processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Graphics, Communication) are now common amongst advanced users. The strict line between professional and nonprofessional  users is more and more disappearing. The only limitation is the price of new software and hardware. Businesses can afford more expensive hard and software than the nonprofessional. The latter started with computers soon called micro computers or home computers. The most famous are the Commodore 64 and Apple II. Also other small micro computers became affordable. They were priced from 300 US$ and up, e.g. Timex Sinclair SX 80

Prodigy founded by Sears and IBM
Sears and IBM plan to launch a national online service, dubbed Prodigy in 1987. Prodigy becomes one of the three leading online services before it loses ground to the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s. The company is bought out by its management in 1996 and becomes an Internet service provider. (6)

The first RISC computer of IBM, the RT PC, is introduced on the market. The idea of Reduced Instruction Set Computers originated in 1976. This new way to construct a processor makes that it can only handle single instructions, which only last one clock cycle. Because of the one cycle process, it seems that the CPU program runs faster than the original full instruction set CPU.

The first IBM portable computer (IBM 5140) "The Convertible" becomes a huge flop. It is too expensive, has not enough memory and most people find the machine too heavy.

Of course, Hewlett Packard can not remain behind and introduces a complete new line of computers based on the HP Precision Architecture ⁽¹⁾. The project received the code name "Spectrum" and the costs of development over 5 years are more than 250 million dollars. It is HP's most expensive research project up to a long time to come.

The first TRANSPUTER, a computer on a chip, is developed in Japan.

The commercial introduction of the MINI-SUPER (computer) with a relatively low price of 2 million US dollars has the same computational power as the first generation super computers with regard to the speed of computing.

The CD ROM (compact disc read only memory) is introduced by SONY. On this disc one can store 650MB of information.

IBM introduced the 1 Mbit (128 Kb) memory chip. At the same time a 1Mb chip is introduced in Japan.

SAA (Systems Applications Architecture) will form the bridge between all IBM systems, such as the systems S/370, S/3X and PS/2 models can communicate through this software.
SAA is a development philosophy which is first launched by IBM. If implemented thoroughly it takes care that the systems as well as the software have the same look and would be compatible with other soft- and hardware. This means that the buildup of the information screens are bounded to rules which increases the efficiency and ergonomy of the information systems. 

Philip K. Katz develops PKArc. A program that makes files smaller, hence: compression. After a legal dispute several years later the program will be renamed into PKZip. The advantage of using a compression program is that compressed files will take a shorter time to send or receive from other computers, but they also take less space on your hard disk.
Katz puts the program into the shareware domain: pay only as you like and use it. He soon will make a fortune and that was something totally not anticipated by him, as he later will tell a journalist of the Milwaukee Journal.(5)

In this year the stock market on Wallstreet is fully automated. It only took the traders a couple of days to realize that they could trade  from their desks using their own computers as well. Within one week the system went in operation the trading rooms will be empty. The stock market's management was quite surprised, which is an under statement of their feelings. Also they feel  a little embarrassed  with the speed Wallstreet turned into an electronic ghost town.

Berkeley Softworks introduces the Operatingsystem GEOS, initially thought for the Commodore 64 and later ported to other computers (CPU's) as well. This was a sleek and fast OS that had less bloath than MS window's.(8)

1987

On April 2, IBM officially introduces a new family of personal computers: the PS/2-series. Starting with the 30  series (8086 CPU) and ending with series 80, based on the 80386 CPU. This system-line introduced the so-called VGA graphics (Video Graphics Array), a new data concept: Micro Channel Architecture (MCA). The  3 1/2" floppy disk drives which are mounted in the type 68000 machines (Apple, Amiga) are now installed in the IBM PS/2 as well.
But there is not an operating system (OS/2) available at the introduction of the new IBM PS/2 machines. Quickly hybrids of these  OS's are getting to the market and fill in the gap left by IBM, such as: Pcmos 386, Windows/286, Windows/386 and similar ones.

When OS/2 finally appears on the market it is big, slow and  riddled with bugs. However the release of OS/2 allowed a mouse to be used with IBM PCs for the first time.

In addition, in April MS-DOS 3.3 appears on the market. This version can create partitions on the hard disc. DOS 3.3 appears to be one of the most stable versions for DOS operating systems for the next four years.

IBM starts with the development of the GF-11. This should be a computer with 576 parallel processors each with 2Mb memory and every chip should be able to execute 20 million computations per second. In this way the GF-11 could make, at top speed, 11 billion computations per second.

Inmos introduces the T800 transputer (2 Mega Flops) that slashes all records for its speed.
Inmos also introduces the first transputer with a numerical coprocessor. With this transputer possibilities seem unlimited for scientific computations.

The 1.44 Mb micro floppy drive and its accompanying floppy discs are introduced.

Bill Atkinson develops with his team (around twenty people amongst which is Dan Winkler ( programmer ) and  Marge Boots ( illustrator) the HyperCard system. It is one of the predecessors of Hypertext but based on programming languages such as SmallTalk and Logo. HyperCard is an author system and meant to form links for a vast amount of unstructured information. The links are called: "hyper links".
For the time being this system will only run on the Apple Macintosh. It will take several years before other platforms (amongst them Intel) make a similar Hyper Card system available.

Eli Yablonovitch of Bellcore corporation describes the theory of how to store light pulses into memory blocks. The memory blocks consists of photonic crystals that contains "chambers" in where the light beams are trapped. This can be done by making the chamber the exact size of the wavelength of the light and the diffraction of the material used is large enough to create a reflection between the "wall" of the chamber and the medium in which the light is trapped.(3)

It will take about 10 years to come to a next step in this technology by two Dutch scientists. (1998)

Light will become the future power to drive computers. It is faster and uses less energy. But this technology is much more complicated than that of electrons. And the needed theories are still not known, a lot of work needs to be done. Science is not yet advanced enough to make any practical and marketable device.

The RISC architecture is invented by a research team on Berkely university under projectleader David A. Patterson. This research will result in the SPARC processor going to be used by Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu.
At Stanford a team led by John Hennesy, also invented the concept of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computers).
The microprocessors which emerged from these 2 projects the MIPS and SPARC are used in most modern workstations.

1988

The OS/2 developers version 1.1 is on the market.   The OS/2 operating system still does not make use of all the possibilities of the so-called Protected Mode.

Finally, IBM entered the super computer arena, and start with a research group with some of the ex-employees from CRAY.

The NeXT (68030 CPU) computer is being introduced after two years of research and developed by Steve Jobs (one of the developers and  inventors of the APPLE computer). For the time being the computer is only sold to students for the high price of US$ 10.000. The limited software available is written in the language C and offers a development environment under UNIX.

Maxis releases Sim City, a video game that simulates the building and maintaining a of a city. The city has to be build up from scratch by placing houses, factories, powerplants, police and fire stations on the "playing" board". The population of the city grows accordingly and thus the tax income of the city. The aim is to make as much money as possible while keeping your citizens happy. Low taxes good public transportation security are factors that keeps them happy. To keep the game appealing to players accidents, crime, fires and disasters were factors of disaster randomly introduced
The term SIM will become a word for anything that is simulated by computers and stands for many other simulation games.

Introduction of MS-DOS 4.0 which is succeeded rapidly by version  4.01. This version is only available via OEM[⁽²⁾] sales. DOS 4.XX can manage partitions larger  then 32Mb, and can work with expanded memory. Has a DOS shell that looks like a Windows GUI, also mouse support and PCTools and Norton Utilities like programs are remastered from the originals. In short, it has a similar look like MS-Windows, but MS-Windows is an  overlay-operating-system, while MS-DOS works like a shell. This version is riddled with bugs like a Swiss cheese and will never become a success.

Nine leading PC producers present a new concept, the Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture (EISA). It will provide an alternative for the Micro Channel Architecture 32 bits bus concept introduced by IBM. This action is mainly a response against the licensing policy of IBM that does not want to release the MCA concept for use. Later only against an abnormal high price.

INTEL offers the 80386SX processor, a cheaper version of the 80386. It has a 6 bit data bus and a 24 bits address bus (just like the 80286) [DOS 12/1988, p86]

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority established
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority is established by the government. Based in Marina del Rey, California, and headed by influential Internet pioneer Jonathan Postel, the group will manage the registration of domain names for the next decade.(6)

Internet Relay Chat invented
Finnish student Jarkko Oikarinen develops Internet Relay Chat, which will grow into a major Internet application, attracting millions of people to communicate in real time. Notably, Internet Relay Chat will be used to send real-time information during the Gulf War and other crises during the 1990s.(6)

Worm plagues Internet
A malicious program called a worm affects some six thousand computers, ARPA forms the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). (6)

Footnotes & References