I tend to call all classes of 1970-1980 stand alone computers you could sit on a desk "microcomputers" (to differentiate them from mainframe and minis) with terms like "home computers" and "business computers" being categories of microcomputers. Of course these definitions are loose at the edges. The way I see it is that you had your classic hobby micros first (Altair etc.). Then you had the first batch consumer-type personal computers...the Apple IIs. the Commodore Pets..TRS-80 Model 1 and the Atari 800. These could be used for business, home and hobby use. They were jack of all trades. Then the market started to split around 1979-1980 into what I'd call Home and Business. Home computers appeared characterised by colour, sound, low screen real-estate, lack of peripherals as standard and all incompatible with each other. Most of all they were cheap. Designed for not just adults but for kids to enjoy too. They tended NOT to be used for business but still for hobby use and especially for games. In my mind the Atari 400 was an example of one that catered for this market, although it's just really a stripped down 800. The Vic-20, TRS-80 colour computer, the spectrum, C-64 etc. all fall into this category. You could argue the ZX-81 was too, due to it's really cheap price. Meanwhile in the business world, from 1979 to 1983 or so you have many CP/M machines. Some of the Japanese ones were fine examples. Business portables also appeared like the Osborne and Kaypros. The TRS-80 Model III would also go in here. These always had disk drives, usually no colour and good screen real-estate. Their specs were not tailored to playing games and their price put them beyond home and (usually) hobby use also The Apple II+/IIe seemed to be one that came down the middle here. It was a versatile computer which was ok for business, education, home and hobby use. Where I lived (New Zealand) is was way too pricey for families though. This was the case with the BBC too although seldom were they used for business. Although the IBM-PC was first in the market in 1981, it really started to dominate from 1983 onwards. Essentially it killed most of those CP/M business machines as everything had to be IBM compatible. For most of the early to mid 1980s though, IBM PCs and compatibles were far too pricey for either home or hobbiest. Apple found a niche market with Macs in desktop publishing, tertiary institutions and writers. In the mid-late 1908s you still had a home market, although machines were getting better, The Atari ST series, the Amigas and the Amstrads. They were often used for playing games, but there was also a hobbyist and creative element to their use. The business market by this time was completely dominated by PCs. Towards the turn of the decade and into the 1990s, PCs became cheaper and multimedia features started to be come standard. These machines pushed there way into the home market. Also, the computer game console was revived with Nintendo and Sega, fulfilling the role many cheap home computers fulfilled earlier (ironically, the likes of the VIC-20 and other home computers had pushed out 1970s-early 1980s game consoles). Home computers as a line died. So, this is the potted history as I see it. Terry (Tez) On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 6:00 AM, BE Arnold <bearnold at outlook.com> wrote:

On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 12:00 PM, BE Arnold <bearnold at outlook.com> wrote: Go back and read Byte from the late 1970s through the mid 1980s. Look at the architecture in the articles and read the ads. Business computing for that market (i.e., below mini-computers) was largely S-100-based or an Apple II with a CP/M card. Not long after the PC clones hit the market, and I mean a few months, you can see PC compatibles displacing CP/M and S-100 hardware. It didn't go entirely away right away, but by 1985, look how spares it is compared to 4 years earlier. Home computing, as you described the category, was, by 1978, heavily Apple, Commodore, and TRS-80, then Atari joined in, and all grew dramatically while the other vendors (Ohio Scientific, Quest, etc., etc) didn't and eventually faded away. There were not that many S-100 in the same price belt as Commodore and Atari, which was part of why there was a split in the hobbyist market (as well as age - I went to meetings in the mid-1970s and saw lots of S-100 machines in the hands of middle-aged engineers who could afford them, but the younger crowd was more likely to zoom in on a machine with BASIC in ROM and cassette for primary storage because they were less expensive and there was no requirement to be compatible with older stuff). The big shift I saw was a few years after the PC came out. When it came out, Apple and Commodore, and to a lesser extent Atari and Radio Shack, dominated computers in the home. In that environment, hobbyists were often using DOS on a PC at work and whatever they already had at home. When the clones came out, bringing the price of a DOS- compatible into the Apple II price range, that's what people chose as their next machine, and suddenly, there were PCs in the home that weren't the PCjr that IBM envisioned would be the way in. To cite a personal data point, in 1984, I was writing kids software for the Commodore 64, Apple II, and BBC Micro. We tentatively began to support the PC, but sales of our product were consistently for the home models. At the time (around the era of DOS 2.1), there just weren't as many PCs in homes with children as there were Apples and C-64s. Two years later it was a different landscape. There started to be a lot more PC clones as home computers. As I mentioned - you can see these trends in the ads and articles in publications like Byte from 1976-1985. -ethan

On 12/23/2013 10:00 AM, BE Arnold wrote: My guess is that only the IBM PC offered a computer with more than 64Kb of memory, and good VIDEO display and a *NAME BRAND* and software other than just games. OS/9 level 2 on the 6809 was the only other offering that even came close to usable computing system. Have microcomputers really died off? There is a lot of NEW projects for the 6502 and Z80 as well as the 8086. Ben.