The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Personal Computer
When the IBM PC was released in the early ’80s, I had an Atari 400 computer and detested it. Not only did it have a horrid membrane keyboard, but it also had a locked-in design. Fortunately, the first IBM personal computer was released shortly afterward. In addition to having an Intel-based chip architecture, the PC design allowed for expansion boards that could swap in better graphics cards, more memory, and better storage. All this could be done without having to resort to replacing the entire computer.
As personal computers became more prevalent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the PC expanded beyond word processing and electronic spreadsheets. The PC gaming market exploded, driven by rapidly ...
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