Computer timeline

1. Computer timeline

2. 1994 • Companies • Storage

3. Companies • Netscape Communications Corporation is founded. Netscape was originally founded as Mosaic Communications Corporation in April of 1994 by Marc Andreessen, Jim Clark and others. Its name was soon changed to Netscape and it delivered its first browser in October of 1994. On the day of Netscape's initial public offering in August of 1995, it’s share price went from $28 to $54 in the first few minutes of trading, valuing the company at $2 billion. Netscape hired many of Silicon Valley’s programmers to provide new features and products and began the Internet boom of the 1990s. • Yahoo is founded. Founded by Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo started out as "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" before being renamed. Yahoo originally resided on two machines, Akebono and Konishiki, both named after famous Sumo wrestlers. Yahoo would quickly expand to become one of the Internet’s most popular search engines.

4. Storage The Iomega Zip Disk is released.  The initial Zip system allowed 100MB to be stored on a cartridge roughly the size of a 3 ½ inch floppy disk. Later versions increased the capacity of a single disk from 100Mbytes to 2GB.

5. Computer history • 1970: General Digital Corporation (renamed Western Digital in 1971) is founded in California • 1973: IBM announces the 3340, the first modern "Winchester" hard drive, which has a sealed assembly, lubricated spindles, and low-mass heads. • 1979: A group headed by Al Shugart founds disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology. • 1979: IBM's 3370 uses seven 14-inch platters to store 571MB, the first drive to use thin-film heads. • 1979: IBM's 62 PC, "Piccolo," uses six 8-inch platters to store 64MB. • 1979: Seagate introduces the ST-506 drive and interface, which is then used in all early microcomputer implementations. • 1980: IBM introduces the first gigabyte hard drive. It is the size of a refrigerator, weighs about 550 pounds, and costs $40,000. • 1980: Seagate releases the first 5.25-inch hard disk. • 1981: Shugart Associates joins NCR to develop an intelligent disk drive interface called the Shugart Associates Systems Interface (SASI), a predecessor to SCSI (Small Computer System Interface). • 1982: Western Digital announces the first single-chip Winchester hard drive controller (WD1010). • 1983: Rodime releases the first 3.5-inch hard drive; the RO352 includes two platters and stores 10MB. • 1984: Western Digital makes the first Winchester hard drive controller card for the IBM PC/AT--and sets an industry standard. • 1985: Control Data, Compaq Computer, and Western Digital collaborate to develop the 40-pin IDE interface. IDE stands for Intelligent Drive Electronics, more commonly known as Integrated Drive Electronics.

6. Continuation • 1985: Imprimis integrates the first hard drive controller into a drive. • 1985: Quantum introduces the Plus Hardcard, which allows the addition of a hard drive without an available bay or a separate controller card. • 1985: Western Digital produces the first ESDI (Enhanced Small Device Interface) controller board, which allows larger capacity and faster hard drives to be used in PCs. • 1986: The official SCSI spec is released; Apple Computer's Mac Plus is one of the first computers to use it. • 988: Prairie Tek releases the 220, the first 2.5-inch hard drive designed for the burgeoning notebook computer market; it uses two platters to store 20MB. • 1988: Connor introduces the first 1-inch-high 3.5-inch hard drive, which is still the common form factor. Before this, hard drives were either full height or half-height. • 1988: Western Digital buys the disk-drive assets of Tandon Corporation with an eye to manufacturing IDE drives. • 1990: Western Digital introduces its first 3.5-inch Caviar IDE hard drive. • 991: IBM introduces the 0663 Corsair, the first disk drive with thin film magnetoresistive (MR) heads. It has eight 3.5-inch platters and stores 1GB. (The MR head was first introduced on an IBM tape drive in 1984.)

7. Continuation again • 1991: Integral Peripherals' 1820 Mustang uses one 1.8-inch platter to store 21MB. • 1992: Seagate comes out with the first shock-sensing 2.5-inch hard drive. • 1992: Seagate is first to market with a 7200-revolutions-per-minute hard drive, the 2.1GB Barracuda. • 1992: Hewlett-Packard's C3013A Kitty Hawk drive uses two 1.3-inch platters to store 2.1GB. • 1994: Western Digital develops Enhanced IDE, an improved hard drive interface that breaks the 528MB-throughput barrier. EIDE also allows for attachment of optical and tape drives. • 1996: IBM stores 1 billion bits per square inch on a platter. • 1996: Seagate introduces its Cheetah family, the first 10,000-rpm hard drives. • 1997: IBM introduces the first drive using giant magneto resistive (GMR) heads, the 16.8GB Deskstar 16GP Titan, which stores 16.8GB on five 3.5-inch platters. • 1998: IBM announces its microdrive , the smallest hard drive to date. • 2000: Maxtor buys competitor Quantum's hard drive business. At the time, Quantum is the number-two drive maker, behind Seagate; this acquisition makes Maxtor the world's largest hard drive manufacturer. • 2000: Seagate produces the first 15,000-rpm hard drive, the cheetah X15 • 2002: Seagate scores another first with the Barracuda ATA V serial ATA hard drive • 2002: A demonstration by Seagate yields a perpendicular magnetic recording areal density of 100 gigabits per square inch. • 2002: Among its many 2002 technology accomplishments, Seagate successfully demos Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording. HAMR records magnetically using laser-thermal assistance and ultimately aims to increase areal density by more than 100 times over 2002 levels. • 2003: IBM sells its Data Storage Division to Hitachi, thus ending its involvement in developing and marketing disk drive technolo

8. again • 2002: Seagate scores another first with the Barracuda ATA V serial ATA hard drive. • 2002: A demonstration by Seagate yields a perpendicular magnetic recording areal density of 100 gigabits per square inch. • 2002: Among its many 2002 technology accomplishments, Seagate successfully demos Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording. HAMR records magnetically using laser-thermal assistance and ultimately aims to increase areal density by more than 100 times over 2002 levels. • 2003: IBM sells its Data Storage Division to Hitachi, thus ending its involvement in developing and marketing disk drive technolo • 2003: Western Digital introduces the first 10,000-rpm SATA hard drive, the 37GB Raptor, which is designed for the enterprise, but which gamers quickly learn is a hot desktop performer in dual-drive RAID setups. • 2004: The first 0.85-inch hard drive, Toshiba's MK2001MTN, debuts. It stores 2GB on a single platter.

9. 005: Toshiba introduces its MK4007 GAL, which stores 40GB on one 1.8-inch platter, fielding the first hard drive using perpendicular magnetic recording. • 2006: Seagate completes the acquisition of Maxtor, further narrowing the field of hard drive manufacturers. • 2006: Seagate's Momentus 5400.3 notebook hard drive is the first 2.5-inch model to use perpendicular magnetic recording, which boosts its capacity up to 160GB. • 2006: Cornice and Seagate each announce a 1-inch hard drive that holds 12GB. The drives are slated to ship in the third quarter of 2006.