Editing Timeline of computing 1980–1989 (section)

==1984==
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Date
! Location
! class="unsortable" | Event
|- valign="top"
|rowspan="2"| January
| UK
| [[Sinclair Research]] announced its first (and only) personal computer aimed to the business market, the [[Sinclair QL]], at an introductory price of £399. The machine was based on the [[Motorola 68008|68008]] CPU of [[Motorola]], the low-cost version of [[Motorola 68000]] with 8-bit external bus. The QL (abbreviation of Quantum Leap) did not become a market success, because of quality issues of the first series and due to the [[ZX Microdrive|Microdrive]] used as storage medium instead of the much more reliable [[Floppy disk|floppy discs]]; its development and production later caused serious financial difficulties for the company.
|- valign="top"
| US
| [[Apple Macintosh]] released, based on the 8&nbsp;MHz version of the [[Motorola 68000]] processor. The 68000 can address 16 MB of RAM, a noticeable improvement over Intel's 8088/8086 family. However the Apple achieved 0.7 MIPS and originally came with just 128 KB of RAM. It came fitted with a monochrome monitor and was the first successful mouse-driven computer with a [[Graphical user interface]]. The Macintosh included many of the Lisa's features at a much lower price: $2,500.
Applications that came as part of the package included [[MacPaint]], which made use of the mouse, and [[MacWrite]], which demonstrated WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processing.
|- valign="top"
| May
| US
| [[Hewlett-Packard]] release the immensely popular [[LaserJet]] printer; by 1993 they had sold over 10 million LaserJet printers and over 20&nbsp;million printers overall.{{Citation needed paragraph|date=July 2021|reason=The preceding claims need references to reliable sources.}} HP were also pioneering [[inkjet technology]].
|- valign="top"
| June
| UK
| [[Amstrad CPC]] was introduced first in Britain, later in other European markets as well. The machine was based on the popular 8 bit [[Z80]] CPU. The mainboard (i.e. the computer itself) and a cassette recorder (Datacorder) were both integrated in the keyboard. The CPC could be bought in a bundle with a monochrome (GT64) monitor for £249 or a colour (CTM640) monitor for £359. The monitor also served as the power supply to have only one plug to connect to the wall outlet. The CPC became very popular in France and Spain, and in Germany where it was marketed by [[Schneider Rundfunkwerke AG]] under its own label. In 1985 two further models (CPC 664 and 6128) with built-in 3-inch [[floppy disc drive]] were released.
|- valign="top"
| August
| US
| MS-DOS 3.0, PC DOS 3.0
Released for the IBM AT, it supported larger hard disks as well as High Density (1.2 MB) 5¼" floppy disks.
|- valign="top"
| September
| US
| Apple released a 512KB version of the Macintosh, known as the "Fat Mac".
|- valign="top"
| End
| US
| Compaq started the development of the [[Integrated drive electronics|IDE]] interface (see also 1989). This standard was designed specially for the IBM PC and can achieve high data transfer rates through a 1:1 interleave factor and caching by the actual disk controller{{snd}}the bottleneck is often the old AT bus and the drive may read data far quicker than the bus can accept it, so the cache is used as a buffer. Theoretically 1 MB/s is possible but 700 kB/s is perhaps more typical of such drives. This standard has been adopted by many other models of computer, such as the Acorn Archimedes A4000 and above. A later improvement was EIDE, laid down in 1989, which also removed the maximum drive size of 528 MB and increased data transfer rates.
|- valign="top"
| ?
| US
| [[Motorola]] released the [[Motorola 68020|68020]] processor.
|}