Timeline:1981

1981 January - Consumer Electronics Show, The Commodore VIC-20 (already released as the VIC-1001 in Japan in 1980, was announced for US$299.95. Pre-manufactured stocks are released in January and February, but a huge demand meant the machine was delayed as production tried to cope with orders; which were finally fulfilled in May. Jack Tramiel told the engineers they could only use 1K chips due to a surplus which Commodore couldnt use in any other way. The VIC came with a 1mhz MOS 6502, 22x23 text mode, a 176x184 16 colour display, 16K of ROM, and 5.5K of  Ram, 2K of which held the Basic 2.0 operating system developed for the Commodore MAX, giving a total of 3.5K available system memory address space. Several memory expansion cartridges were later released, and consumers bought the machines as fast as Commodore could make them, becoming the first computer to sell 1 million units by January 1983, a few months ahead of Apple IIs 1 Millionth machine, and a drop in their retail price follows to become the first colour computer under $100. Around 2.5 Million VIC-20s are known have been sold.

January - MOS Technology, Inc., Commodore's integrated circuit design subsidiary, initiate a project to design the graphic and audio chips for a next generation video game console. named MOS Technology VIC-II, which would go on to become the heart of the Commodore C64.

February - Commodore then began two new game console projects that would use the new chips. Robert "Bob" Russell (system programmer and co-architect of the recently released VIC-20) and Robert "Bob" Yannes, (original producer of the MicroPET prototype) propose a continuation of the PET range aimed at Businesses named the VIC-40. Jack Tramiel liked the idea, but insisted it must have 64k of memory, even though this alone cost $100 at the time, he know Dram prices were falling according to Moore's Law. So the VIC-40 became the VIC-64 and later the Commodore 64. At the same time another project called the Ultimax or the Commodore MAX Machine began. It was engineered by Yash Terakura from Commodore Japan. It will use the same VIC-II chipset as the C64 but with a MOS 6510 CPU, the same sound chip, and compatible ROM cartridge architecture, so MAX cartridges will work in other commodore products. Moore's Law states the internals of integrated circuits will double in capacity and half in price every year, and this can be applied to CPUs, Ram, GPUs and even the size and price of a hard drive. The term was coined in 1965 by Caltech graduate Gordon Earle Moore, who co-founded the Fairchild Semiconductor corporation in 1957, and later founded NM Electronics otherwise known as Intel Corporation in 1968. Moore's Law turned out to be very accurate, and made low cost computer solutions possible for the mass market.

5th March 1981 - Sinclair ZX81 Issue One is launched by Sinclair Research in the UK. The machine houses the Zilog ZX81 processor, featured a revised keyboard, and came with a massive 1K of onboard memory, expendable up to 64k, but only 56k K was actually usable by the machine. The ZX81 produced a monocrome display on any UHF TV, with 32 column x 24 row text mode, or a 64 × 48 pixel graphics mode. More than 1 and a half million ZX81 machines were sold until discontinuation in 1984.

April - At Apple, Steve Jobs envisages that the mackintosh would sell by the millions, so he negotiates an immense deal Motorola to purchase the M68k at just $9 each; which was less than a quarter of the marketed price for the CPU at that time.

June - 1981 The Osborne Computer Corporation, produced the Osborne 1, it is considered to be the first true portable, full-featured computer, by the fact that it is at least light enough to carry by one person. It includes all the components required to be a completely useful and operational computer system. Weighing in at 24 pounds (which is just 10.9 KG) and costing $1,795 (thats almost 4,800 today). The Osborne 1 had a 5-inch display, 64 KB of memory, a modem, and two 5.25-inch floppy disk drives. A Year later, after selling 11,000 units, Adam Osborne announced plans for the Osborne Executive or Osborne 2, along with a cut price Vixen machine. Consumers thought they would be better to wait for the new models, and sales of the Osborne 1 dried up, forcing Osborne into financial collapse. This is commonly known as "The Osborne Effect" which Adam Osborne later admited was an excuse he gave for the collapse of the company, when the video game crash of 1983, and approaching dominance of the IBM PC, had more to do with it.

June - MOS Technologies start to build the VIC-II graphics chip and start work on the SID sound interface device chip. The work would take 5 months, and had to be ready in time for the completion of the C64 motherboard in November. Bob Yannes SID was inspired by synthesisers, and wanted a sound chip as capable of the best synthesiser chips available at that time, to be used inside computer for video games music.July - Atari reportedly lose $10 million on sales of $10 million Atari 400 and 800 units. Marketing strategy is called into question.

August 12, On August 12, 1981, at a press conference at the Waldorf Astoria ballroom in New York City, IBM announced the IBM 5150 Personal Computer with a price tag of $1,565 ($4,119.29) (although some machines would sell by retailers for up to 3,000 when they shipped in September - which is almost 8k today). A brand new lightweight case design now hosted a 8088 CPU clocked at 4.77mhz, 40k custom built rom, 16k ram (max 256k). This was a huge step forward from the expensive and bulky 5120 released only 18 months earlier, especially considering an IBM computer in the 1960's often cost as much as $9 million and required an air-conditioned quarter-acre of space and a staff of 60 people to keep it fully loaded with instructions. The 5150 case design was so popular, it became the defacto by which we still recognise some desktop PCs today, and certainly until tower units took over the market in the mid to late 1990's. It spawned hundreds of PC compatible clones, and transformed IBM into an enormous global brand, which became known as Big Blue. The IBM 5150 was so popular, it was continued in production until 1987, long after the PC XT and AT line appeared and took over the PC market.

November - MOS Technology Incs Video Interface Chip model II and the SID (Sound Interface Device for audio), are completed. Work is still progressing on the VIC-64 and the Commodore MAX machines.

December 1st - In the UK the BBC Micro models A and B are launched. These low cost 8-bit computers ran a standard 6502 with the system clocked at twice the cpu speed, alternating between the CPU and the video display with each cycle. The model A came with 16k of ram, the model B had 32kilobytes, available generally for £299 and £399 respectively. The project came about because of a computer literacy project operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation at that time, and 1.5 million BBC Micro's found there way into 85% of British schools and colleges thanks to the link with the BBC. The computers were only of limited educational use, had no way initially to produce colour until Elite showed Acornsoft how to produce it, and was generally hated by kids everywhere. After the ZX Spectrun and Commodore C64 were released in 1982, and took the gaming market by storm, Acorn responded with the 32K Acorn Electron; which could produce medium resolution graphics in 4 or 2 colours, or 16 colours in low res, but was already out of date when it was released in August 1983.