This Day in Computer History: November 14

2008-11-14

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This Day in Computer History

1984

The COMDEX trade show was held in Las Vegas, Nevada. At the event, Ashton-Tate released new versions of its dBase II application and Framework office suite; Kaypro unveiled the Kaypro 16 microcomputer, which featured 256 KB RAM, a floppy drive, and hard drive; Sperry released its Sperry 5000 series of Unix-based computers; Texas Instruments announced the TI Pro-Lite computer.

1988

The COMDEX trade show was held in Las Vegas, Nevada. At the event, film crews shoot footage for the Steven Seagal action film “Above the Law,” under the guise of a press crew covering the event for the evening news.

1994

The Mosaic Communications Corporation began officially operating under the Netscape business name in order to avoid legal conflicts with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where the initial version of the Mosaic browser was first created. The Netscape web browser was a successor of the initial Mosaic, but it contained none of the original’s source code.

1995

Apple Computer, IBM, and Motorola jointly released specifications for the PowerPC computing platform, commonly known as “CHRP” (Common Hardware Reference Platform). The platform, based largely on IBM’s earlier POWER system architecture, supports AIX, Macintosh System 7, NetWare, OS/2, Solaris, and Windows NT.

1997

Intel released a software patch for the “f0″ bug, otherwise known as the “f00f” bug. The bug is a design flaw in the majority of Intel Pentium, Pentium MMX, and Pentium OverDrive processors in which a hexadecimal encoding that reads “f0 0f c7 c8” causes operating systems to hang. Intel described the issue as the “invalid operand with locked CMPXCHG8B instruction.”

The Netscape Communicator 4.04 Internet suite was released.

The official website of the Spice Girls was hacked by the hacking group “CodeZero.”

1998

The website of Warner’s Cartoon Network was hacked by “VHG”.

2000

Netscape Navigator 6.0, based on pre-released Mozilla source code, was released following two years of development. It came bundled in an internet suite that included: RealPlayer 8, Netscape Mail, Netscape IM, Netscape Composer, and Net2Phone. Due to the instability of its Mozilla core, the browser was slow, unstable, and, after its initial release, largely ignored. It would widely be considered a failure.

On a plane returning from the COMDEX trade show, Ira Velinsky, the chief architect of the Commodore 64 dies of a heart attack at age 46.

2002

Advanced Micro Devices released the Athlon XP 2800+ processor, featuring a 333 MHz front-side bus. Price: $397 each in quantities of 1,000.

Advanced Micro Devices released the Athlon XP 2700+ processor, featuring a 333 MHz front-side bus. Price: US $349 in quantities of 1,000.

Intel released the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 processor, featuring a 133MHz system bus and hyper-threading technology. Price: $637 in quantities of 1,000.

2005

Version 9.4.3 of the Icon programming language was released.

2006

Microsoft released the Zune portable music player. The initial model of the Zune featured a 30 GB hard drive and was available in a variety of colors. Price: $249.99.

This post is part of the series: A Chronology of Computer History for the Month of November: This Day in Computer History

This series provides a daily account of what happened on this day in the history of computing and technology. It discusses developments, breaking news, new releases and global implications that occurred as a result of these ground breaking events.