y data centers now use cartridges that look like the old eight- track tapes and significantly more data than the reels shown here. Data General, the minicomputer was born (Figure 5-12). The minicom- puter made it possible for individual departments in a corporation, or even small corporations, to take charge of their own computer destinies and not be shackled to the centralized data centers of yore. It carried with it a price, of course: Not only did these companies or organizations lose their dependency on the data center, they also lost the centralized support that came with it. So there was a downside to this evolution. The real evolution, of course, came with the birth of the personal com- puter. Thanks to Bill Gates and his concept of a simple operating system (DOS) and to Steve Jobs with his vision of "computing for the masses," truly ubiquitous computing became a reality. From the perspective of the individual user, this evolution was unparalleled. The revolution began in Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. O Technologies Chapter 5 Figure 5-11 Raised floor, showing cables below Figure 5-12 Minicomputers Downloaded from Copyright Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. Premises Technologies Premises Technologies January 1975 with the announcement of the MITS ALTAIR (Figure 5- 13). Built by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the ALTAIR was designed around the Intel 8080 microprocessor and a specially designed 100-pin connector. The machine ran a BASIC operating system developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen; in effect, MITS was Microsoft's first customer. The ALTAIR was really a hobbyist's machine, but soon the market shifted to a s