Into the 1990s: strands of computing

• Strands of computing evolution in the 1990s

  • Small personal computers
  • Larger, more expensive workstations
  • Minicomputers
  • Highly expensive mainframes and supercomputers
• Small personal computers


  • Designed primarily for home use and small businesses
  • Used for applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, databases and the like
• Larger, more expensive workstations

  • Used for modelling, running sophisticated graphics applications and other similar processor-intensive tasks
  • Often interconnected to share processing power
  • Multi-user computers allowing many users to simultaneously access resources
• Minicomputers


  • Used for many of the same tasks as workstations
  • One central minicomputer had distributed terminals, allowing numerous users to interact with the computer
  • By the early 1990s, there was considerable overlap between the roles of workstations and minicomputers
• Highly expensive mainframes and supercomputers

  • Used by the defence sector, academics, very large businesses and government organisations
  • Supercomputers gained prominence in the 1990s, typically used for complex and numerically intensive work such as modelling weather systems
  • Mainframes increasingly being used for tasks relating to large databases, such as payroll management
• The Sunway TaihuLight was the fastest computer in the world at the time of writing (2016)
• Components of a personal computer

  • CPU
  • Main memory (RAM)
  • Motherboard
  • Hard disk drive
  • CD/DVD drive
• The fundamental layout of most personal computers has remained unchanged since the time of the micro in the late 1970s
• Peripheral devices such as keyboard, printer and monitor are connected to the computer by cables
• Devices such as USB memory sticks and external hard drives are used to store data outside the computer
• You could lose everything stored on your computer to hard disk failure or the theft of a laptop
• Backing up your work

  1. Save files to an external disk

  2. Use a cloud-based storage system such as Dropbox or OneDrive
• Cloud-based storage systems keep copies of your documents both on your computer and on an internet server, with further sets on other computers you use