In June 1989, George Morrow told Wendy Woods that he was designing a new laptop computer for South Korea’s Trigem Corporation. He said the machine would weigh just 10.5 pounds (4.76 kg), come with a built-in fax modem, and have multiple power options, including nickel-metal hydride batteries–those were just coming onto the consumer market–four standard D-cell batteries, or an adapter that plugged into a car’s cigarette lighter. There would even be an option to add a cellular phone. Morrow added that the laptop would get up to six hours of battery life between charges, at least when you weren’t using the cellular phone.

Stewart Cheifet, the creator, executive producer, and host of Computer Chronicles for 20 seasons, died on December 28, 2025, at the age of 87, according to an obituary published by Goldsteins’ Rosenberg’s Funeral Directors, Inc., in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Born on September 24, 1938, Stewart Douglas Cheifet was a native of Philadelphia. He earned bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and psychology from the University of Southern California and returned to Philadelphia for a year to teach math and work as a radio announcer before enrolling in Harvard Law School. After receiving his juris doctor and gaining admittance to the New York State Bar, Cheifet joined ABC News in 1964 as an in-house attorney.

Video game historian Kate Willaert recently published her latest video, an in-depth examination of the origins and evolution of the term “Metroidvania,” the well-known (and widely debated) portmanteau of the video game titles Metroid and Castlevania.

Produced by J.T. Pennington and featuring a rotating cast of hosts, BSD Now has covered the world of BSD-based operating systems since 2013. In their December 18, 2025, episode, co-hosts Jason Tubnor and Ruben Schade discussed my recent coverage of an April 1989 Computer Chronicles episode on UNIX, the predecessor of the modern BSD projects. Tubnor and Schade also shared their own recollections from the so-called “UNIX wars” of the early 1990s and how it affected their formative years working with computers.

In March 1989, Atari Corporation chairman Jack Tramiel paid his first visit to Australia, where he delivered the opening address at Sydney’s PC89 computer exhibition. Atari was a major presence at the four-day dealer conference, with Tramiel and his team announcing several new products, including a hand-held MS-DOS machine that shipped as the Atari Portfolio; and the Atari STacy, a portable version of the company’s flagship ST computer. Speaking with David Firth of the Sydney Morning Herald, Tramiel proclaimed that these new machines would help Atari become the world’s number-one personal computer in the company by 1992.

During his Indian travelogue, Stewart Cheifet discussed India’s role at the forefront of UNIX software development, a collateral effect of IBM’s withdrawal from the country’s computer market in the late 1970s. Cheifet noted that UNIX was “now attracting renewed interest in the United States” as well. Indeed, this next Computer Chronicles episode from April 1989 focused on the latest developments in the UNIX world.

It had been nearly four years since Computer Chronicles last devoted an episode to the operating system originally created at Bell Labs and released in November 1971 as Unix Version 1. In that 1985 episode, commentator Paul Schindler dismissed talk of UNIX spreading to microcomputers as “the wrong tool in the wrong place,” comparing it to using a screwdriver to open a can of tomato juice. The two main knocks against UNIX were the number of “incompatible” versions produced by different organizations and hardware manufacturers and its “user-hostile” interface.

In January 1974, India’s Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) took effect. Adopted during the government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, FERA required non-Indian citizens, or Indian companies where a non-citizen owned more than a 40 percent interest, to register and receive “special permission” from the Reserve Bank of India to acquire, hold, or transfer any immovable property located in the country. In simple terms, at least 60 percent of any Indian company had to be owned by Indian citizens.

In October 2015, Dustin Hubbard launched Gaming Alexandria as a website to host his scans of materials related to the history of video games. Over the decade that followed, the site grew into a community of dedicated video game preservationists and independent historians. (They’ve even let me, a person who spends most of his time writing about non-game history, hang out and make snarky comments.)

Hubbard recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of Gaming Alexandria with an article on the history of the site and tributes from many of the regular contributors. Of course, I extend by congratulations to Hubz and the team and look forward to what the next 10 years will bring!

This next Computer Chronicles episode from April 1989 focused on foreign language software. Stewart Cheifet opened the program by showing Gary Kildall the Sharp Wizard OZ-7000, a pocket computer, which supported a ROM card containing an eight-language foreign dictionary. Cheifet inserted the card into the Wizard, turned the unit on, and demonstrated a simple translation from English to Japanese. The program on the card contained a selection of “general conversation” phrases. Cheifet selected, “What is this?” and the program returned the translation using Japanese kanji characters. Cheifet then pushed a button, which displayed the Japanese translation phonetically using Latin characters.

Founded in April 1980 by three seasoned Hewlett-Packard minicomputer executives, Software Publishing Corporation was an early leader in productivity software for the Apple II, IBM PC, and other microcomputer platforms. After achieving rapid growth with a series of simple, modular, and easy-to-use applications targeting novice users, SPC shifted focus in the late 1980s to power users with its industry-leading business presentation software Harvard Graphics. But by the mid-1990s, SPC’s dependence on this single program led to its decline and ultimate acquisition by an upstart new media company that eventually collapsed under the weight of the early 2000s dot-com bust.