You actually had to think... and be able to spell. :-)
Posted on 08/14/2011 3:23:55 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
THE YEAR WAS 1981, the US defeat in Vietnam was already six years in the past, while many people had only hazy memories of most of the 1970s with its drugs, bellbottom pants and disco craze. Ronald Reagan was US President and it was "Morning in America" once again. And that year IBM introduced its IBM PC model 5150 on 12 August, 30 years ago today.
*************Photo at source***************
The first IBM PC wasn't much by today's standards. It had an Intel 8088 processor that ran at the blazing speed of 4.77MHz. The base memory configuration was all of 16kB expandable all the way up to 256kB, and it had two 5-1/4in, 160kB capacity floppy disk drives but no hard drive.
A keyboard and 12in monochrome monitor were included, with a colour monitor optional. The 5150 ran IBM BASIC in ROM and came with a PC-DOS boot diskette put out by a previously unknown startup software company based out of Seattle named Microsoft.
IBM priced its initial IBM PC at $1,565, and that was a relatively steep price in those days, worth about $5,000 today, give or take a few hundred dollars. In the US in 1981 that was about the cost of a decent used car.
Because the IBM PC was meant to be sold to the general public but IBM didn't have any retail stores, the company sold it through US catalogue retailer Sears & Roebuck stores.
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Subsequently IBM released follow-on models through 1986 including the PC/XT, the first with an internal hard drive; the PC/AT with an 80286 chip running at 6MHz then 8MHz; the 6MHz XT/286 with zero wait-state memory that was actually faster than the 8MHz PC/AT and (not very) Portable and Convertible models; as well as the ill-fated XT/370, AT/370, 3270 PC and 3270/AT mainframe terminal emulators, plus the unsuccessful PC Jr.
In 1983 Compaq Computer reverse engineered the IBM PC BIOS, beginning the era of IBM compatible PCs with its Compaq Portable suitcase PC.
IBM attempted to keep the PC market for itself by introducing its Micro-Channel Architecture, but the buying public rejected it. Soon other vendors joined the PC hardware market, applications software like Visicalc and the Lotus 123 spreadsheet programs and the Wordperfect word processing application appeared, and the IBM PC based personal computing industry took off and never looked back.
But today, after 30 years of development and untold billions of dollars in hardware and software sales, we can remember this date. µ
I think the first real “personal computer” was the IBM 5100, which ran BASIC and APL out of ROM. The machines based on the 8088 were simply more affordable.
As far as I can fathom, it’s mockup [photoshop] of a submarine control panel that someone made a long time ago, that went viral.
You actually had to think... and be able to spell. :-)
My first PC was a PC/XT clone from Taiwan I called a “Chingao.”
(My first computer of any kind was an MP-68 kit from Southwest Technical Products, which I built in 1976.)
The “370” series PCs were interesting. They executed the IBM System/370 instruction set (partly by emulation). The CPU was designed by Motorola based on the MC68000, retargeted to the S/370 instruction set. Motorola’s internal name for the chip set was “Cascadilla.”
In the IBM Customer Engineering organization, they didn't want us to alarm the client; we were told to call it an "impact forming tool."
I’m not sure about the wheels. I believe the photo is of an early Nuke Sub training simulator. Maybe the wheels are the control rod controls.
BTW, the printing terminal in the foreground is a photoshopped anachronism. The simulator is obviously from the 1950’s whereas the DECWriter is from the the 70’s or 80’s.
That computer was v cool. Thanks for that video.
Methinks that pic is of an early sub simulator ... Or just a cobbled photoshop...much like those “scans” of his faked birth certificates.
I have 3 stashed away, I think they are Model Ms. I like the Gateway AnyKey keyboards to be able to program HTML strings for posting (e.g. {P}{img src=””} with one keystroke)
I deployed a network of Datapoints 1100, 2200, 5500
for data collection in 1974.
It was two years later that IBM demo'ed the 5100.
They were all based on 8008-8088 Intels.
http://www.old-computers.com/history/images/intel_8008_datapoint-2200.jpg
My Trash 80 had two 5-1/4” floppies, homebrew power supply & case, no hard drive, tape storage, booted from floppy, had full complement of 64K of RAM. And it ran NewDos80. At the time I thought it was pretty nice. Even learned to program in Basic.
The machine is still in the back of my shop and I best it would work if I plugged it back together. hee hee hee
Believe it or not, there are some guys who actually run Linux on Z80 computers. Talk about a throwback!
>> “In 1983 Compaq Computer reverse engineered the IBM PC BIOS, beginning the era of IBM compatible PCs with its Compaq Portable suitcase PC.” <<
.
I remember designing and staking out their parking lot in Milpitas in the winter of ‘82-’83, and wondering who they were. Everything was hush-hush, and their front door was kept locked, except when someone had to go in or out.
>> “And how long was it before Al Gore invented the internet?” <<
.
Actually, Algore invented it as a small child, but he had to wait a long time for the computer to come along so he could use his invention...
>> “typing this at a logitech Desktop keyboard,...not too bad” <<
.
At this moment, I’m using a Key Tronic that I bought in ‘97, real bad I have to admit.
I also remember the original IBM AT, which came with 256KB RAM on the system board... Later on IBM release the 512MB AT, which was the same machine, but the memory chips were soldered one of top of the other, giving rise to the name "bug humping AT" because the memory chips looked like 2 bugs mating. I also remember the 370AT, which didn't run DOS - It actually ran IBM System 370 DOS, the same as a lot of IBM minis and mainframes: I think they sold about 12 of those. And I remember the "Sears Business Centers" which sold the computers.
Later on, I bought one of the very first Everex 386 computers sold in KC - It was a screamer: 20MHz 80386 with 4 MB of RAM, I replaced the disk controller with a high performance RLL controller giving me a total of about 186MB of storage, and running SCO Xenix.
Mark
Holy cow, you're right. I had a keyboard many years ago that felt like it came off of an IBM Selectric, and I would kill for another one today. Amazing keyboard. I've heard people will pay upwards of $200 for a NOS IBM keyboard.
Mark
I used to joke that the Model 80 was a "portable computer," since it had that swing up handle on top of the case for carrying it.
It was an MCA (Microchannel Architecture) system.
Here's a trivia question: What were the only 2 companies that licensed MCA from IBM?
Highlight below for the answer...
Tandy, ALR. MCA & ISA (PC) architectures are NOT compatible, however ALR designed a server with both MCA and ISA buses.
Mark
Now they are made in China..
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