Slashdot Mirror
How the IBM PC Changed the World
Sabah Arif writes "On August 12, 1981, IBM released the IBM PC 5150. In less than two years, IBM had created a computer that would not only change IBM, but the entire world, mostly because it did not follow IBM tradition. It used an outside microprocessor (instead of the nascent IBM 801), operating system and software. Low End Mac recounts the birth of the IBM PC 5150."
These days, no turbo button, so I'm stuck at a crawling 3GHz...
I don't know why it is considered so great historically. CPM machines had spreadsheets and dBASE and word-processors and were doing quite well. The IBM PC stole that market and killed CPM because of the brand name. CPM would have been the base framework of the machines we use today had it not been for the IBM PC. In fact, the PC barrowed CPM-machine hardware in many cases.
Table-ized A.I.
Was the 'blue box' Altair.
It inspired most of the techno-nerds from Gates to Jobs.
Looking back at the past, IBM was probably one of the most influential computer companies. Their Thinkpad notebook line was considered possibly the best notebook in existance. It's a shame that they were purchased by Lenovo, even if Lenovo continues making good Thinkpads.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
Does it run UBUNTU ? It must run UBUNTU !! or it is not a PC.
On the one hand, the x86 is a terrible design. It doesn't have enough registers, and the assembly interface is awkward (especially in the FPU). On the other hand, the openness of the architecture has freed us from the shackles of dependency on a single company for hardware (which DRM would like to lay back on us). If you don't like Intel, you can go to AMD. There are tons of board manufacturers to choose from, and all the parts need to be (more or less) interoperable.
This prevents one manufacturer from imposing their wishes on us. If Microsoft had control of their personal computer platform the way apple does, we surely would have lost the battle to DRM already. Computers would be more expensive because there wouldn't be competition from cheap manufacturers in Taiwan to drive the prices down.
The x86 may be an ugly beast, but it gives us the freedom that only openness can bring. And I will drink to that.
Qxe4
The article gave pretty short shrift to the Compaq engineers for the reverse engineering of the PC architecture.
Imagine you were Chinese and had laid bare before you the innards of some cool technology that until now was locked up tight. You'd be the first one to put down your eggroll and cat-kabob and get right to the task of extracting its secrets. That's when you'd open up the clone market. It wouldn't be the prerogative of the original company whether you created the clone or not, it's out of their hands once they decided to use an open architecture.
Compaq blazed the clone trail, not IBM.
Did someone say 5150?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Very good point. Without Compaq, we would be nowhere today, but I guess without IBM there would be nothing to reverse engineer.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Is it just a coincidence that the codename for this project was Acorn, or was the use of the codename in Dilbert a deliberate homage? (sorry, can't find video reference)
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
IBM PC didn't change the world. Taiwanese clone PC changed the world. They made computing accessible to the mass.
Sadly I couldn't get it too, wouldn't fit on a 5" floppy.
Haven't you heard? Apple is responsible for everything innovative and great. I can link to a picture gallery of mac users with Apple logos branded and dyed-black hair to prove it.
From Intel's website:
Starting from the highest to the lowest the IRQ priorities would be 2/9,10,11,12,15,3,4,5,6,7.
Well, that's kinda...logical...I guess.
* * * * * *
Clear? Huh! Why a four-year-old child could understand this report! Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can't make head or tail of it.
--Groucho Marx as Rufus T. Firefly
My first computer. Of course, mine was gotten in 1987, when the 386 was common and the 486 was t3h 1337 b0xx. Castoff from my uncle's CPA practice. One hell of a little machine.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Just after the PC introduction (at NCC fall 1981) I told my father-in-law that we should re-implement the software used for OCR processing in his downtown office. We should select something PC-compatible since this new open architecture was bound to generate compatibles, thereby ensuring a pretty long lifetime.
:-)
After looking around the market, we bought two Columbia PCs, one desktop (with an immense, never to be filled, 10 MB hard drive) and one luggable, for the same price as a single IBM PC.
The Columbia machine came with a BIOS/HW manual that documented all the various lowlevel interfaces, including the port adresses for things like the serial port and the interrupt controller, which allowed me to write a hw interrupt driver for the incoming 9600 baud OCR data stream.
Columbia was both earlier than Compaq and more compatible, but that didn't matter, they still went under a couple of years later. The PCs lived for many years however.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Commodore et al were the drivers of the personal computing industry. IBM jumped on board with a me-too but the platform didn't achieve sales that compared to Commodore, Radioshack, Tandy, Apple or Sinclair until well after those platforms were eclipsed.
MSDOS PC's only became the plaform of choice because of DOOM.
in my closet
1. The IBM PC was initially sold for about $1295. That was much cheaper than any other IBM computer. Apple and Commodore had cheaper computers, but small-business owners want the IBM name on their computers. Business people tended to view Apple computers and Commodore computers as toys.
2. The computer had the IBM label on it. These days, the IBM label does not carry the same cachet that the IBM name carried in the 1980s. At that time, IBM dominated the mindshare in the computer industry. People often said, "No one was ever fired for buying an IBM computer."
3. IBM encouraged other companies to build hardware and software for the IBM PC. It literally came with a full set of manuals documenting the entire BIOS and the internal wiring among the chips of the motherboard. Compare that open approach to, say, the typical Sony laptop. The plethora of software and hardware peripherals for the IBM PC enabled it to be adapted to a wide-range of useful applications: music synthesis, video games, desktop publishing, real-time intruder monitoring, etc.
4. Phoenix Technologies cloned the BIOS, enabling an army of companies to legally build functioning clones of the IBM PC. This army of cloners then spawned an entire universe of component suppliers. This intense competition among so many cloners and suppliers drastically lowered the price of the IBM PC and its clones. In turn, the lowered prices dramatically increased sales of the personal computers. Today, you can buy a Dell laptop for $500.
As prices dropped, more people bought computers; with more people owning computers, more companies building software and hardware for the computers appeared. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Among the four factors, item #4 is probably the most important factor in amplifying the impact of the IBM PC on the entire computer industry.
You can easily see the impact of #4 by comparing (1) the size of the ecosystem of companies building hardware and software for IBM PCs (now known as Lenovo PCs) and their clones and (2) the size of the ecosystem of companies building hardware and software for 68000 Macintoshes or PowerPC Macintoshes. Still more interesting, the enormous size and supercompetitive nature of the 1st ecosystem has swallowed even Apple: the new x86 Macintoshes are essentially (in a very general sense) an IBM clone. The x86 Macintoshes use the x86 (the central component of an IBM clone) and take advantage of the super-cheap VLSI chips from which IBM clones are built.
If IBM didn't do it, then someone else would have.
I retired a 5150 in 1995. It had a hard drive and maybe 128k. We used it every day. It was the computer we all used to store our CNC programs on. Connected to a serial port switch box running 100's of feet of cable to the CNC machines. It worked until the day we turned it off and replaced it with a contemporary Pentium. That was the last time I saw a 5150 in working order.
What the IBM 5100 really represents, in retrospect, is the beginning of the turnaround for IBM in the minds of the public. It's difficult to think of another example of a company so large and so universally despised eventually becoming the (mostly) developer friendly company it is today.
By allowing their teams to skirt the system occasionally, we've seen truly open hardware (PowerPC) availablity, open source contributions, free training seminars for developers, etc. The 5100 was the first great example of the success that a little rule-breaking can bring to the company.
IMO, it was exactly that product and the example that it was to IBM internally that allowed IBM to do the one thing no one was entirely sure it would be able to do in the age of personal computers -- survive.
My hat's off to the improvements IBM has made in the last 25 years, and I hope that those lessons won't be forgotten over the next 25 years.
I think the Apple Computer had already done this... IBM may have kinda made it Personal but it had already been done...
LifeTime Gamer
I don't know whether or not it counts as white meat, but I believe they refer to cat and dog as "perfumed" or "fragrant" meat. However, from what I've heard, that moniker is something of a generous euphemism.
Sadly, Don Estridge, the director of the Chess project, is not around to reflect back on the impact of the PC 5150. He and his wife died in a plane crash in 1985.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Don_Estridge
In the IBM Site http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc 25_intro.html reffers that IBM PC 5150 was released on September 1981.
In fact all the early processors had their architectural horrors. The 9900 had an absurd system in which the bit order of IO was reverse numbered with respect to the bus and we actually got an I/O board into production before we realised this owing to the poor documentation. The 68000 constantly caught out assembly programmers because of its word alignment issues, resulting in one occasion in a programmer going near berserk and having a screaming fit in the lab, fortunately when the boss was out at a meeting. And don't talk to me about the F100/L except to say that Ferranti did not get as much pain as they deserved for creating it. Not that it would ever have become mainstream...
It's easy to be clever with hindsight, but the Power architecture came later and too late. After, as I recall, the NS32032 which, despite some performance issues, was a processor I really liked.
Pining for the fjords
. . . so I will happily comply in adding them to the story:
From VERIFIED sources:
QDOS, the "Quick and Dirty Operating System," was purchased in July 1981, a month before the PC's release, by Micro-Soft (Microsoft) for $50,000. QDOS was called "Quick and Dirty" since it was basically stolen from Digital Research by Seattle Computer Products (SCP). Bill Gates bought SCP after he sold the DOS code to IBM. When the code was presented to IBM by Micro-Soft, the IBM software engineers found over 1000 bugs. The IBM engineers corrected the bugs for PC-DOS.
From unVERIFIED sources:
According to many sources, including former Microsoft employees, the bugs IBM took out were forced to remain in Microsoft's version of the OS, MS-DOS. Microsoft took advantage of these bugs to put companies such as Digital Research, WordPerfect, Lotus and others out of business by not disclosing the bugs to its competitors.
Those leftover bugs now form most of the code base of Microsoft's latest operating system, named Windows Vista.
For the record, all the popular small systems of the time had third party add-ons. That's a tradition that goes back all the way to the Altair. The Apple II didn't even have an RF modulator, because a third-party deal saved some headaches for Apple. All the systems came with full documentation. Apple even gave you the source code for the whole ROM in a separate manual right in the box, along with the schematics. Cloning the BIOS happened long after the PC had established its place - and the first clones had significant compatibility problems. Clones really didn't take off until Compac beat IBM to market with a 386-based machine.
Actually, today it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a "Slow Down" button, to drop the clockspeed to a lower level. I guess this is effectively done in software anyway (how the chip turns parts of itself into low-power mode when it's not being fully used), but there are definitely times when I don't need my computer running at full speed. A simple switch that turned the clock down for a more power-friendly mode wouldn't be bad.
... that could come in handy as well. Lots of computers get used for games on occasion, but most of the time don't need the majority of their power.
Or something that briefly over-clocked the processor, maybe running the fans at a speed that you wouldn't want to keep them at indefinitely, but would be safe occasionally
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Man, the hardware... Hewn from a single piece of purest iron those things were (literally?) bullet-proof. The keyboards would last for years before even one of those keys stopped working.
Of course, you couldn't lift them. But whilst machines now whirr away at insane speeds and generally work well their keyboards suck.
Er... that's it. Just got misty-eyed there for a second.
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
personal computing had been going strong since the mid 70's, I don't understand why everyone fusses about the IBM PC. I'd been into the hobby for four years already when that thing came out.
Funny you should mention it. I was just reading this fascinating account by Steve Wozniak about how he invented the Apple I (semi-technical), and he talks a bit about the Altair.
//gs?
Anyone have a "Woz"
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
There is more on the BBC website, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4780963.stm with some nice old adverts for the PC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/06/t echnology_ibm_pc_anniversary/html/1.stm
Pure iron is actually quite brittle. Cracks too easily to survive a drop or a bullet.
5150!??! But that's *insane* [1]!
5150 criteria
The criteria for writing a 5150 includes danger to self, danger to others, and/or grave disability - as noted below. The conditions must exist under the context of a mental illness and the person must be refusing psychiatric treatment.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5150_(Involuntary_psy chiatric_hold)
This is why I use an IBM keyboard which is over 10 years old on my present machine. The short of it is if the computer will not run this keyboard then I won't buy it or use it.
We're spoiled. I remember a friend enthusing that his firm had just fitted Maths CoPros to their XTs (I think) and that they could now refresh big AutoCad drawings in mere minutes.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
It's amazing what's written on the net. I always used LowEndMac for information about low end Macs and liked it very much. Yet does this story mean LowEndMac wants to switch to provide information about low end PCs after Apple switched to Intel processors?
Yet this story raises many other questions. How does IBM feel being famous for the most used kind of desktop processors but not being able to participate in that business anymore? How does Sony feel now its long time partner in several technologies (Apple) doesn't use the same processor (PowerPC Cell processor) anymore? How does Intel feel now Microsoft switched to PowerPC processors for their Xbox? Curious world these days, what can we expect next?
But what interests me most is how evangelists feel after so many changes.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Did you ever wonder why ALL XT/AT motherboards in standard form factors had two power supply connectors? Especially since they were not keyed? (swapping the two could easily blow your motherboard.) I have heard that when IBM was preparing to ship the 5150, the supplier of power supply connectors (it happened to be Molex at the time) was out of stock of the 12? pin connectors necessary to integrate the whole PS connection into one. After that, every single PC Power Supply for many years shipped with two connectors on the output, because it had always been done that way.
Probably a crazy urban geek legend, but a cute story nonetheless.
SirWired
I know this is heresy, but IMHO the 68000 was actually a dead end, which is why it was ultimately abandoned by Apple. The 86 instruction set forced Intel to redesign the processor below the assembler level, the Power architecture was nice from the beginning, but the 68000 was neither one thing nor another. In comparative tests, our National Semi 32016 evaluation machine absolutely chewed a similarly specced Motorola workstation on a technical workload back in the 80s.
Pining for the fjords
This is a nice article that explores how the PC industry might have turned out if Microsoft never came to power as we know it in this world.
2 _3-6102503.html?tag=fd_carsl
For alt-history buffs: "Now, here's an interesting question that looks back 25 years: What if IBM demands an exclusive license to that operating system? One of two things happens: Microsoft and IBM don't get a deal done, or Microsoft caves. Let's follow both scenarios as far as they can go:"
http://news.com.com/The+great+PC+what-if/2010-104
Restrictions are designed to increase the profitability of the vendor and therefore always increase the costs to customers. Inevitably at some point a more open and lower cost alternative always appears. If IBM hadn't released the specs, something else would have appeared which we'd be using now. It's economically inevitable. This is actually why Linux will ultimately replace Windows and most other operating systems.
Deleted
Bzzt, wrong. He's talking about the bundle of wires going from the PSU to the motherboard. Try looking inside a case some time, nub.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
I think he's talking about the motherboard power connector. They used 2 Molex connectors of 2x6 pins instead of 1 with 2x12 pins. Which means you could plug them in the wrong order.
made the p0rn business cry
Everytime I see this I have to shake my head... I had my first "desktop" in 1978. Ok it was not much.. A Radio Shack TRS-80 16K LevelII. sporting an 8088 blazing at 4mhz, a tape drive(cassettes). Heck it even had voice recognization(worked ok, bout as good as todays stuff). I still have this machine and it works just fine.... There where also many a Heathkits out there to in those days... IMO statements such as this article makes "about IBM changeing the world" will are just plain false....
points 3 and 4 are not the same:
3. IBM encouraged other companies to build hardware and software for the IBM PC .
4. Phoenix Technologies cloned the BIOS, enabling an army of companies to legally build functioning clones of the IBM PC .
First of all the 68000 cpu was not yet available when IBM started
to design the PC. In fact, they were going to use an 8085 cpu, which
they were using in their DataMaster series of machines. The PC ended
up with the same bus already used in the DataMaster. IBM switched to
the newly released 8088 at the suggestion of Bill Gates.
The very first deliveries of 68000 cpus were locked up in advance sales
to General Motors for use in auto electronics (smog control computers).
Until Motorola could ramp up production very limited numbers of 68k chips
were sold to anybody else.
The 68000 IS a 32 bit machine in the sense that it has 32 bit registers,
and a 32 bit instruction set. It is constructed with 16 bit data paths
and a 16 bit alu however. The 68020 is a true 32 bit machine with 32 bit
data paths and a 32 bit alu. The 68020 can run the same software as the
68000 (it is actually binary compatible with the 68000). Motorola intended
from the start to produce a 32 bit microprocessor but could not get the
needed number of transistors on board till later on.
The 68K series were not really a dead end. For a few years Motorola matched
Intel with new processors. The 68030 matching the 486 and the 68040 the Pentium.
Apple's sales were only a small precent of the PC world and Motorola was loosing
interest in the 68K. They started promoting the PowerPC processors with IBM and
for a while it looked like IBM would start shipping machines based on this part.
Apple thought it would be a good idea to jump ship, but the PowerPC processors
never really caught on outside of IBM's mini mainframe business. (Deep Blue of
chess fame was a PowerPC cluster). Now Apple is jumping ship AGAIN, this time
to Intel.
NOt easily on later one, not greatly keyed but there was a larger plastic nibble on one side of the power connecters to persuade you not to put it the wrong way or at least make it need extra force, still with force you could plug it the wronh way.
hey i've plugged a hard drive power cable the wrong way with force! that killed the drive certainly!
+----------------- | What is the question!
I had one of these speed demons. I grew up playing on my dad's Apple ][ (not plus) but played a lot of games. So he got me a 5150, fresh off the line. It had cassette ports even! But he splurged and got me the dual floppies. I still have my DOS1.0b diskettes and manual here, along with the other 3 manuals that came with it but sadly, the machine itself is no longer. In a bid to ensure that I wouldn't play games on it, my parents did not buy me the color graphics adapter and monitor. I had the monochrome monitor and adapter. I was a sad, sad boy. I couldn't even understand its assembly language. Sad, Sad boy of 15. Eventually I ended up getting a 300baud acoustic modem, shortly thereafter upgrading to 1200, and eventually ending up with an email address starting at !ihnp4!.... Life became more interesting around then...
To a politician, one email equals one voter.
Sorry. No five inch floppy back then. 8 inch floppies and cassette tape (the kind that got replaced by CDs). The models I used only had the tape drive but I understand you could get the 8 inch floppy drive as an option for lots of $$$$.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
At my placed of employment we not only have two IBM 5150s running as production machines - but we just spent around $1000 fixing those and the wonderful Xerox 6135 DocuTech those feed. Our parent corp (world-wide, largest in field, blah, blah, blah) wanted these in operation becasue the 6135 does some strange thing with carbonless forms that newer DocuTechs won't.
By the way, older Nortel Meridian PBXs still run OS/2, so many more of you have OS/2 on sensitive machines than you might think.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
example.org - powered by Linux!
Sorry. The IBM PC didn't have 5" or 8" floppys. It had 5.25" floppy drive. The Radio Shack Model II Business computer used 8" floppy disks.
I remember the keyed connectors only being some models... Yeah, I was taught about the wires too, so I never burnt anything out, but I do know some folks that did. Certainly since the connectors weren't fully enclosed, defeating the keying certainly didn't require much force beyond normal insertion force.
SirWired
How many remebers the OKI 800, Commodore Pet, HP-85B, Osborne 1 or Luxor ABC80/800???
A lot of other computers has also been manufactured with different functionality. OK the bad thing was that they weren't standardized, but on the other hand, how funny is it really with all computers around running the same core hardware configuration...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Not sure why this was modded funny, I too at home have an original IBM PC keyboard. My neighbors want to evict me for the clackety clack it makes, but F them, I love the spring goodness!
I liked OU812 better!
:)
Oh wait... this isn't a Van Halen forum?
Everytime I hear that name I cringe thinking about the years lost fixing CB86 code. Small memory model, code segments were split across module files and swapped in and out. I maintained a large job costing system which was split into hundreds of modules, old modules were basically full and we had to be very careful just fixing small bugs. We knew what kind of code would be produced by the compiler, so we could calculate to the byte how much data space we had left. Sometimes, for us to fix a bug, we had to optimise another part of the module so it would take up less space and then implement the bug fix. Either that or we split the module up into two files, which was time consuming and we had to be careful passing information from one module to another.
It ran under MU/CCPM, with a little tweaking and some tactical ASM I managed to fix it so we could compile versions for MS-DOS, then with further changes to the record locking it would work nicely with Novell.
Task Mangler
Then the 48K of usable space in VisiCalc eventually would max out at 64K with paging in RAMdisks or memory boards or external bubble memory.
The week when the original XT with a maximum 256K onboard came out, drycleaners worked overtime cleaning accountants' dark suitpants.
No, they don't. The Nortel Meridian series have always run a proprietary "OS" developed by BNR/Nortel. Offboard management was handled by a PC running Windows (Meridian Administration Tools, now OTM). The primary PBX software load (called X11, now CS1K Rel4) continues to be developed, it now runs over top of VxWorks. The management tools also continue to be developed, still on Windows.
What you're probably referring to is a Norstar (the smaller PBX) NAM (Norstar Applications Module) which is an outboard voicemail and ACD system that attaches to a Norstar key system PBX. It is not part of the PBX for call processing.
The NAM does run OS/2 but has been discontinued quite a while ago. It was replaced by the CallPilot 100/150 which runs VxWorks IIRC.
My appologise. You are absolutely right.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
On my new AMD PC is a 15-year old IBM Model M PC/AT keyboard. I bought it at the local state surplus office. It's had a very hard life. It has outlived four PCs while in my posession. And if it weren't for all new system being USB, it would probably outlast the next four PCs I buy.
That keyboard is the best $50.00 I ever spent on computer parts.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Does anyone else remember how much DRAM came with the base unit? 16K. That's right, 16K not 16M. It was expandable to a whopping 64K.
It also booted from ROM BASIC, you could save and retrieve the program out to a cassette tape recorder (no floppy or hard drive).
The neatest thing that I liked about it was how they did the DRAM refresh: they used one of the DMA channels. I think that the Intel IC they used had 3 channels.
We used one of the first PCs to build a security system for J.C.Penney stores and warehouses. I designed an ISA-slot board with EPROM/RAM and a RS-422 serial interface to talk to remote multiplexors (they had 8048s on them). We replaced the first ROM BASIC parts with an EPROM board that forced the code to jump to my board.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
Not talking about an IBM PC. We're talking about the predecessor to the PC. The IBM 51XX. It ran APL and basic and had a built in cassette drive. One of the many "non-IBM" items included with the original IBM PC was the 5.25 inch floppy drive.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Yes, the IBM PC changed the world -- very much for the worse.
Before it came along there was a flourishing ecosystem of computer platforms: Tandy, Texas Instruments, Sinclair, Acorn, Commodore, Atari, Apple and several others. Then IBM came along and simply wiped them all out. Some (Atari and Commodore) straggled and survived longer than others, and Apple was never quite killed off completely, but we were nonetheless left with a tremendously impoverished environment.
And I still don't really understand how it happened.
In 1982 I got a new computer -- an Atari 800XL for $250 plus a floppy drive for $400. Just about the same time my high school bought some new IBM PCs. Both systems came with BASIC and were capable of performing many of the same kinds of tasks. My Atari had full color graphics and some decent sound effects. The IBMs had green text displays and a buzzer, and each of them cost several times as much as my Atari. (Now in retrospect, the fact that the IBMs were built like tanks and were unsuited to playing games surely must have looked like big advantages from the school's standpoint.)
It didn't make right good sense to me. After the IBM PC was introduced, the speed with which it took over the marketplace was dizzying. It seems like it was less than a year before people were talking about the IBM PC as the "de facto standard", and all the previously established platforms (Commodore, Atari, TI) and their associated software were vanishing from store shelves. Sitting here with my very nifty Atari system, I had no idea why it was happening -- certainly nobody had asked my opinion on the subject. From my viewpoint the IBM PC had nothing interesting to offer.
Later I worked my way through an Atari 520ST, Amiga 2000/2500, Amiga 3000T, Amiga 4000. . . Atari and Amiga were the hot platforms for games, while PCs were still puttering along with 8/16 bit processors, unusable GUIs (if any at all), CGI graphics, and mere buzzers for sound. And yet. . . Ease of use, excellent graphics and sound, low prices and raw speed were no avail against the flood of PClones. Once again, I didn't understand. Why did so many people seem stupid about this?
After the Amiga platform pretty much died, I put together a generic 90MHz Pentium Win95, which was a disaster. I later rebuilt it as a 233 MHz AMD Win98 system, which was slightly less a disaster, but that was really the Dark Age of my computer experiences. It was the only computer I've ever owned that I've fundamentally disliked.
After that it was iMac DV (nice hardware, too bad about Mac OS 8/9), then Mac OS X and Power Mac G4, Power Mac G5, and I was mostly happy again. But from where I sit, it still seems like everything good we have in the computer world today -- everything -- has come in spite of the IBM PC platform and Microsoft, not because of them.
Anybody know if this PC had anything to do with the Van Halen album of the same title?
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
They actually kept a lot of important projects from getting overspecified in the first version.
Sometimes bad is good.
The 5100 was the PALM microcoded desktop computer, the later version 5110 had a data cartridge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100 It predated the IBM PC by 6 years, being derived from the interesting and groundbreaking prototype PALM machine that I can't recall the designation of, but I do recall the briefcase-sized machine had curved sides so if it was knocked over it would roll back and forth. IIRC it predated the Altair 8800. The IBM PC was the 5150.
Here are some more links.
:)
IBM has an intro piece which leads into a short but interesting set of pages with specifics, genealogy and original press release of the model 5150 and subsequent IBM PC offerings (including the PS/2s).
News.com also has a feature that starts with a Michael Dell interview but frankly it is rather dull.
Much better is the linked previous piece published for the 20th anniversary of the PC.
Digibarn has also a page with a feature and some movies.
They also show the cover of the original brochure for the IBM PC which had a Chaplin lookalike.Unfortunately it's just the cover but I managed to scan the internal pages from my copy and put them on Flickr.
Oh, and... happy birthday, PC!
At a time when there were 68000 machines with 10 megabyte hard drives running verisons of UNIX, IBM comes out with a 8-bit POS with cassette BASIC.
Set back the industry 10 years.
All because "no one lost there job recommending IBM".
A dark, dark, dark day.
I'm glad someone got the joke :)
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Ahh, so if we record the installation CD to a tape... I'll get "chrome".
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
bzzzzt, have a 5150 at my house and looking at the 5" in it
Any idea what year your 5150 is from? From what I could dig up through some Google searches, the 5.25in floppy was part of the "not-IBM" hardware that was included in the original IBM PC (1981) which was considered ground-breaking because, up until then, IBM had a really bad "Not Invented Here" attitude. Doesn't say IBM wouldn't have included it on the 5150 before then but the 8 inch floppy was "corporate standard" including being used to IPL their mainframes.
The only 51xx I really used was the original 5100. Any chance that the 5.25 floppy was one of the enhancements to the 5100 that made it into a 5150?
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
It might be worthwhile to mention that IBM PCs didnt pop up in Europe until much later.
:-)
If one wanted a decent business machine one needed the Sirius 1.
I first programmed on the Apple II with an extra board inside to be able to use CPM and then we went straight to the Sirius 1 - Victor 9000 with MS-DOS
The Sirius 1 had better graphics than the IBM PC and was overall a superior machine. The graphics was however a real pain to get right in dbase since one had to use special control codes to put the cursor into the desired places.
I still cant quite figure out why IBM is still around and why no one has heard of Victor / Sirius in the last years
In an interview with German magazine, c't BIOS-programmer David Bradley said that IBM exected to sell exactly 241,683 PC in the first 5 years.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
hmmm I'm not sure, but I know that it has 1 5.25 floppy in it right now, and an older one not in it. I am pretty sure that an 8" wouldn't fit in the case.