IBM Personal Computer

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The IBM Personal Computer, more commonly referred to as the IBM PC, is a line of desktop computers developed by Don Estridge with a team of engineers at IBM and introduced on 1981-08-12. Although this wasn't IBM's first foray into the home computer market, it was their first hugely successful home computer which allowed them to wrest control from companies like Commodore Business Machines, Apple, and Atari who had dominated the market. With its release, IBM was able to capture a huge share of the market and become the front-runner of home computers, despite the fact that their computers were inferior in nearly every conceivable metric. However, upon gaining much of the market, other companies began to produce cloned hardware, by the mid-1990s, the IBM PC was just one of many companies producing essentially the same computer.

IBM PCs were primary designed for business use, and, because of that, the base model lacked graphic capabilities, color monitors, and sound beyond the PC speaker. However, they shipped with faster processors and more memory than their competitors, but they also cost three times as much!

Status

I do not own, nor have I ever owned an IBM PC.

Personal

I used a couple of IBM PCs in my youth. The one I remember using most was owned by a friend from middle school. We usually played on his SNES, but, we usually played single-player RPGs, so the other person would get bored and play on the PC at the same time. I think it was an XT model with an EGA card and MS-DOS 5.0. I remember writing simple QBASIC programs on it.

Models

IBM kept a continuous release of new models, all called "PCs," so there is no official demarcation for when the model ends, but I like to group the original PC with the AT and XT models.

Model Model Number Released CPU RAM Hard Disk Drives Video
PC (Personal Computer) 5150 1981-08-12 8088 4.77 MHz 16 KB None Up to two 5.25" floppy disk drives and cassette system Monochrome or CGA
XT (Extended Technology) 5160 1983-03-08 8088 128 KB 10 MB 5.25" 360 KB Double-Sided Floppy
AT (Advanced Technology) 5170 1984-08-14 80286 6 MHz 256 KB 20 MB 5.25" 1.2 MB High Density Floppy

Links

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