Happy 25th Birthday PC!

[AVB]

August 12, 1981. If you were ready to plunk down about $1,600, you could have owned a piece of history: The original IBM 5150 PC, generally considered to be the "first" (easily available) PC.

At 25 years old, it's fun to look back on how far we've come. At 21 pounds (without drives), the 5150 wasn't much fatter than the PCs of today. Under the hood, things looked a bit different: 40KB of read-only memory and 16KB of RAM (upgradable to 256KB). You could configure the machine with one or two 160KB floppy drives, but a jack for a cassette player was included. Users certainly loved the "power-on automatic self-test of system components" and "built-in speaker for musical programming." And the keyboard (included) weighed six pounds. The 11.5-inch monochrome monitor, capable of displaying 25 lines of text, weighed in at 17 lbs. and supported both upper- and lowercase characters. Whoa.

Mock it if you must, but remember that the 5150 was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. The Apple II, released a few years earlier, came close, but it was more of a hacker toy and game-playing machine than something that would be at home in a business. The 5150 had built-in BASIC and Pascal support for writing programs, and it included a ton of business software: VisiCalc, Peachtree accounting software, and the EasyWriter word processor. And yes, Microsoft Adventure, a text-based adventure game, was available for diversions.


(care of Yahoo news)

 

[DePasta]

oh how sweet it is

 

[boonedoggle]

August 12, 1981. If you were ready to plunk down about $1,600, you could have owned a piece of history: The original IBM 5150 PC, generally considered to be the "first" (easily available) PC.

At 25 years old, it's fun to look back on how far we've come. At 21 pounds (without drives), the 5150 wasn't much fatter than the PCs of today. Under the hood, things looked a bit different: 40KB of read-only memory and 16KB of RAM (upgradable to 256KB). You could configure the machine with one or two 160KB floppy drives, but a jack for a cassette player was included. Users certainly loved the "power-on automatic self-test of system components" and "built-in speaker for musical programming." And the keyboard (included) weighed six pounds. The 11.5-inch monochrome monitor, capable of displaying 25 lines of text, weighed in at 17 lbs. and supported both upper- and lowercase characters. Whoa.

Mock it if you must, but remember that the 5150 was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. The Apple II, released a few years earlier, came close, but it was more of a hacker toy and game-playing machine than something that would be at home in a business. The 5150 had built-in BASIC and Pascal support for writing programs, and it included a ton of business software: VisiCalc, Peachtree accounting software, and the EasyWriter word processor. And yes, Microsoft Adventure, a text-based adventure game, was available for diversions.


(care of Yahoo news)

dude, that's the computer I use now...should I upgrade? :laugh:

 

[LilBastage]

I really miss the feel and heft of those old keyboards. These new fangled ones are just too flimsy for me. Way too quiet, too.

 

[AVB]

There is a place that specializes in refurb of the old IBM keyboards. Do enough google and you're bound to find it.

 

[BlindedByScience]

I really miss the feel and heft of those old keyboards. These new fangled ones are just too flimsy for me. Way too quiet, too.

The keyboard you are referring is still considerd "da bomb" by many experienced computer users. That would be the IBM Model 'M' keyboard. The sound you refer to is the use of "bucking springs" in the keys, as opposed to the polymer spring technology used in most keyboards today. The bucking spring keys were what gave these keyboards their unique sound and feel.

You can still buy them here. No surprise they cost more than $8.00....

Regards - B.B.S.

 

[stevehawk]

It's strange to me but my kids (as well as a lot of our younger members) never went through the "personal computing revolution" that some of us older guys did. You young guys will never know how it felt to do all of your work with pen paper or, at best, a typewriter.

Some things I will never miss from the pre-PC era:

- manual typewriters
- changing font balls on electric typewriters
- changing the ribbon on any typewriter
- typewriter erasers (with the brush on the end)
- white-out
- the head-banging slowness of Windows when it first came out :angry:
- Wang word processors (even though they were da bomb at the time)
- carbon paper
- typing mistakes when using carbon paper

One thing I still miss, though:

- secretaries

 

[LilBastage]

I really miss the feel and heft of those old keyboards. These new fangled ones are just too flimsy for me. Way too quiet, too.

The keyboard you are referring is still considerd "da bomb" by many experienced computer users. That would be the IBM Model 'M' keyboard. The sound you refer to is the use of "bucking springs" in the keys, as opposed to the polymer spring technology used in most keyboards today. The bucking spring keys were what gave these keyboards their unique sound and feel.

You can still buy them here. No surprise they cost more than $8.00....

Regards - B.B.S.

Thanks for the link! A little more than I would like to spend for a bit of nostalgia, but it's nice to know they're still out there in use. I have one sitting in the closet, but the 'enter' key doesn't work anymore. The keyboard isn't much use to me without that one!

It's strange to me but my kids (as well as a lot of our younger members) never went through the "personal computing revolution" that some of us older guys did. You young guys will never know how it felt to do all of your work with pen paper or, at best, a typewriter.

Some things I will never miss from the pre-PC era:

- manual typewriters
- changing font balls on electric typewriters
- changing the ribbon on any typewriter
- typewriter erasers (with the brush on the end)
- white-out
- the head-banging slowness of Windows when it first came out :angry:
- Wang word processors (even though they were da bomb at the time)
- carbon paper
- typing mistakes when using carbon paper

One thing I still miss, though:

- secretaries

It's funny, my wife and I were just talking about that the other day. Of course our "work" was schoolwork (we're in our early 30s), but we both remember using most of that equipment with the exception of the secretaries.

(My neighbor's dad used his more for 'after hours' work. I guess she was quite good at what she did outside of the office, but not so good in the office. )

My family was not an "early adopter" of anything, so I still had to type on the old typewriter while my friends were using computers to type out their papers. I finally got a C64 when I was about 13 or so (1988) and it was fun, but not too useful. I got my first PC in 1993 for graduation and to use in college. Much better, but when I look back and compare it to what I have today, whoa!

 

[Infinity]

Oh yes - remember the cd\dir (prior to windows) days.

When Intel first developed their chip they predicted that the
speed would double every year. I believe they accomplished
that for many years, not sure if they can keep doing it but
I guess anything is possible.

Brian

edit for grammar.