40 years of the IBM PC, the computer that changed history

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ibm pc 1000x600.jpg
ibm pc 1000x600.jpg

Today marks 40 years since the introduction of the IBM PC (IBM Personal Computer), a key machine in the history of modern computing, which brought personal computers to the mass public like no other.

Although the term “personal computer” had been around since 1972 with the launch of the Xerox PARC and the 1975 Altair 8800 generated a legion of enthusiasts who two years later paved the way for the Apple II, the Tandy TRS 80 and the Commodore PET, no It was not until the arrival of the IBM PC that personal computers became popular with the mass public.

IBM had already marketed its first desktop microcomputer, the 1975 IBM 5100, but by design and price ($ 20,000) it could not be considered a personal computer. The blue giant was then the most powerful technology company on the planet, but it sought to expand its business and enter the home computer market and he had the idea of ​​promoting a program that broke with everything he had been doing until then.

Project Chess = IBM PC

With the code name of Chess Project, a team of only twelve people was allowed to bypass the protocols and restrictions that IBM had imposed on itself in the manufacture of computers and that was common at the time. In this way, instead of developing unique industrial designs, they carried out a strategy that does not differ from the one we users who build our own PCs do in 2021.

IBM’s home computer project consisted of add existing components from different manufacturers of original equipment (OEM) and thereby reduce costs and save time. Thus, they added components from Intel, Motorola or Epson, and some from IBM but previously created by other divisions such as the monitor. In fact, it is cited that the only industrial design elements of the IBM PC were the system unit and the keyboard.

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40 years of the IBM PC

The project was completed in just one year (quite a record in the late 1970s) and was announced on August 12, 1981 as open architecture, where other manufacturers could produce and sell compatible components that could replace the originals without the need to purchase and pay for licenses.

Also notable is IBM’s decision (in this strategy of openness, speed of production and cost savings) to use an operating system such as the Microsoft MS-DOS and a hardware base in charge of a Intel processor, when the same company had better systems and much more powerful processors than the one they finally installed on their machine.

The IBM PC (IBM PC 5150) was a sales success for the company although its base price of $ 1,565 was not yet economical, but much more so was its open concept that led to a whole generation of computers and components, first IBM compatible, and later as the great industrial standard of the Personal Computer that has survived to this day.

His influence was enormous and Time magazine even named this computer “person of the year” in 1982. And the consequences were a total change in the technology industry and the IBM PC left everything that had been done until then out of the market. If you’re wondering why the ‘Wintel’ alliance (Microsoft with Windows and Intel with the x86 architecture) has dominated the computing industry for more than three decades, think of IBM’s decision as the foundation stone.

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If the development of IBM was a great general triumph for the entire industry and the first step for the personal computers that we now enjoy, it must be remembered that for IBM the success was not complete. The company hoped to maintain a privileged position by reserving the BIOS licensing rights, but soon specialists such as Phoenix, American Megatrends and Award they managed to create their own compatible firmware (through reverse engineering) that they sold to manufacturers such as HP, Dell, and Compaq.

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They began to create personal computers without payment of royalties to IBM and cheaper than theirs. IBM’s personal computer manufacturing business came to an end in 2004 when it sold the division to a fledgling Lenovo that was emerging as the largest Chinese manufacturer. It was goodbye to the IBM PC, but not to the Personal Computer era that this computer started.

What did the IBM PC include?

In case you are curious, let’s remember that this machine was a ‘meccano’ created from components and peripherals from different manufacturers. The system unit was the most important and the only one created by IBM (next to the keyboard) as a new industrial design for this machine.

It contained the power supply and motherboard, as today key to everything else as it included space for the CPU, RAM, slots for expansion cards, connectors for the two 5.25-inch floppy drives that could be included as storage and the rest of I / O.

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Among its components we can stand out:

  • An Intel 8088 4.77 MHz microprocessor.
  • An 8 KiB ROM memory for firmware, the IBM PC ROM BIOS.
  • An Intel 8259 Programmable Interrupt Controller (PIC).
  • Up to 1 MiB of memory. 640 KiB of available RAM.
  • An Intel 8237 DMA controller that was used for transfers between I / O devices and RAM.
  • The IBM PC ROM BASIC, a BASIC interpreter that resided in 4 modules of 8 KiB each.
  • A socket to insert an Intel 8087 numeric coprocessor for hardware floating point calculations.
  • One port for connecting a cassette drive.
  • 5 x 62-pin expansion slots with the IBM Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) video card.
  • Monitor previously developed at IBM Japan.
  • IBM keyboard, the second component designed exclusively for the machine.
  • Optional IBM 80 CPS 9-pin dot matrix printer.
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A key machine in the history of modern computing this IBM PC that brought us closer to the personal computers we enjoy today like no other before. Congratulations on the anniversary!