4 ms·

Happy 45th Birthday to the IBM PC and Model F/XT

121 points by tart-lemonade 2mo ago

iberator 2mo ago
Apple II home computers and TRS-80 are 48.
- kator 2mo ago
  I learned BASIC in 1981 on the TRS-80 Model I with 4k RAM (later upgraded to a massive 16k), and it wasn't long before someone showed me EDTASM [1], and I was hooked. My parents couldn't believe me when I asked them to buy "How to Program the Z80" by Rodnay Zaks [2]. They were shocked, it was the first time I asked them to buy a technical book. I was so excited I couldn't sleep for days. I was in High School, and I would carry the book around and read, use the lookup tables, and write Z80 assembly in my spiral-bound 8.5"x11" notebook. One three-day weekend, I slept about 4 hours while I was disassembling the BASIC ROM to find nuggets I could call in my Z80 programs, and also to learn so much more about the video, the cassette interface, interrupts, etc. My notebook looked like something a madman had scribbled on the walls of an asylum to everyone around me, but to me it was perfectly organized, and I used it to reference things I would use later in my programs. I got to the point where I could read the hex dumps and "see" the op codes in my mind; people would look over my shoulder while I was debugging, and I'd be explaining what the code was doing, but I hadn't disassembled it yet. I didn't even realize I was doing that until one of my classmates pointed it out: "Hey, disassemble that. I'm not following you, how the heck do you see that?" And all of this because my science teacher had that TRS-80 Model I sitting in the corner of his classroom gathering dust; nobody knew what it was, I didn't either, but I had to figure it out. I've always had this bug, I don't believe in magic, I want to know how everything works, it's been an insatiable thing all my life, that first machine set me on a course of learning for the rest of my life. Thanks, Mr. Kruzan, you changed my life. I'll never forget you. Oh, and thanks to all the people who created the Z80, the TRS-80 Model I, and paved the path for me to learn computers and never stop learning. We are truly building on the shoulders of giants; every generation, more giants. It's humbling to look back and think about it forty-five years later... [1] https://www.trs-80.org/edtasm.html https://www.trs-80.org/edtasm.html [2] http://www.z80.info/zip/zaks_book.pdf http://www.z80.info/zip/zaks_book.pdf
  - AnimalMuppet 2mo ago
    Yeah. Thank you Mr. Pierson for lending me the TRS80 Basic manual, even though I wasn't enrolled in the class that used them...
  - jimt1234 2mo ago
    For me it was the Commodore 64 from a few years later (1982, I think?) - that's what got me into computers. Back then, to me and my nerdy friends, the C64 felt sorta like a 'rebel computer'; we weren't doing Lotus 1-2-3 or anything practical at all. We were just tinkering, mostly war dialing and pirating games. The C64 was cheap enough that broke-ass kids like me could afford to do the same shit the Apple II and TRS-80s were doing.
  - wwind123 2mo ago
    I learned BASIC in 1985 on an Apple II, and 6502 machine language in 1987, while in high school. I was able to publish a 6502 machine language program on a national computer magazine that year. Back then we printed the hex code of the program on paper, along with some explanation, then mailed it to the magazine. The magazine stuff manually typed in those hex code on the computer, and if they thought it worked well, they'd just publish hex code of the program and the explanation. Interested readers would then just typed the hex code into their computer to try it out. The publication validated that programming was something I liked and was good at, which became the main factor I chose computer major in college.
  - piokoch 2mo ago
    Great story, I am wondering if nowadays this kind of being hooked on in any kind of technology is possible. Kids have ipad style computers or smartphones which are not really hackable. There are things like Scratch, which provide kind of easy access to programming, but that's not the same thing (or maybe I am just old and miss the old times with Atari ST and IBM PC clone with 486DX processor).
- ColdStream 2mo ago
  It is one of those things, yes they are old but they also aren't that old considering the impact personal computers have had on everything.
lenerdenator 2mo ago
I wonder what the average CS grad thinks of these days when they hear the company name "IBM".
- userbinator 2mo ago
  Might be something like "IBM? What's that?"
  - jimt1234 2mo ago
    It's been said that when Microsoft started to grow - say, in the mid-80s, Bill Gates' biggest fear was that it would turn into IBM.
    - andsoitis 2mo ago
      And they haven’t.
      - rbanffy 2mo ago
        They are trying. They even make quantum computers that are in a superposition state, working and not working at the same time.
    - hulitu 2mo ago
      Quality was always a challenge for Microsoft.
    - Frieren 2mo ago
      > Bill Gates' biggest fear was that it would turn into IBM. Good news, it did not. It is worse.
  - rbanffy 2mo ago
    I would assume every good one would know IBM mainframes still run the world. And POWER processors are the second coolest ones (second to the mainframe ones).
- 2mo ago
taude 2mo ago
time to boot up some Lode Runner.
secretsatan 2mo ago
Ah jeez, that makes me feel old. It’s particularly impactful as my dad worked in the computer industry at the time of the transition and the firm he worked for were a little late to the game. They limped on for years but ultimately failed. My first pc ran CP/M
- pstuart 2mo ago
  Yep. I had a Northstar Advantage and was able to get all the various MicroSoft Language distributions for it. 80 column text and dual floppies. Woot!
kmoser 2mo ago
I have a framed copy on my office wall of this story from the NY Times, August 13, 1981: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/13/business/business-digest-thursday-august-13-1981-the-economy.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/13/business/business-digest-...
abotsis 2mo ago
I love the keyboard casually hanging off the desk like it’s not 20lbs!
- shever73 2mo ago
  It's a weirdly unnecessary AI version of this image (https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/PA-6797798.jpg https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/PA-6797798.j...). It should be a green-screen monitor, and the woman staring at the printer...
  - sharktastica 2mo ago
    Author here. The photo is from an IBM product guide for Fall 1983 to Winter 1984, page 18: https://archive.org/details/ibm-the-guide-fall-83-winter-84/page/18/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ibm-the-guide-fall-83-winter-84/... Technically, I cannot absolutely guarantee that whoever scanned and digitised the guide didn't 'mess' with it, but nothing seems suspect to me. Certainly, IBM didn't have access to generative AI in the 1980s. It's probably just the same set being used by different people, with at most being airbrushed and composited, but not AI. Whilst the person staring at the printer is quite amusing (partly why I included it, to be honest), you may notice similar oddities in contemporary IBM marketing in general, arguably including the photo you linked as well. Furthermore, the monitor in the photo you linked is also not green-screen (ie, the IBM 5151 Monochrome Display). It has three dials instead of two, and you can make out the red-green-blue colouring just underneath the silver "IBM" badge, indicating it is at least a 5153 Colour Display. You can also just about make out the bar chart having other colours, too.
karim79 2mo ago
My first experience with a computer as a child was putting a floppy disk labelled "King's Quest" into an IBM PC XT when my dad wasn't around. And now I'm on this forum.
- rbanffy 2mo ago
  I guess it worked out in the end.
- Gormo 2mo ago
  Where might you be today if it had been Space Quest instead?
rbanffy 2mo ago
I am not a huge fan of the IBM PC. For one, it was a mediocre design. Most important, it caused a mass extinction in the small computer space so that, even today, the majority of desktop computers out there are distant descendants of the original 5150. They probably have a complete 5150 inside them, just for compatibility with ancient software.
- skywal_l 2mo ago
  What the IBM PC provided was a standard on which competition was unleashed and massive investments went into improving a common platform. Which is how all the closed proprietary alternatives got overwhelmed. Without it, we would have many weak walled gardens incompatible with each other, like we have on the smartphone market. Listen to Linus Torvalds when he says that the PC is so easy compared to the nightmare of all those incompatible arm SOCs. I dream of a smartphone PC.
  - rbanffy 2mo ago
    > What the IBM PC provided was a standard on which competition was unleashed Entirely accidental. What really started this was the reverse engineering of the BIOS. This allowed any company to enter the market with a PC-compatible computer. IBM tried, but clean-room proved to be an effective defense. > Without it, we would have many weak walled gardens Kind of. There were Apple II clones with varyingly clever schemes around copying the original ROMs, and it provided slots so many manufacturers could provide hardware for the machines. Microsoft was one of them, with a Z-80 card that allowed the II to run CP/M software. Atari had a serial bus that allowed external expansion - less popular than the II, but still allowed other manufacturers to expand it. And let's not forget the ubiquitous S-100 bus, with hundreds of different companies making hardware for. In 1983 you could assemble a computer around your choice of processor, graphics (or not), IO, mass-storage, and so on. > incompatible with each other Kind of. Prior to MS-DOS, CP/M was the de-facto 8-bit standard for business computers. It had a multi-user version called MP/M, and versions for processors other than the 8080/85 and Z-80. In the higher end, Unix-compatible small computers started to appear - the TRS-80 model II could get a 68000 board, for instance.
k3vinw 2mo ago
https://sharktastica.co.uk/image?id=yysMQjg1 https://sharktastica.co.uk/image?id=yysMQjg1 Admiring the keyboard layout they went with. I love that Ctrl is placed in my preferred location. That’s prime real estate that modern keyboards waste on Capslock. Unfortunately, Capslock still exists awkwardly adjacent to the space bar.
- jimmydddd 2mo ago
  That cord storage pocket is pretty nice as well.
burningdeck 2mo ago
I became an Intel Field Application (FAE) engineer in 1988, just 7 years after the PC. At my first internal tech conference in Phoenix I was told that the reason IBM used the 8088 over the Motorola 6502 they were also looking at was because the local Intel FAE lent them an 8088 emulator. These things were a pin-for pin replacement for the chip and were the hardware equivalent of a software debugger, with single-stepping, register inspection, breakpoints etc. Having one would have made development of the motherboard that much easier and quicker. This seemed to be common knowledge in the FAE community, but never mentioned by IBM or Intel higher ups. Who knows which version is true, but perhaps a design decision based on the serendipitous fact that the FAE had a loan stock emulator in the trunk of his car when he visited the IBM team was not the story that either company wanted written.
PaulRobinson 2mo ago
In about 1990, my Dad gifted me an old XT. By that point it was almost ancient, no modern software would work on it, but I could do some BASIC programming, and learn DOS and a few PC magazines still had PC software on 5.25" cover disks, so I got some of those going. My mates by this point had Amiga 500s and Atari STs and the other rare PC owner I found was using 386s and dreaming of a 486 (the Pentium was still years away). A few years later the PSU blew, a mate and I isolated it to a capacitor that burned out, we tried replacing it but it didn't work. I left it to one side and I decided I'd get back to it one day and restore it with more time and knowledge - or get a professional (I'm a software guy), to fix it. I returned from University one break to find it missing. My step-father had known it was broken and decided it was rubbish. He'd put the whole thing - base unit, monitor, keyboard, all of it, into a wheelie bin for the council to take with the household rubbish collection. I felt sorry for the rubbish collectors - that thing was heavy. I'm surprised it didn't break the bin, TBH. And of course, I still haven't forgiven him. Love the guy, but man... Anyway, when I have the time and space for a small retro computing museum, I'll be getting one of those in the collection. Iconic, beautiful, and close to my heart. And also - I can't understate this enough - really, really heavy and not something you should dispose of with household rubbish.
- badc0ffee 2mo ago
  I was still using my XT clone (with Hercules graphics) in 1990, mostly for WordPerfect and to play SimCity. I also remember getting simcga from a friend in 1991 and using that to play some 80s CGA games. Finally upgraded to a 386SX in 1992.
  - chorizo 2mo ago
    I had a 386DX with Hercules Graphics around 1993. Love how high resolution it could get in monochrome. Wrote a font renderer that could scale fonts to any size. Did not have any games, but rewrote a few old VIC-20 games into Pascal.
GreenLightGo 2mo ago
And to think that back then, those weak computers took up entire floors of institutes, with ponds just for cooling them...

121 points by tart-lemonade 2mo ago

iberator 2mo ago

Apple II home computers and TRS-80 are 48.

kator 2mo ago
I learned BASIC in 1981 on the TRS-80 Model I with 4k RAM (later upgraded to a massive 16k), and it wasn't long before someone showed me EDTASM [1], and I was hooked. My parents couldn't believe me when I asked them to buy "How to Program the Z80" by Rodnay Zaks [2]. They were shocked, it was the first time I asked them to buy a technical book. I was so excited I couldn't sleep for days. I was in High School, and I would carry the book around and read, use the lookup tables, and write Z80 assembly in my spiral-bound 8.5"x11" notebook. One three-day weekend, I slept about 4 hours while I was disassembling the BASIC ROM to find nuggets I could call in my Z80 programs, and also to learn so much more about the video, the cassette interface, interrupts, etc. My notebook looked like something a madman had scribbled on the walls of an asylum to everyone around me, but to me it was perfectly organized, and I used it to reference things I would use later in my programs. I got to the point where I could read the hex dumps and "see" the op codes in my mind; people would look over my shoulder while I was debugging, and I'd be explaining what the code was doing, but I hadn't disassembled it yet. I didn't even realize I was doing that until one of my classmates pointed it out: "Hey, disassemble that. I'm not following you, how the heck do you see that?" And all of this because my science teacher had that TRS-80 Model I sitting in the corner of his classroom gathering dust; nobody knew what it was, I didn't either, but I had to figure it out. I've always had this bug, I don't believe in magic, I want to know how everything works, it's been an insatiable thing all my life, that first machine set me on a course of learning for the rest of my life. Thanks, Mr. Kruzan, you changed my life. I'll never forget you. Oh, and thanks to all the people who created the Z80, the TRS-80 Model I, and paved the path for me to learn computers and never stop learning. We are truly building on the shoulders of giants; every generation, more giants. It's humbling to look back and think about it forty-five years later... [1] https://www.trs-80.org/edtasm.html https://www.trs-80.org/edtasm.html [2] http://www.z80.info/zip/zaks_book.pdf http://www.z80.info/zip/zaks_book.pdf
- AnimalMuppet 2mo ago
  Yeah. Thank you Mr. Pierson for lending me the TRS80 Basic manual, even though I wasn't enrolled in the class that used them...
- jimt1234 2mo ago
  For me it was the Commodore 64 from a few years later (1982, I think?) - that's what got me into computers. Back then, to me and my nerdy friends, the C64 felt sorta like a 'rebel computer'; we weren't doing Lotus 1-2-3 or anything practical at all. We were just tinkering, mostly war dialing and pirating games. The C64 was cheap enough that broke-ass kids like me could afford to do the same shit the Apple II and TRS-80s were doing.
- wwind123 2mo ago
  I learned BASIC in 1985 on an Apple II, and 6502 machine language in 1987, while in high school. I was able to publish a 6502 machine language program on a national computer magazine that year. Back then we printed the hex code of the program on paper, along with some explanation, then mailed it to the magazine. The magazine stuff manually typed in those hex code on the computer, and if they thought it worked well, they'd just publish hex code of the program and the explanation. Interested readers would then just typed the hex code into their computer to try it out. The publication validated that programming was something I liked and was good at, which became the main factor I chose computer major in college.
- piokoch 2mo ago
  Great story, I am wondering if nowadays this kind of being hooked on in any kind of technology is possible. Kids have ipad style computers or smartphones which are not really hackable. There are things like Scratch, which provide kind of easy access to programming, but that's not the same thing (or maybe I am just old and miss the old times with Atari ST and IBM PC clone with 486DX processor).
ColdStream 2mo ago
It is one of those things, yes they are old but they also aren't that old considering the impact personal computers have had on everything.

lenerdenator 2mo ago

I wonder what the average CS grad thinks of these days when they hear the company name "IBM".

userbinator 2mo ago
Might be something like "IBM? What's that?"
- jimt1234 2mo ago
  It's been said that when Microsoft started to grow - say, in the mid-80s, Bill Gates' biggest fear was that it would turn into IBM.
  - andsoitis 2mo ago
    And they haven’t.
    - rbanffy 2mo ago
      They are trying. They even make quantum computers that are in a superposition state, working and not working at the same time.
  - hulitu 2mo ago
    Quality was always a challenge for Microsoft.
  - Frieren 2mo ago
    > Bill Gates' biggest fear was that it would turn into IBM. Good news, it did not. It is worse.
- rbanffy 2mo ago
  I would assume every good one would know IBM mainframes still run the world. And POWER processors are the second coolest ones (second to the mainframe ones).
2mo ago

taude 2mo ago

time to boot up some Lode Runner.

secretsatan 2mo ago

Ah jeez, that makes me feel old. It’s particularly impactful as my dad worked in the computer industry at the time of the transition and the firm he worked for were a little late to the game. They limped on for years but ultimately failed. My first pc ran CP/M

pstuart 2mo ago
Yep. I had a Northstar Advantage and was able to get all the various MicroSoft Language distributions for it. 80 column text and dual floppies. Woot!

kmoser 2mo ago

I have a framed copy on my office wall of this story from the NY Times, August 13, 1981: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/13/business/business-digest-thursday-august-13-1981-the-economy.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/13/business/business-digest-...

abotsis 2mo ago

I love the keyboard casually hanging off the desk like it’s not 20lbs!

shever73 2mo ago
It's a weirdly unnecessary AI version of this image (https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/PA-6797798.jpg https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/PA-6797798.j...). It should be a green-screen monitor, and the woman staring at the printer...
- sharktastica 2mo ago
  Author here. The photo is from an IBM product guide for Fall 1983 to Winter 1984, page 18: https://archive.org/details/ibm-the-guide-fall-83-winter-84/page/18/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ibm-the-guide-fall-83-winter-84/... Technically, I cannot absolutely guarantee that whoever scanned and digitised the guide didn't 'mess' with it, but nothing seems suspect to me. Certainly, IBM didn't have access to generative AI in the 1980s. It's probably just the same set being used by different people, with at most being airbrushed and composited, but not AI. Whilst the person staring at the printer is quite amusing (partly why I included it, to be honest), you may notice similar oddities in contemporary IBM marketing in general, arguably including the photo you linked as well. Furthermore, the monitor in the photo you linked is also not green-screen (ie, the IBM 5151 Monochrome Display). It has three dials instead of two, and you can make out the red-green-blue colouring just underneath the silver "IBM" badge, indicating it is at least a 5153 Colour Display. You can also just about make out the bar chart having other colours, too.

karim79 2mo ago

My first experience with a computer as a child was putting a floppy disk labelled "King's Quest" into an IBM PC XT when my dad wasn't around. And now I'm on this forum.

rbanffy 2mo ago
I guess it worked out in the end.
Gormo 2mo ago
Where might you be today if it had been Space Quest instead?

rbanffy 2mo ago

I am not a huge fan of the IBM PC. For one, it was a mediocre design. Most important, it caused a mass extinction in the small computer space so that, even today, the majority of desktop computers out there are distant descendants of the original 5150. They probably have a complete 5150 inside them, just for compatibility with ancient software.

skywal_l 2mo ago
What the IBM PC provided was a standard on which competition was unleashed and massive investments went into improving a common platform. Which is how all the closed proprietary alternatives got overwhelmed. Without it, we would have many weak walled gardens incompatible with each other, like we have on the smartphone market. Listen to Linus Torvalds when he says that the PC is so easy compared to the nightmare of all those incompatible arm SOCs. I dream of a smartphone PC.
- rbanffy 2mo ago
  > What the IBM PC provided was a standard on which competition was unleashed Entirely accidental. What really started this was the reverse engineering of the BIOS. This allowed any company to enter the market with a PC-compatible computer. IBM tried, but clean-room proved to be an effective defense. > Without it, we would have many weak walled gardens Kind of. There were Apple II clones with varyingly clever schemes around copying the original ROMs, and it provided slots so many manufacturers could provide hardware for the machines. Microsoft was one of them, with a Z-80 card that allowed the II to run CP/M software. Atari had a serial bus that allowed external expansion - less popular than the II, but still allowed other manufacturers to expand it. And let's not forget the ubiquitous S-100 bus, with hundreds of different companies making hardware for. In 1983 you could assemble a computer around your choice of processor, graphics (or not), IO, mass-storage, and so on. > incompatible with each other Kind of. Prior to MS-DOS, CP/M was the de-facto 8-bit standard for business computers. It had a multi-user version called MP/M, and versions for processors other than the 8080/85 and Z-80. In the higher end, Unix-compatible small computers started to appear - the TRS-80 model II could get a 68000 board, for instance.

k3vinw 2mo ago

https://sharktastica.co.uk/image?id=yysMQjg1 https://sharktastica.co.uk/image?id=yysMQjg1 Admiring the keyboard layout they went with. I love that Ctrl is placed in my preferred location. That’s prime real estate that modern keyboards waste on Capslock. Unfortunately, Capslock still exists awkwardly adjacent to the space bar.

jimmydddd 2mo ago
That cord storage pocket is pretty nice as well.

burningdeck 2mo ago

I became an Intel Field Application (FAE) engineer in 1988, just 7 years after the PC. At my first internal tech conference in Phoenix I was told that the reason IBM used the 8088 over the Motorola 6502 they were also looking at was because the local Intel FAE lent them an 8088 emulator. These things were a pin-for pin replacement for the chip and were the hardware equivalent of a software debugger, with single-stepping, register inspection, breakpoints etc. Having one would have made development of the motherboard that much easier and quicker. This seemed to be common knowledge in the FAE community, but never mentioned by IBM or Intel higher ups. Who knows which version is true, but perhaps a design decision based on the serendipitous fact that the FAE had a loan stock emulator in the trunk of his car when he visited the IBM team was not the story that either company wanted written.

PaulRobinson 2mo ago

In about 1990, my Dad gifted me an old XT. By that point it was almost ancient, no modern software would work on it, but I could do some BASIC programming, and learn DOS and a few PC magazines still had PC software on 5.25" cover disks, so I got some of those going. My mates by this point had Amiga 500s and Atari STs and the other rare PC owner I found was using 386s and dreaming of a 486 (the Pentium was still years away). A few years later the PSU blew, a mate and I isolated it to a capacitor that burned out, we tried replacing it but it didn't work. I left it to one side and I decided I'd get back to it one day and restore it with more time and knowledge - or get a professional (I'm a software guy), to fix it. I returned from University one break to find it missing. My step-father had known it was broken and decided it was rubbish. He'd put the whole thing - base unit, monitor, keyboard, all of it, into a wheelie bin for the council to take with the household rubbish collection. I felt sorry for the rubbish collectors - that thing was heavy. I'm surprised it didn't break the bin, TBH. And of course, I still haven't forgiven him. Love the guy, but man... Anyway, when I have the time and space for a small retro computing museum, I'll be getting one of those in the collection. Iconic, beautiful, and close to my heart. And also - I can't understate this enough - really, really heavy and not something you should dispose of with household rubbish.

badc0ffee 2mo ago
I was still using my XT clone (with Hercules graphics) in 1990, mostly for WordPerfect and to play SimCity. I also remember getting simcga from a friend in 1991 and using that to play some 80s CGA games. Finally upgraded to a 386SX in 1992.
- chorizo 2mo ago
  I had a 386DX with Hercules Graphics around 1993. Love how high resolution it could get in monochrome. Wrote a font renderer that could scale fonts to any size. Did not have any games, but rewrote a few old VIC-20 games into Pascal.

GreenLightGo 2mo ago

And to think that back then, those weak computers took up entire floors of institutes, with ponds just for cooling them...