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About me and why the IBM 5150 Personal Computer is so important? I started this website on thanksgiving day 2007, because I am on a mission to save, preserve, restore and help others enjoy the IBM 5150 Personal Computer. I am a 24 year old guy living in the Pacific Northwest, my personal 5150 system can be seen below. Why Is the IBM 5150 Personal Computer So Important? If you have never heard of the IBM 5150 Personal Computer or maybe you heard of it, but don’t have a clue what it is or why it’s so important?Well let me enlighten you. Prior to the IBM 5150 Personal Computer in Aug 1981, the world of computers was nothing more than a hobby driven market, toys as IBM and other business said. The early days of computers were a very “wild” market, dozens of different systems with entirely different hardware and software. So let’s say you chose to buy a system form Apple. Well in order to upgrade or get new software you had to go back to Apple. Nothing from Commodore or Tandy would work. One computer and one program shifted the market from toys to tools to use at work. The Apple II and VisiCalc . They started to creep in to offices near you. IBM toke notice of the Apple II and said we have to come out with a personal computer to combat the Apple II. In all honestly the IBM 5150 Personal Computer was just another computer competing for the number one spot. However the IBM 5150 Personal Computer had something going for it no others did at the time. It was 100% open source hardware, so anyone in the world could write or make hardware and software for it, and with the IBM name on the Personal Computer it was ok to use these new tools. So there it was the standard of the personal computer world was born. The IBM 5150 Personal Computer. Almost 30 years later, you can trace a lot of stuff back to the 5150 that makes your Personal Computer what it is today, the ISA bus turned in to the PCI BUS. If you’re modern computer has an ISA slot could install a card from an IBM 5150 Personal Computer in to your computer and it would work, pretty amazing I think. IBM chose to use Intel/AMD CPU’S , IBM also choose to use Microsoft Operating Systems. You have the IBM 5150 Personal Computer to thank for the fact you can go to any store and buy any part or program and 99.9% of the time it will work flawlessly! So in short the IBM 5150 Personal Computer toke a market full of "personal toy computers" showed business that it's OK to use these systems, and because of the IBM name and open system design, the IBM 5150 Personal Computer stuck and has been around ever since. Living deep inside every PC in use today. The other systems such as Commodore and Tandy are just a footnotes in history. The IBM 5150 Personal Computer has become a de facto standard. Below is a photo of my personal 5150. It’s in NOS (new old stock) flawless condition. It has its factory IBM boxes and as far as I know, had less than 25 hours of use on it when I got it. I also have the 5161 Exp. unit with a 10mb ST-412 fixed disk and 2nd color display.  |
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Vintage IBM 5150 is in no way affiliated with IBM. All material copyright/trademark of there respectful owner. IBM is a copyright/trademark of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States |