The History of the IBM 5150 Personal Computer

The history of the IBM 5150 Personal Computer begins in the summer of 1980, when a a group of engineers in IBM’s Boca Raton Florida facility decided others where making too much money in the small affordable computer market meant for home users such as systems like the Altair 8800 Apple's and Commodore's of that time and IBM wanted some of that business. So that small group of engineers came up with, thought out and roughly designed what IBM’s version of the small home market computer should be. After a short time that small group of engineers then “pitched” the new product and the idea to the IBM Board of Directors. The IBM Board approved the new product and the idea and they said “you have one year to get it from paper to ready to be shipped”. That moment forever changed the world and computer history as we know it today and that also set in the famous short one year development timeline for the IBM 5150 Personal Computer. From here on out until that fateful 12th day of August 1981 it was all hush and rush!

During the development and release of the IBM 5150 Personal Computer, IBM did a number of things that were “out of the norm” for IBM. Including using third party or “off the shelf parts” in its products and selling the system via third parties such as the Sears stores and Computer Land stores. Although IBM targeted the 5150 Personal Computer  for the home user, it ended up being too costly compared to other systems of the day for the normal home user and became a smash hit in the business world!

At the time of the 5150's release the system was priced at about $1,600.00 for just a baseline system with 16 KB of RAM a keyboard and a color graphics card for your T.V. At the time no floppy disk drives were included in the base system price. You were to go out to your local Radio Shack and pick up a data cassette recorder for data storage! However, hardly if any 5150’s left the factory without at least one floppy installed!

There are a number of untrue facts related to the development of the IBM 5150 Personal Computer. I would like to address the myths below and the state the facts!

One of the most common myths is that a group of 12 engineers sat down in the summer of 1980 and until August 12 1981 designed and built the 5150 Personal Computer. That is true only to some degree, in the very early days, there was a small group of engineers that did sit down and think up and roughly design the IBM 5150 Personal Computer. But that number grew every single day to over 500 people working on the project by the time IBM introduced the 5150 Personal Computer.

A 2nd very common myth is the IBM 5150 Personal Computer was designed from entirely “off the shelf” parts. That is also true to some degree. About half of the system was from the IBM system 23 Data master, such as the expansion bus, display, monitors, BIOS, floppy interface, keyboard and the other half of the system from “off the shelf” parts such as the floppy drives, all the software, BASIC in ROM, and Intel CPU. And some parts of the system were designed from “scratch” such as the motherboard.

 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