A release photo of the original IBM PC
Computer firm IBM made technological history on 12 August 1981 with the announcement of a personal computer - the IBM 5150. Although IBM is not the first that came out with PC or the term "Personal Computer", however the IBM 5150 is the first that successfully gained wide acceptance and this led to global impact on PCs. It's recognised as the ancestor of the modern PC, a crucial step in computers' evolution from expensive geek's play toy to business and home computing. After all these years, PC has significantly changed our lives.
Quote:
Roughly one billion PCs are now in use across the world; many office workers spend more time with their PCs than they do asleep or with their families. But the PC's spread has been uneven: in America there are 70 PCs for every 100 people, compared with 35 in France, 7 in Brazil, and 3 in China.
IBM 5150 came in 3 versions, they cost between $1,565, for a home model, and $4,500, for a machine designed for the office. The $1,565 IMB 5150 had a 4.7Mhz processor, 16K of memory and it comes with keyboard. Disk drives were an optional extra but each 5.25inch disk could hold 160K of data. It included Microsoft's BASIC programming language. The machines could display four different colours of graphics and 24 different colours for text. It also included a built-in mono speaker for music and audio.
Dig Dug
What ?! 4.7Mhz and 16k of memory ?! Most of the terms & conditions, license agreements these days are more than 16k even in pure text, on top of that, a click on "Start" on Windows will certainly crashed the 4.7Mhz processor... hehe...
I still remember the days of playing Dig Dug when I'm a kid ~12 years back, I can't remember what kind of PC is that, but the green console text reminds me of Matrix, and we uses 5.25inch disk to load the game. Then I came across a more modern PC, playing Mortal Combat in friend's house. The first game that I ever played on my Pentium 600Mhz desktop was Command & Conquer in DOS mode (greetings to all C&C fans out there). Loved the Lemmings game too back that time. Those little tiny lemmings with green hair with faces that's not visible... they're all nice nostalgia of mine. Again, if you wonder, the game is in DOS mode as well. Hmm, Doom was fun that time but now my Windows XP can't run Doom 1 and I don't even bother to try playing Doom 3 on my notebook, I don't want my notebook to overheat and catch fire.
Anyway, the cheapest model that used to cost $1,565 would cost around $3,500 today (in 2006 figures), taking 25 years of adjustments in the retail price index into account. That's around $AUD 4,500. What can you do with $AUD 4.5k ? Oh boy, you'll pretty spoiled if you have that much of money to spend on a dekstop PC today. Other than high ends computers, you'll probably looking at buying a small server, get a dedicated line and start hosting service... ^^
Salute to those great people who dedicated their time and bringing this great technology to human. Thanks !
