Ibm Pc facts
While investigating facts about Ibm Pcjr and Ibm Pc Xt, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The Commodore 64 computer dominated the US computer market during the mid-80s, outselling IBM PC compatibles and Apple computers.
how ibm lost the pc market?
Apple ran a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal in 1981 welcoming IBM to the desktop computer market. Even though IBM would become Apple's biggest competitor, Apple felt that IBM's entry into the PC market would legitimatize the industry and ultimately help Apple.
What was the original microsoft operating system for the ibm pc?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what is ibm pc. Here are 17 of the best facts about Ibm Pcomm and Ibm Pc History I managed to collect.
when did ibm introduce the 20286 based pc/at?
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Microsoft Flight Simulator is the longest running Microsoft software product line for Microsoft, predating Windows by 3 years. It was originally picked up to show of superiority of IBM PC line over Apple products.
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Bill Gates admitted that Control-Alt-Delete key combination to log into a PC was a mistake and Blamed IBM for it.
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Bill Gates did not create PC-DOS/MS-DOS from scratch. The the software rights for 86-DOS/QDOS, which became IBM PC-DOS, was bought from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products for a mere total of $75,000, on July 27, 1981. It was then licensed to IBM after tweaking the operating system.
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The first "Killer Apps" were spreadsheet programs for the Apple II (VisiCalc) & IBM PC (Lotus 1-2-3). These "Killer Applications" drove the sales of their respective systems (like how Pokemon drove sales of the GameBoy).
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The IBM PC was not IBM's first personal computer. That honor goes to the IBM 5100, a (barely) portable computer that weighed 50 pounds.
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The computer used by Ferris in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, an IBM PC XT, would cost around $12,200 in 2017 dollars.
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IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM PC. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS
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When IBM was designing the first IBM PC they hoped to sell 50,000 units. Today, about 280 million PCs are sold a year.
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There was a British PC maker called Apricot Computers, which once competed with Apple and IBM
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Mark Dean, a designer of the original IBM PC, now uses a tablet instead. He wrote that he had "moved beyond the PC", comparing it to "the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs".
Why ibm pc so successful?
You can easily fact check why did ibm fail in the pc market by examining the linked well-known sources.
Microsoft MS-DOS was a copy of QDOS, which itself was a copy of CP/M(which was superior than both). IBM had reached out to Bill Gates for OS for their PC, who pointed them to Gary Kildall but when IBM officials went to negotiate a deal, Gary was out flying his private plane so IBM went with MS
The Num Lock key exists because earlier 84-key IBM PC keyboards did not have cursor control or arrows separate from the numeric keypad - source
That, bundled with the original IBM PC, there was an embarrassingly bad game called Donkey that was co-authored by Bill Gates himself
The IBM XT was a version of the IBM PC with a built-in hard drive. XT stood for eXtended Technology. - source
