31 Oct
2006
31 Oct
'06
4:20 p.m.
On 31 Oct 2006 at 12:34, Fred Cisin wrote:
But it was IBM's picing and packaging of options that engendered the
third-party add-on board makers, like Quadram and Everex. What made
them really attractive was packing more than a single function on a
board (remember that the original 5150 had only 5 expansion slots)
So, for example, a board that gave you RAM, a parallel port two
serial ports, as well as a clock was very attractive if the
alternative was purchasing an expansion box ($$$) for the extra
single-function cards that you'd need from IBM.
Cheers,
Chuck
From the time
that it was introduced (August 1981), the IBM PC 5150 was
also available bare for
about $1360 (USD). If you put in your own Tandon
TM100 drives at ~$150 each, instead of IBM's at ~$500 each, put in your
own RAM at ~$75 per 16K v IBM's at $300 per 16K, added a serial card for
~$150?, added an FDC board for ~$300, a video board for ~$300, and your
own monitor for ~$100 v IBM's at ~$600, etc. you ended up with a machine
at comparable prices to an Apple ][.