24 Apr
2008
24 Apr
'08
10:24 a.m.
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:38:36 -0500
From: Jules Richardson
Does anyone recall what the maximum memory was for an
original IBM 5150 PC
at launch time?
Vividly. 64K of 4116-type DRAM chips. The first row was soldered
in, the remainder were in sockets. It was possible to purchase a
really-stripped-down 5150 through various sources (probably gray-
market as I doubt that IBM sold them that way) with no cards or disk
drives and only the first 16K installed on the planar. I believe
that the San Jose Computerland offered that deal fairly early on. I
was never able to determine if they purchased the boxes that way or
canibalized the RAM for other machines. There was a DRAM shortage on
at the time.
Cheers,
Chuck