24 Apr
2008
24 Apr
'08
1:24 p.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
24 Apr
24 Apr
2:31 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:38:36 -0500
From: Jules Richardson
Yep, I'm pretty sure the first machines were offered as a bare config, with
everything else as extras (including more than 16KB). I'm not sure if IBM
considered the keyboard an 'extra', but they may well have done.
Later I had a 5150 myself, although it came with a FDC and MDA boards, and
64KB fitted. Sadly I sold it late last year. I never did explore expansion
possibilities though - I picked up a 5160 at the same time, so that one
became the machine that I normally played with.
*somewhere* I think I still have the original invoices for those two machines
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. from when their original owner bought them, but
it'd be a few months before I
stood a chance of unearthing them (I believe that
particular 5150 was bought
in the UK for around 1,600 pounds, and the 5160 XT was about 2,400)
cheers
Jules
11:25 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
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.
Wow, I can't see it being useful at launch with 16K -- the DOS 1.0 took
up about 11K if memory serves, and command.com 5K all by itself... I
guess that left 1.5K to run BASIC.COM and that was all she wrote...
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
5932
days inactive
5933
days old
2 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
-
cclist＠sydex.com -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
trixter＠oldskool.org