PC Magazine didn't cover 8-bit platforms, which is why you also won't find the Commodore 64 in this list. Nonetheless, we owe our existence to that first IBM PC, so it's only natural for us to start there. Read on to celebrate our shared history and see what else makes the list. What was the most influential PC in your history? Let us know in the comment section below. IBM doesn't make low-profit-margin commodity products, which is why it sold its PC business to Lenovo in 2005 after losing nearly a billion dollars on it in the four years preceding. #Late 2006 macbook pro ssd tv#īut PCs weren't commodities in 1981-buyers of the Model 5150 paid $1,565 for a unit with 16K of RAM, no monitor (you connected a TV set), and no disk drives (it used TRS-80-style cassette tape storage).
The 5150's design made several compromises-its Intel 8088 CPU had 16-bit registers but an 8-bit external data bus allowing cheaper support and peripheral chips.Ī loaded system with 64K of memory, one floppy drive, and a monochrome monitor cost about $3,000. #Late 2006 macbook pro ssd serial#īut it looked forward with five expansion slots for graphics, floppy drive controller, parallel and serial port, sound, modem, networking, and other cards. A second socket accommodated an 8087 coprocessor for better floating-point performance. Its springy, clicky keyboard, taken from the 95-pound System/23 Datamaster all-in-one word and data processing station, remains to this day an industry legend.īig Blue's decision to publish specs for the system bus, memory map, and expansion slots created a thriving ecosystem of third-party products. The IBM brand and a port of 1979's Apple II spreadsheet VisiCalc (killed by Lotus 1-2-3 in 1983) made the 5150 a hit in corporate offices. Big Blue's decision to publish specs for the system bus, memory map, and expansion slots created a thriving ecosystem of third-party products. Within months, the PC was an unstoppable force, and so was PC Magazine.
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