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93-505: PolyMorphic Systems' first products were several interface boards based on the then-popular S-100 bus . These were compatible with other microcomputers such as the Altair 8800 and IMSAI 8080 . The first was an A/D and D/A converter board. This was followed by a video terminal interface (VTI) card which became the primary display device for their systems. Later board-level products included CPU , RAM , and disk controller cards. With

186-916: A VT100 -compatible terminal) to have any output. To connect it to a terminal a serial interface card had to be installed. Alternatively to using a terminal Altair could be programmed using its front-panel switches. While serving at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base , Ed Roberts and Forrest M. Mims III decided to use their electronics background to produce small kits for model rocket hobbyists. In 1969, Roberts and Mims, along with Stan Cagle and Robert Zaller, founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Roberts' garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico , and started selling radio transmitters and instruments for model rockets. The model rocket kits were

279-528: A wave soldering machine and an assembly line at the new location. In January 1972, Popular Electronics merged with another Ziff-Davis magazine, Electronics World . The change in editorial staff upset many of their authors, and they started writing for a competing magazine, Radio-Electronics . In 1972 and 1973, some of the best construction projects appeared in Radio-Electronics . In 1974, Art Salsberg became editor of Popular Electronics . It

372-517: A 4K static memory that was plug-in compatible with the Altair 8800 and sold for $ 255. His company was Processor Technology , one of the most successful Altair compatible board suppliers. Their advertisement in the July 1975 issue of Popular Electronics promised interface and PROM boards in addition to the 4K memory board. They would later develop a popular video display board that would plug directly into

465-468: A BASIC interpreter for program development. Poly BASIC used BCD arithmetic for high precision in financial applications. A word-processing system, named WordMaster, consisted of a text editor and separate formatter program. Stuart Woods wrote his second novel, Run Before the Wind , using WordMaster on a PolyMorphic 8813 system. With the introduction of double-sided, double density minifloppy drives,

558-468: A computer through retail channels rather than directly to customers. Because IBM did not have retail experience, they partnered with the retail chains ComputerLand and Sears , who provided important knowledge of the marketplace and became the main outlets for the PC. More than 190 ComputerLand stores already existed, while Sears was in the process of creating a handful of in-store computer centers for sale of

651-559: A copy of the kit. The calculator was successful and was followed by several improved models. The MITS 1440 calculator was featured in the July 1973 issues of Radio-Electronics . It had a 14-digit display, memory, and square root function. The kit sold for $ 200 and the assembled version was $ 250 . MITS later developed a programmer unit that would connect to the 816 or 1440 calculator and allow programs of up to 256 steps. In 1972, Texas Instruments developed its own calculator chip and started selling complete calculators at less than half

744-472: A decade, colleges had required science and engineering majors to take a course in computer programming, typically using the FORTRAN or BASIC languages. This meant there was a sizable customer base who knew about computers. In 1970, electronic calculators were not seen outside of a laboratory, but by 1974 they were a common household item. Calculators and video games like Pong introduced computer power to

837-442: A dedicated power supply and included a hard drive. Although official hard drive support did not exist, the third party market did provide early hard drives that connected to the floppy disk controller , but required a patched version of PC DOS to support the larger disk sizes. The only option for human interface provided in the base PC was the built-in keyboard port, meant to connect to the included Model F keyboard. The Model F

930-515: A disk controller card, to interface with the minifloppy drives. Later, a Z80 based disk controller supported double sided, double-density minifloppy drives, and full-size (8-inch) floppy drives. The Poly disk operating system was called Exec . The three disk drives were distinguished by numbers enclosed in angle brackets such as <1> , rather than the drive letter convention ( A: ) used by CP/M and later MS-DOS . File names were case-sensitive and could contain up to 31 characters including

1023-583: A hard drive, the motherboard did not support BIOS expansion ROMs which was needed to support a hard drive controller, and both PC DOS and the BIOS had no support for hard disks. After the XT was released, IBM altered the design of the 5150 to add most of these capabilities, except for the upgraded power supply. At this point adding a hard drive was possible, but required the purchase of the IBM 5161 Expansion Unit, which contained

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1116-562: A kit. The first 50 IMSAI computers shipped in December 1975. The IMSAI 8080 computer improved on the original Altair design in several areas. It was easier to assemble: The Altair required 60 wire connections between the front panel and the motherboard ( backplane ). The IMSAI required only two soldered connections between the front panel and power supply. The MITS motherboard consisted of 4 slot segments that had to be connected together with 100 wires. The IMSAI motherboard implemented 22 slots on

1209-637: A letter to its sales force stating that the MITS Altair 8800 computer used standard Intel 8080 parts. The sales force should sell the Intellec system based on its merits and that no one should make derogatory comments about valued customers like MITS. The letter was reprinted in the August 1975 issue of MITS Computer Notes. The "cosmetic defect" rumor has appeared in many accounts over the years although both MITS and Intel issued written denials in 1975. For

1302-567: A library of common functions that all software can use for many purposes, such as video output, keyboard input, disk access, interrupt handling, testing memory, and other functions. IBM shipped three versions of the BIOS throughout the PC's lifespan. While most home computers had built-in video output hardware, IBM took the unusual approach of offering two different graphics options, the MDA and CGA cards. The former provided high-resolution monochrome text, but could not display anything except text, while

1395-401: A maximum of 64 KB onboard, and the more common 64 KB revision to a maximum of 256 KB on the motherboard. RAM cards could upgrade either variant further, for a total of 640 KB conventional memory , and possibly several megabytes of expanded memory beyond that, though on PC/XT-class machines, the latter was a very expensive third-party hardware option only available later in

1488-509: A modest success and MITS wanted to try a kit that would appeal to more hobbyists. The November 1970 issue of Popular Electronics featured the Opticom, a kit from MITS that would send voice over an LED light beam. As Mims and Cagle were losing interest in the kit business, Roberts bought his partners out, then began developing a calculator kit. Electronic Arrays had just announced the EAS100,

1581-657: A mouse.) Connectivity to other computers and peripherals was initially provided through serial and parallel ports. IBM provided a serial card based on an 8250 UART . The BIOS supports up to two serial ports. IBM provided two different options for connecting Centronics-compatible parallel printers. One was the IBM Printer Adapter, and the other was integrated into the MDA as the IBM Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter. The expansion capability of

1674-467: A personal computer, possibly a miniaturized version of the IBM System/370 , and Matsushita acknowledged publicly that it had discussed with IBM the possibility of manufacturing a personal computer in partnership, although this project was abandoned. The public responded to these rumors with skepticism, owing to IBM's tendency towards slow-moving, bureaucratic business practices tailored towards

1767-505: A policy of strict secrecy, with all other IBM divisions kept in the dark about the project. Several CPUs were considered, including the Texas Instruments TMS9900 , Motorola 68000 and Intel 8088 . The 68000 was considered the best choice, but was not production-ready like the others. The IBM 801 RISC processor was also considered, since it was considerably more powerful than the other options, but rejected due to

1860-657: A rapidly changing market. The idea of acquiring Atari was considered but rejected in favor of a proposal by Lowe that by forming an independent internal working group and abandoning all traditional IBM methods, a design could be delivered within a year and a prototype within 30 days. The prototype worked poorly but was presented with a detailed business plan which proposed that the new computer have an open architecture , use non-proprietary components and software, and be sold through retail stores, all contrary to IBM practice. It also estimated sales of 220,000 computers over three years, more than IBM's entire installed base . This swayed

1953-417: A self-made simulator for the 8080 on a PDP-10 mainframe computer . They figured that they had 30 days before someone else beat them to the punch, and once they had a version working on the simulator, Allen flew to Albuquerque to deliver the program, Altair BASIC (aka MITS 4K BASIC), on a paper tape . The first time it was run, it displayed "READY", then Allen typed "PRINT 2+2", and it immediately printed

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2046-595: A separate monochrome monitor for text menus. Third parties went on to provide an enormous variety of aftermarket graphics adapters, such as the Hercules Graphics Card . The software and hardware of the PC, at release, was designed around a single 8-bit adaptation of the ASCII character set, now known as code page 437 . The two bays in the front of the machine could be populated with one or two 5.25″ floppy disk drives, storing 160 KB per disk side for

2139-534: A serial interface board and at least one or two 4096 word memory boards, depending on the language variant. MITS Price List, Popular Electronics , August 1975. MITS had no competition in the US for the first half of 1975. Their 4K memory board used dynamic RAM and it had several design problems. The delay in shipping optional boards and the problems with the 4K memory board created an opportunity for outside suppliers. An enterprising Altair owner, Robert Marsh, designed

2232-474: A set of six large scale integrated (LSI) circuit chips that would make a four-function calculator. The MITS 816 calculator kit used the chipset and was featured on the November 1971 cover of Popular Electronics . This calculator kit sold for $ 175 , or $ 275 assembled. Forrest Mims wrote the assembly manual for this kit and many others over the next several years. As payment for each manual he often accepted

2325-544: A single segment. The IMSAI replaced the Altair's one-shot clock generator with the Intel 8224. The IMSAI also had a larger power supply to handle the increasing number of expansion boards used in typical systems. The IMSAI advantage was short lived because MITS had recognized these shortcomings and developed the Altair 8800B, which was introduced in June 1976. In 1977, Pertec Computer Corporation purchased MITS and began to market

2418-520: A substantial influence on the personal computer market ; the specifications of the IBM PC became one of the most popular computer design standards in the world. The only significant competition it faced from a non-compatible platform throughout the 1980s was from Apple 's Macintosh product line, as well as consumer-grade platforms created by companies like Commodore and Atari . Most present-day personal computers share architectural features in common with

2511-459: A total of 320 KB of storage on one disk. The floppy drives require a controller card inserted in an expansion slot, and connect with a single ribbon cable with two edge connectors. The IBM floppy controller card provides an external 37-pin D-sub connector for attachment of an external disk drive, although IBM did not offer one for purchase until 1986. As was common for home computers of the era,

2604-424: A two-character extension. For example, a text file might be named Notes.TX . Various file extensions had predefined meanings: .GO for executable files , .BS for BASIC programs, .OV for overlays. Overlays were used extensively to provide more code space for the operating system. If a file named INITIAL.TX was present when the system booted, commands listed in that file were executed automatically, similar to

2697-529: A two-piece case. The backplane and power supply were mounted on a base plate, along with the front and rear of the box. The "lid" was shaped like a C, forming the top, left, and right sides of the box. The front panel , which was inspired by the Data General Nova minicomputer, included a large number of toggle switches to feed binary data directly into the memory of the machine, and a number of red LEDs to read those values back out. Programming

2790-403: A year. By 1984, IBM's revenue from the PC market was $ 4 billion, more than twice that of Apple. A 1983 study of corporate customers found that two thirds of large customers standardizing on one computer chose the PC, while only 9% chose Apple. A 1985 Fortune survey found that 56% of American companies with personal computers used PCs while 16% used Apple. Almost as soon as the PC reached

2883-594: Is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU . Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in Radio-Electronics , and in other hobbyist magazines. According to Harry Garland, the Altair 8800 was the product that catalyzed the microcomputer revolution of

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2976-411: Is housed in a wide, short steel chassis intended to support the weight of a CRT monitor. The front panel is made of plastic, with an opening where one or two disk drives can be installed. The back panel houses a power inlet and switch, a keyboard connector, a cassette connector and a series of tall vertical slots with blank metal panels which can be removed in order to install expansion cards. Internally,

3069-486: Is that the Altair was originally going to be named the PE-8 (Popular Electronics 8-bit), but Les Solomon thought this name to be rather dull, so Les, Alexander Burawa (associate editor), and John McVeigh (technical editor) decided that: "It's a stellar event, so let's name it after a star." McVeigh suggested " Altair ", the twelfth brightest star in the sky. Ed Roberts had designed and manufactured programmable calculators and

3162-608: The AUTOEXEC.BAT file of an MS-DOS system. Later versions of Exec supported subdirectories . The naming syntax continued to use angle brackets. For example, a file in a second-level subdirectory on drive 2 might be named <2<Projects<Dan<Accounts.TX . Unlike MS-DOS and Unix , no explicit "make directory" command was needed. When a program tried to create a file within a subdirectory, that subdirectory would be automatically created (if it didn't already exist). System 8813 software included an 8080 macro assembler and

3255-516: The BASIC programming language for the machine. He called the company and reached a private home, where no one had heard of anything like BASIC. In fact the letter had been sent by Bill Gates and Paul Allen from the Boston area, and they had no BASIC yet to offer. When they called Roberts to follow up on the letter he expressed his interest, and the two started work on their BASIC interpreter using

3348-585: The IBM System/23 Datamaster . The 62-pin expansion bus slots were also designed to be similar to the Datamaster slots, and its keyboard design and layout became the Model F keyboard shipped with the PC, but otherwise the PC design differed in many ways. The 8088 motherboard was designed in 40 days, with a working prototype created in four months, demonstrated in January 1981. The design

3441-565: The Intellec-8 Microprocessor Development System that typically sold for a very profitable $ 10,000 . It was functionally similar to the Altair 8800 but it was a commercial grade system with a wide selection of peripherals and development software. Customers would ask Intel why their Intellec-8 was so expensive when that Altair was only $ 400 . Some salesmen said that MITS was getting cosmetic rejects or otherwise inferior chips. In July 1975, Intel sent

3534-489: The Railway Express Agency . However, it never arrived due to a strike by the shipping company. Solomon already had a number of pictures of the machine and the article was based on them. Roberts got to work on building a replacement. The computer on the magazine cover is an empty box with just switches and LEDs on the front panel. The finished Altair computer had a completely different circuit board layout than

3627-463: The 1970s . It was the first commercially successful personal computer. The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus , and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft 's founding product, Altair BASIC . The Altair 8800 had no built-in screen or video output, so it would have to be connected to a serial terminal (such as

3720-506: The 5100 had a price tag as high as $ 20,000. Their entry into the home computer market needed to be competitively priced. In 1980, IBM president John Opel, recognizing the value of entering this growing market, assigned William C. Lowe and Philip Don Estridge as heads of the new Entry Level Systems unit in Boca Raton, Florida. Market research found that computer dealers were very interested in selling an IBM product, but they insisted

3813-511: The Altair name, which editor Les Solomon later told the audience at the first Altair Computer Convention (March 1976), is that the name was inspired by Les's 12-year-old daughter, Lauren. "She said why don't you call it Altair – that's where the Enterprise is going tonight." The Star Trek episode is probably " Amok Time ", as this is the only one from The Original Series which takes the Enterprise crew to Altair (Six). Another explanation

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3906-458: The Altair via the front panel could be a tedious and time-consuming process. Programming required the toggling of the switches to positions corresponding to the desired 8080 microprocessor instruction or opcode in binary, then used the "DEPOSIT NEXT" switch to load that instruction into the next address of the machine's memory. This step was repeated until all the opcodes of a presumably complete and correct program were in place. The only output from

3999-596: The Altair. A consulting company in San Leandro, California, IMS Associates, Inc. , wanted to purchase several Altair computers, but the long delivery time convinced them that they should build their own computers. In the October 1975 issue of Popular Electronics , a small advertisement announced the IMSAI 8080 computer. The ad noted that all boards were " plug compatible " with the Altair 8800. The computer cost $ 439 as

4092-675: The Canadian company Micro Computer Machines); the National Semiconductor IMP-8 and IMP-16 required external hardware; the Motorola 6800 was still in development. So he chose the 8-bit Intel 8080 . At that time, Intel's main business was selling memory chips by the thousands to computer companies. They had no experience in selling small quantities of microprocessors. When the 8080 was introduced in April 1974, Intel set

4185-491: The Corporate Management Committee, which converted the group into a business unit named "Project Chess", and provided the necessary funding and authority to do whatever was needed to develop the computer in the given timeframe. The team received permission to expand to 150 people by the end of 1980, and in one day more than 500 IBM employees called in asking to join. The design process was kept under

4278-510: The IBM 5150's lifecycle and only usable with dedicated software support (i.e. only accessible via a RAM window in the Upper Memory Area ); this was relatively rarely equipped and utilized on the original IBM PC, much less fully so, thus the machine's maximum RAM configuration as commonly understood was 640 KB. The BIOS is the firmware of the IBM PC, occupying one 8 KB chip on the motherboard. It provides bootstrap code and

4371-435: The IBM PC offered a port for connecting a cassette data recorder . Unlike the typical home computer however, this was never a major avenue for software distribution, probably because very few PCs were sold without floppy drives. The port was removed on the very next PC model, the XT. At release, IBM did not offer any hard disk drive option and adding one was difficult - the PC's stock power supply had inadequate power to run

4464-399: The IBM PC was very significant to its success in the market. Some publications highlighted IBM's uncharacteristic decision to publish complete, thorough specifications of the system bus and memory map immediately on release, with the intention of fostering a market of compatible third-party hardware and software. The motherboard includes five 62-pin card edge connectors which are connected to

4557-459: The January issue of Popular Electronics , MITS was flooded with inquiries and orders. They had to hire extra people just to answer the phones. In February MITS received 1,000 orders for the Altair 8800. The quoted delivery time was 60 days but it was months before they could meet that. Roberts focused on delivering the computer; all of the options would wait until they could keep pace with the orders. MITS claimed to have delivered 2,500 Altair 8800s by

4650-489: The January launch date. So during the construction of the second model, he decided to build most of the machine on removable cards, reducing the motherboard to nothing more than an interconnect between the cards, a backplane . The basic machine consisted of five cards, including the CPU on one and memory on another. He then looked for a cheap source of connectors and came across a supply of 100-pin edge connectors . The S-100 bus

4743-426: The July 1974 cover of Radio-Electronics . The computer trainer was put on hold and the editors looked for a real computer system. ( Popular Electronics gave Jerry Ogden a column, Computer Bits , starting in June 1975.) One of the editors, Les Solomon, knew MITS was working on an Intel 8080 based computer project and thought Roberts could provide the project for the always popular January issue. The TV Typewriter and

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4836-565: The Mark-8 computer projects were just a detailed set of plans and a set of bare printed circuit boards. The hobbyist faced the daunting task of acquiring all of the integrated circuits and other components. The editors of Popular Electronics wanted a complete kit in a professional-looking enclosure. Ed Roberts and his head engineer, Bill Yates, finished the first prototype in October 1974 and shipped it to Popular Electronics in New York via

4929-462: The PC, covering such features as the bytecoding for color monitors, DMA access operation, and the keyboard interface. They were never enforced. Many of the designers were computer hobbyists who owned their own computers, including many Apple II owners, which influenced the decisions to design the computer with an open architecture and publish technical information so others could create compatible software and expansion slot peripherals. During

5022-495: The TTL-level keyboard interface limited the distance between the two user stations to a few feet. The dominant operating system for microcomputers in this era was CP/M . Unmodified Poly systems were unable to run CP/M, for several reasons: Late in the system's lifetime, hardware modifications were introduced to solve the memory map issues, and a version of CP/M was released for the 8813. Altair 8800 The Altair 8800

5115-561: The available space into several logical disk drives, similar to the FDISK partitioning command used by other operating systems. The TwinSystem was marketed as "Get more work done on a computer built for two." The System 8813 TwinSystem had an additional RAM card, video card, and keyboard. Bank switching between the RAM cards allowed the CPU to keep two applications in memory simultaneously. However,

5208-597: The basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard . Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team of engineers and designers at International Business Machines (IBM), directed by William C. Lowe and Philip Don Estridge in Boca Raton, Florida . Powered by an x86 -architecture Intel 8088 processor, the machine was based on open architecture and third-party peripherals. Over time, expansion cards and software technology increased to support it. The PC had

5301-471: The chassis is dominated by a motherboard which houses the CPU, built-in RAM, expansion RAM sockets, and slots for expansion cards. The IBM PC was highly expandable and upgradeable, but the base factory configuration included: The PC is built around a single large circuit board called a motherboard which carries the processor, built-in RAM, expansion slots, keyboard and cassette ports, and the various peripheral integrated circuits that connected and controlled

5394-467: The company use a design based on standard parts, not IBM-designed ones so that stores could perform their own repairs rather than requiring customers to send machines back to IBM for service. Another source cites time pressure as the reason for the decision to use third-party components. Atari proposed to IBM in 1980 that it act as original equipment manufacturer for an IBM microcomputer, a potential solution to IBM's known inability to move quickly to meet

5487-567: The components of the machine. The peripheral chips included an Intel 8259 PIC , an Intel 8237 DMA controller, and an Intel 8253 PIT . The PIT provides 18.2 Hz clock "ticks" and dynamic memory refresh timing. The CPU is an Intel 8088 , a cost-reduced form of the Intel 8086 which largely retains the 8086's internal 16-bit logic, but exposes only an 8-bit bus. The CPU is clocked at 4.77 MHz, which would eventually become an issue when clones and later PC models offered higher CPU speeds that broke compatibility with software developed for

5580-482: The computer, without changes (except for branding), as the PCC 8800 in 1978. In the first design of the Altair, the parts needed to make a complete machine would not fit on a single motherboard , and the machine consisted of four boards stacked on top of each other with stand-offs. Another problem facing Roberts was that the parts needed to make a truly useful computer were not available, or would not be designed in time for

5673-406: The correct answer: "4". The game Lunar Lander was entered in, and this worked as well. Gates soon joined Allen and formed Microsoft , then spelled "Micro-Soft". Announced in late 1975, it started shipping in August 1977. IBM Personal Computer The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC ) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and

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5766-417: The design constraint to use off-the-shelf parts . The TMS9900 was rejected as it was inferior to the Intel 8088. IBM chose the 8088 over the similar but superior 8086 because Intel offered a better price for the former and could provide more units, and the 8088's 8-bit bus reduced the cost of the rest of the computer. The 8088 had the advantage that IBM already had familiarity with the 8085 from designing

5859-534: The design process IBM avoided vertical integration as much as possible, for example choosing to license Microsoft BASIC rather than utilizing the in-house version of BASIC used for mainframes due to the better existing public familiarity with the Microsoft version. The IBM PC debuted on August 12, 1981, after a twelve-month development. Pricing started at $ 1,565 for a configuration with 16 KB RAM, Color Graphics Adapter , keyboard, and no disk drives. The price

5952-433: The end of May. The number was over 5,000 by August 1975. MITS had under 20 employees in January but had grown to 90 by October 1975. The Altair 8800 computer was a break-even sale for MITS. They needed to sell additional memory boards, I/O boards and other options to make a profit. The system came with a "1024 word" (1024 byte) memory board populated with 256 bytes. The BASIC language was announced in July 1975 and required

6045-442: The general public. Electronics hobbyists were moving on to digital projects such as digital voltmeters and frequency counters. The Altair had enough power to be actually useful, and was designed as an expandable system that opened it up to all sorts of applications. Ed Roberts optimistically told his banker that he could sell 800 computers, while in reality they needed to sell 200 over the next year just to break even. When readers got

6138-450: The keyboard was extremely positive, with some sources describing it as a major selling point of the PC and even as "the best keyboard available on any microcomputer." At release, IBM provided a Game Control Adapter which offered a 15-pin port intended for the connection of up to two joysticks, each having two analog axes and two buttons. (The early PCs predated the advent of the " Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer" concept and so did not have

6231-411: The latter provided medium- and low-resolution color graphics and text. CGA used the same scan rate as NTSC television , allowing it to provide a composite video output which could be used with any compatible television or composite monitor , as well as a direct-drive TTL output suitable for use with any RGBI monitor using an NTSC scan rate. IBM also sold the 5153 color monitor for this purpose, but it

6324-503: The market, rumors of clones began, and the first legal PC-compatible clone—the MPC 1600 by Columbia Data Products —was released in June 1982, less than a year after the PC's debut. Eventually, IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo in 2004 . For low cost and a quick design turnaround time, the hardware design of the IBM PC used entirely "off-the-shelf" parts from third party manufacturers, rather than unique hardware designed by IBM. The PC

6417-515: The market, sold only 69,000. Software support from the industry grew rapidly, with the IBM nearly instantly becoming the primary target for most microcomputer software development. One publication counted 753 software packages available a year after the PC's release, four times as many as were available for the Macintosh a year after its launch. Hardware support also grew rapidly, with 30–40 companies competing to sell memory expansion cards within

6510-567: The most obvious use was the addition of an Intel 8087 math coprocessor, which improved floating-point math performance. PC mainboards were manufactured with the first memory bank of initially Mostek 4116-compatible, or later 4164-compatible DIP DRAMs soldered to the board, for a minimum configuration of first just 16 KB, or later 64 KB of RAM. Memory upgrades were provided by IBM and third parties both for socketed installation in three further onboard banks, and as ISA expansion cards. The early 16 KB mainboards could be upgraded to

6603-415: The new product. Reception was overwhelmingly positive, with analysts estimating sales volume in the billions of dollars in the first few years after release. After release, IBM's PC immediately became the talk of the entire computing industry. Dealers were overwhelmed with orders, including customers offering pre-payment for machines with no guaranteed delivery date. By the time the machine began shipping,

6696-430: The original IBM PC, including the Intel -based Mac computers manufactured from 2006 to 2022 . Prior to the 1980s, IBM had largely been known as a provider of business computer systems. As the 1980s opened, their market share in the growing minicomputer market failed to keep up with competitors, while other manufacturers were beginning to see impressive profits in the microcomputer space. The market for personal computers

6789-503: The original PC. The single base clock frequency for the system was 14.31818 MHz, which when divided by 3, yielded the 4.77 MHz for the CPU (which was considered close enough to the then 5 MHz limit of the 8088), and when divided by 4, yielded the required 3.579545 MHz for the NTSC color carrier frequency. The PC motherboard included a second, empty socket, described by IBM simply as an "auxiliary processor socket", although

6882-508: The price of other commercial models. MITS and many other companies were devastated by this, and Roberts struggled to reduce his quarter-million-dollar debt. In addition to calculators, MITS made a line of test equipment kits. These included an IC tester, a waveform generator, a digital voltmeter, and several other instruments. To keep up with the demand, MITS moved into a larger building at 6328 Linn NE in Albuquerque in 1973. They installed

6975-449: The production of large, sophisticated and expensive business systems. As with other large computer companies, its new products typically required about four to five years for development, and a well publicized quote from an industry analyst was, "IBM bringing out a personal computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance." IBM had previously produced microcomputers, such as 1975's IBM 5100 , but targeted them towards businesses;

7068-416: The programs was the patterns of lights on the panel. Nevertheless, many were sold in this form. Development was already underway on additional cards, including a paper tape reader for storage, additional RAM cards, and an RS-232 interface to connect to a proper teletype terminal . Ed Roberts received a letter from Traf-O-Data asking whether he would be interested in buying what would eventually be

7161-452: The prototype shown in the magazine. The January 1975 issues appeared on newsstands a week before Christmas of 1974 and the kit was officially (if not yet practically) available for sale. The typical MITS product had a generic name like the " Model 1440 Calculator " or the " Model 1600 Digital Voltmeter ". Ed Roberts was busy finishing the design and left the naming of the computer to the editors of Popular Electronics . One explanation of

7254-533: The release of their CPU card, PolyMorphic began selling complete systems. Their first was the Poly-88, housed in a 5-slot S100 chassis, with additional side-mounted S-100 connectors for the purpose of joining chassis together. This unit earned the nickname "orange toaster" due to its orange metal cover, and the fact that the S-100 cards generated noticeable heat. The Poly-88 was available in kit form, or assembled. It

7347-416: The single unit price at $ 360 ($ 2220 in 2023). "That figure had a nice ring to it," recalled Intel's Dave House in 1984. "Besides, it was a computer, and they usually cost thousands of dollars, so we felt it was a reasonable price." Ed Roberts had experience in buying OEM quantities of calculator chips and he was able to negotiate a $ 75 price ($ 460 in 2023) for the 8080 microprocessor chips. Intel made

7440-430: The storage capacity of a single floppy became approximately 360K bytes (the same as the original IBM-PC floppy drive capacity). This made it feasible to store Exec, applications and data on a single floppy. The System 8810 was functionally identical to the 8813, but in a smaller chassis, with 5 slots and only one minifloppy drive. The 88/MS (Mass Storage) was a cabinet housing dual, 8-inch (full size) floppy drives. It

7533-407: The term "PC" was becoming a household name. Sales exceeded IBM's expectations by as much as 800% (9x), with the company at one point shipping as many as 40,000 PCs per month. IBM estimated that home users made up 50 to 70% of purchases from retail stores. In 1983, IBM sold more than 750,000 machines, while Digital Equipment Corporation , one of the companies whose success had spurred IBM to enter

7626-484: Was Salsberg's goal to reclaim the lead in electronics projects. He was impressed with Don Lancaster 's TV Typewriter ( Radio Electronics , September 1973) article and wanted computer projects for Popular Electronics . Don Lancaster did an ASCII keyboard for Popular Electronics in April 1974. They were evaluating a computer trainer project by Jerry Ogden when the Mark-8 8008 -based computer by Jonathan Titus appeared on

7719-448: Was available with either single- or double-sided disk drives, both using double-density recording on hard-sectored media. The 88/MS could be added onto either an 8813 or 8810 system. The largest Poly configurations would contain three mini-floppy drives and four full-size drives, with drive numbers from 1 to 7. The 88/HD was a subsystem with an 18 MB SASI hard drive, housed in an 8810 chassis. Software called Volume Manager partitioned

7812-402: Was designed to compete with comparable machines in the market. For comparison, the Datamaster, announced two weeks earlier as IBM's least expensive computer, cost $ 10,000. IBM's marketing campaign licensed the likeness of Charlie Chaplin 's character " The Little Tramp " for a series of advertisements based on Chaplin's movies, played by Billy Scudder. The PC was IBM's first attempt to sell

7905-538: Was dominated at the time by Tandy , Commodore , and Apple , whose machines sold for several hundred dollars each and had become very popular. The microcomputer market was large enough for IBM's attention, with $ 15 billion in sales by 1979 and projected annual growth of more than 40% during the early 1980s. Other large technology companies had entered it, such as Hewlett-Packard , Texas Instruments and Data General , and some large IBM customers were buying Apples. As early as 1980 there were rumors of IBM developing

7998-406: Was essentially complete by April 1981, when it was handed off to the manufacturing team. PCs were assembled in an IBM plant in Boca Raton, with components made at various IBM and third party factories. The monitor was an existing design from IBM Japan ; the printer was manufactured by Epson . Because none of the functional components were designed by IBM, they obtained only a handful of patents on

8091-456: Was eventually acknowledged by the professional computer community and adopted as the IEEE-696 computer bus standard. The Altair bus consists of the pins of the Intel 8080 run out onto the backplane. No particular level of thought went into the design, which led to disasters such as shorting from various power lines of differing voltages being located next to each other. Another oddity

8184-583: Was familiar with the microprocessors available in 1974. He thought the Intel 4004 and Intel 8008 were not powerful enough (in fact several microcomputers based on Intel chips were already on the market: the Canadian company Microsystems International 's CPS-1 built-in 1972 used a MIL MF7114 chip modeled on the 4004, the Micral marketed in January 1973 by the French company R2E and the MCM/70 marketed in 1974 by

8277-540: Was initially developed for the IBM Datamaster , and was substantially better than the keyboards provided with virtually all home computers on the market at that time in many regards - number of keys, reliability and ergonomics. While some home computers of the time utilized chiclet keyboards or inexpensive mechanical designs, the IBM keyboard provided good ergonomics, reliable and positive tactile key mechanisms and flip-up feet to adjust its angle. Public reception of

8370-453: Was not available at release and was not released until March 1983. MDA scanned at a higher frequency and required a proprietary monitor, the IBM 5151 . The card also included a built-in printer port. Both cards could also be installed simultaneously for mixed graphics and text applications. For instance, AutoCAD , Lotus 1-2-3 and other software allowed use of a CGA Monitor for graphics and

8463-484: Was originally called the Micro-Altair, but after objections from MITS , manufacturers of the Altair, the name was changed. The Poly-88 board set consisted of the following: The Poly-88 ROM contained a boot loader program, capable of reading programs from the cassette tape interface. Available programs included games, utilities, a BASIC interpreter , and an 8080 assembler . PolyMorphic's disk-based system

8556-481: Was that the system included two unidirectional 8-bit data buses , when the normal practice was for a single bidirectional bus (this oddity did, however, allow a later expansion of the S-100 standard to 16 bits bidirectional by using both 8-bit buses in parallel). A deal on power supplies led to the use of +8  V and ±18 V, which had to be locally regulated on the cards to TTL (+5 V) or RS-232 (±12 V) standard voltage levels. The Altair shipped in

8649-469: Was the System 8813. It consisted of a larger chassis holding one, two, or three 5 1 ⁄ 4 -inch minifloppy disk drives from Shugart Associates . The drives used single-sided, single-density storage on hard-sectored diskettes. Storage capacity was approximately 90K bytes per diskette. System 8813 hardware included the standard CPU and VTI cards; a RAM card, typically with at least 32K of memory; and

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