Museum of Media History | MMH | Berlin

IBM 5150

The IBM 5150, which was introduced on August 12, 1981 was part of a line of PCs as IBM attempted to get into the small computer market then dominated by the Commodore, Atari, Apple and Tandy.

Model:	5150
Released:	September 1981
Price:	US $1,565 ~ $3,000
CPU:	Intel 8088, 4.77MHz
RAM:	16K, 640K max
Display:	80 X 24 text
Storage:	dual 160KB 5.25-inch disk drives
Ports:	cassette & keyboard only
	5 internal expansion slots
OS:	PC-DOS v1.0

The IBM Personal Computer ("PC") was not as powerful as many of the other personal computers it was competing against at the time of its release. The simplest configuration has only 16K on-board RAM and uses an audio cassette to load and save data - the floppy drive was optional, and a hard drive was not suported.

A basic system for home use attaches to an audio tape cassette player and a television set (that means no floppy drives or video monitor) sold for approximately $1,565. PC-DOS, the operating system, was not available on cassette, so this basic system is only capable of running the Microsoft BASIC programming language, which is built-in and included with every PC.

A more typical system for home or school with a memory of 64K bytes, a single diskette drive and its own display, was priced around $3,000.

An expanded system for business with color graphics, two diskette drives, and a printer cost about $4,500.

Five internal ISA expansion slots on the motherboard provide the ability to add additional memory and other capabllities, although one slot is usually occupied by the video card, and another by the optional floppy drive controller. A third slot typically has an RS-232 serial port card installed. A modem card for dialing-up remote computer systems became a popular option as well.

Although the original IBM 5150 "PC" supported only 64K of RAM memory on the motherboard, later versions used higher capacity memory chips, allowing up to 256K onboard - up to 640K with internal expansion cards.

The high quality (and very noisy) keyboard is the same as the IBM Datamaster, a business computer released earlier in the same year as the "PC".

http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5150.html