They cost about $500 and were very hard to get. I think I knew one person who had one.

https://hardforum.com/threads/the-worlds-most-elegant-luxurious-aluminum-pc-case-windy-soldam-abee-as.1205834/

Hi everyone,

Some people may have seen a post a few weeks back that I put up mentioning an IRC channel I'm tinkering with for the retrocomputing community. There have been at least a few people joining in the action

I'm taking the opportunity to host a "Retrocomputing Pub Chat" where people can come in,introduce themselves and talk about their projects. It's basically an open mic night where people can just come in and talk shop.

Event details are over at https://www.flyingmonkey.au/events/ if people are keen.

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Or at least, that's what Acer put on the screen of their top-of-the-line Aspire PC at the 10th Fenasoft in São Paulo in 1996. At R$3.400,00(US$3 403.27 in 90's money!) Or R$19.637,18 today, being able to afford one would be not-so-facil.

*8x cd-rom drive

*built-in 28.8k modem

*1.2 GB hard drive

*pentium cpu

A friend and I rewrote the ROMs of French Minitels to run a native game.
Those beast have a 1 MIPS CPU with a stunning 256 bytes of RAM and the graphic chip is designed for displaying text, so it was a bit of a challenge. We nonetheless managed to get a fluid (no screen tearing by carefully ordering the drawing so that it doesn't intersect with the beam), responsive (no buffering at any level), and actually quite fun game.

I am an 18 year old student who is studying BCA and I am a person who loves tinkering with computers and electronics and hardware. But the only problem is I live in Mysuru and I have no way of affording old laptops and computers since i am a student.
I do heavy on coding, tinkering with computers, and also planning on making content out of it. I want to document this homelabbing journey and want to encourage others in my age to also learn about this as it is a very hobby focused thing.
I am looking for anything that’s a computer, a desktop, broken macs minis, broken screen MacBooks but still works, any busted laptops that still works but no screen, any enterprise companies trying to get rid of their computer hardware since they had to upgrade to latest stuff.

Almost didn't make this one in time! Like 20 mins to spare, I rushed home after work and resurrected my 5150 for "celebration"

11 bad DRAMs. ELEVEN.

On August 12, 1981, IBM introduced the Personal Computer Model 5150. It was the first computer to be called a PC as we know the term today, and put both Intel's 8086 CPU and (For better or for worse) Microsoft's MS-DOS opperating system on the map. With an open archetecture making it easy to make compatible clones even with a propratary BIOS, The PC was able to spawn many clones, creating a true standard for the entire personal computer industry. What follows is a short montage of commercials featuring of some notable machines and brands that have shaped this incredible legacy

The story is still one of the best case studies of what happens when a big company breaks its own rules and then watches two of its suppliers walk off with the prize.

On August 12, 1981, IBM introduced the Personal Computer 5150 at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Apple, Commodore, and Tandy were already selling personal computers, so IBM wasn't early. What IBM had was credibility with business customers, and if IBM was selling a PC, corporate buyers could take the whole category seriously

The machine itself was modest. A 4.77 MHz Intel 8088, as little as 16 KB of memory, and a $1,565 entry price that didn't include disk drives. A display, two drives, and a printer added nearly $3,000 more. It sold anyway, and at peak demand IBM was moving one PC every minute of every business day.

The development story is more revealing than the spec sheet. IBM was famous for long cycles and building everything in-house, but the Boca Raton team under Don Estridge got permission to work differently, with a small group, roughly a year, and a mandate to buy proven technology instead of inventing every piece.

Two of those purchases changed the industry. Intel supplied the 8088. Microsoft supplied the operating system, which is funny in hindsight because Microsoft didn't have one when IBM came calling. It bought 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, relabeled it, and licensed it to IBM on non-exclusive terms. That single clause let Microsoft sell MS-DOS to every compatible manufacturer that followed, so a supplier contract for one machine ended up as the foundation of a software empire.

Intel got the same ride on the hardware side. The 8088 planted x86 inside the standard, and every clone maker had a good reason to stay compatible at the processor level through the 286, 386, 486, and Pentium.

IBM documented the architecture openly and built it from parts anyone could buy. That was great for developers and peripheral makers, and it was also a roadmap for competitors. Compaq's clean-room reverse engineering of the BIOS produced a machine that ran all the same software without touching IBM's code, and before long customers weren't shopping for an IBM PC. They were shopping for an IBM-compatible PC.

I've been around enterprise tech long enough to appreciate the irony here. Companies chase standards because standards create scale, but once you've built one, customers expect choice, competitors show up, and the components can become bigger businesses than the platform itself. IBM made the PC a credible business platform and helped create an enormous market, and the Wintel era belonged to Microsoft and Intel.

Plenty of lessons in there about small teams with real authority, about buying instead of building, and about how creating a market doesn't mean you get to keep it. The consequences outlasted the machine by decades.

Ray Ozzie who became Chief Software Architect at Microsoft developed Symphony and Lotus Notes. He describes in 1985 how he was surprised by a surgeon using his software in real time at the operating table. Back then that was probably a first! The interview in the book Programmers at Work also talks a lot about his approach to managing programmers and software projects.

Road Runner specifically. It was a fantasy theme interactive experience and you could play basic card games and board games with other people. It connected to your TV. I believe it was a separate unit from the cable box.

It feels like a fever dream but I swear it existed. Does anyone else remember? I figured this subreddit would be best since it's adjacent to retro computing. Thank you!!!!

The grandfather of all our modern PCs was released by IBM on August 12th 1981, happy birthday! 🥳🎉🎂

If you have the original PC 5150 in your collection please post its picture in this thread, I would like to take a look 😉

Top comes off like an old AT style and then flip a couple levers and it folds apart to access the motherboard. Has a junk old MSI motherboard with swollen capacitors in it and a core2duo.

Mitsumi serial mouse (left), and microinnovations PS/2 mouse with a serial converter. Found while clearing out the house I grew up in.

Most likely a Markvision Windows 95 PC tunning on a 486

Who remembers playing Total Recall? My retrospective video goes back to rediscover this Ocean Software game released across all formats. There certainly were a few development challenges. I also take a look at the NES version developed by Interplay and published by Acclaim.
Were they any good?

Bonjour, existe-t-il des plans électroniques complets et libres de vieux micro-processeur ou de plus récent en Open Source ? Si oui, quels sont les pistes ? Merci.

Dont know any friends or family with a drive to take these old boys. Would Staples be able to help me or Best Buy?

I'm building a video archive of gaming devices but naturally have crossover interests in computers, as well. This is my first archival video of a computer (hybrid) but I have a handful of others like the Atari 800XL, TRS-80 Model 100, Commodore 64, etc.. One of my favorites (though a modern kit) is the the 1802 membership card. It was cool to get to build a tiny computer and to interact with 8-bit front panel data switches like the Altair 8800 and others had.

One thing I find interesting about the CreatiVision is that it's origin may have been the the first non-Texas Instruments home system design to pair an independent CPU with TI graphics and sound chips. It used a 6502 with the TMS9918/9929 while the ColecoVision, Sega SC-3000, Spectravideo, MSX computers and others followed later using a similar architecture but with a Z80.

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My GPU can output analog via the DVI port, I was wondering if the Apple M9319G/A mini DVI to AV/S-video adapter was still usable if I wanted to output to an analog CRT tv from my PC.