Talk:IBM Personal Computer
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Design process
[edit]The article states that "The IBM 801 RISC processor was also considered, since it was considerably more powerful than the other options, but rejected due to the design constraint to use off-the-shelf parts". But according to IBM 801 "The resulting CPU was operational by the summer of 1980 and was implemented using Motorola MECL-10K discrete component technology". This leads to this conclusion: IBM didn't use the 801 for its first PC because it would have heavily delayed the project not because of not being an of-the-shelf part. In fact according to IBM RT PC IBM built a PC on the 801 technology but it took another 5 years. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Klabauterfisch (talk • contribs) 21:20, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- If they had used the 801 approach the size would have been much, much larger. It wouldn't have been fit for the microcomputer market. If they had integrated the processor using VLSI technology, they would have delayed the project. And it would have been much more expensive. So there's a size, time and cost issues to not select it.
- The truth being said, It wasn't very difficult to select the microprocessor as the experience with the previous project valuable to them. And they were only twelve people, so they had to act with already made things. In fact this is what lead to the DMA DRAM refresh circuit, availability.
- Buran Biggest Fan (talk) 12:41, 21 November 2025 (UTC)
Mion's plan is anachronistic
[edit]The History section says, In the summer of 1979...Mion recommended Digital Research’s CP/M and a new O/S called MS-DOS from a little-known company named Microsoft. But the DOS itself, Seattle Computer Products 86-DOS, was not released until 1980, and Microsoft didn't buy it and rename it MS-DOS until 1981. Cjs (talk) 15:02, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Code compatibility
[edit]How is the 8080 source code compatible with x86 source code?
While many mnemonics are there, many others like the instruction to load data into the registers with immediate values are not the same!
MVI A,80h Buran Biggest Fan (talk) 10:25, 21 November 2025 (UTC)
Keyboard similarity between the PC and the Datamaster
[edit]The keyboard design of the original IBM PC does not resemble the one from the Datamaster other than the usage of a 8048 as main element. One of the reasons is that they employed an 8-bit matrix in the Datamaster while using a 4-bit one in the 5150. However, even if it seems strange, they recovered the architecture with a serial interface and a different matrix with the F/XT type 2.
Buran Biggest Fan (talk) 10:31, 21 November 2025 (UTC)
IBM PC and Microsoft BASIC
[edit]The main reason of the selection of the Microsoft BASIC was not due to people being more used to Microsoft BASIC (which already had lots of dialects). It has more to do with timings than anything else because the BASIC employed in its precursor, the Datamaster, delayed the project more than a year and they did not want to commit the same mistake by having to port it again.