Happy IBM PC Day

[Chris Savage]

[granz]

Interesting fact: the original PC was slated to come out with either MS-DOS (PC-DOS) or CP/M-86. History has shown that MS-DOS won, in the end.

By coincidence, just this morning, I transferred a copy of CPM.EXE (a CP/M-86 emulator to be run under MS-DOS) from my Aspire One (where I downloaded it from: http://www.cpm.z80.de/download/cpmemu.zip - be aware that your browser may whine about this being an HTTP, rather than an HTTPS download) on to my Zenith SupersPort (a portable PC clone - all right, an XT clone, but close.  ) Haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but it is there ready for me.  Actually, I plan on doing my RetroChallenge 2024 on converting my SupersPort entirely over to CPM-86.

Breadcrumb: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=60702

[Chris Savage]

Back in 1993 I didn't care about PCs / clones. At that point I had never owned one, nor did I have the desire to. I cut my teeth on the Apple IIe and the C= VIC-20. I started my own Commodore / Apple business in 1991. But in 1994 when CBM folded, I scrambled to learn the PC market and literally bought a pallet of old computer equipment from GE in Schenectady.

It was mostly IBM PS/2 (286) computers with IBM 8512 monitors, a few 9" monochrome POS (Point of Sale) monitors and even a couple of IBM 5151 monitors that were attached to 8088-based machines. Everything had 5-1/4" floppies and the two 8088 machines had 5MB, 5-1/4" full height hard drives. One had an RLL interface allowing 10MB. The drives were Seagate ST-506, IIRC.

Later I started purchasing computer hardware from a local computer shop called, DanJen Computers. I built, upgraded and repaired 386, 486 and finally Pentium 75 MHz computers while living in Schenectady. Later I moved back to my hometown of Watkins Glen and kind of restarted things.

[JKnightandKARR]

Never learned Commadore, much anyhow, basically you type eveeything in n some stuff can be stored on 5.25/tape, nothing on Apple. First for me was 286 Tandy, then 386 Packard Bell, then custom 486 I got from high school, then P1 eventually PIII, before more modern stuff

[Chris Savage]

It's that time again! Happy IBM PC Day!