more on Twenty five years of the IBM PC

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Pickens <jpickens () sprynet com>
Date: August 11, 2006 5:45:55 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: Re: [IP] Twenty five years of the IBM PC
Reply-To: John Pickens <jpickens () sprynet com>

At Visicorp, as we moved away from the cassette tape loaded software  
model,  two of the most divisive internal technical battles around  
minimum resource application assumptions in the evolving IBM PC was

1.  assumption of 16K vs 64K RAM
2.  assumpion of single vs double sided floppy disk

And then a few years later I recall an industry pundit arguing that  
personal storage needs were going to grow exponentially, and that the  
newly emergent 5MB hard disk would have to quickly grow to 50MB  
(thought to be sufficient).

Outrageous assumptions.

J

-----Original Message-----
> From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Sent: Aug 11, 2006 11:04 AM
> To: ip () v2 listbox com
> Subject: [IP] Twenty five years of the IBM PC
>
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Claudio Gutierrez <claudio.gutierrez.m () gmail com>
> Date: August 11, 2006 10:04:20 AM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Twenty five years of the IBM PC
>
> Computer firm IBM made technological history on 12 August 1981 with
> the announcement of a personal computer - the IBM 5150.
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4780963.stm
>
> Costing $1,565, the 5150 had just 16K of memory - scarcely more than a
> couple of modest e-mails worth.
>
> The machine was not the first attempt to popularise computing but it
> soon came to define the global standard.
>
> It altered the way business was done forever and sparked a revolution
> in home computing.
>
> "It's hard to imagine what people used to do with computers in those
> days because by modern standards they really couldn't do anything,"
> said Tom Standage, the Economist magazine's business editor told the
> World Service's Analysis programme.
>
> "But there were still things you could do with a computer that you
> couldn't do without it like spreadsheets and word processing."
>
> <snip>
>
>
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