Talk:IBM Personal Computer

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This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the IBM Personal Computer article.
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IBM Personal Computer was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: July 18, 2006
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  • Archive 1 - Talks mainly about edit concerns.

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[edit] Good Article nomination has failed

The Good article nomination for IBM Personal Computer has failed, for the following reason:

  • Trivia contravenes WP:NOT. I don't actually think the fact there is trivial, so it should be integrated into the rest of the article, and the trivia section then deleted.
  • I also think the bullet points at the end of the intro look really bad. You should probably create a section called 'terminology' to put this kind of thing in.
  • I don't see why 'IBM PC models is bullet pointed.
  • I don't think the character set needs to be included in an encyclopaedia article.
  • I don't think the tables under 'IBM PC and PS/2 models' actually tell the reader very much at all about IBM PCs. If you really feel they're necessary, I would recommend some text explaining them, and putting them in collapsible boxes, but I don't think the article would be worse off without them. Worldtraveller 15:03, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  • The bullets are changed for a list of page links of models only. Remaining text is reformatted as paragraphs.
  • I zapped the char set table and added a sentence referring to the code page instead.
  • The PS/2 table and PS/2 info was removed as the relevant info is on the PS/2 page.
  • The trivia section was removed and replaced with a section called Longevity. A note on the continued use of old IBM PCs is included, absorbing the example that was in the trivia.
  • The tables under the "IBM PC models" summarize some basic details and seem fine to me. Placed in collapsible boxes.
Michael Daly 21:44, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Flowery crap

"The 'solution' of Third Parties came as an answer to a maiden's prayer."
I don't know exactly what the wikipedia term for this sort of nonsense is (NPOV?), but it probably wants a bit less of it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.5.98.139 (talk)

This is characteristic of User:Futureobservatory's contributions to date. He puts a lot of personal speculation and analysis into the articles he edits. The sections he has added need to be reviewed by other editors for NPOV. Gazpacho 18:35, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Please do review my contributions. As should be obvious, they are abstracted from my trade books and are, as such, more populistic. I keep on trying, but I will be delighted if your editors also can knock them into more suitable shape. Futureobservatory 10:37, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Price

Does anyone know what the original price was? Other PC pages (such as ZX-81) give some indication. I would find it interesting. Google shows that this page did used to have a price, but I can't see any record of it in the history. Thank you.peterl 01:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)


This is a prime example of why entries in this site are routinely deemed unreliable - the only surprise being that one would have thought the entry on the IBM PC, the grand daddy of today's PC's, would be somewhat accurate. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.161.172.81 (talk • contribs) .

[edit] Irrelevant item

The current third paragraph (on Lenovo) is irrelevant here - this is about the PC and history, not IBM as such and certainly not about Lenovo or recent events. Even if it were appropriate, it's introduced in a completely dislocated way. It would be best to remove it but it should at the least be rewritten. 216.77.225.52 19:19, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

And redundancy: the trivia about the National Weather Service occurs both in Trivia and in the main body. 216.77.225.52 21:56, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Was IBM BIOS open or proprietary?

This is discussed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_20th_century_in_review

IBM decided on an open architecture so that other manufacturers could produce and sell peripheral components and compatible software. The ROM BIOS source code was published. IBM did not anticipate that its competitors would find ways to legally duplicate the entire system.

and discussed further at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC

IBM made all specifications for their computer open rather than proprietary, with the exception of their BIOS. As the only impediment to an open system with interchangeable suppliers was this BIOS, it was reverse-engineered by Compaq, and the IBM PC became the first fully open-specification computer system, leading to its current dominance in the marketplace. Riding on this wave of popularity, the operating system vendors for the PC (Microsoft) leveraged their position to become the most powerful software company in the world.


--Flsaisalie 22:50, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Answered at Talk:Bill Gates. Gazpacho 00:23, 17 December 2006 (UTC)


It was proprietary in the sense that IBM asserted intellectual property rights. My recollection is that the BIOS listing in the technical reference manual not only had a copyright notice, it had a conspicuous copyright notice and, I think, other warnings as well.
It was open in the sense of "not being hidden or secret," i.e. anyone could buy the technical reference manual.
Obviously, Compaq, Phoenix et. al. would not have had to perform complex and expensive "clean-room" cloning of the functionality of the BIOS if the BIOS had been "open" in the sense of being GPL-licensed or anything like that. Dpbsmith (talk) 03:12, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

The article specifically says "reverse-engineered", which is neither technically nor legally necessary if you can just go out and buy a ROM listing.

88.217.110.55 (talk) 23:51, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Now, think about this - even if every page of the listing didn't carry a copyright notice, unless IBM specifically disclaimed the rights, it would still be copyright infringment to duplicate the BIOS from a listing. Just because you can buy Stephen King's latest off the shelf doesn't give you permission to print your own copies. I recall reading that what was done is Team A went through the BIOS listing and identified every entry point and subroutine and what they did, wrote this out as a specification, then handed it to Team B who wrote code that did the same thing. Compaq didn't get sued, so IBM must have been happy that this was sufficient intellectual effort that their ROMs were not just being copied. --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:17, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cassette

Did it use a proprietary cassette drive or would any normal tape recorder work? How were tapes loaded? Were there special MS-DOS commands to deal with tape functions? Bastie 06:09, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The cassette port was only used in Cassette BASIC - the BASIC that loaded from ROM when the computer had no way of booting from floppy or hard disks. The versions of BASIC on the DOS disks (BASIC and BASICA) did not support the cassette. IBM did not offer an 'official' cassette deck, any third party one with the correct connector (common with computers of the time) could be used. Howard81 16:13, 26 June 2007 (GMT)
A late addition - I recall using the MOTOR() command in GWBASIC (or was it BASICA? 20+ years ago...) under a later version of MS DOS - booted from a Hard Card 10 Meg disk - so I think that some diskette-based versions of BASIC still supported the cassette port. I always thought of that as IBM's attention to backward compatibility - how else would you get casxssette programs onto a disk machine? --Wtshymanski (talk) 17:55, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
The PC BIOS contained some special routines for handling the cassette. Programmers called INT 15h, function 00h and 01h to turn the cassette motor on and off resepectively. INT 15h, function 02h was used to read data and 03h was used to write data. (Source: MS-DOS encyclopedia) Retron (talk) 13:18, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Objectionable renaming

Could we put the article back where it was? The suffix "original" is unnecessary, the original article title was perfectly un-ambiguous. --Wtshymanski 21:41, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] KB / KiB Edit War

This is from WP:MOSNUM

"The use of the new binary prefix standards in the Wikipedia is not required, but is recommended… " "If a contributor changes an article's usage from kilo- etc. to kibi- etc. where the units are in fact binary, that change should be accepted."

It appears that you have to be a contributor to the article to have any say in this choice. A "Drive By" editor can not make the decision. SWTPC6800 00:18, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

This is clearly a matter of momentous importance and worth fighting a major editwar over. Drutt 08:17, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
What a nice article. Pity about the kibibytes, though. --Wtshymanski 17:44, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IBM 5100

Wasn't affordable and thus not a Personal computer. Also it's hardware and the 5150 were not related and the 5150 was a totally new design from the 5100. Alatari (talk) 17:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

It was a personal computer in the sense that you didn't need to go through a professional staff of operators to use it - remember, 1975 was *very* different from 2008! "Affordable" is a relative term...in 1975 your department head might not have been able to wrangle more time on the company's mainframe, but could afford $20,000 or so to get your very own 5100 that didn't need to be run through the corporate data center. --Wtshymanski (talk) 17:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree. Historically, personal computer and personal computing has been in regards to a computer designed for single person or personal use and direct interaction, as opposed to a mainframe or mini and timesharing environments. Likewise as Wtshymanski said, such systems would not require a staff to operate, including submission of materials for programming (i.e. punch cards to a staff who then puts it in to a card reader). The definition of a personal computer has never revolved around afforadability - only usability. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 21:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Right. I get the impression many Wiki editors have never had to use a keypunch and stand in line to submit their decks. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:40, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Note on the Keyboard

Imho the article fails to take notice of the problems which arose by using the IBM standard keyboard in non-English countries which naturally used letters which were not available on the English-only standard keyboard (remapping of keys with TSRs).

I hope that someone can enhance the article with that. Unfortunately I'm not an expert in this field, so I won't dare.

Alrik Fassbauer (talk) 16:41, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Font

Was there any specific name given to the font? If so is it used today? Was it like times new roman or arial or sans serif? That's pretty important since I'm assuming there was only one font. 69.251.82.213 (talk) 18:39, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

The exact font depended on which video card was used; the monochrome display adapter had more pixels in each character cell than the Color Graphics Adapter. A Hercules card could display a lot of different fonts using software. I don't recall the font having a name. It was never used for printing, only for the screen display - dot-matrix impact printers of the era had their own wretched caricatures of fonts. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)