PC turns 25 today

[RonPK]

Many articles at [news.google.com...] .

The PC certainly has come a long way since 1981. With 16 kB RAM and PC DOS version 1.0, the 5150 sold at $1,565. No monitor, no disk drive.

[ken_b]

Similar thread in the Adsense forum.

Happy Silver Jubilee IBM 5150 [webmasterworld.com]

[RonPK]

Of course, the Adsense forum, why didn't I think of that...

[rocknbil]

Really, where's your logic? Without organization we have . .. FOO! :-)

"No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer."

(Which may be a myth . . . )

"I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again."

[tbear]

I remember reading an article saying that IBM thought that computers for business use was a far fetched dream........LOL

[rocknbil]

"There's no reason the average consumer would ever need a computer in their home." (poorly paraphrased.) :-)

[Essex_boy]

There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again - This has something to do with 8 bit processors and the way they access RAM.

If my memory (!) serves me correctly MS DOS was designed to access 256K top wack, which was the figure given by a tutor way back in 1990 when I was an IT student.

He was explaining some obscure number base or binary fractions etc etc in a low level languages lecture, but cant be to sure on that.

[edited by: Essex_boy at 1:51 pm (utc) on Aug. 13, 2006]

[tbear]

The article I read was related to the LEO (Lyon's Electronic Office) computer and IBM's reaction to it's business use, way back in the 1950s :)

[zCat]

If my memory (!) serves me correctly MS DOS was designed to access 256K top wack, which was the figure given by a tutor way back in 1990 when I was an IT student.

If my memory serves me correctly 1024kb was the limit, something to do with the 8086 register architecture. The 640 KB limit came from the IBM firmware, which put video memory and other stuff at 64Ok upwards, the assumption by the original designers being that no-one would ever use so much memory...