Tru64 and the DECSYSTEM 20 1076

wrote, in part:

In the year 1981, when IBM introduced the IBM Personal Computer to the world, it was advertised as a personal computer. It was even called one.

It had a port on the back to attach a *tape cbuttette player* to the computer for data storage, for those who couldn't afford floppies.

It had BASIC in ROM, written by Microsoft.

And the keyboard had *ten* function keys. Not twelve. (Although their grouping did resemble that of *another* group of keys on contemporary IBM terminals.)

IBM certainly did, over time, offer various options for the IBM PC, among which 3270 terminal emulation was found. But if it was an outgrowth of any previous IBM product, it would be the IBM 5100, whose numbering was continued with the IBM PC.

Thus, I can't really agree with the idea that the IBM PC was a product primarily intended as an inexpensive intelligent terminal that somehow got taken up by more people than IBM expected, and turned into a personal computer by accident. This was *specifically intended* as a replacement, with a bigger growth path, for all those Z-80 CP-M boxes out there in use by small business - and the fact that well-heeled parents could consider having their kids hook it up to a TV instead of a C-64 or an Apple (the 6502 kind, the Mac being three years in the future, and never mind the Lisa) was the outcome of a fuzzy marketing strategy that aimed at taking over the *whole* PC marketplace.

It wasn't mainly a terminal replacement.

It wasn't primarily a home computer for games and storing recipes - although it was made so that it *could* be used for that.

It was a small business computer. Right from the get-go. Word processing. Spreadsheets. Database programs. Accounting packages.

John Savard