{"id":1133,"date":"2015-06-29T15:31:15","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T20:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1133"},"modified":"2015-06-30T14:06:29","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T19:06:29","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-ibms-bizarro-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1133\/retro-scan-of-the-week-ibms-bizarro-pc","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> IBM&#8217;s Bizarro Alt-Reality PC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/ibm_instruments_computer_system_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/ibm_instruments_computer_system_small.jpg\" alt=\"IBM Instruments Computer System advertisement - 1983\" class=\"retroscan\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>The IBM Instruments Computer System<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>What a strange machine.  The IBM Instruments Comptuer System was a completely modular 68000-based PC with its own custom OS (CSOS, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/IBM_System_9000\" target=\"_blank\">according to Wikipedia<\/a>, which stood for &#8220;Computer System Operating System&#8221; &#8212; ???).  It also utilized Motorola&#8217;s rarely-seen Versabus bus architecture.  The ICS was aimed at scientific and engineering use, and it launched in 1982 &#8212; the year following the launch of the IBM PC 5150.<\/p>\n<p>Has anyone used or seen one of these?  This is an oddity of oddities.  Thank goodness the IBM PC didn&#8217;t end up like this.<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From BYTE Magazine, February 1983, p.116-117]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> What was the first IBM brand computer you ever owned (even when collecting)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The IBM Instruments Computer System What a strange machine. The IBM Instruments Comptuer System was a completely modular 68000-based PC with its own custom OS (CSOS, according to Wikipedia, which stood for &#8220;Computer System Operating System&#8221; &#8212; ???). It also utilized Motorola&#8217;s rarely-seen Versabus bus architecture. The ICS was aimed at scientific and engineering use, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,27,26,10],"tags":[139,150,113,132,1124,1126,60,1127,1125],"class_list":["post-1133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-computers","tag-139","tag-advertisement","tag-byte","tag-ibm","tag-instruments-computer-system","tag-modular","tag-retro-scan","tag-scientific","tag-system-9000"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}