{"id":1200,"date":"2016-06-30T12:47:15","date_gmt":"2016-06-30T17:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1200"},"modified":"2016-06-30T18:59:30","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T23:59:30","slug":"retro-scan-ibm-pc-5150-guts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1200\/retro-scan-ibm-pc-5150-guts","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan ]<\/span> Disemboweled IBM PC 5150"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/ibm_pc_apart_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/ibm_pc_apart_small.jpg\" alt=\"IBM PC 5150 Apart Components Inside Advertisement Scan - 1982\" class=\"retroscan\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>Is somebody gonna clean this mess up?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Here we have a biggole two-page IBM PC 5150 advertisement spread from 1982 &#8212; published not long after the launch of IBM&#8217;s first PC in August 1981.<\/p>\n<p>It looks like IBM is trying to play up the bare-metal technical angle for Byte readers, who likely were building their own PCs from kit parts just a few years prior (and some still were doing it then).<\/p>\n<p>The result, quite frankly, is a huge mess (looks like my workbench).  And the advertisement didn&#8217;t come out too well in the magazine print run, which makes the image dark and muddy. It&#8217;s not my fault, I swear!<\/p>\n<p>I particularly like the phrase &#8220;the RS232C interface that gives you the world&#8221; in the advertising copy.  It implies using the serial port for networking &#8212; that is, in connecting to remote computers.  It&#8217;s funny because back then, that statement was a hyperbolic boast that was not meant literally.  Online services were limited to a teeny-tiny fraction of the world population and their capabilities were limited.  Today, networking does really give you the world.<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From Byte Magazine, February 1982, p.24-25 ]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic:<\/strong> Have you ever broken a computer while you were taking it apart?  Tell us about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is somebody gonna clean this mess up? Here we have a biggole two-page IBM PC 5150 advertisement spread from 1982 &#8212; published not long after the launch of IBM&#8217;s first PC in August 1981. It looks like IBM is trying to play up the bare-metal technical angle for Byte readers, who likely were building their [&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":[92,1382,1383,150,113,132,133,1145,60],"class_list":["post-1200","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-92","tag-1382","tag-1383","tag-advertisement","tag-byte","tag-ibm","tag-ibm-pc","tag-intel","tag-retro-scan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200","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=1200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}