Ibm 5100 at DVinfo.net

Noa Put · December 18th, 2016, 03:21 PM

I sometimes see topics about laptops and how some have performance issues handling 4K material, well, wait no more, get the new IBM 5100 "portable" computer, only 50 pound and you can plug it in anywhere, you also can have it for a reasonable cost, only US $19,975, it has a 1.9MHz processor with a whopping 16K ram memory installed.

For specs: IBM 5100 computer

Boyd Ostroff · December 18th, 2016, 04:38 PM

Man, I wanted one of those SO bad back then. But I ended up settling for one of the first Apple ][ computers in 1978 instead. :)

I got the 16K RAM option, which was about $1,300 - the basic model only had 4k but that was not enough to load floating point BASIC and you were limited to the integer BASIC that was burned into ROM. There was no floppy drive, you had to provide your own cassette tape deck. No monitor either, it had composite video output for connecting to a TV set.

Those were the days!

December 18th, 2016, 03:21 PM	#1
Noa Put Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Belgium Posts: 9,510	Ibm 5100 I sometimes see topics about laptops and how some have performance issues handling 4K material, well, wait no more, get the new IBM 5100 "portable" computer, only 50 pound and you can plug it in anywhere, you also can have it for a reasonable cost, only US $19,975, it has a 1.9MHz processor with a whopping 16K ram memory installed. IBM 5100 First Portable Computer commercial 1977 - YouTube For specs: IBM 5100 computer

December 18th, 2016, 04:38 PM	#2
Boyd Ostroff Wrangler Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Mays Landing, NJ Posts: 11,800	Re: Ibm 5100 Man, I wanted one of those SO bad back then. But I ended up settling for one of the first Apple ][ computers in 1978 instead. :) I got the 16K RAM option, which was about $1,300 - the basic model only had 4k but that was not enough to load floating point BASIC and you were limited to the integer BASIC that was burned into ROM. There was no floppy drive, you had to provide your own cassette tape deck. No monitor either, it had composite video output for connecting to a TV set. Those were the days!