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Did anyone here have IBM personal computer in the 80s and 90s?

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Bubble99

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I’m wondering if anyone here had IBM computer back in the 80s and 90s? The IBM personal computer. I hear IBM computer where really costly but where made so well that they last 20 to 30 years. Unlike computers at time from other companies lasting only two or three years.

Also what happen to IBM making PowerPC? The competitor to Intel and AMD.
 
Long story short, Wintel beat IBM so eventually IBM said WE QUIT, and back to its core of selling mainframes and business services.

I had a fondness for the IBM PS/2, you could disassemble the whole PC without using any tools, not even a screwdriver was required, everything was modular and used zero cables.

No PC of any kind last 20-30 years. The constant software updates take care of that, the new software almost always call for a faster engine CPU. Some vendors tried swappable CPU but it turns out the BUS, the highway between the CPU and the peripherals is important as well to the performance of the whole PC.
 
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IBM PCs were definitely expensive, but a lot of that price went into build quality, standardization, and business support. Many clones were cheaper, but IBM machines had a reputation for being reliable workhorses.
 
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jerryjohnson said:
IBM PCs were definitely expensive, but a lot of that price went into build quality, standardization, and business support. Many clones were cheaper, but IBM machines had a reputation for being reliable workhorses.
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Yea I wonder if some of those IBM computers back in the 80s and 90s are still working today.
 
Mrbobb said:
No PC of any kind last 20-30 years. The constant software updates take care of that, the new software almost always call for a faster engine CPU. Some vendors tried swappable CPU but it turns out the BUS, the highway between the CPU and the peripherals is important as well to the performance of the whole PC.
Click to expand...

Yeah but if you're OK with using the original software, a PC will last more than 20-30 years. It's a machine. As long as you're willing to repair anything that goes wrong with it, it can theoretically continue to function until the heat death of the universe. Software that came with an 80s PC -- a word processor for example -- will work just as well in 2026 as it did then.

The main thing that wears out in old electronics are the capacitors, which tend to leak over time. So you need to replace the capacitors with newer ones / tantalum ones. Any internal clock battery also needs to be replaced as those can leak and damage nearby circuits. And of course spinning hard disks wear out, requiring replacement with another spinner or solid-state equivalent.

My parents had an IBM PS/2 with a 16mhz 386sx and 4 or 6 megabytes of RAM (can't recall, was one of those.) I think it had a 80 megabyte hard disk, which seemed absolutely massive to me at the time. Before I had only use Apple II computers with 5.25" floppy disks which could store 140 kilobytes of data per side.

I mostly ran MS-DOS on this PC, but also tried Windows 3.1 and OS/2. I didn't care for either GUI as they were quite primitive even then and OS/2 in particular was slow. So DOS it was.

Replacing caps on an old Mac:
 
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Bubble99 said:
if anyone here had IBM computer back in the 80s and 90s?
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Yep, I bought and used the IBM PC/XT 5160 running ms dos 2.11

I loved that thing, now looking back, I wished I kept it, but I'm not one for keeping stuff that I don't use, as it only collect dust\

Bubble99 said:
Also what happen to IBM making PowerPC? The competitor to Intel and AMD.
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the PPC was co-developed by IBM and Motorola with them promising a 3ghz G5 processor, but the PPC consortium never was able to produce one. The Partnership was called AIM (Apple/IBM/Motorola).

Moto was largely the producer of the G3 and G4, IBM was the sole developer of G5 and it was not a great chip and never achieved the 3ghz speed that was promised. With Motorola largely moving in another direction, Apple was increasingly relying on IBM for is CPUs and IBM was not strictly in the business of creating consumer grade CPUs for its competitor. Also IBM struggled at producing the G5 in sufficient volumes for Apple and I believe if memory serves me they never were able to produce a mobile variant of the G5 to fit in a laptop, thus impacting Apple's marketshare.
 
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I had use of a genuine IBM laptop. It was built like the proverbial tank. Heavy but indestructible.
 
maflynn said:
Moto was largely the producer of the G3 and G4, IBM was the sole developer of G5 and it was not a great chip and never achieved the 3ghz speed that was promised. With Motorola largely moving in another direction, Apple was increasingly relying on IBM for is CPUs and IBM was not strictly in the business of creating consumer grade CPUs for its competitor. Also IBM struggled at producing the G5 in sufficient volumes for Apple and I believe if memory serves me they never were able to produce a mobile variant of the G5 to fit in a laptop, thus impacting Apple's marketshare.
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The G3 was also produced by IBM, and I'm quite sure the G3 in Macs and Nintendo consoles was from IBM. At least the one in my iBook G3 was. The G4 was Motorola. IBM didn't want AltiVec but did add it when it came to the G5. IBM was not very interested in spending a lot of money developing the mobile G5 that Apple needed but IBM had no use for.
 
Had one I ran as a packet station on in the mid 90's. Pretty sure one could drive over the computer and keyboard with a truck and not hurt it. I can remember it was pretty loud between the drives and fan which today would render it completely un acceptable.
 
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Bubble99 said:
...made so well that they last 20 to 30 years. Unlike computers at time from other companies lasting only two or three years.
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It depends what you mean by "last".

True, IBM PCs were built like tanks, and the IBM Model M keyboard is a legend... but most 80s/90s computers ended up on the dump after a few years because the technology was obsolete and no longer capable of running modern software. IBM PCs were not, in any way immune to that - you're not going to be running Windows 95 on your 1985, 80286 IBM PC AT unless you've replaced everything but the case and keyboard.

You'll find plenty of youtubes of Apple IIs, Amiga 1000s, BBC Micros. Mac Classics etc. that have kept running well onto the 21st century by enthusiasts.

...the early 8086 IBM PC was actually pathetic in terms of computing power, using warmed-over 70s tech, a pseudo-16-bit processor that Intel created as a stopgap when their proper 32-bit CPU project failed running a minimal CP/M clone OS... and would have been a forgotten footnote in history if any other company had released it (actually, several companies did release better x86 machines which are indeed forgotten footnotes).
 
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In the early 90s, IBM computers were extremely expensive—even the already obsolete XT models.
By 1994, however, I was able to easily rent an i386DX 25MHz machine with 16 MB of RAM and a massive 250 MB hard drive; while purchasing one was still costly at the time, by 1998 its value had plummeted so drastically that it was simply given away.
That very same year—1998—buying a Pentium MMX was no longer expensive. Yet, original IBM machines specifically still cost roughly twice as much as standard PCs.
 
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IBM PS/1 Consultant. Intel 486SX/25 with 2MB RAM (I later added 4 MB for a whopping $350!). The only thing it had standard was the 2400 baud modem, so playing LORD on it up until 2 am via BBS was a lesson in patience.
 
We were issued Thinkpad 600 notebooks for a project. They didn't have enough RAM so you had to let the system catch up to what you were doing as it swapped into virtual memory constantly. The keyboards were sublime. Nothing on any other notebook came close. Not even the hallowed Powerbook 1400. I have a collection of IBM Thinkpads now and they were built like tanks but, sadly, more often than not had rubberised lids which became tacky over time.
 
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I bought a Zenith Z-158 clone in Sep 1985: Intel 8088, 640kb memory, 20MB hard drive (self-installed), DOS 3.11. The thing was a tank. I used it heavily for five years, then my mother used it for another ten years pretty much as an over-spec'd electric typewriter. It was still running fine when I recycled it around 2001 or so. Nice machine.
 
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Bubble99 said:
I’m wondering if anyone here had IBM computer back in the 80s and 90s? The IBM personal computer. I hear IBM computer where really costly but where made so well that they last 20 to 30 years. Unlike computers at time from other companies lasting only two or three years.

Also what happen to IBM making PowerPC? The competitor to Intel and AMD.
Click to expand...
I had an Atari 130XE with staggering 128KB of RAM in early 1990s. I could only dream about having an IBM PC or its clone.

Oh by the way - what happened with IBM PCs? It was easy to clone a genuine IBM PC architecture and sell it cheaper.
 
I had one of these:
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Even the two 5 1/4" floppy drives, including the keyboard and monitor. I don't know if it was really any tougher than any other computer -- they certainly outdated quickly like everything else. I remember how loud the keys were when you typed with them. I was just a kid and remember how magical it all seemed.

And now I see one on eBay for $1200! Guess I should have saved it.

(I have saved my NeXT Workstation though!)
 
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I had an ibm p90 from the late 1990s running OpenBSD as a firewall until last year.

Edit: it ran like this without a problem for probably 23 years or so.
 
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foobarbaz said:
We had an IBM Aptiva in the late 90s. By then there was nothing special or premium about IBM.
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Same here. We got a cheap Aptiva thanks to having an acquaintance at IBM, but it was never a particularly good machine and from memory the sound card failed in less than a year.
 
Bubble99 said:
Also what happen to IBM making PowerPC? The competitor to Intel and AMD.
Click to expand...

There were high hopes for Windows running on PowerPC but MS never went through with it. (The modern equivalent is MS certifying ARM Windows to run on Apple Silicon via Parallels).

My first Mac, the Power Mac 7200/75, had an IBM-made PowerPC processor. So far I've had IBM, Motorola and Intel chips in my Macs and am looking forward to my first Apple Silicon in the next couple of years.

Side note: When IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo and Apple moved to Intel, Apple was ironically making "IBM compatibles" while IBM wasn't!
 
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