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1981: The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) launches its first personal computer, which uses the Microsoft operating system MS-DOS.

The company was incorporated in 1911 as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in a merger of three smaller companies. After further acquisitions, it absorbed the International Business Machines Corporation in 1924 and assumed that company’s name. Thomas Watson arrived that same year and began to build the floundering company into an industrial giant. IBM soon became the country’s largest manufacturer of time clocks and punch-card tabulators. It also developed and marketed the first electric typewriter.

IBM entered the market for digital computers in the early 1950s, after the introduction of the UNIVAC computer by rival Remington Rand in 1951. The development of IBM’s computer technology was largely funded by contracts with the U.S. government’s Atomic Energy Commission, and close parallels existed between products made for government use and those introduced by IBM into the public marketplace. In the late 1950s IBM distinguished itself with two innovations: the concept of a family of computers (its 360 family) in which the same software could be run across the entire family; and a corporate policy dictating that no customer would be allowed to fail in implementing an IBM system. This policy spawned enormous loyalty to “Big Blue,� as IBM came to be known.

In 1981 IBM introduced its first personal computer, the IBM PC, which was rapidly adopted in businesses and homes. The computer was based on the 8088 microprocessor made by Intel Corporation and the MS-DOS operating system made by Microsoft Corporation. The PC’s enormous success led to other models, including the XT and AT lines. Seeking to capture a share of the personal computer market, other companies developed clones of the PC, known as IBM-compatibles, that could run the same software as the IBM PC. By the mid-1980s these clone computers far outsold IBM personal computers.

In the mid-1980s IBM collaborated with Microsoft to develop an operating system called OS/2 to replace the aging MS-DOS. OS/2 ran older applications written for MS-DOS and newer, OS/2-specific applications that could run concurrently with each other in a process called multitasking. IBM and Microsoft released the first version of OS/2 in 1987. In 1991 Microsoft and IBM ended their collaboration on OS/2. IBM released several new versions of the operating system throughout the 1990s, while Microsoft developed its Windows operating systems.

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"...and here we are today!" and now you know the rest of the story...(Paul Harvey comment)...lol

I think some of us remember most of that and while I didn't have an 8088, I did have the TRS80 from Radio Shack and jumped into a FAST 6mhz 286 with 1mb of memory!...lol

ya fergot somethin, stepchile, my boy. August 13 is also.... Alder Tag!

Whoot!

And I do remember them thar old computers what with the teeny orange screen, the huge plastic floppies, and wow, when color monitors came out, it was da bomb. I was so thrilled. *snickers*

But now I's giv'n away me age....heheheh

My first was a blazing fast 25 MHz Tandy

- Shadow_Bshwackr

I did have the TRS80 from Radio Shack

My first bought computer was a TRS80 Model 1 with 16K of memory, I bought the expansion interface which took it up to 48K and added a 5.25 floppy drive instead of the tape recorder...

Still have it on top of the wardrobe.

Along with my BBC's and Atari's. ZX81 somewhere as well.

Mine was from "Opus Computers" (the office p.c. branch of 'Tiny UK').
Although they were completely useless, I am endebted to them. For, without their inept technical support staff, I might never have been forced into finding out what makes computers tick for myself so I could fix it, and eventually build my own.

Anyway, it was a flat-case desktop Pentium 90MHz with 64Mb IDE RAM, integrated everything, running Windows 95 (PATOOEY!).
I was so happy the day I upgraded it to a Pentium 133, with another 64Mb RAM and popped a Ti-4600 with 128Mb onboard RAM into it.

CFS1 sure rocked that day. lololol