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76-510: Whereas IBM's PC (and almost all PC compatibles) had a power supply in a corner of the main case, the PC1512's power supply was integrated with that of its monitor . The monitor had sufficient venting to cool itself by convection , instead of needing a fan. The PC1512 was therefore quieter than other PCs. Rumours circulated that an Amstrad PC would overheat, and while existing owners would note that this did not happen, new buyers were discouraged. As

152-657: A 'real mode'). The PC1512 significantly helped open up the European PC market to consumers as well as businesses, and Amstrad's advertising of the PC1512 was aimed at homes rather than offices. The 1512's influence was such that the UK PC magazine PC Plus originally targeted itself at the "Amstrad PC 1512 and compatibles", since home ownership of other PCs at the time was rare. The PC1512 shipped with 512 KB of RAM ; it could be upgraded to 640 KB of RAM with 16 pieces of 4164-120 Dynamic RAM chips (64KBx1 per chip) and setting

228-465: A computer through retail channels rather than directly to customers. Because IBM did not have retail experience, they partnered with the retail chains ComputerLand and Sears , who provided important knowledge of the marketplace and became the main outlets for the PC. More than 190 ComputerLand stores already existed, while Sears was in the process of creating a handful of in-store computer centers for sale of

304-442: A dedicated power supply and included a hard drive. Although official hard drive support did not exist, the third party market did provide early hard drives that connected to the floppy disk controller , but required a patched version of PC DOS to support the larger disk sizes. The only option for human interface provided in the base PC was the built-in keyboard port, meant to connect to the included Model F keyboard. The Model F

380-573: A hard drive, the motherboard did not support BIOS expansion ROMs which was needed to support a hard drive controller, and both PC DOS and the BIOS had no support for hard disks. After the XT was released, IBM altered the design of the 5150 to add most of these capabilities, except for the upgraded power supply. At this point adding a hard drive was possible, but required the purchase of the IBM 5161 Expansion Unit, which contained

456-498: A jumper. Video output was compatible with the CGA standard, with an extension allowing all 16 colours to be used in the 640×200 graphics mode. The CPU of both the PC1512 and the later PC1640 was an 8 MHz Intel 8086 , which was sufficient for playing The Secret of Monkey Island , Maniac Mansion and Prince of Persia . The power supply was located in the monitor, which made upgrading difficult. The input devices supplied with

532-564: A library of common functions that all software can use for many purposes, such as video output, keyboard input, disk access, interrupt handling, testing memory, and other functions. IBM shipped three versions of the BIOS throughout the PC's lifespan. While most home computers had built-in video output hardware, IBM took the unusual approach of offering two different graphics options, the MDA and CGA cards. The former provided high-resolution monochrome text, but could not display anything except text, while

608-401: A maximum of 64 KB onboard, and the more common 64 KB revision to a maximum of 256 KB on the motherboard. RAM cards could upgrade either variant further, for a total of 640 KB conventional memory , and possibly several megabytes of expanded memory beyond that, though on PC/XT-class machines, the latter was a very expensive third-party hardware option only available later in

684-635: A mouse.) Connectivity to other computers and peripherals was initially provided through serial and parallel ports. IBM provided a serial card based on an 8250 UART . The BIOS supports up to two serial ports. IBM provided two different options for connecting Centronics-compatible parallel printers. One was the IBM Printer Adapter, and the other was integrated into the MDA as the IBM Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter. The expansion capability of

760-460: A personal computer, possibly a miniaturized version of the IBM System/370 , and Matsushita acknowledged publicly that it had discussed with IBM the possibility of manufacturing a personal computer in partnership, although this project was abandoned. The public responded to these rumors with skepticism, owing to IBM's tendency towards slow-moving, bureaucratic business practices tailored towards

836-494: A policy of strict secrecy, with all other IBM divisions kept in the dark about the project. Several CPUs were considered, including the Texas Instruments TMS9900 , Motorola 68000 and Intel 8088 . The 68000 was considered the best choice, but was not production-ready like the others. The IBM 801 RISC processor was also considered, since it was considerably more powerful than the other options, but rejected due to

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912-657: A rapidly changing market. The idea of acquiring Atari was considered but rejected in favor of a proposal by Lowe that by forming an independent internal working group and abandoning all traditional IBM methods, a design could be delivered within a year and a prototype within 30 days. The prototype worked poorly but was presented with a detailed business plan which proposed that the new computer have an open architecture , use non-proprietary components and software, and be sold through retail stores, all contrary to IBM practice. It also estimated sales of 220,000 computers over three years, more than IBM's entire installed base . This swayed

988-420: A result, later models had a cooling fan integrated into the main case. Another example of rumour was the suggestion that there were issues with the 'unshielded' power supply in the monitor affecting an optional hard drive that could be installed at the back of the base unit and further that this would be solved by taping tin foil or aluminum foil over the back of the base unit or the bottom of the monitor to shield

1064-581: A separate monochrome monitor for text menus. Third parties went on to provide an enormous variety of aftermarket graphics adapters, such as the Hercules Graphics Card . The software and hardware of the PC, at release, was designed around a single 8-bit adaptation of the ASCII character set, now known as code page 437 . The two bays in the front of the machine could be populated with one or two 5.25″ floppy disk drives, storing 160 KB per disk side for

1140-516: A substantial influence on the personal computer market ; the specifications of the IBM PC became one of the most popular computer design standards in the world. The only significant competition it faced from a non-compatible platform throughout the 1980s was from Apple 's Macintosh product line, as well as consumer-grade platforms created by companies like Commodore and Atari . Most present-day personal computers share architectural features in common with

1216-648: A suite of productivity applications. Each had a name prefixed by "Geo": GeoWrite, GeoDraw; GeoManager; GeoPlanner; GeoDex, and GeoComm. It was also bundled with many PCs at the time, but like other GUI environments for the PC platform, such as Graphics Environment Manager (GEM), it ultimately proved less successful in the marketplace than Windows. Former CEO of GeoWorks claims that GEOS faded away "because Microsoft threatened to withdraw supply of MS-DOS to hardware manufacturers who bundled Geoworks with their machines". In December 1992, NEC and Sony bundled an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) version of GeoWorks named

1292-455: A total of 320 KB of storage on one disk. The floppy drives require a controller card inserted in an expansion slot, and connect with a single ribbon cable with two edge connectors. The IBM floppy controller card provides an external 37-pin D-sub connector for attachment of an external disk drive, although IBM did not offer one for purchase until 1986. As was common for home computers of the era,

1368-488: A webbrowser named Skipper or Skipper 2000, respectively. After "NewDeal Inc." went out of business, Breadbox purchased the rights in the software from GeoWorks in 2001. Their newest PC/GEOS, 4.x, is now a full productivity and internet suite, including web browser (named WebMagick) as well as email. Other essential programs such as word processing, spreadsheet, flat file database and graphics applications are integrated into this package. On 14 November 2015, Frank S. Fischer,

1444-403: A year. By 1984, IBM's revenue from the PC market was $ 4 billion, more than twice that of Apple. A 1983 study of corporate customers found that two thirds of large customers standardizing on one computer chose the PC, while only 9% chose Apple. A 1985 Fortune survey found that 56% of American companies with personal computers used PCs while 16% used Apple. Almost as soon as the PC reached

1520-487: Is a computer operating environment , graphical user interface (GUI), and suite of application software . Originally released as PC/GEOS , it runs on MS-DOS -based, IBM PC compatible computers. Versions for some handheld platforms were also released and licensed to some companies. PC/GEOS was first created by Berkeley Softworks , which later became GeoWorks Corporation. Version 4.0 was developed in 2001 by Breadbox Computer Company, limited liability company (LLC), and

1596-411: Is housed in a wide, short steel chassis intended to support the weight of a CRT monitor. The front panel is made of plastic, with an opening where one or two disk drives can be installed. The back panel houses a power inlet and switch, a keyboard connector, a cassette connector and a series of tall vertical slots with blank metal panels which can be removed in order to install expansion cards. Internally,

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1672-467: The HP OmniGo 100 . It featured Graffiti handwriting recognition. The OmniGo is a flip-around clamshell handheld computer powered by a Vadem VG230 integrated PC-on-a-chip. The VG230 chip includes an Intel 80186 -instruction set compatible NEC V30 core. It was soon followed by the HP OmniGo 120 , which added a high-contrast screen. Brother LW-screen typewriters use PEN/GEOS and are the only version of

1748-615: The IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard . Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team of engineers and designers at International Business Machines (IBM), directed by William C. Lowe and Philip Don Estridge in Boca Raton, Florida . Powered by an x86 -architecture Intel 8088 processor, the machine was based on open architecture and third-party peripherals. Over time, expansion cards and software technology increased to support it. The PC had

1824-615: The IBM System/23 Datamaster . The 62-pin expansion bus slots were also designed to be similar to the Datamaster slots, and its keyboard design and layout became the Model F keyboard shipped with the PC, but otherwise the PC design differed in many ways. The 8088 motherboard was designed in 40 days, with a working prototype created in four months, demonstrated in January 1981. The design

1900-439: The object-oriented design. Under DR DOS 6.0 , if TASKMAX was loaded before PC/GEOS, PC/GEOS registered as graphical menu system for TASKMAX. This still worked under the pre-emptive multitasker ( EMM386 /MULTI + TASKMGR) provided by Novell DOS 7 , OpenDOS 7.01 and DR-DOS 7.02 (and higher), allowing for multiple GEOS and DOS applications to run concurrently. After the release of Ensemble 2.01, GeoWorks ended support for

1976-500: The 5100 had a price tag as high as $ 20,000. Their entry into the home computer market needed to be competitively priced. In 1980, IBM president John Opel, recognizing the value of entering this growing market, assigned William C. Lowe and Philip Don Estridge as heads of the new Entry Level Systems unit in Boca Raton, Florida. Market research found that computer dealers were very interested in selling an IBM product, but they insisted

2052-477: The CD Manager with their respective CD-ROM players that sold as retail box add-on peripherals for consumers. The NEC Bundle retailed for around $ 500.00 with a 1x external CD-ROM , Small Computer System Interface ( SCSI ) interface controller, Labtec CD-150 amplified stereo speakers and 10 software titles. A scaled-down version of GeoWorks was used by America Online for their MS-DOS-based AOL client software from

2128-517: The CEO and owner of Breadbox Ensemble LLC, died of a heart attack, some while after announcing plans to bring GEOS to Android. PEN/GEOS 1.0 was the new name for PC/GEOS 2.0 when GeoWorks released it on 9 April 1992. PEN/GEOS 1.0 was a pioneering personal digital assistant (PDA) technology. GEOS was also used in the low-end GeoBook laptop from Brother Industries and in several Nokia Communicator models (GEOS 3.0 in models 9000, 9110 ). PEN/GEOS 2.0

2204-527: The CPU's I/O lines. IBM referred to these as "I/O slots", but after the expansion of the PC clone industry they became retroactively known as the ISA bus . At the back of the machine is a metal panel, integrated into the steel chassis of the system unit, with a series of vertical slots lined up with each card slot. Geoworks Ensemble GEOS (later renamed GeoWorks Ensemble , NewDeal Office , and Breadbox Ensemble )

2280-479: The Corporate Management Committee, which converted the group into a business unit named "Project Chess", and provided the necessary funding and authority to do whatever was needed to develop the computer in the given timeframe. The team received permission to expand to 150 people by the end of 1980, and in one day more than 500 IBM employees called in asking to join. The design process was kept under

2356-515: The ECD model could display all EGA modes. The PC1640 also allowed replacing the internal graphics adapter with a 8-bit ISA VGA graphics expansion board, which made it more versatile than the PC1512. Both the PC1512 and the PC1640 could be upgraded with a NEC V30 CPU, that increased and added 80186 instruction set compatibility, and by adding an Intel 8087 mathematical coprocessor (FPU). Upgraded with

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2432-497: The FPU, the PC1512 and PC1640 did outperform later PC architectures (i.e. 80286 w/o FPU) in numerical operations, which was highly useful for CAD and numerical calculations. Lotus 1-2-3 and Matlab supported the 8087. A performance benchmarks as conducted with Checkit compares the different models and configurations of the PC1512 and PC1640, with that of a fast 80286. Amstrad also attempted to expand its market share by selling computers in

2508-502: The IBM 5150's lifecycle and only usable with dedicated software support (i.e. only accessible via a RAM window in the Upper Memory Area ); this was relatively rarely equipped and utilized on the original IBM PC, much less fully so, thus the machine's maximum RAM configuration as commonly understood was 640 KB. The BIOS is the firmware of the IBM PC, occupying one 8 KB chip on the motherboard. It provides bootstrap code and

2584-435: The IBM PC offered a port for connecting a cassette data recorder . Unlike the typical home computer however, this was never a major avenue for software distribution, probably because very few PCs were sold without floppy drives. The port was removed on the very next PC model, the XT. At release, IBM did not offer any hard disk drive option and adding one was difficult - the PC's stock power supply had inadequate power to run

2660-399: The IBM PC was very significant to its success in the market. Some publications highlighted IBM's uncharacteristic decision to publish complete, thorough specifications of the system bus and memory map immediately on release, with the intention of fostering a market of compatible third-party hardware and software. The motherboard includes five 62-pin card edge connectors which are connected to

2736-462: The PC, covering such features as the bytecoding for color monitors, DMA access operation, and the keyboard interface. They were never enforced. Many of the designers were computer hobbyists who owned their own computers, including many Apple II owners, which influenced the decisions to design the computer with an open architecture and publish technical information so others could create compatible software and expansion slot peripherals. During

2812-760: The United States. In the US the PC1640 was marketed as the PC6400 and included a 20 MB hard drive. The PC1512, and also its successor the PC1640, sold very well. Part of it was explained because the basic model (one floppy drive, no hard disk) launched for £399, which made it one of the first cheap PCs in Europe. This price, which initially increased to £450, was restored in September 1987 amidst adjustments in Amstrad's PC range. Second, its design

2888-612: The Z-PDA. Palm Organizer included the PalmSchedule date book, PalmAddress address book, PalmNotes notebook, a dictionary, calculator, clock, forms calculator, 26 language translation dictionary, on-line help, holiday, and travel information. The device was also sold under license as the AST GRiDPad 2390 and as the Casio Z-7000 which was the best selling version. In the US, Casio sold it under

2964-510: The ability to read CP/M disks. Only one of these operating systems could be used at a time. They also licensed the GEM windowing system , which supported the customized CGA hardware of the 1512. In 1987 the PC1512 was followed by the PC1640, which had 640 KB of RAM and an EGA -compatible graphics chipset, acquired from Paradise Systems , integrated into the main board of the machine, although only

3040-517: The chassis is dominated by a motherboard which houses the CPU, built-in RAM, expansion RAM sockets, and slots for expansion cards. The IBM PC was highly expandable and upgradeable, but the base factory configuration included: The PC is built around a single large circuit board called a motherboard which carries the processor, built-in RAM, expansion slots, keyboard and cassette ports, and the various peripheral integrated circuits that connected and controlled

3116-467: The company use a design based on standard parts, not IBM-designed ones so that stores could perform their own repairs rather than requiring customers to send machines back to IBM for service. Another source cites time pressure as the reason for the decision to use third-party components. Atari proposed to IBM in 1980 that it act as original equipment manufacturer for an IBM microcomputer, a potential solution to IBM's known inability to move quickly to meet

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3192-614: The components of the machine. The peripheral chips included an Intel 8259 PIC , an Intel 8237 DMA controller, and an Intel 8253 PIT . The PIT provides 18.2 Hz clock "ticks" and dynamic memory refresh timing. The CPU is an Intel 8088 , a cost-reduced form of the Intel 8086 which largely retains the 8086's internal 16-bit logic, but exposes only an 8-bit bus. The CPU is clocked at 4.77 MHz, which would eventually become an issue when clones and later PC models offered higher CPU speeds that broke compatibility with software developed for

3268-464: The computer via a parallel port. Amstrad also launched the SM2400 modem , which was a quad-speed dial-up modem that boasted speeds of up to 2,400  baud . It was an internal ISA modem. It was encased in plastic and could fit into Amstrad PC1512 and PC1640. IBM Personal Computer The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC ) is the first microcomputer released in

3344-465: The design constraint to use off-the-shelf parts . The TMS9900 was rejected as it was inferior to the Intel 8088. IBM chose the 8088 over the similar but superior 8086 because Intel offered a better price for the former and could provide more units, and the 8088's 8-bit bus reduced the cost of the rest of the computer. The 8088 had the advantage that IBM already had familiarity with the 8085 from designing

3420-529: The design process IBM avoided vertical integration as much as possible, for example choosing to license Microsoft BASIC rather than utilizing the in-house version of BASIC used for mainframes due to the better existing public familiarity with the Microsoft version. The IBM PC debuted on August 12, 1981, after a twelve-month development. Pricing started at $ 1,565 for a configuration with 16 KB RAM, Color Graphics Adapter , keyboard, and no disk drives. The price

3496-655: The desktop version to focus on handhelds and smart devices. Geoworks Ensemble won the 1991 Software Publishers Association Excellence in Software Award for Best Consumer Program. A newer version of PC/GEOS was marketed in the late 1990s as NewDeal Office from NewDeal Inc. in hopes of creating a market among owners of i386 , i486 and Pentium PCs that could not run Windows 95 or Windows 98 effectively. NewDeal released 3 new versions of NewDeal Office (NewDeal Office 2.5, NewDeal Office 3/98 and NewDeal Office 2000) until it went bankrupt in 2000. NDO or NDO 2000 came with

3572-478: The hard drive. The PC1512 shipped with one or two 360KB 5¼-inch floppy drives , and optionally a hard drive (10 or 20 MB). The 5¼-inch floppy drive(s) could be replaced with 1.2 MB capacity versions. The machine was also marketed as the Sinclair PC500 . Amstrad licensed both MS-DOS 3.2 and Digital Research DOS Plus , which was largely compatible with MS-DOS and included some features from CP/M and

3648-450: The keyboard was extremely positive, with some sources describing it as a major selling point of the PC and even as "the best keyboard available on any microcomputer." At release, IBM provided a Game Control Adapter which offered a 15-pin port intended for the connection of up to two joysticks, each having two analog axes and two buttons. (The early PCs predated the advent of the " Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer" concept and so did not have

3724-462: The late 1980s and early 1990s, including WordPerfect 5.1, WordStar , Microsoft Word 4 and 5 for DOS, the spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 , Matlab , and the database program dBase III+ as well as Ashton-Tate 's Framework II integrated office suite. The PC1512 and PC1640 were shipped with Digital Research's GEM as a graphical shell , but could run also Geoworks Ensemble (up to Version 2.1), and Microsoft Windows (up to Version 3.0, that did support

3800-411: The latter provided medium- and low-resolution color graphics and text. CGA used the same scan rate as NTSC television , allowing it to provide a composite video output which could be used with any compatible television or composite monitor , as well as a direct-drive TTL output suitable for use with any RGBI monitor using an NTSC scan rate. IBM also sold the 5153 color monitor for this purpose, but it

3876-473: The machine were notable. The mouse was an Amstrad Mouse, which was incompatible with serial mice common at the time. It was supported by some games, including Elite , but many DOS programs had problems with it. The keyboard sported an Atari-compatible joystick port for digital joysticks. Joystick movements and buttons were mapped to unused keyboard codes, allowing the joystick to be used in many DOS games that were written for keyboard control. The series

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3952-547: The market, rumors of clones began, and the first legal PC-compatible clone—the MPC 1600 by Columbia Data Products —was released in June 1982, less than a year after the PC's debut. Eventually, IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo in 2004 . For low cost and a quick design turnaround time, the hardware design of the IBM PC used entirely "off-the-shelf" parts from third party manufacturers, rather than unique hardware designed by IBM. The PC

4028-510: The market, sold only 69,000. Software support from the industry grew rapidly, with the IBM nearly instantly becoming the primary target for most microcomputer software development. One publication counted 753 software packages available a year after the PC's release, four times as many as were available for the Macintosh a year after its launch. Hardware support also grew rapidly, with 30–40 companies competing to sell memory expansion cards within

4104-567: The most obvious use was the addition of an Intel 8087 math coprocessor, which improved floating-point math performance. PC mainboards were manufactured with the first memory bank of initially Mostek 4116-compatible, or later 4164-compatible DIP DRAMs soldered to the board, for a minimum configuration of first just 16 KB, or later 64 KB of RAM. Memory upgrades were provided by IBM and third parties both for socketed installation in three further onboard banks, and as ISA expansion cards. The early 16 KB mainboards could be upgraded to

4180-456: The name XL-7000 without the multi-lingual interface, but added an AOL client and some USA specific help files. These devices were all named Zoomer and were the first PDAs with a connection to the online services CompuServe and AOL . This was made possible through the pre-installed dial-up software CompuServeAOL. In 1993, GeoWorks released PEN/GEOS 2.0, again based on PC/GEOS 2.0. In 1995, this version of GEOS appeared (running on top of DOS) on

4256-415: The new product. Reception was overwhelmingly positive, with analysts estimating sales volume in the billions of dollars in the first few years after release. After release, IBM's PC immediately became the talk of the entire computing industry. Dealers were overwhelmed with orders, including customers offering pre-payment for machines with no guaranteed delivery date. By the time the machine began shipping,

4332-566: The operating system that ships with vendor-provided drivers for scanner and it included a GEOS scanning application. In Germany, the Brother LW750ic system is equipped with PEN/GEOS. In 1997, Brother, in collaboration with IBM, brought the GeoBook series of notebooks to market. GeoBook models NB-60, NB-80C, and PN-9100GR used a modified version of PEN/GEOS using the Yago user interface. The GeoBook series

4408-430: The original IBM PC, including the Intel -based Mac computers manufactured from 2006 to 2022 . Prior to the 1980s, IBM had largely been known as a provider of business computer systems. As the 1980s opened, their market share in the growing minicomputer market failed to keep up with competitors, while other manufacturers were beginning to see impressive profits in the microcomputer space. The market for personal computers

4484-499: The original PC. The single base clock frequency for the system was 14.31818 MHz, which when divided by 3, yielded the 4.77 MHz for the CPU (which was considered close enough to the then 5 MHz limit of the 8088), and when divided by 4, yielded the required 3.579545 MHz for the NTSC color carrier frequency. The PC motherboard included a second, empty socket, described by IBM simply as an "auxiliary processor socket", although

4560-449: The production of large, sophisticated and expensive business systems. As with other large computer companies, its new products typically required about four to five years for development, and a well publicized quote from an industry analyst was, "IBM bringing out a personal computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance." IBM had previously produced microcomputers, such as 1975's IBM 5100 , but targeted them towards businesses;

4636-407: The term "PC" was becoming a household name. Sales exceeded IBM's expectations by as much as 800% (9x), with the company at one point shipping as many as 40,000 PCs per month. IBM estimated that home users made up 50 to 70% of purchases from retail stores. In 1983, IBM sold more than 750,000 machines, while Digital Equipment Corporation , one of the companies whose success had spurred IBM to enter

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4712-655: The time of introduction on IBM compatible PCs until the late 1990s when America Online dropped development for graphical DOS in favor of Microsoft Windows. During that time, the popular single 3.5" self-booting disk that AOL was distributing could be hacked to boot the GeoWorks environment. IBM released the PC/GEOS-based EduQuest SchoolView network management tool for K-12 schools in 1994. Negotiations to make PC/GEOS an integral part of PC DOS 7.0 failed. GeoWorks attempted to get third-party developers but

4788-604: Was also bundled with the Amstrad PC Games Collection, which included four games: Bruce Lee , The Dam Busters , Tag-Team Wrestling and Psi-5 Trading Company . These came on three floppy disks, contained in a plastic clamshell case. Amstrad launched the Amstrad DMP3000 printer, which was an 80-character dot matrix printer with both IBM and Epson compatibility that boasted NLQ (Near Letter Quality) and could handle both A4 and fanfold paper. It connected to

4864-466: Was compact and visually appealing. With the exception of the fan in the PC1640's ECD monitor, both the PC1512 and the PC1640 were silent. This was a significant difference compared to the quite noisy PCs sold at the time. Although the Amstrad PC1512 and PC1640 had to compete against faster AT-type architectures at the time of their release, they were sufficiently powerful to run office software popular in

4940-402: Was designed to compete with comparable machines in the market. For comparison, the Datamaster, announced two weeks earlier as IBM's least expensive computer, cost $ 10,000. IBM's marketing campaign licensed the likeness of Charlie Chaplin 's character " The Little Tramp " for a series of advertisements based on Chaplin's movies, played by Billy Scudder. The PC was IBM's first attempt to sell

5016-538: Was dominated at the time by Tandy , Commodore , and Apple , whose machines sold for several hundred dollars each and had become very popular. The microcomputer market was large enough for IBM's attention, with $ 15 billion in sales by 1979 and projected annual growth of more than 40% during the early 1980s. Other large technology companies had entered it, such as Hewlett-Packard , Texas Instruments and Data General , and some large IBM customers were buying Apples. As early as 1980 there were rumors of IBM developing

5092-406: Was essentially complete by April 1981, when it was handed off to the manufacturing team. PCs were assembled in an IBM plant in Boca Raton, with components made at various IBM and third party factories. The monitor was an existing design from IBM Japan ; the printer was manufactured by Epson . Because none of the functional components were designed by IBM, they obtained only a handful of patents on

5168-400: Was incompatible with the earlier 8-bit versions of GEOS for Commodore and Apple II computers, but provided numerous enhancements, including scalable fonts and multitasking on IBM PC XT - and AT -class PC clones. GeoWorks saw a market opportunity to provide a graphical user interface for the 16 million older model PCs that were unable to run Microsoft Windows 2.x. GEOS was packaged with

5244-533: Was initially developed for the IBM Datamaster , and was substantially better than the keyboards provided with virtually all home computers on the market at that time in many regards - number of keys, reliability and ergonomics. While some home computers of the time utilized chiclet keyboards or inexpensive mechanical designs, the IBM keyboard provided good ergonomics, reliable and positive tactile key mechanisms and flip-up feet to adjust its angle. Public reception of

5320-586: Was marketed mainly in education and was part of the IBM Eduquest School View strategy. In 1996, the Nokia 9000 Communicator smartphone was introduced. This phone uses PEN/GEOS 3.0 and established the smartphone market. Nokia followed with Communicator models 9000i, 9110, and 9110i. GEOS-SC was a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) CPU smartphone , OS, and GUI for the Japanese cellphone market. It

5396-450: Was not available at release and was not released until March 1983. MDA scanned at a higher frequency and required a proprietary monitor, the IBM 5151 . The card also included a built-in printer port. Both cards could also be installed simultaneously for mixed graphics and text applications. For instance, AutoCAD , Lotus 1-2-3 and other software allowed use of a CGA Monitor for graphics and

5472-517: Was released in 1992, and version 3.0 was released in 1995. PEN/GEOS 1.0 was used as the operating system for the Tandy Corporation Z-PDA, which was introduced shortly after the first Apple Newton MessagePad . Palm Computing had been incorporated to create software for this device and shipped its first handwriting recognition software, PalmPrint, personal information manager , Palm Organizer, and synchronization software, PalmConnect, on

5548-477: Was released in 1997. Originally built as GeoWorks' planned future OS and codenamed 'Liberty', GEOS-SC became the basis for cellphones designed by Mitsubishi Electric Company (MELCO) of Japan. Alongside this, GEOS-SE which was an OS designed and developed by Eden Ltd., a UK-based company acquired in 1997 by Geoworks. It became the basis of several other devices, most notably the Seiko Epson Locatio which

5624-527: Was renamed Breadbox Ensemble. In 2015, Frank Fischer, the CEO of Breadbox, died and efforts on the operating system stopped until later in 2017 when it was bought by blueway.Softworks. PC/GEOS should not be confused with the 8-bit GEOS product from the same company, which runs on the Commodore 64 and Apple II . In 1990, GeoWorks (formerly Berkeley Softworks ) released PC/GEOS for IBM PC compatible systems. Commonly referred to as GeoWorks Ensemble , it

5700-503: Was somewhat unusual for the fact that it had a physical volume control on the internal speaker . This allowed the user to make the machine beep quietly, or silently, from boot time onwards. This innovation is still not present in most modern PCs: the legacy beeper is typically still a fixed-volume device. General hardware specifications of the PC1512: Four disks were supplied with floppy models, five with hard drive models. The system

5776-520: Was unable to get much support due to expense of the developer kit, which cost $ 1,000 for the manuals only, and the difficult programming environment, which required a second PC networked via serial port to run the debugger. Even though PC/GEOS is referred to as an "operating system", it still requires DOS in load. GEOS and its applications were written in a mix of 8086 assembly language (Espire), an interpreted language called IZL , and C (GEOS Object C: GOC) with non-standard language extensions to support

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