IBM reportedly spent 36 million dollars on their ad campaigns for the personal computer. Utilizing the iconic figure of Charlie Chaplin as a character in their print and television advertising, the campaign was wildly successful. An interesting paper IBM's Charlie Chaplin: A Case Study written by Jane Caputi is worth a look. It examines the role of IBM in society and how it toggles with the artistic outlook of Chaplin.
I've been interested in obtaining an old IBM from this time period and with careful thought, decided on finding this particular model.
I found one locally that was missing it's keyboard and cosmetically in fairly bad shape. Yet it booted up to a 601 Error (no keyboard). This was as far as I could go with it.
I found another one on eBay that has a monitor issue. It was in great cosmetic shape, with keyboard and the original blue IBM canvas case.
My goal is to transfer the working components into the cosmetically better case.
Specifications:
Processor Intel 8088
Speed 4.77 MHz
RAM 256-640K
ROM Unknown
Storage 2 360K 5.25" built-in floppy drives
Expansion 7 slots of varying length, some used in the basic configuration.
Bus ISA
Video CGA 9'' amber screen which could display texts and graphics.
I/O Parallel, Serial
OS DOS 2.1
Weighs about 30 lbs.
For an in depth review, read the PC Magazine article Inside the PC Portable by Bill Machrone:
The IBM Portable Personal Computer was introduced on February 1984. It was discontinued in April 1986. Fall 1984, this machine sold for $ 3020.00. That would be $6,783.53 in today's dollars!
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