
For the $1,565 price one got a system unit and a keyboard. Unit containing only 40K of ROM (read-only memory) and 16K RAM of user memory, built-in speaker for tone generation (today some would say music).
Most important it offered five expansion slots for expanded memory, display and printer ports, game paddles.
Extra options that were available were color display, a printer, two floppy drives, extra ram, serial and game adapter and software packages, like text processing.
Most important options were:
- Printer could print 80 characters per second in two directions with 12 different character styles.
- Color onitor had 16 foreground and background colors and 256 characters for text applications. Its graphics were in four colors.
- Expansion ram card could be plugged into the option slots to increase ram to 256K.
But the new IBM PC could hook up to the home TV set and you could play “some” games.
Compaq incorporate an identical copy of PC architecture, since IBM architecture was quite open and IBM PC was made using (′′ assembling ′′) products available (off shelves components) on the market.
link:IBM PC 5150 with 64Kb RAM and Monochrome Display simulation
link:Birth of IBM PC