Re: I have 600
> Which is right up their with the famous IBM prognosis that went somewhat like "There is a market for may be 50 to 100 so-called personal computers, so we won't invest in that.."
Completely untrue. IBM had 'personal computers' before the 'IBM 5150 PC': The 5120 and 5130. They also had the System 23 Displaywriter on which the IBM PC was based. They developed the PC because they noticed Apple II* in their mainframe sites running Visicalc and CP/M (on Z80 Softcards) with Wordstar and other software. They designed their PC to be just a bit better than the Apple II: same cassette interface, 160Kb diskettes instead of 120Kb, same BASIC in ROM, CP/M clone PC-DOS, Wordstar, Visicalc, Peach, etc.
They also added terminal facilities (which is why the serial ports are DTE instead of DCE*) and there were versions with mainframe emulation borads.
The intended market was mainframe sites to keep Apple (and others) out. The market there was seen as 20,000 to 50,000. It may be true that initially they did not intend to broaden their customer base by selling 5150s outside existing IBM sites, but dealers and resellers did.
* DTE is Data Terminal Equipment. Most mini and micro computers at the type had their serial ports configured as DCE - Data Communications Equipment, to which serial terminals were connected (eg ADM-3a). Hence the IBM PC was configured to _be_ a terminal.
* The Apple II was advertised as 'Personal Computer' in 1978.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
