IBM PC Oddities
Posted by Benj Edwards | Thursday, August 11, 2011
IBM Game Control Adapter
The PC shipped without a joystick or paddle port, but IBM’s Game Control Adapter was available for $55 (about $135 in today’s dollars) and supported a pair of two-button analog joysticks or four Pong-style paddles.
The game port held on as the standard for PC game controllers up until the USB era. They were found as a bonus on internal sound cards like the Sound Blaster. The port’s analog nature — and the lack of high-quality, low-cost joysticks or control pads for the PC — held back PC action gaming for the first 15 years, until the mouse/keyboard control scheme, and then USB controllers, relieved some of those deficiencies.
(Photo: jenesaispas1f)
August 11th, 2011 at 8:07 pm
What about IBM's word processing software, Display Write 1.0? It's hard to find any good information on this product on the internet. I even remember the name of the executable "dw1" 🙂
August 12th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
What's bizzare and dystopian about teaching people to read? I say it's utopian. Now if they subliminally taught them to only buy IBM or become chimp plant lackeys… that would be dystopian.
October 23rd, 2011 at 9:57 pm
I think the author was just showing how limited his/her vocabulary is. …ah, if only they had access to one of those evil IBM enslavement machines during their youth.