IBM PC Oddities
Posted by Benj Edwards | Thursday, August 11, 2011
BASIC on Board
Imagine that your current PC has no fixed or removable storage. You turn it on, and up pops Microsoft BASIC.
A built-in programming language seems strange these days, but the first PC contained BASIC in ROM chips plugged into the motherboard. Many home computers of the day shipped with BASIC in ROM, and IBM followed the trend.
IBM retained BASIC in ROM into the PS/2 era for backwards compatibility. Microsoft GW-BASIC obviated that requirement.
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.