History of video games/Platforms/IBM Personal Computer

Development
The IBM 5100 of 1975 was the first minicomputer made by IBM. APL models of the 5100 could essentially emulate a IBM System 360 mainframe.

The accelerate development the IBM PC was developed in the span of 12 months by extensively using components made by other companies.

Launch
A press release by IBM in late August 1981 touts the capabilities of the IBM 5150, including a brief mention that the system can be used to easily play video games.

The IBM 5150 was released in September of 1981 at a base cost of around $1,565, a home use setup costing around $3005, and a business system costing around $4,500. Because the only thing IBM actually made for the IBM PC was the BIOS, clones of the system existed within a year, though were quickly stopped by legal action. Compaq made a clone with a legally engineered compatible BIOS, paving the way for other clones to create the modern PC platform.

Technology
There are many iterations of the IBM Personal Computer. This section covers the IBM 5150 model.

An 16-bit x86 architecture Intel 8088 CPU clocked at 4.77 megahertz powers the IBM 5150. The IBM 5150 came with 16 kilobytes of RAM standard, and could be configured with up to 256 kilobytes of RAM. The IBM 5150 shipped with 40 kilobytes of ROM.

The only custom part was the BIOS chip. As mentioned earlier, once that was reverse engineered using clean room techniques, many legal clone machines were brought to the market. These clones were often cheaper or sported features the official IBM PC models lacked.

Ad-Lib sound output
- An example music file similar to what would run on real Ad-Lib hardware. Note that the IBM PC did not originally ship with this hardware.