SAN JOSE, California — A white cursor blinks in the monitor’s top left corner. From beneath, a slab of machinery whirs, shudders and falls expectantly quiet.
Facing me is an original edition of the first IBM PC, a computer that made its debut the summer I was born. We ought to have some affinity for each other, I think. I want this relationship to work. But I’m not sure what to do. There is no mouse to shake and wake up the screen, no icon to click or touch.
Introduced 30 years ago, and once embedded in homes and offices across America, the IBM 5150 is the forebear of much of the technology I take for granted – the Mitochondrial Eve that eventually led to the sleek laptop computer on which I live so much of my life. As I sit at the IBM’s 80-column wide display, I half expect my fingers to know what to do with the machine’s clacky keyboard, guided by some subconscious aptitude distilled from living among the 5150’s distant offspring. Instead, the screen and I stare blankly back at each other, separated by decades of technological evolution.
“It has a 16 bit CPU, 8 bit memory bus, and ran at a solid 4.77 megahertz,” says Erik Klein from over my shoulder. “The original one had a motherboard which supported 16 to 64K. And you could put extension cards in it all the way up to 640K!”
Klein, 45, is a vintage computer collector, and Wired’s quest to lay hands on the first PC has led me to his suburban Silicon Valley home — one of the last places in the Bay Area where you can find a working 5150. Klein has three, two of which he’s lugged from his garage and set up in a living room otherwise dominated by his childrens’ art projects.
He has about 120 vintage computers in his collection. The 5150, though, holds a special place in his heart. As a young teenager in the early 80s, Klein saved his paper-route money to buy one of the original IBM 5150s for $2,700, with the help of his dad. This model that launched the PC revolution also launched Klein’s path into ubergeekdom, and today he’s a software developer.
The large, stately computers jockey for space in the room. The commanding, 65-pound machines, made of formed steel and heavy-gauge plastic, are all but bulletproof.
The enormous red on-off switch on the side is especially nice.
I’m still looking at the white blinking cursor.
“So you need to use command line code,” he says.
“Great. How do I do that?”
Klein knows the syntax well, so we begin. I hit Control-Alt-Delete — the 5150 introduced the three-finger salute, which remains one of its most enduring legacies. The DOS prompt “A>” shows up. To look at the directory, “Dir” and Enter.
A list of Basic programs appears on the display. They are tiny by today’s standards, but fully functional, some bylined by Bill Gates. We check out the calendar program. You can’t enter your appointments, ask to receive reminders, or share events. But you can print out blank calendars on your dot matrix printer.
Before I question the utility of his beloved 5150s, Klein reminds me that this computer still packs enough power to do much of what we need today: word processing, spreadsheet calculations and electronic mail. As the whole computer has enough capacity for about 1/30 of a full-sized digital photograph, however, manipulating large files would be out.
Remaining focused wouldn’t be a problem. No pop-up alerts. No multitasking. No playing music — the small, single-tone speaker can’t play anything you’d want to hear.
But as I work on the 5150, testing out the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, the WordStar version 3 and a few simple games, I begin to see this is a different breed of computing than I’m used to. My svelte, adored MacBook Air might do lots of things for me — the world seems to hover beneath my fingertips — but aside from buying it and installing some software, I’ve never done anything for it. I’ve never taught it anything; it has never taught me anything.
Klein began programming his 5150 the day it arrived. He’d already read the entire DOS and Basic manuals in advance. He had prewritten a few programs in longform. One of the first programs he wrote was a moon landing simulation, based on the Lunar Lander arcade game, to play with his brothers. To learn more advanced programming, he studied the code of other programs.
Klein’s 5150 made him a more capable thinker. My Air made me a faster consumer of media. I’m not about to trade in the Mac, but as I watch Klein’s easy competence while he replaces a blown video card and recalls his early programming days, I’m left with a slight twinge of jealousy. I wonder if technology hasn’t robbed me of some of its full experience in making things too easy for me.
He loads one of the original 5150 games for me: “Decathalon.” As it boots up tiny stick figures run and pole vault across the screen to a tinny little tune. These were once, I’m assured, mind blowing graphics. We pull up the 100-meter-dash. Pounding on the 1 and 2 keys moves your cursor across the screen. I bang away, but my lack of training shows.
“That was, uh, slow,” Klein says. “You could use some practice.”
Thanks to the Computer History Museum, The Vintage Computer and DigiBarn for helping us find a working IBM 5150. Images: James Merithew/Wired.com.
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