This Day in 1981: The IBM PC was launched #IBMPC #MSDOS #VintageComputing #RetroComputing @IBM @Microchip

38 years ago, IBM took a big leap on something small. Instead of a mainframe, they built a business and home computer.

As Adafruit’s self-proclaimed PC champion (with others falling into Apple, Commodore, Nintendo, and other camps), I’ve blogged about this and similar machines. While not the fastest or the most flexible, the IBM PC legitimized computing in our lives in a way that other computers had not quite reached. And with the advent of Lotus 1-2-3, dBase and WordPerfect, productivity took a huge leap.

That your smartwatch or other devices can now run rings around the original PC is moot. We had to start somewhere and IBM helped push the industry in a good direction.

If I could tell myself in 1985, buying my first PC (a Compaq DeskPro, the original PC clone) that I would be typing this on a 3.5 GHz Intel i7 with an nVidia GTX1080 graphics card, 32GB memory, dual 4k displays, I wouldn’t believe future me (or I would invest in the right companies).

What is the killer machine equivalent today?

Just like in those days, things were smaller but underpowered. Much like Microcontrollers were just a few years ago. I’d posit that the faster Microchip SAMD51 M4 class of microcontrollers, connected to the nice LCD TFT displays just out, are the IBM of today. And CircuitPython is the “killer app” like 1-2-3 was. This combination of hardware and software is disrupting the ecosphere with a new ease of programming and use in our lives. Bookmark this blog, and in 38 years let’s see if I was right.