IBM 5100

The IBM 5100 was a computer that preceded the IBM PC by six years (1975). The device could be programmed in APL, BASIC or both. Machines that supported both languages used a toggle switch on the front panel to select the language. The unit itself was the size of a small suitcase. When the engineers at IBM asked one beta tester, Donald Polonis, for his analysis, he commented that if folks had to learn APL to use it, the IBM 5100 would not make it as a personal computer. He tried to impress the fact that a personal computer had to be easy to use to be accepted. Although commonly described as using a "microprocessor" called PALM (Put All Logic in Microcode), this processor was an entire circuit board containing 13 square metal-can bipolar gate arrays, 3 conventional DIP transistor-transistor logic (TTL) parts and 1 round metal can part. The IBM documentation referred to this board as the Controller. The term "microprocessor" only meant a processor that executes microcode to implement a higher-level instruction set, rather than its current usage.

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\n*IBM 5100 Portable Computer Category:IBM hardware