1983

The IBM PC/XT

IBM PC/XT with Color display Floppy disk on left, hard disk on right

PC DOS 2.0 screen

In March of 1983 IBM introduced the IBM Personal Computer XT or just PC/XT.  What mainly distinguished the IBM PC/XT from the IBM PC that had been out for a couple of years is the XT had a 10 Megabyte hard drive (with an option for a second one). The addition of the hard drive made all the difference in the world, no more limited 180K, (360K if you got the more expensive dual sided) slow floppy disks for storage, the XT had a fast, large hard disk.  In addition, the PC/XT had three more expansion slots allowing for additional features.  With the addition of the hard drive, the PC/XT came with PC DOS 2.0 (Disk Operating System) which was a character based, command line interface.  For a display you had a choice of the Monochrome Display (green) which displayed 25 lines of 80 characters, or the Color Display which also had the 25 lines by 80 character mode, but the characters could be one of 16 colors.  In addition, the Color Display had graphics modes of 160x100 pixels in 16 colors, 320x200 in 4 colors, or 640x200 in two colors (one being black).   Compare that to my current computer screen that has 3840x2160 pixels each can be one of 64,000 colors.   Ok, the graphics were limited, but you could still write games that used simple graphics instead of only text.  Games like Pong and Space Invaders became popular.

Space Invaders Game

Dedicated Systems