Classic Computers Emulated Part 2: The IBM PC/XT

The Days of The Electric Typewriter Are Numbered As The IBM PC/XT becomes a Juggernaut; Establishing Itself in Offices of Fortune 500 Companies, and Contributed to  Apple's 2nd Failed Attempt at the Corporate Market.

IBM Model 5150. Image courtesy of IBM

The days of the electric typewriter were numbered the day the IBM PC was introduced in August 12, 1981. Even though the original model didn't take the corporate world by storm, the groundwork was laid. It was only a matter of time before Big Blue would release a machine that would give corporate users what they wanted. They were in a much better position to take over the corporate world than Apple was.

Apple made two attempts into the corporate market by this point. They attempted to enter the market in 1980 with the Apple III which was suppose to have been the successor of the Apple II. This was one of the first micros that was geared towards corporate customers. During the machine design, Steve Jobs decreed that the machine was not to have any fans because they were noisy and in-elegant. Instead the computer was to use aluminum shielding to dissipate the heat. The big issue was that was the heat dissipated from the chips was still trapped in the case, which caused temperatures to rise. The motherboard overheated, causing the chips to pop out of their sockets. The solution to the overheating was to lift the computer to about a couple inches off the table, and then drop it. The force of gravity would cause the chips to slam back into their sockets. The machine suffered from a near 100% failure rate, and Apple's first attempt to enter the corporate market failed.

The Apple Lisa was the second attempt. I've made a brief reference to this computer in the previous article, which will be expanded on here. The Apple Lisa was introduced in January, 1983. This computer would sport many advance features which made it very innovated workstation for its day. The Lisa was designed to compete against the graphical workstations that started showing up at the tail-end of the 70's and early 80's. Machines like the Xerox Star, Corvus Concept, and the PERQ Graphical Workstation. It sported a 5MHz Motorola 68000 with a high-resolution, bit-mapped display and was the first mass-produced machines to come bundled with a GUI, Lisa OS. 

This computer was very revolutionary, but it failed to make any inroads into the corporate market for various reasons. The biggest contributing factor was the price. The computer retailed for $10,000 in 1983 (adjusted for inflation, that would be $25,000 in 2018). Also, Lisa OS, the new advanced GUI OS that sported drop down menus, a desktop, movable, re-sizable windows, and icons; was sluggish on it's hardware.

I've used Lisa OS on both the Lisa Emulator Project and the Idle Emulator, which uses very accurate emulation of the Motorola 68000 CPU and associated hardware; and the performance issues can be confirmed. Also, many users reported reliability issues with the Apple Twiggy Floppy Disk Drives that were used in the Lisa. The Twiggy Disk Drives and its technologies were developed in-house at Apple. They were similar in appearance to the standard 5-1/4 inch floppy disk that most computers used during this time. Because of the problems associated with the Twiggy drives, Steve Jobs opted for the standard 3-1/2 floppy disk drives that were recently developed by Sony in the Macintosh.

Apple Lisa Office System Version 2 running under the Idle Emulator for Win32.

It's funny that this is an article about the IBM PC/XT, and I've spent most of the time talking about Apple. Context needed to be established. The reader needed to know that Apple was making attempts to enter the corporate market during the same time IBM was. However, as mentioned above, mistakes were made that cost them that market, and now it was IBM's turn. Big Blue already had many advantages to enter the corporate market that Apple didn't have. 

Because IBM had been around for several decades by this point, they understood the needs of business users and Fortune 500 customers like the back of their hand. They had reputation on their side. IBM was basically the Vatican of the computer industry during this time. They had far reaching influence in the corporate market with their mainframe computers. This resulted in decades of experience. Experience that Apple didn't have. These Fortune 500 companies employed IBM mainframe computers to do their heavy grunt-work; like the payroll processing of thousands of employees working at a single company, and managing the accounting affairs of whole divisions. IBM mainframes were used to do the lunar calculations that got Apollo 11 to the Moon. This established IBM's solid reputation in their respective markets. 

Mainframes that were proving their value in the workplace, and providing a reputation of making powerful, reliably systems. In 1980, this was in sharp contrast to the Apple III corporate micro that suffered near 100% hardware failure mentioned above. Lastly, millions of employees working at Fortune 500 companies were typing all of their correspondences on IBM DisplayWriter electric typewriters. IBM had a strong presence in this market. Even if the PC didn't take it over, their foot was already in the door.

The machine that would kill the typewriter was actually only a slightly modified version of the IBM PC. The engineers would add a more capable power supply in order to accommodate the hard-disk. And then a hard-disk controller board was slammed into one of the ISA slots on the motherboard. Afterwards, a ribbon cable was connect from that controller board to the hard-disk itself, along with a cable from the power supply. A 10 or 20MB (Not GB, Gigabyte) drive would be in these computers. Because the capabilities of the PC were extended, the marketing team decided to call the machine the XT, or Extended, for short.

DOS
The PC/XT still needs an operating system. Before the introduction of the PC/XT, there were hard-drive kits for the original PC. Most of these kits patched PC-DOS v1.x to treat the hard-drive as really large floppy. PC-DOS v1.x didn't have hard-disk support, and for that reasons, the ideas of folder/directories weren't there either. As a result, on one of these kits, all the files would be in the first root directory. This was a very clumsy way of managing files. Microsoft started working of MS-DOS 2.x. This version was a major rewrite in order to support the new hard-disk routines. MS-DOS 2 incporated the concept of a hierarchical filesystem, in which the root folder could have directories, and then those directories/folders can have other directories/folders. I have to make the assumption that millennials reading this won't know what a directory is. The term "folder" is basically the Windows/Mac OS "slang" term for a directory. The term directory is used because that was what "folders" were called in DOS.

Within DOS, commands like mkdir (make directory), rmdir (remove directory), and cd (change directory) were added as well to give DOS that hard-disk file-management capability. The command fdisk (Fixed-Disk Setup Program) was added to allow DOS to partition a disk. Partitioning a drive is a process of allocating space for DOS to store files. It necessary to partition a hard-drive before it can be used. Within DOS 2.0, the largest partition size supported was 16MB's. This was due in the limitations of the FAT12 file-system that DOS used. Later versions of FAT (File Allocation Table) would expand the size of partitions that DOS could handle.

Unlike the original PC, the PC/XT was geared specifically for corporate employees. The reason for this was the inclusion of a hard-drive. Hard-disk drives were a very expensive proposition in 1982-1983. Home users couldn't really afford them period. A hard drive would have retailed for 1,000-3000 dollars depending on the capacity, which normally would have ranged between 10-30MB's. Expensive from the perspective of a home user; but affordable from the perspective of the Fortune 500 companies, which were use to spending millions upon millions for computer equipment on a yearly basis.

Introduction
The IBM PC/XT was introduced on March, 1983. In retrospect, the PC/XT made a far bigger impact on computing than the original PC did.  The PC/XT started killing electric typewriters in large numbers since day one. Almost immediately, the computer was rapidly installing itself in corporate offices all across this country. One aspect that greatly helped its adoption was the introduction of a new spreadsheet that would take the office world by storm. This program would become the massive killer application for the PC/XT that would almost single-handily propel the computer into the offices of those Fortune 500 companies. For those that don't know what a killer application is; it's a program that so popular that it causes hardware sales to greatly increase so people can run the program.

Lotus 123
Lotus 123 was the creation of Mitch Kapor. A  entrepreneur who been in a field of computing, he realized the drawbacks of VisiCalc on the PC. VisiCalc was the killer application that was released on the Apple II around the tail-end of 1979. This spreadsheet was what caused many small business; from mom-and-pop stores to loan offices, to purchase Apple II's. The PC port of VisiCalc was a straight port that did not take advantage of the powerful capabilities of the IBM PC. Mitch Kapor realized this, so he, along with another programmer, Jonathan Sachs, created Lotus 123. 

This spreadsheet was programmed in x86 assembly language, which allowed it to quickly execute and do equation computation much more quickly that VisiCalc. Assembly also allowed the program to use less memory and use less disk space. In 1983, when computing resources were much more limited; this was essential. The use of DMA (Direct Memory Access) on the motherboard was used by the programmers to speed up performance as well. This would eventually pose a challenge for PC clone makers who had to imitate what they considered flaws in the PC design in order to remain compatible with the spreadsheet. 

Lotus 123; along with the Microsoft Flight Simulator, were used as a stress test to see how compatible the clone computer was to the IBM PC/XT. The commands were simplified, which made the program more user friendly. Capabilities were added like graphing, database capabilities, along with faster performance spreadsheet calculations. Hence the 1-2-3 name. This spreadsheet program was one of the first to have massive marketing invested into it. It was advertised on TV, which was a first for a software program. Lotus 123 would take the corporate world by storm and quickly overtake VisiCalc. Lotus Software had sales of $53 million in its first year. 

Lotus 123 would remain the spreadsheet juggernaut for many years until it was eventually overtaken by Microsoft Excel in the early 90's. This spreadsheet would become a another nail in the coffin for the Apple Lisa.
Lotus 123 Version 1.0A for the IBM PC.

Emulation
For the IBM PC/XT, I've opted to use the PCE-PC Emulator. This emulator is significantly more complicated to set-up compared to PCEM. Setting up PCE was more complicated because I had to study the configuration files using Notepad++.  I needed to figure out how to configure the hardware correctly using the configuration file syntax. Also,  the hard disk images are in a special format specific for PCE. Command-line tools are provided with the emulator to convert them to the standard WinImage format, and then convert them back. While this emulator was more complicated to set-up, I've found the emulation more accurate than PCEM, which also emulates the same model. This was going to be my go-to emulator for this particular machine. I haven't used the more recent PCEM version 14, so I can't comment on the emulation for those versions. I might revisit them in the future. This is also probably the only time that PCE will be seen in action, as I'm still using PCEM for the XT clones and the 286, 386, 486 AT-class machines. Setting up the hard-drive image can be complicated as well. The BIOS used in the hard-disk controller recognized only certain sizes, and the disk geometries (cylinders, heads, and sectors) have to conform to the BIOS setting in order for the fdisk program to recognize and partition the disk. Once the drive is partitioned, then the format program that came with MS-DOS can format the drive. After that, the files from the DOS disk are copied over and the drive is ready to go.

When it came to compatibility, there was no difference between this machine and the original PC. The PC/XT could run the same games that the PC could run. The computer supported the same video standards that were on the PC: MDA and CGA. With that said, the price point of the PC/XT designated the computer for office use. Office applications were coming of age during this time. Productivity programs that were widely used on CP/M; such as dBase, SuperCalc, and MicroPro's Wordstar, were ported over to MS-DOS. WordPerfect would in time become the defacto word-processor on the PC/XT. Its use of the function keys were very innovate for its time. I had to have Notepad open with a cheat sheet of the function-key commands so I would know how to open and/or save the document, and making edits. This still was not an easy program to use.
WordPerfect Version 3 for the IBM PC.


It's Time To Build That Legacy While 
Killing The Typewriter In The Process!
With a price of $4,000-$5,000, the PC/XT was beyond the price of home users, but it was selling like hotcakes for corporate customers. The PC/XT with Lotus 123 was a unstoppable monster which was devastating the Apple Lisa. This machine was much cheaper in price compared to the $10,000 price tag of the Lisa, which was struggling in the marketplace. Despite the PC/XT using the Intel 8088 running at 4.77MHz, which was slower than the Motorola 68000 running at 5MHz, Lotus 123 felt much more responsive on its hardware than the Lisa spreadsheet felt on its own hardware. Corporate customers had spoken. They preferred applications that were fast and response over applications that looked well presented, but executed slowly and felt sluggish. The failure of the Lisa wasn't entirely on Apple though. The fact was that many of these processors just weren't cut out for those type of GUI environments, and it wouldn't be until processors like the Intel 486, Motorola 68040 and the PowerPC came along that running GUI environments on a daily basis became feasible. And the Apple Lisa was a very innovative computer for its time. It just that the workstation was no match for the PC/XT. Nothing was as that machine established personal computers in corporate offices and killed off the typewriter.

Articles Of Interest
PCEM - https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/

PCE - PC Emulator  - http://www.hampa.ch/pce/

IBM Personal Computer XT - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT

Apple III - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III

Apple Lisa - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa

Lisa Emulator Project - http://lisa.sunder.net/

IDLE - Lisa Emulator - https://sourceforge.net/projects/idle-lisa-emu/

PERQ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERQ

Corvus Systems - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_Systems

fdisk - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fdisk

Comparison of DOS operating systems - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_DOS_operating_systems

The History Of Hard Drives - https://www.mygeex.co.uk/blog/historyofharddrives/

Mitch Kapor - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Kapor

Jonathan Sachs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Sachs

The Inflation Calculator - https://westegg.com/inflation/

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