Xref: utzoo comp.misc:2915 comp.arch:5808
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From: jps@wucs2.UUCP (James Sterbenz)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.arch
Subject: Re: History of PCs
Keywords: history, pc, workstation
Message-ID: <899@wucs2.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jul 88 18:33:05 GMT
References: <5946@venera.isi.edu> <5458@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <1876@looking.UUCP> <17589@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: jps@wucs2.UUCP (James Sterbenz)
Organization: Washington U. in St. Louis
Lines: 19

In article <17589@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle) writes:
>	The IBM 8100, a strange semi-portable personal computer circa
                ^^^^
>	the late 1970s.  A switch on the front panel selected either 
>	BASIC or APL.

I'm sure others will catch this, but the model was the 5100.  The 8100
was a supermini marketed for distributed processing applications. 

The 5100 either emulated a system/370 (for APL) or a system/3 (for BASIC);
the switch effectively picked two different instruction set architectures.
It was very slow, but considering the date of its release, the size,
and the machines emulated, its surprising it ran as well as it did.  If
you like the APL environment it was farily nice to use.
-- 
James Sterbenz  Computer and Communications Research Center
                Washington University in St. Louis 314-726-4203
INTERNET:       jps@wucs1.wustl.edu
UUCP:           wucs1!jps@uunet.uu.net