IBM 5100 (was Re: Preserving history. Was: Re: IBM 1130)

From: Doug Yowza <yowza_at_yowza.com>
Date: Tue Sep 29 05:09:33 1998

On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Sam Ismail wrote:

> From him I learned that the IBM 5100 was actually a knock-off of a
> computer called the MCM-70!! The MCM-70 was manufactured by a Canadian
> company, and included a CRT, tape drive and APL in ROM. It was marketed
> at the insurance industry. IBM, having a big stake in the insurance
> industry, needed to come up with a product lest MCM take over the market.
> So they answered with the 5100, which basically was a rip-off of the
> MCM-70. Knowing this, it explains why IBM, a company which shunned
> personal computers until 1981, would have come out with a "personal
> computer" in the 1975 time frame. They wouldn't have done so unless they
> were forced to!

The nice thing about these stories is that they're all different --
everybody has their own spin. When I asked the guy who headed-up US sales
of the IBM 5100 about his story, it was that the 5100 was in response to
machines from HP and Wang, and that they lost to those machines on price
(the IBM 9830, for example, was about $10K for a similar setup). IBM was
simply not used to competing based on price/features.

BTW, CBI has lots of MCM docs in their archives. I'm not familiar with
MCM at all, but I got the sense that they always played in the insurance
niche, and always did fairly well there.

-- Doug
Received on Tue Sep 29 1998 - 05:09:33 BST