18 Classic Computers Delivered, a beaut day.

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Fri Mar 12 14:47:11 1999

>>> Eh? IBM Displaywriter was one of the first platforms to support CP/M86
>>> (if not the first!)
>>
>> You must be thinking of something else. The IBM DisplayWriter was a
>> dedicated word processor based on the 8085.
>
> I don't think so. Are you sure you're not thinking of the Datamaster (AKA
> System/23)? My Datamaster (I have the data processing version, not the word
> processing version, alas) certainly has an 8085 at its heart, but my
> Displaywriter equally certainly has an 8088. It was indeed designed as a
> dedicated word processor, but since it loaded system software from disk, it
> wasn't hard to set it to other tasks.

I don't have one, but the information I've got from periodicals claims
that it was introduced in 1980 and contained an 8085. When the IBM PC
was introduced in 1981, it was claimed that it was IBM's first product to
use an Intel 16-bit microprocessor (albeit with an 8-bit bus).

But if you actually have one that you've verified contains an 8088, then
obviously my information was wrong. :-)
Received on Fri Mar 12 1999 - 14:47:11 GMT