IBM PC
My second computer was a genuine IBM-PC. Two floppy drives, a color monitor, but no hard drive! In 1983 it cost about $5500.
Hey ... where's the mouse?
While I’ve been on a retrocomputing kick, I decided to try to see what it takes to emulate an original IBM PC. I found Pico-XT, which runs on Windows. (I’d rather have one that runs on Linux.) Since I’m running Ubuntu, I used Wine and had to chuckle.
Then I needed a floppy disk. I downloaded a ton from The Boot Disk Project. I started with MS-DOS 3.30. It didn’t work the first time and I realized I had to convert it from a 1.44MB floppy to a 360k. I did that with WinImage. It requires that you open the original image file and pull down “Image / Change Format”, select 360k, then save.
When Wine opens Pico-XT, you must pull down ‘File / Floppy Drive A: / Insert”, then choose the floppy filename. Here’s what it looks like.
My next project is to take an image file from my Mom’s old office PC and get it to work in the emulator. I made it with dd, but it doesn’t seem to be a format recognized by Pico-XT yet nor WinImage.
Update
Special thanks to my neighbor Vince who just gave me a 5150 that he rescued from a dumpster. I’m going to try to see if it works.
