The IBM PC turns 30, we hurt our hands giving it birthday punches

Thirty years ago today IBM officially ushered in what many consider to be the modern computing era with the 5150. What ultimately became known simply as the IBM PC was the first machine to run a Microsoft operating system (the recently acquired PC-DOS) on an Intel processor (the 4.77MHz 8088) and inspired countless clones. The bare-bones model, which cost $1,565, was cheap enough to become a serious commercial success, and spawned an entire cottage industry of machines that touted their IBM-PC compatibility. We won't spend too much time recounting the story of how IBM's decision to build a computer with off the shelf components and commercially available software forged a standard whose descent survives to this day in the form of Wintel. But, if you're feeling a little nostalgic, you can read the original PR from August 12, 1981 just after the break.