IBM 5100

Common card · No. 269553

The IBM 5100 Portable Computer is one of the first portable computers, announced by IBM's General Systems Division on September 9, 1975, six years before the IBM Personal Computer, and eight years before the first successful IBM compatible portable computer, the Compaq Portable. It was the evolution of a prototype called the SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable) that was developed at the IBM Los Gatos Laboratory and Palo Alto Scientific Center in 1973. Although it was marketed as a portable computer, it still needed to be plugged into an electric socket. When IBM announced the 5100 they took the then unusual step of having 15 sales teams each take a 5100 to a national news center to demonstrate it, rather than presenting it at a headquarters press event. They emphasised that it was IBM's smallest computer system, comparable to the IBM 1130 while also being smaller than the System/32, released 10 months earlier. When the IBM PC was introduced in 1981, it was originally designated...

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