prerok 3 days ago

While original IBM PCs indeed may not have had HDDs, it did become a standard for PC XT, as early as 1983. Only the cheapest version were without a HDD by the end of the 1980s.

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  • actionfromafar 3 days ago

    Many clones came without a HDD.

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    • prerok 3 days ago

      Sure, I can imagine that.

      My first contact with PCs was in 1988 and they all had HDDs and were definitely not "IBM PC" but clones. That said, that's just my experience so YMMV.

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      • pdonis 3 days ago

        My first PC, bought in late 1986, was a Leading Edge Model D, with two 360K floppy drives and no hard drive. I wrote a script to put COMMAND.COM and some other key files on a RAM disk on boot so I didn't have to keep the DOS floppy in the A: drive all the time. IIRC they had come out with a model that had a 20 MB hard drive but it was more than I could afford.

        MIT, where I was at school then, had some IBM PC XTs with 10 MB hard drives, but most of their computer resources were time-sharing DEC VAX machines. You could go to one of several computer labs to get on a terminal, or even dial into them--I did the latter from my PC (the one above) using a 2400 baud modem, which was fast for the time.

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      • int_19h 2 days ago

        Keep in mind that a lot of this depends on the location.

        In Russia, we had class full of IBM PCs without hard drives in school - you had to juggle floppies - and that was early 90s. And that was a fancy school.

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  • layer8 3 days ago

    By the end of the 1980s, a lot of years had passed, and you’d buy an AT instead of an XT.

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