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Hypothetical: Could a 5150 be viable today if not for GUI/Graphics?

Depending on what you want to do, it's definitely possible. One of my great-uncles does every bit of his and my great-aunt's personal and business accounting on an IBM 5150 PC with single-sided floppies. They bought it brand-new for around $6000 in 1980 or '81 and it's been used continuously since then. When you receive a typewritten letter from him, you can rest assured it has been composed on the 5150 and printed on their daisy wheel printer.

They were once audited by the IRS for their business accounts...he said it was very satisfying to hand the auditor a big box of 5.25" disks containing all of their financial records.
 
glitch said:
Depending on what you want to do, it's definitely possible. One of my great-uncles does every bit of his and my great-aunt's personal and business accounting on an IBM 5150 PC with single-sided floppies. They bought it brand-new for around $6000 in 1980 or '81 and it's been used continuously since then. When you receive a typewritten letter from him, you can rest assured it has been composed on the 5150 and printed on their daisy wheel printer.

They were once audited by the IRS for their business accounts...he said it was very satisfying to hand the auditor a big box of 5.25" disks containing all of their financial records.
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That's fantastic! I think if could figure out how to process credit cards on the 5150 I would probably do that at my shop. Hmmm
 
On a 5160/5170 you could use a cherry keyboard with a card scanner, or other card scanners are often just serial. From there I guess it'd just be a network stack to send the encrypted data over the wire. I would think usb->serial you might be able to hack one of the little portable (cellular) card chargers.
 
lyonadmiral said:
Do you agree/disagree and why, that a 5150/60 could be viable today if you exclude graphics and GUI's? I think it could be especially if you can get a NIC.
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As much as I love my 5160, as much as how I understand exactly how it works, and as much software as I've written on it -- I have to be practical and say no. If you're doing anything other than simple content creation or consumption, you couldn't use a 5160 today.

Things that a 5160 is practical to use in modern times, assuming you have a NIC:


  • Browsing text-only web (which is likely less than 5% of everywhere you want to go)
  • Writing (letters, manuscripts, novels, essays, etc.)
  • Spreadsheets (if you have an 8087, Lotus and some other spreadsheets are surprisingly spritely)
  • Email
  • Programming (C, assembler, Pascal, BASIC, Fortran, COBOL, etc. but all of these ONLY for the 5160 itself!)
  • Terminal emulator
  • IRC, telnet, FTP client

Things that a 5160 is not good for in modern times:


  • Everything else
 
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