We're now the owners of a IBM Personal Computer. We bought the full-blown configuration with two discs and 64K of internal memory. We've ordered, and soon expect to receive, a ``Baby Blue'' which will provide 64K of additional memory plus a Z-80 processor to allow the IBM to run CP/M, and a Quadram board which will give us a serial port, time of day clock, and 64K-196K of additional memory (we're ordering 64K, and will add the chips ourself to expand it to the maximum). We've received the IBM Macro Assembler, which we will be able to run as soon as we get the requisite 96K (!) installed in the machine. We've also obtained an 8087 chip which we'll install in the machine to give it hardware floating point capability. This will both let us certify our software floating point package and let us offer the hardware floating point as an option in all the software we develop. (This will make MicroCAD immensely faster.)
At the moment the IBM is at Greg Lutz's house in the east bay, where Greg and Keith Marcelius are gaining familiarity with the machine. We have two copies of the technical manual for the machine, which we will circulate to those interested in it.
At the moment we're mostly playing with the machine and trying to figure out the assembly language. The machine's major immediate application will be to support the conversion of MicroCAD and QBASIC.