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I changed all of the memory units to KiB and they were reverted. However, saying that the early PC was sold with 16KB is just wrong. It wasn't. It was sold with 16KiB. Yes, the early marketing literature said it was sold with 16KB, and that's because *KiB wasn't invented when the early PC was sold.

Nevertheless, it is *wrong* to say that the machine was sold with 16KB, because it was sold with 16,384 bytes of memory, not 16,000. This is simply confusing for people reading this article today. We are not writing Wikipedia for people in 1981, we are writing it for people today. I think that the article should use proper SI units. What do others think? Simsong (talk) 05:25, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Kibibibytes aren't particularly helpful; none of the literature at the time used "kibibytes". It's solving a problem that doesn't exist. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:59, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

This is covered by the editing manual of style. Per WP:COMPUNITS: kibibytes should not be used in Wikipedia in this context as they are not universally recognised. None of the provided exceptions apply here. Oh: and kibibyte is not an SI unit. But then neither is kilobyte. 86.181.0.182 (talk) 13:15, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

changed to KB per WP:COMPUNITS, kB = 1000 bytes which not what is being referenced ShadyCrack (talk) 02:49, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

IBM provided two different options for connecting Centronics-compatible parallel printers. One was the IBM Printer Adapter, and the other was integrated into the MDA as the IBM Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter.

The parallel port of the original IBM PC was not Centronics compatible. It had extra interface signals that prevented printing to anything other than an IBM-badged printer, which was an Epson unit. IBM had Epson bastardize the interface for this purpose. Third-party manufacturers quickly responded by adding the necessary signals, without losing true Centronics compatibility.

216.152.18.132 (talk) 20:44, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

"After the XT was released, IBM altered the design of the 5150 to add most of these capabilities, except for the upgraded power supply. At this point adding a hard drive was possible, but required the purchase of the IBM 5161 Expansion Unit, which contained a dedicated power supply and included a hard drive. Although official hard drive support did not exist, the third party market did provide early hard drives that connected to the floppy disk controller, but required a patched version of PC DOS to support the larger disk sizes."

The above passage indicates that one was "required" to buy the expansion unit to use an HDD (due to the power supply), but then states that you could use drives that connected to the floppy controller in the PC. I've personally never seen a drive inside an IBM PC that connected to the "floppy" controller, but it should be quite obvious to the reader that this wouldn't solve the PC's power supply problem. The problem is not that there was "no place to hook it up to the bus". To do this you just needed an 8 bit ISA MFM HDD card with a built in BIOS (several options at the time including one from an XT).

Additionally, the image on the page in the "hardware" section clearly shows a 5150 with a HDD installed in the system chassis (the LED is square instead of round like the FDDs have). I doubt this drive was connected to the floppy controller. Either way, it contradicts the text that proclaims it's "required" to get the expansion unit to use a hard drive.

All that said, my own personal 5150 has a stock power supply and a standard st412 hard drive installed. Works without issue. 216.164.226.167 (talk) 12:43, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

The units in this article are not in Wikipedia-standard SI units. For example, the infobox says that the memory is " 16 KB – 256 KB". But that's not true. The memory was not 16,000 to 256,000 bytes. It was 16 KiB - 256 KiB. I believe that the units in this article should be correct. Simsong (talk) 23:34, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

kB = 1000 bytes, KB = 1024 bytes, so current use of KB is correct per WP:COMPUNITS ShadyCrack (talk) 03:54, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Longer list of 5150 model numbers = https://www.os2museum.com/wp/ibm-pc-5150-model-numbers/ - • Sbmeirow • Talk • 12:08, 29 September 2024 (UTC)