Looking back at IBM's First Laptop [IBM PC Convertible 5140 Software and Gaming]

[@kayleenamanda]

The ad was so fun too! Great find 😁

[@adambrassard9268]

Never seen this machine, that's so cool! Really good video. Good call back to tons of the neat games and features! Keep up the good work!

[@PNPRetro]

Glad you enjoyed it! It may not bring anything revolutionary to the table in terms of features, but it's still cool to see the things they were trying back then

[@mv80401]

My wife's brother was working for IBM at the time and I bought one through him in 1988. I remember playing King's Quest on it, as well as writing term papers. The fact that the screen was detachable is news to me, I guess I should have read the manual. My next laptop was Apple's Powerbook 100 :)

[@LucaBlightOfHighland]

The feature of being able to pull out the laptop screen to install a crt monitor is brilliant. Beautiful machine.

[@PNPRetro]

Honestly, I love that IBM used to pull these random designs that tried new things. Moving keyboards, removable monitors... even the snap on modules could have been amazing since it was based on the ISA bus... the expandability of a desktop in a laptop format. Pretty cool!

[@aaronlaberge727]

Very cool engineering on this between the raised keyboard and floppies and the Detachable screen. You can tell some developments would be keepers and some are duds like the opening buttons. Very cool!

[@rae3012]

Talk about ultra wide display 😁. The ad was cute too!

[@PNPRetro]

Wide-screen is where it's at!

[@MrDicafr]

I thought we would go an entire episode without any mention of star trek but you manage to snuck it at the very end, well done sir

[@PNPRetro]

Gotta sneak it in where I can! Go back and watch the coffee scene again, Star Trek shows up even sooner than you think ;)

[@MrDicafr]

@@PNPRetro 🤦 darn it, you got me

[@JeffKirkley]

Very good video and great find of a true classic PC. One thing, though, albeit minor, the floppy disks could hold 720 kilobytes of data not kilobits as you stated in your video. Yes, I get it, the folks of today are not used to and familiar with storage referenced in the kilo ranges of yesteryear. Great job on the video and presentation though!

[@PNPRetro]

I had to go back and re-listen. I can definitely see how it sounds like bits versus bytes because of my tendency to fast talk. Was definitely meant to be bytes. Thanks for letting me know!

[@IBM_Museum]

Nice! - I did some PC Convertible videos too - and actually put the screen output to my RGB2HDMI board to be able to capture and display it better. I've got both types of external monitors too.

[@bertramspielt]

Great video - thanks for that first. Well, today I found one example of these rare beasts in the basement of an old house. Sadly not complete, but with the case and the printer. No original power connector, and no floppy disks... And it smells like what you expect from a not perfekt dry basement... 😢 Lets see. It is way too nice to end in the recycling bin! Greetings from Austria! 🇦🇹

[@mechanisma22]

Great machine! I love the commercial like as business person was so desperate to do work, he's pulling up pie charts at a train stop. Is there no HDD option even with the expansion devices? I love to see that keyboard screen hinge design.

[@PNPRetro]

Unfortunately not hard drive module expansion device was ever released. The expansion modules are based in the ISA bus, so who knows what might have happened if it had been more popular!

[@BigScreenLife]

Another great video. I'll keep my eye out for the next piece of hardware for you to review. :)

[@PNPRetro]

Thanks for tracking these two pieces down for me! I meant to thank you in the video and somehow forgot!

[@kayleenamanda]

Love the new intro! I'd love to see you at Starbucks 😂😂😂

[@86smoke]

No retro PC video is complete without an attempt to run Secret of Monkey Island (if you have 640kB RAM). Having nowadays a device that was out of place even when released is a great satisfaction. It is the same with s423 Pentium 4 that was absolutely rubbish when entered the market, but sought after now.

[@PNPRetro]

You know, I don't think I've ever played Secret of Monkey Island. Sounds like my next DOS machine video is going to take longer to film... for research purposes.

[@Otokichi786]

My first laptop was a closeout Toshiba 1200 XE. This "last-of-the-80286" portables was sorta OK for the time, but I could have waited for much better 80386 laptops. But then, would I have been able to afford "state of the art"? Eventually, it went to school with a college-bound family friend.

[@PNPRetro]

Well it sounds like you made the right choice at the time, and that it lived a long and productive life. I hope it treated you well while you had it!

[@Otokichi786]

@@PNPRetro The CGA Monochrome (blue text on grey) was hard to see in low light. I learned that "virtual HDD" space via Stacker was an illusion, and I never did use the 1200 Baud modem because it was easier to use the desktop to access CompuServe. After the turn of the century, I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad SL 410 at Best Buy, since I'd read that brand was "a survivor." I still use that laptop, which has outlasted newer/better MacBook Pro units.

[@EirikrTinkerTries]

Ethernet with a Xircom PE3?! 🙀640K RAM upgrade?! 🙀 Internal modem to use as a terminal communications port?! 🙀 External CF-IDE with something like XT-IDE using the expansion snap on?! 🙀 or using the LPT ZIP 100 Drive as an external storage drive?! 🙀. then having one card or disk with Win 2.11, another with Windows 3.0, and another another with ELKS Linux for 8088?! 🙀 And using modern Linux over Ethernet to do something cool?! (SSH still a work in progress) 🙀 Backlit-LCD upgrade?! 🙀 Anyway there are a lot of cool expansions you can do still, and would love to see how Windows 3.0 works without the 8087, and with this particular monitor… especially with the GUI versions of Word and Works and other productivity programs from that area. Was Visual Basic available for Windows 3.0?

[@choschiba]

Which year was it launched?

[@PNPRetro]

It launched all the way back in 1986!

[@choschiba]

Then my dad must have already used it, as he used to work for IBM during that time.

[@PNPRetro]

That's awesome! Must have been amazing to be there as some of their most innovative projects took shape.

[@choschiba-music]

@@PNPRetro Yes, I can imagine. Unfortunately my father never talked about work.

[@LovelyAlanna]

you sound funny

[@PNPRetro]

I get that a lot! 🤣🤣🤣

[@kayleenamanda]

😬 How embarrassing is this comment