The IBM PC: a success of the “dirty dozen” – and the IBM boss The revolution The great-great-father system / 23 Datamaster morning air for DOS Next Big Thing Article in c’t 27 / 2020 read It was clear to the IBM management at the end of the 1970s that something should be done to counter the cheeky upstart Apple. The market for PCs was 1979 at 300 Million dollars with high forecast growth numbers; you wanted to get involved somehow.

Exactly in the phase came in July 1980 the offer from Atari Inc., then part of the Time Warner Group, to design a home computer exclusively for IBM. A few years earlier, Apple founders Steven Wozniak and Steve Jobs had even worked for Atari for a short time. They developed the famous and still popular game Breakout for the company – initially completely in hardware. At the end of the 1970s the Atari 400 and 800 popular home computers and game consoles.

Atari submitted the offer directly to the IBM boss Frank T. Cary. It was known from him that not only the great, successful 360 – and 360 – systems were close to the heart, but that he also warm to small systems could – whereas “small systems” at IBM at that time mostly still floated in other dimensions than home computers.

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