ThinkPad History Part 2 – Sales shortcomings & PS/55 Note

IBM had mild success with the launch of the IBM PC but had much less success with their portables & luggables line of computers. The clones would dominate and companies from Japan started to seep into the NA and EU markets. By the end of the 80’s, IBM’s General Systems division had kept on failing and desperately looked for solutions.

5155 Model 68 – 1984-86

In 1984 IBM released the IBM PC Portable 5155 model 68, it was a luggable computer that looked to be a direct competitor to the Compaq Portable. It cost $4225 at launch, and the system was a PC/XT motherboard with a built-in CRT & keyboard. It was 100% IBM Compatible because well, it was made by IBM, but it cost $700 more than Compaq’s computer, offered the same performance & it weighed a little bit more at 30 pounds vs 28lbs. Good thing they used a wired keyboard and not the PCjr 99% never working wireless keyboard.

The PC Portable was a flop, while the PC/XT came with a hard disk as standard, the 5155 did not. Due to how the PC/XT was built, most of the extension cards were made tall & long to fit the desktop case. Due to the 5155 being a bit shorter, most of the cards built would not fit, this also affected the Compaq Portable, but it didn’t cost $700 more. You may of waited for smaller cards being built, or be disappointing that none were built at all. There was no real advantage for manufacturers to microsize their extension cards for one computer, vs the world of clones being developed.

The portable market was slowly starting to emerge. A year prior the Gavilan SC & Sharp PC-500 were both a simpler, cheaper clam-shell PC than the GRiD Compass 1101 or 1129. Other companies started to follow, the Dulmont Magnum, HP 110, NEC PC 8401A all had clam-shell designs. But still there as a few luggables like the Zenith Z-160 PC, Kaypro 2X or Kaypro 4. During this time the 5.25″ floppy was widely used and popular, but a smaller 3.5″ floppy got released and started to gain popularity. IBM had a lot to fight up against if it wanted to be the king, but their competition kept on ahead.

Apple gave the middle finger to IBM with its famous 1984 commercial advertisement during Super Bowl XVIII. Apple released the Macintosh, with its CRT built-in at $2500, and it’s snazzy GUI. The Macintosh was a small desktop at $2500, & it was portable enough for people to consider it instead of the PC Portable or Compaq. It would be several years before Apple would release a laptop. The Mac form factor and GUI impressed millions and it showed that Apple didn’t have to cave to the IBM PC compatible market. Oh yeah, the book Neuromancer was released at this time by William Gibson. The cyberpunk dystopia 

Toshiba T1100 & Flash Memory 1985-87

via an Ebay Listing (overpriced, untested)

April 1985 Toshiba launches the T1100 in Europe, a super-compact clamshell, that was IBM PC compatible, had a fairly large LCD for its size & was able to run on batteries. This computer was the great grandparent of laptops to come, it wasn’t limited to run on AC power like the GRiD Compass line, yet it wasn’t hindered by running a small OS, it was able to run all the programs the IBM PC could. Toshiba packed in a 3.5″ floppy drive, while most of their competitors used 5.25″ drives, even the 5155 had a 3.5″ floppy drive as an option, but not standard.

With the success of the European market, Toshiba released it to the United States and Japan in 1986. The 3.5″ drive was disliked at first but it became the standard media format everyone used. Toshiba listened to market demands & studied the trends. Toshiba’s innovation to the laptop market was like no others at the time, defeating its rivals like NEC and Fujitsu in sales and popularity. One such creation was the invention of flash memory.

Fujio Masuoka via IEEE & ETHW

Fujio Masuoka is an engineer who was hired by Toshiba in 1971. He was excited about EEPROM (ROM) memory, and wondered what else to do with it. Even if the T1100 was not a success, Toshiba was making plenty of money in the computer, aeronautical and automobile industries with its DRAM chips, everyone was buying them. Fujio Masuoka would work on creating flash memory after his shift ended at Toshiba. He developed a precursor of the modern Solid State Drive, NOR memory, and went public with it in 1984 at the International Electronics Developers Meeting in San Jose. American semiconductor companies took notice of this, Intel in particular hired 100 engineers to research and develop this new technology.

Masuoka wanted to use this technology primarily in the automobile industry however, Toshiba kept on producing and advancing their DRAM chips. Toshiba’s executives saw Masuoka’s invention as a risk to their sales, so Masuoka worked with progressing DRAM technology. He slowly advanced in the ranks with the hopes of working on his invention. With his promotions, he had been given a team of engineers and they evolved the NOR memory SSD into a cheaper architecture. They produced a different architecture that was cheaper to produce that is used by most SSDs today, NAND type storage in 1987, which what we are most familiar with today. Masuoka would quit Toshiba later on due to his disappointment, maybe it was Intel making billions or SunDisk’s CF Card innovation. He would later sue Toshiba and get an $860K payout from them in the 2000s. In 1985 Michael Dell would drop out of college to run his computer company startup, and five supercomputers in various universities around United States would link up to each other via NSFNET.

IBM PC Convertible 5140 – 1986-1988

Boca Raton saw how terrible the PC Portable sales were, its uses, so they had made a clam-shell computer. This time it had a battery in the system, and it had an optional dot matrix printer that would connect to the back, looking like a single unit. The laptop was designed by Richard Sapper with Colleen Sweeney. If you wanted to, you could remove the display and connect it directly to a CRT.

Richard Sapper & 5140 – via Richard Sapper Design

Released on April 1986, the laptop cost $2000, it was cheaper than the 5155, and it came with an Intel 8088 CPU @ 4.77MHz, two 3.5″ Floppy Drives and a green monochrome LCD capable of 640 x 200 pixels for text or 320 x 200. I am not sure why IBM had kept using the same CPU clock for their PCs… but they were a bit different from each other, and some were actually better. I’ll dive this later. 😛

This computer sucked, real, hard. It was slow, it had no backlight screen and its contrast ratios were terrible to look at. IBM did upgrade the system a few times, first adding a 256K Memory Card in January 1987, and in July they added a new blue display that had a backlight. IBM las losing to Toshiba’s 1100 line of laptops and the Zenith (ZDS) Z-171 luggable. The Zenith Z-171 got a 27 million USD contract with the Internal Revenue Service. One company that stayed with the CRT luggable design was Compaq, their Portable II was faster, slightly smaller and came with an HDD standard.

PS/2, MCA & EISA – 1987-90

The successor to the IBM PC, XT, AT computers was the PS/2 line. This was IBM’s first Intel 386 powered PC, a 20MB hard drive, and PC-DOS 3.3. They released quite a few PS/2 Models; 30, 50, 60, 80, and then later the 25, 70. These computers decided to sort out the many things that IBM goofed up with the original PC. We get the legendary cyan & purple, mouse & keyboard “PS/2” input that almost lives on to this day.

In April 1987, IBM officially announced the OS/2 Operating System, available in Q1 of 1988. Software Development Kits were available for purchase, Microsoft advertised it for $3,000 and that number pushed a lot of people away from it. OS/2 was marketed as the successor of DOS, the interface and commands were similar, except it was able to do multitasking. OS/2 is completely alien to me, so I’ll spare the details, the teamwork between IBM and MicroSoft began to get worse as the days went on. Microsoft had an agreement to build and continuously develop the OS/2 software on paper, but in actuality it was placed below the priority of MS-DOS & Windows development. In 1988, Jim Cannavino became head of IBM’s Entry Divisions and he had firsthand experience with how frustrating the deal had been not fulfilled. IBM believed OS/2 would bring in sales to their computers, away from the clones & EISA computers. The OS could be used with other computers, but driver support was non-existent in comparison to Windows and most saw no reason to switch. This snowballed with each release of Windows, to which IBM cut ties with M$ and developed OS/2 on its own in 1990…

Micro Channel Architecture is a proprietary bus that was introduced with some models of the PS/2 line & other systems. This is the successor to the ISA bus that was in the IBM PC & clones. It improved the bus speed, had a better bus width, helped grounding & power distribution among other things. It formed the basis of Plug and Play systems, instead of needing to configure hardware, it just werks! IBM saw the mistakes they did with the open system of the PC, so they sought to get licensing fees to whoever used or built for the system. Some manufacturers adopted MCA, while others stayed with ISA, or tried out the VESA Local Bus. IBM sought to regain losses from the clone market via licensing fees, and some did not want to join.

The Gang of Nine” fought back with the EISA, Extended Industry Standard Architecture, which was backward compatible with ISA. ESIA was just about as good as MCA, except it had a slower bus speed. Computers built on EISA architecture was more expensive than ISA ones however, they were still cheaper than MCA systems and were not hindered by the IBM licensing fees & rules. In the budget market, ISA still rocked the world, while EISA was used in mid to high-end computers, as well as workstations & servers, as the bus speed for networking & drives was much needed. IBM would later make computers compatible with the EISA platform and ultimately kill off MCA computers after 1993.

Enough of that, let’s get back on laptops.

P70 & P75 (8573) 1989-91 More Luggables

IBM decided that it can’t make a powerful computer in a small form factor. On May 9th, 1989, IBM introduced the PS/2 Model P70 386 Portable Computer. Instead of the PC Convertible’s design, the P70 went back to a luggable and was more of a suitcase. It weighed 20 lbs, and it stood upright, like a tower with a gas plasma display attached on the side, and a keyboard. The display was like a GRiD Compass, black with orange text/color, compared to the current LCDs, it had a higher refresh rate, and the text looked crisper thanks to its contrasts. The keyboard was not fixed on the frame, it was connected via wire, like a KayPro II, and the LCD was tiltable. I speculate that IBM couldn’t create an MCA laptop, so they went with a PS/2 mobo and build from there. Gas Plasma displays were popular at this time, but they burned a lot of energy.

IBM went one step forward, and 3 leaps back. First, it cost more than the PC Portable, from $4995, up to USD $7695, which was hella expensive. For that you got a 16MHz or 20MHz Intel 386 CPU (some sources suggest a Cyrix 486DLC), 4MB RAM, 1.44MB Floppy Drive, 30MB HDD, no batteries, and uh a shit load of regret, I do want one though. In comparison, you could have gotten a PS/2 Model 55 SX for $3895, with a slightly slower CPU and less drive space, but no regrets. The P70 was more of a portable workstation than a portable computer or laptop, as it was not the real successor to the PC Convertible. It is similar to the Portable, as it uses a standard PC motherboard, which is good for parts resourcing these days.

In November 1990, IBM releases the PS/2 Model P75 Portable Computer. It is an upgraded version of the P70, using a revised motherboard, a 33MHz Intel 486, 8MB RAM, 160MB HDD, 1.44MB floppy, and weight 22 lbs. One source says that the P75 is a “PS/2 Model 90 on a carrying handle”. I can’t find an exact price, but models ranged from $15,990 to $18,890 USD depending on your configuration. IBM solely marketed this to commercial markets, it had superior computing and graphical performance compared to the P70, and could output XGA graphics to a monitor. I don’t want to delve into part pricing, but it was way different back then, for one thing, IBM was selling a 400MB SCSI drive for $6,400 for their PS/2 desktop. Due to the hellish price, IBM didn’t sell many of these, I cannot find information as to why they made these systems and for who. Before we hit 1991, we have to go check on IBM’s competitors and Yamato Labs…

GRiD & Pen Computing 1985-90

Tired of me bringing up these laptops? Get fucked!

via Mark Simmons for ComputerHistory.org

GRiD Systems made operating systems, software, servers, cloud storage; all of which had odd-numbered prices. They knew they needed to compete against PC compatibles & went off to make an MS-DOS machine. The GRiDCase (GRiDCASE?) came out in 1985, it was the answer to MS-DOS compatibility and cheaper price vs the Compass line. There were four models available for this line of laptops, basically a tier list, I being the lowest and IV being the highest. You start with a garbo LCD display for the I, an upgraded LCD for the II, a high contrast Gas Plasma display for the III or a full size yellow electroluminescent display for the IV. Although things were doing great at GRiD, they did not have the commercial success they believed they could get. In 1988 they were purchased by Tandy Corp., the GRiD execs believed they would be able to gain commercial success, and the Tandy Corp was able to get the commercial sales team they needed.

Instead of having expensive bubble memory, you have the ability to jam ROM chips to load programs or just go with a spinning disk. If you watched the movie Aliens, you saw a GRiD laptop there. Although GRiD was doing extremely well with the US Army & other governments due to its “tough” magnesium case builds, they wanted to enter a different field, Pen Computing. There had been a few computers using digitizers and electronic pens by other companies but not widely successful, recently the Linus WriteTop was marketed to the dental/hospice field.

Samsung PenMaster via RetroCosm

Jeff Hawkins of GRiD would help innovate pen computing, with the GRiDPad, & he later he would create the PDA. On October 1989 the GRiDPad was released, it is the first portable battery-powered pen computer. Hawkins developed the hand recognizing software, patented as PalmPrint, it recognized hand strokes in opposed to how letters should be written. GRiD had the tablet co-developed by Samsung, to which they’ve created their own version, the PenMaster, but didn’t make it to full production. It was big and bulky, nothing like an iPad, something more like a ToughBook tablet. GRiDPad had a proprietary version of MS-DOS 3.30 as the operating system. I’m unsure if it was stored in the planar or a memory card eventually, a 10MB HDD was added to the systems.

Wacom WT-460M via Bill Buxton

The GRiDPad used technology and hardware from Wacom. Wacom’s first product was in 1984 with their WT-460M tablet, it was not the first pen/tablet on the market, it was the first pen that didn’t need a wire. Wacom’s tablets beat out Kurta’s & other competition. They quickly gained a monopoly thanks to their electro-magnetic resonance technology, specialized chips, & plenty of patents. Wacom technology would be used by many companies who went the pen computing route, and IBM would do the same with the ThinkPad. Wacom may of made a deal with Disney in 1990 for the 1991 movie Beauty and the Beast.

PS/2 L40SX 1991-93

L40SX w/ a NumberPad via RICM

In March 1991 IBM produced their first laptop, the L40SX, a 7-pound behemoth which nearly cost $6000. This computer uses a backlit LCD display, has a full-size keyboard, an attachable number pad, & ran on batteries up to 3 hours. It came with a 20MHz Intel 386SX processor, 2MB RAM standard, upgradable to 18MB, 60MB HDD. When released it cost an astronomical price of$5,995 USD, and similar spec’d laptops cost $3,995.

EEV blog did a teardown on this unit and he said it had the best keyboard a laptop ever came with, I wouldn’t doubt that seeing it is similar to a Model M. But keyboard feel was not something that sold well in a pre-internet era. On top of that, you had to pay extra for upgrades, which included a Fax Modem, i387SX math coprocessor, 2MB, 4MB or 8MB RAM modules, and a PS/2 mouse. IBM called this mouse the TrackPoint, it was like a typical mouse or you can flip it over, and set it up to be like a trackball. Yet due to the high price and bulky design, consumers were not too incentivized to get this IBM laptop. Especially when there were more desirable and innovating laptops in this era. 

Ball mouse side, via AfterDeathBloom imgur

In July 1991, IBM announced that it would cut the price to $5,245 to help sales. The development of the L40SX kept on getting delayed, due to shortages of 60MB drives and other components. Additionally, IBM’s Boca Raton Plant & General Systems Division were hampered by the elder hierarchy that ruled the mainframe era, they needed to get approval by the executives before they went on. Because of this L40SX was not a success, it blundered at sales, it was clunkier than competitors, and it cost much much more. The full-sized keyboard was liked by people familiar with the IBM Model M layout, its size and weight greatly outweighed its competitors.

Intel had released the new 386SL 20MHz chip sometime in October 1990 but in limited quantities. This processor was specifically designed for laptops, the first of its kind by Intel. The 386SL chip extended battery life by using low powered CPU states & had sleep functions that could be set by the system’s hardware or software. Some OEMs at the time could not launch laptop systems because of the shortage. The L40SX had been held back in development because of setbacks, and when it did come out, there were 386SL laptops just around the corner. This timing was terrible for IBM as people just waited for the 386SL offerings by Toshiba, Zenith & others.

Possibly random, but IBM had created a “laptop device” called the PC Radio. It ran MS-DOS, it had a small built-in printer and an antenna jack for radio communications. It looked to be a sort of early telecommunications laptop device. From the looks of it, the system is much more smaller and simpler than their previous products. This device was not intended to be used as a home computer.

Japans PS/55 Note line of Laptops – 1987 to 1994

PS/55 Laptop 5535-M18 via ~ayase

IBM of Japan released its new line of computers in 1987 called the PS/55 line, using the MCA standard, these were the successors of the 5550 Multistation series. IBM’s clunky portable PCs did not do well against the minimal environment, so Yamato Labs had been working on releasing a successful laptop to sell with the PS/55. They had success with the PS/55 5535-S & 5535-M portables released in October 1987. They were smaller than the PC Convertible, had a similar folding clamshell design and require to be plugged in. These computers were still very clunky, as with the hardware it had to be 100% MCA and PS/55 compatible. In Japan companies were obsessed with making smaller laptops, so performance & hardware expansion had taken a hit.

PS/55 Note 5523-S via Duensser

A few years later we get the ThinkPad precursor, PS/55 Note 5523-S released on March 27, 1991. This laptop was released in Japan the day after the L40SX was released in the USA, and it was extremely successful too. As the months progressed, word about this laptop & its success caught attention from the US markets, as it was a much more desirable computer than the L40SX. There were rumors that IBM would release an American and European variant of the PS/55 Note sometime later in 1991. IBM’s Yamato labs had designed, & developed the Note, but what helped them have the upper hand was that they co-developed the machine with RICOH. IBM and RICOH made a joint venture on April 2, 1990, called RIOS Systems. RICOH was responsible for minimizing the laptop, being able to build the two main sub-boards with a density that IBM’s manufacturing facilities could not match. The RIOS joint venture would develop the extreme-portable line of computers only available in East Asian countries, the Chandra Project, 200 series & PC110 “PalmTop”.

Reading the ComputerWorld article, Japan’s price for this laptop was a mere $2,647 for a fully spec’d Note! That is half of the cost of a base model L40SX. Upon further investigation, it had a starting price as low as $1,700, thanks to RICOH’s low manufacturing costs. What helped sell the PS/55 Note was that it was advertised as designed & built in Japan. Like the United States during the muscle car era, Japan had a strong sense of nationality & pride in the products they owned. Although it has an IBM label on the laptop, it was built and made in Japan, which the advertising campaign had been vocal about. Had this been released in North America, it would have been in direct competition to laptops that cost half of an L40SX. Even though the PS/55 line is supposed to be MCA compliant, I have doubts there would of been easy backwards compatibility in NA or EU markets. Around this time Arimasa Naitoh was sent off to work in America, but got called back to work on a new laptop project in IBM Japan.

Arimasa Naitoh 2017 – bizjournals

IBM believed that pen computing would be the future, but wanted to work with a company who wasn’t MicroSoft. GO Corporation was a new startup that has been developing an operating system to specifically work with handwriting and had a working prototype with a digitizer. Pen computing was still in its infancy, with the Linus Write Top and GRiDPad being some of the first portable tablets, Cannavino saw GO CORP’s prototype and wanted an IBM tablet like it. Thinking it was the future and as a counter to Microsoft, IBM worked a deal to use their software for their slate tablet, so the start of the 2521 began. The PS/55 Note was the laptop of the future, so IBM worked with the Yamato Labs facility to build a laptop for the NA and EU markets by the end of 1991. Apart from the 2521, there were three pre-ThinkPad laptops; N27SX, N51, & N23/33.

N33SX, N51SX – Late 1991

This section could be inaccurate, will correct with updates when possible.

In October 1991, Yamato Labs produced the PS/55 Note N23SX with a 12MHz Intel CPU. As IBM said they were going to release a PS/55 Note for North America and European, they got the N23, switched the keyboard and called it the PS/2 Note N33SX (8533-G13) with the same 12MHz CPU. Pricewise it may fo cost $2990 (I think) for the base model. The laptop has a layout similar to the ThinkPad, but in an off grey, almost army kind of look. In the NA/EU market, IBM had adapted a 16MHz CPU for the system (8533-G15), possibly because of lackluster sales. The kev009 page also indicated that the NA/EU N33SX had a different system board design than the JP/SA N23SX, possibly due to the NA/EU keyboard layout?

The N51SX (8551-***) laptop was released alongside the N33, I believe this was a more powerful unit. From the German Wiki, it states that it is very similar in build to the ThinkPad 700, a precursor. It came with a 16MHz Intel 386SX, 2MB RAM standard or up to 10MB maximum. There was a second model called the PS/2 Note N51SLC, it was released later, in May 1992. This had an IBM 386SLC processor, which was an Intel licensed processor, based on the Intel 386SX.

Apple’s PowerBook Success – 1991

Apple PowerBook 100 via oldcomputers.net

The timing couldn’t be worse for IBM, because Apple released its PowerBook line of computers. Unlike their very unsuccessful Macintosh Portable of 1989, Apple got it right this time and sold many units. Apple’s laptops had a clam-shell design, they placed a roller ball mouse in front of the keyboard, with space to rest your palms. Before this, most computers had the keyboard in front of you, and a space behind it, most people put notes or flashcards for commands here. Undoubtedly the design of the PowerBook is still used today, and the position of the trackball made the PowerBook series a success. They had the standard PowerBook 140 (USD $3,199), a powerhouse 170 (USD $4,599), and an ultraportable 100 (USD $2,300), which was designed & miniaturized by Sony.

These PowerBooks were selling very well in competition to the Wintel laptops and stellar to the unpopular IBM laptops. Even though the PS/2 Note laptops were a better laptop than the L40SX, it still lacked the pizzaz that IBM needed. Some laptops had cumbersome pointing systems for GUI based machines, some didn’t bother with it entirely and required it as an add on. The PS/2 mouse was big and clunky, most were roller ball types, but companies tried to make a solution for the small spaces of laptops. Ted Selker was still messing around with the TrackPoint and it wasn’t ready for release or may of been stuck in development hell. Due to the popularity of the PowerBook, developers and executives saw the TrackPoint as the ingenious solution to a trackball. IBM still made some laptops utilizing a trackball anyways.

Like the 5150, Convertible PC, and P70, IBM was still afraid that the sales of their home computers were going to be comprised of an equal powerful laptop. After 7 years, IBM still hindered their laptops so that they were not better spec-wise than their desktop counterparts. When the ThinkPad line of laptops would launch, IBM still had PS/2 Note computers available for sale, and made a few more models to be sold alongside the ThinkPad line. As to why they did, I’m not sure, perhaps the different divisions were competing with each other, so the infighting ensued. We will soon jump to the excitement of the 2521 and 700C in the next chapter. 🙂

IBM had been in the development of a RISC based computer system since the 70’s, and they had a few prototypes in the 80’s. It was believed that a RISC based processor was the chip of the future, so many companies were heavy in development and eager to push them out. In 1991 IBM was in talks with Apple to sell them a microprocessor for them to use. Apple asked Motorola if they wanted to get in the deal with them. The three companies made an alliance, called AIM, and this is the start of Apple’s use of PowerPC processors. IBM focused on making supercomputers, servers and high-end workstations built using PowerPC components, but they didn’t capitalize much on the desktop or laptop market. I want that sexy IBM PowerLaptop EWS, but I’m not sure if it is real. Maybe I’ll settle for a Tadpole built RISC laptop with IBM branding….

During this alliance, IBM discovered out about Apple’s project Pink; an operating system currently in development. Originally it was intended to become the successor to the Mac Operating System. IBM saw this opportunity to make a joint venture with Apple’s project team & spun off to create a separate company, Taligent in 1992. It pointed the project OS to create an OS specifically for RISC systems, called WorkplaceOS. HP would later get involved in this process, buying a 15% stake in the company in 1994. WorkplaceOS was supposed to be the ultimate RISC operating system, but it never came to be, and eventually died in 1998. During this time of the AIM alliance, IBM’s operating systems consisted of AIX, OS/2, PenPoint OS, and MVS to name a few. It’s strange to think that IBM was going to create another operating system to compete against Microsoft Windows.

Arimasa Naitoh had taken a small vacation in Hawaii before going to Japan to work on the next project. His work schedule wouldn’t let him take another vacation for the next decade. Ted Selker had been ironing out the bugs of the TrackPoint system, which would become the ThinkPad staple. He would make plenty of innovations for the ThinkPad line, like wrap around power cord, and 755V removable lid for a projector display.

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