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Comment by ubermonkey | Hacker News Reader

I read "IBM 5150" and I swear I can hear the keyboard.

Did anyone call them by their numbers back in the day? I grew up the child of an IBMer and only recall hearing "PC", "XT", "AT". There were some big IBM machines and displays that would be referred to by numbers ("3090", "8514") but I never heard that for the PC system units.

No, we just called them PCs or XTs or -- rarely! they were expensive! -- ATs.

BTW 3090 was a mainframe, IIRC.

I was about to be like "surely you mean the S/390 series" but nope, you are correct! Apparently 3090 came in between the S/370 and S/390 series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3090

I remember! My dad had an extra 3090 metal badge (maybe 2–3× the size of the ones on PCs) that we had glued over our XT's badge for a while lol

You are right. I used to work on one. Yay COBOL.

I don't think so, but in 2023 "PC" can refer to a whole bunch of different things, and "5150" is precisely clear about what it refers to.

No, they were always just 'a pc', even XT (5160) vs PC (5150) was never really pointed out

5150 I occasionally heard (though something like “original PC” was more common) to disambiguate reference to the specific model from the general class once the XT, AT, PCjr, etc., made the term ambiguous even when prefixed with “IBM”; don't recall the other model numbers for system units being used.

Sometime after the PC/XT came out, I started calling the other "original IBM PC" to distinguish it.

Around then, and for awhile, people said "IBM PC", "IBM PC/XT", "IBM PC/AT", "IBM-compatible PC", "286 PC", "386", and things like that.

People didn't ordinarily say "5150", and that wasn't the prominent branding on the chassis.

Much later, when "PC" was even more diluted, I started saying "5150" to mean the original.

... and Van Halen's "5150" in the background?

Heh, no. The PC was intro'd before the album. ;)

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