Skip to main content Icons of Progress  The PC  Personal
Computing Comes of Age  The team that designed the IBM Personal
Computer faced a very tight deadline—they had to design and
produce a completely new microcomputer within just one year’s
time. To accomplish this task, they had to take a new approach
to building a computer.  Piecing it together  To save time, the
development team decided to build the new machine mostly from
existing components. About half of the system was from the IBM
System/23 Datamaster, which was released just one month before
the PC. Components such as the expansion bus, display, monitors,
BIOS, floppy interface and keyboard were shared between the
Datamaster and the PC. The rest of the system mostly comprised
“off-the-shelf” components, including the floppy drives,
software, BASIC in ROM and the Intel processor.  Because the PC
was designed using readily available components, it was easy to
replicate. The only proprietary component of the PC was the BIOS
(Basic Input/Output System),