[illys]

I love the story... But don't forget this story is the proper selection of events with textual glue and interpretation to make it feel like a novel.

Some statements belong more to the glue than to History, and they should remind us this is a real-life-based * novel *. I especially noted this one: "nobody at IBM had any real experience with [microcomputers]".

IBM senior management was certainly reluctant, but "nobody"... They even had microcomputer products that hit the market:

- IBM 5100 1975, first IBM personal computer

- IBM 5110 1978, 5100 updated for a larger market target

- IBM System/23, under parallel development with the IBM PC and released 1 month before in July 1981: many of the IBM PC features are shared with or taken from it (8-bit Intel processor family 8080 vs. 8088, very same expansion connector, reuse of the electronic expansion cards such as serial, exact same keyboard - just in a different box and with different function keycaps...)

[illys]

Small fix: the IBM System/23 Datamaster was based on Intel 8085, an improved version of the 8080 (binary compatible, more features, requiring less electronics around).