IBM 5150 maximum memory?

[Chuck Guzis]

Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:38:36 -0500
From: Jules Richardson 

> Does anyone recall what the maximum memory was for an original IBM 5150 PC
> at launch time?

Vividly.  64K of 4116-type DRAM chips.  The first row was soldered 
in, the remainder were in sockets.  It was possible to purchase a 
really-stripped-down 5150 through various sources (probably gray-
market as I doubt that IBM sold them that way) with no cards or disk 
drives and only the first 16K installed on the planar.  I believe 
that the San Jose Computerland offered that deal fairly early on.  I 
was never able to determine if they purchased the boxes that way or 
canibalized the RAM for other machines.  There was a DRAM shortage on 
at the time.

Cheers,
Chuck