The IBM DOS “June, 1981” Boot Screens
and the PC We Used:

After the disk boots, it executes an AUTOEXEC.BAT file which runs DATE.COM, then MOVBAS.COM and BAS18A.COM.

Note that the range of dates for early IBM PC DOS; apart from the strange "00-00-80" you see here on the second line, were only from 01-01-80 through 12-31-99. Entering anything else would result in an "INVALID" error message.

After exiting the BASIC program using SYSTEM, a DIR *.COM command was entered:

Note that the latest file date here is 06-04-81 (June 4, 1981); two months before the final release was ready (when all of the release files would have their dates changed to "08-04-81" no matter what their last change date had been).

Top Drive: 5 - 1/4 inch Diskette Drive which is quite capable of reading 1200 KB (double-sided, high density, 15 Sectors/Track, 80-Sector) diskettes. Yet, backwards compatible for even the original IBM PC DOS 1.00, 160 KB diskette!

Bottom Drive: 3.5-inch Floppy Disk Drive capable of reading the latest (for its time) 1440 KB (double-sided, normal high density, 18 Sectors/Track, 80 Tracks) diskette. But it's still capable of reading a floppy formatted as only a single-sided, 8 SPT, 40-Track, 160 KB diskette!

View of this PC's Soltek SL-52B2 Motherboard, with a 100 MHz Intel Pentium-S CPU installed. Click on picutre to see details, such as the Award BIOS label on a large 32-pin EPROM chip in a DIP socket; so you could physically replace the BIOS chip.

Note the orignal-IBM-style KEYBOARD SOCKET at the rear. The SERIAL PORT to the right could be used for a Serial Mouse.

Two of this board's advanced (at the time) PCI slots are filled with a 15-pin Video Card and a Realtek NA2632RS 10/100 Ethernet (LAN) Card.