IBM PC Oddities

Posted by  | Thursday, August 11, 2011


A Mac in Drag

As the IBM PC became the standard to beat, many companies created adapters for non-IBM platforms that would allow them to run PC software. Even the proud Mac couldn’t avoid this trend, as evidenced by the Dayna MacCharlie (1985).

The result is like a 1980s version of Apple’s Boot Camp. MacCharlie, essentially a headless PC clone, used the Mac as a glorified terminal. It brought the ability to run text-based PC software (and use PC peripherals) in a Mac window, along with the capability to transfer files between platforms. It also had a keyboard extender that added the PC’s function keys and numeric keypad to the Mac keyboard.

Judging by the rarity of MacCharlie today, I’d say that very few of them sold. At $1,195, users could buy a more powerful, stand-alone PC compatible machine for a similar price.

(Photo: Dayna Communications)



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3 Comments For This Post

  1. Stilgar Says:
    August 11th, 2011 at 8:07 pm

    What about IBM's word processing software, Display Write 1.0? It's hard to find any good information on this product on the internet. I even remember the name of the executable "dw1" 🙂

  2. Zomg Says:
    August 12th, 2011 at 5:34 pm

    What's bizzare and dystopian about teaching people to read? I say it's utopian. Now if they subliminally taught them to only buy IBM or become chimp plant lackeys… that would be dystopian.

  3. Pheasant Under Glass Says:
    October 23rd, 2011 at 9:57 pm

    I think the author was just showing how limited his/her vocabulary is. …ah, if only they had access to one of those evil IBM enslavement machines during their youth.