IBM Clone

 

While we were living in Japan we made a vacation trip to Hong Kong.  While we were there I saw ads in the local paper for Apple II clones. I thought it would be interesting to visit these shops.  Most of them were in Kowloon so I took the bus over.  I discovered that they not only had Apple II clones, they also had IBM PC clones.  By “clone” I mean a machine that has the same hardware and software interfaces as the “real” computer, but made by some company other than (in this case) IBM.  Of course, these machines infringed IBM patents and copyrights, but such laws were not (and are not) enforced in Hong Kong. 

 

I had had no intention of buying an Apple II clone, since I already owned one.  But when I saw the IBM clones, and their prices, I decided to buy one.  The machine I bought was essentially a clone of the IBM XT.  The XT was the first IBM PC to come with a hard disk drive.  For the clone I bought, the hard drive was optional.  I chose to do without it; I was trying to minimize my cost as a way of minimizing risk.  I knew if the machine arrived in Japan in a damaged state I would have no way of getting it repaired, so I felt this purchase was somewhat of a gamble.  For the same reason I bought the machine with the minimum amount of memory.

 

I asked the shopkeeper if I would have problem importing the machine into Japan and later into the U.S.  The computer came with an IBM-copyrighted BIOS and BASIC interpreter in ROM.  The shopkeeper said that Japan didn’t care about that.  However, he said, the U.S. would object to the BASIC ROM, and I should remove it before importing the machine.  Why he thought U.S. customs wouldn’t care about the BIOS, which also carried an IBM copyright notice, I don’t understand, but I did remove the BASIC ROM, which I didn’t plan to use in any case.  If I had removed the BIOS ROM, the computer would not have booted.

 

I took the new computer back to my room in a taxi, and brought it back to Japan as extra baggage.  When I set it up in our apartment, it wouldn’t boot.  I thought my fears of travel damage had been realized.  Indeed, the rear of the case had a significant dent in it. When I opened it up, I discovered that the dent was forcing the floppy-disk controller partially out of its slot.  By removing the screw that held the card to the back of the case I was able to seat it properly, but I knew that removing a card with the power on could destroy such a card.  I held my breath and powered it back on with the card correctly seated.  It booted fine and worked correctly.

 

One of the issues I had to face with this machine was the difference in electricity between countries:  Hong Kong was 220 volts, Japan was 100, and the U.S. was 110.  The shop in Hong Kong solved that problem by selling me a three-way transformer.  The input power cord had a male connector at both ends.  The transformer had three female receptacles, one for each of the three voltages.  I could plug one end of the input cable into the wall and the other into the transformer at the receptacle corresponding to the input voltage.  The other two receptacles would then deliver the other two voltages.  The power supply for the PC expected 220 volts, so in Japan I plugged into the 100 volt socket and took power out of the 220 volt socket.  Once I came back to the U.S. I plugged into the 110 volt socket and again took power to the PC from the 220 volt socket.  Eventually I replaced the power supply with a U.S. 110-volt supply.

 

As evidence of the faithfulness of the clone as a copy of the IBM PC, I was able to run IBM’s PC-DOS and any other software I could find.

 

I once again had the task of copying my old programs and data, this time from the NEC PC to the IBM clone.  I did so using similar techniques and zmodem as I had from the Franklin to the NEC.