Best 'classic' PC to begin collecting for?...

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burningdoom:

--- Quote from: Jakandsig on January 24, 2015, 11:37:05 am ---What is a classic PC? Are we talking just PC before the 90's? Or do you mean computers in general and not just PC's? If the latter Atari 8-bit.

Looking at the rest of the thread, looks like people forgot PC was not what computers were called if not by IBM or using their components back in the day, actually, wasn't even that long ago. (of course, MAC is really the only non-pc left, along with Chrome Books.)

--- End quote ---

That clarification actually came later when IBM started being seen in the home market. Back in the day, when most home PCs were not IBM, because IBM was still targeting the business market only, computers like the TRS-80 and the Apple II were indeed marketed as PCs. Watch an old Apple II commercial on YouTube, they use the words "personal computer".

At first it was just a general term that referred to computers you could have in your home, "personal computers". This was due to the fact that when home computers were still new, much of the public thought of computers as these huge beasts of machines that only universities and the government had access to.

As for which the original poster meant, I don't know. But he seems to be happy with our responses, so I think we covered it pretty well.

Jakandsig:
That's actually not true at all, IBM pc's were the only ones to use the abbreviation of PC back then. And while some did use personal computer as a tag, others did not, and one of the main separating factors was the lack of using IBM PC's on a TV if not mistaken.

PC as the two letter abbrev was IBM's calling card, not only that, but there were computers like Atari 8-bit which were clearly aiming for the consumer market, Computers weren't mainstream as they were in the 90's, but this belief that computers were only for businesses is actually inaccurate, even in the U.S.

burningdoom:
Never said it wasn't available to the public, just said that a lot of people thought that way.

Here's an example right here, one of those Apple II commercials I mentioned. They CONSTANTLY marketed the Apple II, TRS-80, and C64 as a personal computer, it was a buzzword of the early 80s:

And here's even a promo video named "The Most Personal Computer" about the Apple II:

BarbaricAvatar:
Regardless, the terminology "PC" has since only been used in conjunction with the previously-titled IBM Compatibles. It is a confusing definition indeed.

A parallel to draw (as an example) would be if Nintendo referred to the SNES as a "HGC" (Home Games Console). While all the other TV-consoles are HGC's, only one of them is actually an HGC (in the case of this theroetical example, the SNES), because Genesis and Atari games won't work in SNES's, even though effectively they're all HGC's anyway.
If you can wrap your head around that, then you can see why despite ideas to the contrary, there is actually only 1 PC; the aforementioned IBM Compatible and its successors (Made by HP, Acer, Asus, Dell etc).

burningdoom:
It was probably about the time that Windows became popular that PC started referring to IBM computers only. After that, PC tended to refer to Window-compatible systems.

Back in the days of the Apple II and C64, there was another term; "IBM Compatible", which referred to IBM only programs.

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