Minor nit-pick: The PC came out in 1981 but the XT came out in 1983. But they both have 8088 chips running at 4.77 MHz. The main difference was that you could get it with a 10 MB hard drive, but my PC (not XT) had upgraded ROM BIOS chips (you had to change the actual chips because they were not flashable) from around 1984 and so it has a 20 MB Seagate hard drive. (Which still works.) The XT also drops the cassette port.
I recently got ahold of my PC from storage again and when I opened it up I was surprised that the floppy drive uses up one of the five 8-bit ISA slots, even though it has very few simple chips. (The XT has 8 slots.)
I recently got ahold of my PC from storage again and when I opened it up I was surprised that the floppy drive uses up one of the five 8-bit ISA slots, even though it has very few simple chips. (The XT has 8 slots.)
(Pic of the floppy controller. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/IBM_PC_Or... )