APL 5100

APL ran on the IBM 5100. The 5100 was a luggable (47 lb) computer that is regarded by some as the grandfather of the IBM PC. It was released in the US 1975. It was released in the UK in 1976. The smallest model cost about £9000, then the price of a London Apartment.

The IBM 5100 used a proprietary 16-bit processor called PALM which could run emulators for the System/360 and System/3. It could run APL and/or BASIC, depending on the model.

The 5100 came was available in four memory sizes: 16K, 32K, 48K and 64K bytes. A 16K machine had an available workspace size of just over 9K bytes.

The code for the APL and BASIC interpreters was stored in ROM, referred to as ROS (Read Only Storage) in the Maintenance Manuals. The 5100's APL interpreter was based on System/36's APLSV.

Several manuals for the 5100 have been preserved online.