I have two main units, keyboard and mouse.
type computer
country USA
year 1992
os IBM DOS 5.0 / OS2
cpu Intel 386SX
speed 20 MHz
ram 4 MB
disk 3,5″ 2.88 MB
hd SCSI 80 MB
display VGA+ / XGA-2
graphic 640 x 480 etc.
colors max 64k
sound peep
ports monitor, keyboard, mouse, rs323, centronigs
The IBM PS/2 Model 56 — The Business PS/2
The IBM PS/2 Model 56 was part of IBM’s second-generation PS/2 range, using the Intel 80386SX processor with Micro Channel Architecture expansion for corporate environments that required IBM’s managed, enterprise-grade computing platform. Like other PS/2 models, it featured IBM’s proprietary MCA bus rather than the ISA bus of IBM PC-compatible clones — a distinction that remained commercially divisive but gave PS/2 systems technical advantages in terms of bus speed and automatic configuration (a precursor to Plug-and-Play) that ISA systems of the era could not match.
MCA’s Technical Merits
Despite its commercial failure as a standard, the Micro Channel Architecture was genuinely technically superior to ISA in several respects. MCA supported bus mastering — allowing expansion cards to transfer data directly to memory without CPU involvement — automatic configuration eliminating the jumper-setting that plagued ISA card installation, and higher data transfer rates. These advantages made PS/2 systems genuinely better performing in corporate network environments, and IBM PS/2 machines remained standard in many corporate and government environments throughout the early 1990s despite costing more than comparable clone machines.