How that came to be is no secret, of course: IBM chose the Intel 8088 to power its model 5150 PC back in the early 1980s, and since it became the dominant PC platform, everyone else followed suit.

At the risk of stating the obvious, a PC is more than just its processor ... as [GloriousCow] shows us by bus-sniffing the original IBM Model 5150. A little background is perhaps in order.

Marketed as one of the first personal computers, the IBM 5150 consisted of a system ... existed before this date, the IBM PC ushered in the availability of computers for everyone by creating an ...

Without the 8088 we wouldn't have the likes of the IBM Model 5150 – commonly known as the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) – which was one of the first machines to use it when it launched in 1981.