12/19/2021
This was the first model Dell computer ever. Released in 1985, one year after the company's founding by Michael Dell, PC's Limited as it was called until 1987, the Turbo PC was the first original design by what would later become the massively successful Dell Computer Corporation.
The Turbo PC was priced $795 for the base model with a single 360K 5.25" disk drive, 640 KB RAM, and monochrome graphics. This price undercut competitors by a big margin. The reason Dell could offer a computer for such a low price, was its very efficient built-to-order mail-order-only business model. Customers could customize their PC with several options (like color graphics, a hard drive and an extra floppy disk drive) and the PC would only be built after customers had placed their orders.
This particular example is an early model from 1985. It is still accompanied by its original cardboard box. The computer features monochrome graphics on an amber CRT monitor, two 360K 5.25" floppy disk drives, a 20 MB hard drive and one 1.2 MB 5.25" floppy disk drive. The latter two are believed to have been added later.
Curiously, the CPU case does not contain any labels. The monitor was manufactured before PC's Limited started rebranding them. This is otherwise the exact same monitor as the PC's Limited-branded 12" monochrome monitor shipped with later computers.
PC's Limited went on to release an IBM AT clone later that year, for $1995 without monitor. According to a company spokesperson at the time, the company was shipping 1000 units a month during the first year.
