I did buy the original PC on an employee deal for over $3K. 4.8 MHz 8088 with 16 KB memory (upgraded immediately to 64 KB with third party chips) and one sided 5.25" diskette drive and, of course, PC-DOS v1.0.

Later, I did get to visit Digital Research and even see (but not talk to) Gary Kildall when my group was looking at an alternative to then nascent OS/2. For our purposes, the DR team was head and shoulders above what IBM guys were doing at the time. Politics prevented that path from getting anywhere.

Interestingly, the top financial guy for the original PC group just died last month here in Charlotte. I met him while camping with a local RV group he was trying join. We talked about some about our IBM careers and his association with the original PC group was the highlight for him. He was not a "techie", however.