The Cast of M.A.S.H. Sells I.B.M.
I don’t know why I never saw these commercials. As a kid, I LOVED M.A.S.H. and I loved computers. Of course, I was more of an Atari fan back then, but I would have loved to see my old friends together in these commercials.
IBM hired the entire cast of M.A.S.H. to promote their new computer, the PS/2. Here are the commercials:
I didn’t see a PS/2 until I got to high school. Our junior high was equipped with Ataris. I don’t know when they got an upgrade, but it was well after we left. By the time I got to use the IBM PS/2, it was very much like junior high. We were stacked three to four kids per computer. We learned to write letters on the computer using a new program called WordPerfect. There was no WYSIWYG back then. We had to put in codes before and after the words if we wanted something in italic or bold and we didn’t get to see how it looked until it came out of the printer.
In retrospect, I’m grateful for my experience with old word processors like WordPerfect because HTML seems so natural to me because of them. I don’t have very many memories of the IBM PS/2 because our school had so few of them that I didn’t get much time to use them. The idea of having a computer in my home was so far out of my reach back then that I still thrill at the idea that I have my very own computer. It’s all mine and I don’t have to share it with anyone else.