Re: The Mac is an obscure footnote of computer history.

On Sun, 2006-09-03 at 10:54 -0700, Michelle Ronn wrote:
On 2006-09-02 19:58:33 -0700, "Edwin" <thorne25@xxxxxxxx> said:


Michelle Ronn wrote:
On 2006-09-02 15:02:40 -0700, Edwin <thorne25@xxxxxxxx> said:

"Historical PC Sales Top $3.1 Trillion"

" The personal computer celebrated its 25th birthday this past weekend.
Although its age is known, its weight wasn't. But on Monday, one analyst
estimated that the total PC market to date is worth $3.1 trillion."

"IBM introduced the PC on August 12, 1981. It cost $1,565, had a 16-bit
microprocessor, 12 font styles, 8 background colors and no mouse or hard
drive. But it set the standard for the ecosystem that made the PC a part of
our daily experience because it was compatible with non-IBM software. IBM
released the machine with the go-ahead for other manufacturers to develop
similar machines on the same software base."

"Egil Juliussen, an analyst with Computer Industry Almanac, co-authored a
review of the machine in August of 1981 in which he predicted that the PC
would "permanently and rapidly change the computer industry.""

"IBM did not fragment the personal computer industry by starting its own,
new software base," Juliussen wrote in the original report. "Other
manufacturers have fallen into this trap by trying to down-size their
existing small system. Instead, IBM has shown that it is a market-driven
company, determined what the best product would be, and built that product
to be compatible with the primary existing standard."

I would love to see the link to this, what revisionist non-sense!

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2003376,00.asp

I meant to include that.

Enter IBM. Proprietary hardware to an already existing CP/M SOFTWARE standard.

There was no proprietary hardware in the IBM PC. It was all
off-the-shelf stuff.

No, the BIOS was proprietary. BASICA was also proprietary.

The BIOS and BASICA are not hardware. That's all code saved in ROM.
Non-proprietary ROM.



Several machines came out that were SOFTWARE compatible with the IBM.
They had the names such as Eagle, AT&T, Texas Instruments...

That's in keeping with what I quoted above.

Not really. What you quoted above makes the statement that there was a
software standard that was adhered to. That was clearly not the case.
All the companies that were MSDOS compliant,

You're contradicting yourself. The software standard adhered to is
"MSDOS compliant."

but no hardware compliant,
did not live long. That means that it was a HARDWARE standard.

That came later, but does not negate the above.

It was
not an open one either.

Sure it was.


It was not until a company named Compaq came along that essentially
CLONED the IBM BIOS iteself that a "compatible" was born.

No folks, you could not be MS-DOS or PC-DOS compatible to start in the
PC game, you had to be HARDWARE compatible with the IBM PC.

MS DOS compatible. PC DOS still would only run on genuine IBM PCs,
until the late nineties.

I ran PC DOS 2.1 on Compaq's with no problems.

I don't see how.

IBM had a proprietary
BASIC on the ROM, which did not matter for very long.

IBM had DOS code in ROM that MS-DOS did not include. That's why IBM
PC-DOS wouldn't run on non-IBM PCs.

However, hardware
compatibility was the key. There was not a software compatibility
standard. If it was, being compatible with MS DOS would have been
enough. It was not.

Sure it was. People ran MS DOS on both IBM PCs and on PC clones.
They had an IBM PC at work, and a clone at home.


IBM figures this out for the 386 time frame, and tries to regain
hardware control with its PS/2 product line. Introduce microchannel
architecture, etc.

And then they go back to standard PC architecture.

Compaq does a Deskpro 386 that retains compatibility with the old
hardware standard. The rest of the industry forked with them.

IBM has essentially been a side note to PC history, never again to
retain market dominance. They did have a few flashes in the pan, with
products like the Thinkpad, etc.

IBM still stands as the originator of the PC platform.

I am not knocking that IBM did great stuff... just thought I would set
the record straight.

I don't really see anything you "set straight."

Yes, I did. Being compatible with the IBM PC was about being compatible
with the HARDWARE.

Anybody could do that. There wasn't anything about IBM PC hardware
that Apple could patent. It was about being compatible with the
software.

The article you clipped states that it was a
software standard. It was not a software standard.

Yes it was.


.

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