Re: Ebay, the ANA, and greedy dealers are destroying the hobby

I agree with much of what you said as I was also there in the beginning. In
fact, I was working at a major Aerospace company there in the valley and was
part of a task team that was looking at the available PC's (IBM had not yet
announced their PC) and developing a recommendation for our company to
purchase. At that time, the main PC we had were 4 mhz machines built by
Zentec. After a 6 month process, we narrowed the choices down to 2. A
couple weeks later, IBM announced their version of the PC and an edict came
from the head of IS that our company would be purchasing the IBM PC as the
company standard. Needless to say that we were all more than a little
ticked, but there was nothing we could do.

Everyone unestimated what the PC would become. Except for the few
visionaries who are now multi-billionaires.

To correct one more point, when using the word "its" as a plural possive
pronoun, there is no apostrophe. This is one of the exceptions to the rule
of making a plural possive by adding "'s". The only proper usage of "it's"
is the contraction form of "it is".

Have a nice day.

Bob

"Ed In Colorado" <ehunnicu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:k4l5h390nihfj64s02etnh63qu796bgd26@xxxxxxxxxx
Just to correct a couple points,

Bill Gates purchased DOS from a developer who Bill Gates worked with
in New Mexico and proceeded to refine it for IBM. IBM used a
specially designed basic chip as part of it's 8086 and 8088 machines,
so IBM's DOS/OS as refined by MIcrosoft, would not run on generic
processors.
Apple Used a Motorola CPU chip in it's first few generation of
computers, the same CPU chip that HP used in it's MPE3000 and 9000
famliy of computers. This was because WOZ worked at HP's R&D center
in Palo Alto. And didn't leave the company until He and his new idea
was rejected by HP. The primary reason for the rejection was the
feeling at HP that the PC market would not overtake the Multitasker
CPUs for 20-30 years and the projected sales presented by WOZ was only
$20 million over a 5-year period, not enough for HP, they were getting
up to $20 Million a year from PepsiCo alone in support of the
computers they had placed in Pepsico's Primary Company's.

In the deal with IBM, Microsoft retained rights to the original
Purchased OS which became the product that Microsoft marketed to all
the rest of the market place in those early years. Most of the PC
inventor's in Silicon Valley didn't have a processor chip that would
run Microsoft's DOS and stuck with their own basic O/S. That worked
until enough parts became availible on the third-party market to build
a IBM compatible system, except those machine wuld NOT run IBM/DOS, so
the market for Microsoft's DOS grew by leaps and bounds. It may
interest you to know that IBM build NONE of their XT machines, they
were all built by a Teledyne Company named Teledyne MEC in MT View,
CA. And that Commodore, Atari, TI, Radio SHack, Packard Bell all built
MS/DOS machines, mostly marketed overseas. Packard Bell was, of
course, built overseas and sold in the US.

Apple, In it's need to regain market, conceived and designed the MAC,
and CONTRACTED MIcrosoft to develop the GUI O/S that made the MAC so
successful.
However, as with IBM and DOS, Microsoft retained developer's rights
and was soon producing WINDOWS for IBM and generic machines.
You might recall the Microsoft lost a law suit that Apple filed over
the GUI O/S. In the settlement, each company was ordered to pay their
own lawyers, and Microsoft was ordered to pay Apple $200 within 30
days.
Yes, $200.

SO it helps to have been there....


.

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