IBM PC 20 years
Martin Nisshagen
IBM Timeline (mostly about it's PC hardware):
http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/pcanniversary/timeline.html
Best regards,
m a r t i n | x p
--
Martin Nisshagen
mart...@msn.com
http://communities.msn.com/wxp
David T. Johnson
Martin Nisshagen wrote:
>
> For the nostalgic part of us...
>
> IBM Timeline (mostly about it's PC hardware):
>
> http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/pcanniversary/timeline.html
>
These machines really advanced the idea of desktop computers when they
were introduced with their 16-bit memory addressing allowing up to 640K
of memory (this was a lot for the time), flexibility/expandability with
their 8-bit ISA bus, keyboards as peripherals, and high-resolution
(relatively speaking) green screen (made business use practical on a
desktop machine).
Wolf Kirchmeir
=>These machines really advanced the idea of desktop computers when they
=>were introduced with their 16-bit memory addressing allowing up to 640K
=>of memory (this was a lot for the time), flexibility/expandability with
=>their 8-bit ISA bus, keyboards as peripherals, and high-resolution
=>(relatively speaking) green screen (made business use practical on a
=>desktop machine).
I beg to differ. IBM's machines were all old technology. We have had crippled
machines ever since. I had a Commodore 64 at the time, and it could handle a
meagbyte of RAM (in an add-on cartridge). It had higher resolution than the
CGA crap of the PC. And so on.
Other superior machines were the Apple, the Amiga (it could do video in the
background while you did your work in the foreground, complete with sound,
about the time we got the XT), Sun, HP, and a host of others.
The reason we have IBM PCs is that technopeasants were afraid to buy anything
without those three magic letters on the box... Yecch! Ibm set back PC
development by a decade. But they've been punished. They never did understans
what a PC, and they will never catch up. The PC has bypassed their attempts
to force their shit-standards on the industry, and the box is finally getting
to be a Real Computer.
--
Wolf Kirchmeir >>wol...@onlink.net<<
If you didn't want to go to Chicago, why did you get on the train?
(Garrison Keillor)
Wes newell
> For the nostalgic part of us...
>
> IBM Timeline (mostly about it's PC hardware):
>
> http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/pcanniversary/timeline.html
>
What a crock. Inovative my butt. They just threw together a computer
with off the shelf components. And picking the 8088 was about the worst
choice they could have made. 8 bit data bus, 16 bit internal bus, 20 bit
address bus. This choice has plagued us for 20 years now.
Will Honea
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
Well, any choice with Intel's segmented address architecture would
have been just as bad.
What you are missing is what IBM did that was positive for the PC as a
class: they made it a legitimate business tool and brought enough
presence to enforce a previously missing level of compatibility.
Granted, a more IT professional view of the configuration of the
hardware would have reaped huge gains for us but even the minimal
hardware approach had a very large and important effect on the general
acceptance of the entire PC genre.
--
Will Honea <who...@codenet.net>
William L. Hartzell
Martin Nisshagen wrote:
>
> For the nostalgic part of us...
>
> IBM Timeline (mostly about it's PC hardware):
>
> http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/pcanniversary/timeline.html
>
And there are those that say IBM does not know marketing. The PC and
the XT had the best in marketing. The technology sucked, but the ads
rocked. What happened when it came time to do the OS/2?
--
Bill
<Okay, you win>
ste...@earthlink.bogus.net
>off the shelf components. And picking the 8088 was about the worst choice
>they could have made. 8 bit data bus, 16 bit internal bus, 20 bit address
>bus. This choice has plagued us for 20 years now.
I often think of the PC as a lab experiment that got out into the wild.
There are times I like to consider what the world would be like if IBM had
chosen to use the Motorola chips that were available at the time.
Steven
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven Levine <ste...@earthlink.bogus.net> MR2/ICE 2.28a #10183
Warp4/FP11.5 www.scoug.com irc.webbnet.org #scoug (Wed 7pm PST)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
David T. Johnson
I don't think the IBM PC technology sucked. IBM took what was available
at the time and created a relatively powerful system with a relatively
low cost. Yes, a couple of years later, there was a lot of better stuff
but that is not the point. People have pointed out that the CGA
resolution and color depth was not very good by today's standards. Very
true. But the processors, memory, bus speed, and software were simply
not capable of delivering more at a price that normal users could
afford. The CGA was actually designed to work with color TV sets which
were commonly used with small desktop computers at the time that the IBM
PC was introduced. As a compromise solution, IBM also provided what
they called a monochrome display adapter along with a green monochrome
screen. This setup did not support colors or graphics but it did offer
a much higher resolution screen using only ASCII characters at a
reasonable speed. Technology passed this solution by within a couple of
years but most early IBM PCs for business use were used with the green
screen. IBM was also innovative in putting many key components on
expansion cards rather than on the motherboard as most other machines
did at the time. This had two major advantages that were key to the
success of the IBM PC. First, it created a new 3rd party market for
add-ons such as better display cards, modems, additional ports, hard
drive controllers, etc. Second, it provided users with a way to upgrade
their very expensive machines relatively easily.
Barry Bryan
:>There are times I like to consider what the world would be like if IBM had
:>chosen to use the Motorola chips that were available at the time.
I wonder too. I have a picture on my wall of the personal computer we built
in Kingston based on the Motorala 6800/68000 (whatever the 16-bit number was)
chip set. We demoed to the executives twice; the second time we were told
by Paul Rizo to go back and figure out how to use the, then unannounced, Boca
Raton PC for our project. His explanation was that Boca Raton was much
further along than we were in figuring out how to manufacture the system and
market it. He was right.
Regards, Barry
Program Manager, OS/2 Device Support
Jason Bowen
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Yeah, it's sad how true inovation has been run over by the Wintel
jaugernaut.
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Jason Bowen
them heh? The IBM PC was not the best machine out there by a long shot
and it's rise gave rise to MS too.
In article <jbysxvebayvaxarg...@news1.sympatico.ca>,
Brad BARCLAY
> These machines really advanced the idea of desktop computers when they
> were introduced with their 16-bit memory addressing allowing up to 640K
> of memory
Just to make a small clarification, the original PC used 20 bit
segmented addresses. The CPU could address a total of 1MB of memory,
however 384K of that was reserved for addressing ROM routines.
Brad BARCLAY
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Posted from the OS/2 WARP v4.5 desktop of Brad BARCLAY.
E-Mail: bbar...@ca.ibm.com Location: C3/023/8200/MKM
William L. Hartzell
"David T. Johnson" wrote:
>
> I don't think the IBM PC technology sucked. IBM took what was available
> at the time and created a relatively powerful system with a relatively
> low cost. Yes, a couple of years later, there was a lot of better stuff
> but that is not the point. People have pointed out that the CGA
> resolution and color depth was not very good by today's standards. Very
> true. But the processors, memory, bus speed, and software were simply
> not capable of delivering more at a price that normal users could
> afford. The CGA was actually designed to work with color TV sets which
> were commonly used with small desktop computers at the time that the IBM
> PC was introduced. As a compromise solution, IBM also provided what
> they called a monochrome display adapter along with a green monochrome
> screen. This setup did not support colors or graphics but it did offer
> a much higher resolution screen using only ASCII characters at a
> reasonable speed. Technology passed this solution by within a couple of
> years but most early IBM PCs for business use were used with the green
> screen. IBM was also innovative in putting many key components on
> expansion cards rather than on the motherboard as most other machines
> did at the time. This had two major advantages that were key to the
> success of the IBM PC. First, it created a new 3rd party market for
> add-ons such as better display cards, modems, additional ports, hard
> drive controllers, etc. Second, it provided users with a way to upgrade
> their very expensive machines relatively easily.
There was a thriving expansion card business that had existed for years
before the advent of the PC. If you care to remember the Apple II and
IIC both had expansion card slots. So the the Commodore PET and 64,
ditto for the Atari and all CPM machines that I had seen. My CPM
machine had six expansion slots. One of them was for the video card.
The external Hard drives required another slot. The technology in the
PC sucked. Not only that but the Z80 chip ran at eight MHz and came
with 160 KB of memory and was not until the turbo XT clones appeared
that faster machines existed.
Wolf Kirchmeir
=>People have pointed out that the CGA
=>resolution and color depth was not very good by today's standards. Very
=>true.
Nor by the "standrads" of what was available on non-Intel boxes...
Wes newell
> "William L. Hartzell" wrote:
> >
> > Sir:
> >
> > Martin Nisshagen wrote:
> > >
> > > For the nostalgic part of us...
> > >
> > > IBM Timeline (mostly about it's PC hardware):
> > >
> > > http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/pcanniversary/timeline.html
> > >
> >
> > And there are those that say IBM does not know marketing. The PC and
> > the XT had the best in marketing. The technology sucked, but the ads
> > rocked. What happened when it came time to do the OS/2?
> > --
>
> I don't think the IBM PC technology sucked. IBM took what was available
> at the time and created a relatively powerful system with a relatively
> low cost. Yes, a couple of years later, there was a lot of better stuff
If this statement wasn't so sad, I'd be laughing.
Wojtek Bok
<djoh...@isomedia.com> wrote:
> I don't think the IBM PC technology sucked. IBM took what was available
> at the time and created a relatively powerful system with a relatively
> low cost. Yes, a couple of years later, there was a lot of better stuff
> but that is not the point. People have pointed out that the CGA
> resolution and color depth was not very good by today's standards. Very
> true. But the processors, memory, bus speed, and software were simply
> not capable of delivering more at a price that normal users could
> afford. The CGA was actually designed to work with color TV sets which
> were commonly used with small desktop computers at the time that the IBM
> PC was introduced. As a compromise solution, IBM also provided what
> they called a monochrome display adapter along with a green monochrome
> screen. This setup did not support colors or graphics but it did offer
> a much higher resolution screen using only ASCII characters at a
> reasonable speed.
Yes, but you had a text mode and a graphices mode. The two could not
be used together, except by graphically mapping characters onto the
graphics mode, which was a PITA.
By contrast I had a Heathkit H100 (Zenith Z100) which not only had a
whopping 192K of RAM for the video, but supported text and graphics at
the same time. There WAS no graphics/text modes. You had two planes of
16 colour video and could flip between them. Or you could interlace
them for 640x480 resolution (amazing at the time).
Also the architecture (and Z-DOS) supported much more than 640K of
RAM. I had at one time 768K of RAM, ALL of which was available.
Moreover I could put into the machine via the S100 bus up to 16M of
RAM (could not afford it, it would have been in the tens of thousands
of dollars).
The keyboard had F0 to F11, and a separate key marked HELP.
It had two CPU chips (8088 and 8085(?)) so you could boot either CP/M
or Z-DOS.
It was a much better machine. But it was not easily upgradable. Yes it
had the S100 bus, but the video was on a daughter board. I think a
company produced an addon that upped the video RAM and resolution, but
it was way to late for the machine.
--
Wojtek Bok
wojtek at bossi dot com
Olafur Gunnlaugsson
ste...@earthlink.bogus.net wrote:
>In <3B7B0B17...@verizon.net>, on 08/15/2001
> at 11:48 PM, Wes newell <w.ne...@verizon.net> said:
>
>>off the shelf components. And picking the 8088 was about the worst choice
>>they could have made. 8 bit data bus, 16 bit internal bus, 20 bit address
>>bus. This choice has plagued us for 20 years now.
>>
>
>I often think of the PC as a lab experiment that got out into the wild.
>
>There are times I like to consider what the world would be like if IBM had
>chosen to use the Motorola chips that were available at the time.
>
It did !
Motorola could not supply them with the garanteed volumes that they
wanted, so they choose to come out with the PC as a stopgap measure.
They still weant ahead with the design 68k version but the PC turned out
to be so popular that they only released that version as a
"instumentation computer". (I bought one used in the 90's just to take a
look, compleatly useless).
If you read inerviews with the original team at IBM notice that they
"only expected the PC to live for a couple of years", it was ment to be
replace with the vastly superior 68k later on, but as the PC broke all
sales record this was understandibly not possible.
And funnily enough the Aplle mac was delayed too, Jobs wanted an 68k
based machine, the design team wanted an 6089 based design instead. If
that had gone through I do not think we would still have apple with us
today .....
Olafur Gunnlaugsson
William L. Hartzell wrote:
>
>There was a thriving expansion card business that had existed for years
>before the advent of the PC. If you care to remember the Apple II and
>IIC both had expansion card slots. So the the Commodore PET and 64,
>ditto for the Atari and all CPM machines that I had seen. My CPM
>machine had six expansion slots. One of them was for the video card.
>The external Hard drives required another slot. The technology in the
>PC sucked. Not only that but the Z80 chip ran at eight MHz and came
>with 160 KB of memory and was not until the turbo XT clones appeared
>that faster machines existed.
>
The Apple II did have epx. and so did the S100 & S50 bus systems
but ..ur ... the IIC came out in 1984 or so and had 1 slot or so ? well
after the advent of the PC
My PET did not have expansion slots as we know them today, the 1 on the
C64 was not enough for any useful expansion (having to plug, power down
and unplug devices drove me insane, since I had to load the software
again from a serially connected disk drive that was slower than a
cassette tape). the same goes for the atari.
William L. Hartzell
Olafur Gunnlaugsson wrote:
>
> ste...@earthlink.bogus.net wrote:
>
> >In <3B7B0B17...@verizon.net>, on 08/15/2001
> > at 11:48 PM, Wes newell <w.ne...@verizon.net> said:
> >
> >>off the shelf components. And picking the 8088 was about the worst choice
> >>they could have made. 8 bit data bus, 16 bit internal bus, 20 bit address
> >>bus. This choice has plagued us for 20 years now.
> >>
> >
> >I often think of the PC as a lab experiment that got out into the wild.
> >
> >There are times I like to consider what the world would be like if IBM had
> >chosen to use the Motorola chips that were available at the time.
> >
> It did !
>
> Motorola could not supply them with the guaranteed volumes that they
> wanted, so they choose to come out with the PC as a stopgap measure.
>
> They still went ahead with the design 68k version but the PC turned out
> to be so popular that they only released that version as a
> "instrumentation computer". (I bought one used in the 90's just to take a
> look, completely useless).
>
> If you read interviews with the original team at IBM notice that they
> "only expected the PC to live for a couple of years", it was meant to be
> replace with the vastly superior 68k later on, but as the PC broke all
> sales record this was understandably not possible.
>
> And funnily enough the Apple Mac was delayed too, Jobs wanted an 68k
> based machine, the design team wanted an 6089 based design instead. If
> that had gone through I do not think we would still have apple with us
> today .....
Do you realize that the 68k was a TI design, that TI sold to Motorola
along with a bunch of memory chip designs and the plants to produce
them. This was back in 1978 or '79. TI had a fifteen year no compete
agreement work out between TI, Motorola and Intel. When it expired,
Cyrix came in being. Think where Apple would be if that had not
happened. Remember that TI had a very good PC in production then.
David T. Johnson
When the IBM PC came out, many people hoo-hawed at it and predicted its
quick failure. 'It costs more than an Apple II,' they cried, 'and you
don't get that much for the money.' 'There is more software for CPM
machines.' 'The Atari 800 is better for games.' 'Apple is coming out
with the Apple III which will be *much* better than the IBM PC.' Etc.
One year later, IBM had sold over one million machines. It's amazing
that even after 20 YEARS, some people STILL DON'T GET IT.
David T. Johnson
192K of RAM memory was a large amount and quite expensive in 1981. The
first IBM PC came with exactly 16K or RAM on the motherboard with
sockets for an additional 48K.
>
> Also the architecture (and Z-DOS) supported much more than 640K of
> RAM. I had at one time 768K of RAM, ALL of which was available.
> Moreover I could put into the machine via the S100 bus up to 16M of
> RAM (could not afford it, it would have been in the tens of thousands
> of dollars).
>
> The keyboard had F0 to F11, and a separate key marked HELP.
>
> It had two CPU chips (8088 and 8085(?)) so you could boot either CP/M
> or Z-DOS.
>
> It was a much better machine. But it was not easily upgradable. Yes it
> had the S100 bus, but the video was on a daughter board. I think a
> company produced an addon that upped the video RAM and resolution, but
> it was way to late for the machine.
A LOT of companies took their best shot at producing a desktop computer
for the mass market. IBM's design was the first to really take off. It
was not the best, the cheapest, the fastest, or the most powerful but it
did seem to hit the price/performance/features target much better than
any of its contemporaries.
After the IBM PC came out and proved to be a big hit, many companies
tried to usurp its position with various improvements. The most
important selling feature for any these machines was compatibility with
the IBM PC design. Hewlett Packard came out with its first x86 desktop
machine that had better performance than the IBM PC, more features, and
it came with MS-DOS. At the time, Hewlett Packard had a history of
building small standalone desktop computer systems for businesses and
universities and had a reputation for quality. The only real problem
with the new HP machine was that it would not run IBM PC software and
needed its own special versions. The first HP machine was a complete
failure and would be lost to memory except that HP also released the
very first little crude Inkjet printer with it. That Inkjet printer
didn't work very well and was expensive but it was the first of a long
line of inkjet printers that became better and better and are now
dominant in their market.
David T. Johnson
Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
>
> On Thu, 16 Aug 2001 10:12:00 -0400, David T. Johnson wrote:
>
> =>People have pointed out that the CGA
> =>resolution and color depth was not very good by today's standards. Very
> =>true.
> Nor by the "standrads" of what was available on non-Intel boxes...
The contemporary competitors of the IBM PC such as the Commodore 64,
Atari 800, and Apple II primarily used color TV screens for a color
display which was not that great. The IBM PC CGA adapter could also be
used with a color TV but provided a better display on the IBM color
monitor. Apple also sold a little monochrome monitor for the Apple II
but it was fuzzy and only displayed 40 characters across IIRC.
Some of the things IBM seem ridiculously obvious now but were not so in
1981. For example, IBM's design allowed one or two floppy disk drives
to be optionally installed right into the computer case. The other
machines listed above had each floppy disk drive as a separate little
standalone box. OTOH, IBM's design had the keyboard separate from the
computer case while other computers had the keyboard built into the
computer case. Since typing was a big part of what people do (and did)
with a computer, the separate keyboard had obvious advantages. The IBM
machine was intended to boot the disk operating operating system from
the floppy disk drive and it did this automatically when the machine was
powered up. Other machines ran with cassette drives and the floppy
drive was an accessory. The first version of the IBM PC machine came
with a simple built-in cassette operating system that would run if the
floppy drive were not present but that was the exception rather than the
normal operation.
Jason Bowen
yeah, you're right after 20 years people still blindly follow...
Bob St.John
"David T. Johnson" wrote:
<snip>
>One year later, IBM had sold over one million machines. It's amazing
>that even after 20 YEARS, some people STILL DON'T GET IT.
I would put IBM in that number ... the original build plan for *the life of the
product* was 240,000 machines .. not for the year, for the life of the product.
IBM was never a fan of the PC, popularizing the expression "Never trust a
computer you can lift". Estridge made it successful, largely because IBM was
not paying attention.
While IBM ran public service type ads, Estridge had his independent business
unit run the Little Tramp ads, and focused not on the PC that he made, but on
the software which provided business solutions.
Estridge was unusual ... as the product became more successful, he was removed
and replaced by Lowe, a more 'traditional' IBM exec .. famous for the remark,
"If PCs become a commodity product, IBM will get out of the business." Within a
few years IBM went from owning the PC market to a single digit market share ...
and the phrase went from "IBM PC Compatible" ... to "Microsoft Windows
Compatible".
When Lou Gerstner came in ... IBM PC company started to replace "career IBMers"
with people like J. Firestone and others from Nabisco, Phillip Morris, and
"non-technical" backgrounds. Didn't seem to help, PC Company went ahead and lost
a billion dollars that year.
Regards.
Bob St.John
Serenity Systems
David T. Johnson
"Bob St.John" wrote:
>
> "David T. Johnson" wrote:
> <snip>
> >One year later, IBM had sold over one million machines. It's amazing
> >that even after 20 YEARS, some people STILL DON'T GET IT.
>
> I would put IBM in that number ... the original build plan for *the life of the
> product* was 240,000 machines .. not for the year, for the life of the product.
>
> IBM was never a fan of the PC, popularizing the expression "Never trust a
> computer you can lift". Estridge made it successful, largely because IBM was
> not paying attention.
>
> While IBM ran public service type ads, Estridge had his independent business
> unit run the Little Tramp ads, and focused not on the PC that he made, but on
> the software which provided business solutions.
>
> Estridge was unusual ... as the product became more successful, he was removed
> and replaced by Lowe, a more 'traditional' IBM exec .. famous for the remark,
> "If PCs become a commodity product, IBM will get out of the business."
Don Estridge was not "replaced." He died in a plane crash in 1985 and
was an IBM senior vice president at the time of his death.
> Within a
> few years IBM went from owning the PC market to a single digit market share ...
> and the phrase went from "IBM PC Compatible" ... to "Microsoft Windows
> Compatible".
IBM lost the PC market when they tried to switch to their proprietary
microchannel architecture with the PS/2 line of computers. Customers
simply refused to go in this direction. IBM eventually reversed course
but it was much too late.
ha...@pacbell.net
>>
>> Estridge was unusual ... as the product became more successful, he was removed
>> and replaced by Lowe, a more 'traditional' IBM exec .. famous for the remark,
>> "If PCs become a commodity product, IBM will get out of the business."
>
>Don Estridge was not "replaced." He died in a plane crash in 1985 and
>was an IBM senior vice president at the time of his death.
>
You shouldn't argue with someone who knows what he's talking
about ... Don Estridge was removed to Armonk and relieved of his
position at Boca Raton, home of the PC, *five months* before he
died in a plane crash. He was in the penalty box ... It had taken
Frank Cary *three years* to get the pc project off the ground, &
he finally had to do it *outside* normal IBM channels. You don't
even wanna START on the diiscussion of how bad IBM blew it.
The more interesting question is - Bob ? - how come ? IBM didn't
start life as a bunch of fools. There are LOTS of clever, talented
people working at IBM, even today. How did it manage to change
from a pretty darn good company to being .. errrmm ... somewhat
less than a full floor short of the top ?
--
härad ængravvåd
David T. Johnson
ha...@pacbell.net wrote:
>
> In <3B7D403D...@isomedia.com>, "David T. Johnson" <djoh...@isomedia.com> writes:
> >>
> >> Estridge was unusual ... as the product became more successful, he was removed
> >> and replaced by Lowe, a more 'traditional' IBM exec .. famous for the remark,
> >> "If PCs become a commodity product, IBM will get out of the business."
> >
> >Don Estridge was not "replaced." He died in a plane crash in 1985 and
> >was an IBM senior vice president at the time of his death.
> >
>
> You shouldn't argue with someone who knows what he's talking
> about ... Don Estridge was removed to Armonk and relieved of his
> position at Boca Raton, home of the PC, *five months* before he
> died in a plane crash. He was in the penalty box ...
The facts are that he died in a plane crash in 1985 and that he was a
senior vice president at IBM at the time of his death. I'll leave the
rest of the spin on that to you and Bob except to say that then, as now,
manufacturing and selling personal computers was not the main corporate
focus of IBM.
>It had taken
> Frank Cary *three years* to get the pc project off the ground, &
> he finally had to do it *outside* normal IBM channels. You don't
> even wanna START on the diiscussion of how bad IBM blew it.
>
IBM did not blow it. The IBM PC was a very successful product that
established an industry and sold millions of copies. Being done
"outside of normal IBM channels" does not take away from the success of
the project. Much of the work for the atomic bomb was done by DuPont
"outside of normal channels."
Jason Bowen
David T. Johnson <djoh...@isomedia.com> wrote:
>
>
>Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 16 Aug 2001 10:12:00 -0400, David T. Johnson wrote:
>>
>> =>People have pointed out that the CGA
>> =>resolution and color depth was not very good by today's standards. Very
>> =>true.
>> Nor by the "standrads" of what was available on non-Intel boxes...
>
>The contemporary competitors of the IBM PC such as the Commodore 64,
>Atari 800, and Apple II primarily used color TV screens for a color
>display which was not that great.
Hmmm you could hook them up to composite monitors...
The IBM PC CGA adapter could also be
>used with a color TV but provided a better display on the IBM color
>monitor. Apple also sold a little monochrome monitor for the Apple II
>but it was fuzzy and only displayed 40 characters across IIRC.
>
And there were color composite monitors available...
Why do you speak about things you don't know?
>Some of the things IBM seem ridiculously obvious now but were not so in
>1981. For example, IBM's design allowed one or two floppy disk drives
>to be optionally installed right into the computer case. The other
>machines listed above had each floppy disk drive as a separate little
>standalone box.
The TRS-80 Model II, which predated you precious PC, had the option for
built in floppy drives, so did other machines. Your knowledge is limited.
>OTOH, IBM's design had the keyboard separate from the
>computer case while other computers had the keyboard built into the
>computer case. Since typing was a big part of what people do (and did)
>with a computer, the separate keyboard had obvious advantages. The IBM
>machine was intended to boot the disk operating operating system from
>the floppy disk drive and it did this automatically when the machine was
>powered up. Other machines ran with cassette drives and the floppy
>drive was an accessory.
Both were options on many computers, the tape drive was an option on the
original pc.
>The first version of the IBM PC machine came
>with a simple built-in cassette operating system that would run if the
>floppy drive were not present but that was the exception rather than the
>normal operation.
>
Doesn't mean it wasn't there was it? It was an option. Learn to
research.
Jason Bowen
David T. Johnson <djoh...@isomedia.com> wrote:
>
>
>ha...@pacbell.net wrote:
>>
>> In <3B7D403D...@isomedia.com>, "David T. Johnson" <djoh...@isomedia.com> writes:
>> >>
>> >> Estridge was unusual ... as the product became more successful, he was removed
>> >> and replaced by Lowe, a more 'traditional' IBM exec .. famous for the remark,
>> >> "If PCs become a commodity product, IBM will get out of the business."
>> >
>> >Don Estridge was not "replaced." He died in a plane crash in 1985 and
>> >was an IBM senior vice president at the time of his death.
>> >
>>
>> You shouldn't argue with someone who knows what he's talking
>> about ... Don Estridge was removed to Armonk and relieved of his
>> position at Boca Raton, home of the PC, *five months* before he
>> died in a plane crash. He was in the penalty box ...
>
>The facts are that he died in a plane crash in 1985 and that he was a
>senior vice president at IBM at the time of his death. I'll leave the
>rest of the spin on that to you and Bob except to say that then, as now,
>manufacturing and selling personal computers was not the main corporate
>focus of IBM.
>
You just claimed he wasn't replaced in the postion he was, now you back
away from it. Do you not care about making up information?
>>It had taken
>> Frank Cary *three years* to get the pc project off the ground, &
>> he finally had to do it *outside* normal IBM channels. You don't
>> even wanna START on the diiscussion of how bad IBM blew it.
>>
>
>IBM did not blow it. The IBM PC was a very successful product that
>established an industry and sold millions of copies. Being done
>"outside of normal IBM channels" does not take away from the success of
>the project. Much of the work for the atomic bomb was done by DuPont
>"outside of normal channels."
Yeah it succesfully gave Microsoft it's chance at taking over the industry
on an inferior platform with inferior technology.
Bob St.John
"David T. Johnson" wrote:
> Don Estridge was not "replaced." He died in a plane crash in 1985 and
> was an IBM senior vice president at the time of his death.
He did die in a plane crash. A Delta flight coming into D/FW which was caught in a
wind shear. He had already been moved out of the PC Company at the time, though.
> IBM lost the PC market when they tried to switch to their proprietary
> microchannel architecture with the PS/2 line of computers. Customers
> simply refused to go in this direction. IBM eventually reversed course
> but it was much too late.
Which would tend to support what I said. IBM did not understand the PC market and
sought to apply the same "rules" to PCs as were associated with mainframes. IBM also
bundled a great deal of service and support into the PC price, referred to as the
"field apportionment". This alone kept IBM PCs from being priced in the range of
"clones".
Of course, not all PS/2s were MCA. IBM continued to make ISA machines as part of the
PS/2 product line. But these machines were still not targeted at "clones".
And MCA was not proprietary. It was an open and published standard. Other companies,
including NCR manufactured MCA PCs.
Regards,
Bob St.John
Serenity Systems
The REAL OS/2 PERSON
Wes newell <w.ne...@verizon.net> said:
> What a crock. Inovative my butt. They just threw together a computer
> with off the shelf components. And picking the 8088 was about the worst
> choice they could have made. 8 bit data bus, 16 bit internal bus, 20 bit
> address bus. This choice has plagued us for 20 years now.
Absolutely wrong and in direct apposition to IBM's reasons for developing
a PC.
Of the various technologies around the only viable choice from IBM's point
of view was open architecture and that meant Intel 808x. Commodore, Tandy,
etc., etc., etc. were all proprietary. Ditto for Apple.
IBM didn't ever foresee the boom they would create; and moreover, it was
not their desire to create one! The history behind the decision to create
a PC must be understood in order to understand the decisions IBM made.
First you need to understand how IBM (and the seven dwarfs) sold
mainframes and even mid-size computers. They were (are) sold on the basis
of available machine cycles. The mid-1970's were boom times for the
Fortune 1000 and most smaller but still significant IBM computer
customers. Then came the election of Jimmy Carter, a 22% prime rate, and a
deep recession. Virtually all of IBM's customers had machine cycles to
spare up the wazoo. At the same time, the patents on the Selectric
typewriters expired and everyone and his brother went into the ball (and
daisy wheel) typewriter business. Hell, I even owned an Exxon typewriter
in 1978!
IBM's Customer Engineers (salesmen to the rest of humanity) noted that in
days past they saw thousands of dumb terminals in shipping, billing,
accounts receivable, sales, etc. They saw Selectrics and the odd Executive
on the secretarial desks in the Executive suite. But now they were seeing
Brothers, Olivettis, Smith Coronas, etc.
Try as IBM might they could never get the bosses to have terminals in
their offices or on their secretaries' desks. Then intended to keep
confidential correspondence private and would not hear of having their
secretaries keep files on a computer where they feared (with good reason)
non-authorized people could see them.
So, desparate to increase revenue, IBM came up with a business plan. They
would produce a PC with its own storage. They could sell the machine to
both the secretaries as well as the bosses since they wouldn't be putting
confidential information on the corporate mainframe. Moreover, they saw
the possibility of connecting all those neat new PC's to the mainframe so
the boss, etc. could pull up unit sales of widgets for the third quarter
in Outer Mongolia. Why they could sell a printer with each machine! Thus
were born simultaneously with the PC TopView and Token Ring.
Somehow, IBM's advertising agency hit upon a series of advertisements
which when viewed dispassionately were geared to businessmen, mainly
corporate decision makers. Remember, always, that the B in IBM stands for
BUSINESS.
But, the public fell in love with the Charlie Chaplin clone. Individuals
who remember "I Love Lucy" roared with laughter at the one with the cakes
coming off the production line faster than poor Charlie could catch them
which was a direct ripoff of Lucy in the candy factory.
The PC, which IBM never saw as a profit center in and of itself, suddenly
became one. The plan would have been fulfilled even if Project Chess lost
money as long as it soaked up mainframe cycles as it did. That they were
able to produce and sell the PC itself in large enough quantities to make
profits on the PC and its peripherals themselves was a pure bonus and in
reality serendipity.
IBM was more than happy to have third parties write applications for the
PC. It sold more machines for IBM. They deliberately chose an open
architecture so that others could copy the machines and hopefully soak up
even more mainframe cycles.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 Person - E-mail: bob...@home.com
Proudly running OS/2 Warp 4, WSeB and eCS on our network
MR/2 Ice 2.28a Registration Number 67
Rumour: NT means Not Tested...OS/2, Windows/0
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 PERSON
"Bob St.John" <Sere...@Augustmail.com> said:
> Of course, not all PS/2s were MCA. IBM continued to make ISA machines as
> part of the PS/2 product line. But these machines were still not
> targeted at "clones".
> And MCA was not proprietary. It was an open and published standard.
> Other companies, including NCR manufactured MCA PCs.
True to a point. However, IBM demanded a royalty for the right to produce
MCA clones. What is worse and what was the real killer was that in order
to get a license for the MCA machines, the manufacturer also had to pay a
royalty for every PC/XT/AT clone they had sold.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 Person - E-mail: bob...@home.com
Proudly running OS/2 Warp 4, WSeB and eCS on our network
MR/2 Ice 2.28a Registration Number 67
Program call to load Windows- "Here_piggy_piggy_piggy"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 PERSON
ha...@pacbell.net said:
> The more interesting question is - Bob ? - how come ? IBM didn't start
> life as a bunch of fools. There are LOTS of clever, talented people
> working at IBM, even today. How did it manage to change from a pretty
> darn good company to being .. errrmm ... somewhat less than a full
> floor short of the top ?
Read my message on this topic. In brief, the PC was envisioned primarily
as a tool to soak up mainframe cycles.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 Person - E-mail: bob...@home.com
Proudly running OS/2 Warp 4, WSeB and eCS on our network
MR/2 Ice 2.28a Registration Number 67
"Luke! I'm your father!" Bill Gates, 1980
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 PERSON
bow...@rintintin.colorado.edu (Jason Bowen) said:
> You just claimed he wasn't replaced in the postion he was, now you back
> away from it. Do you not care about making up information?
DTJ never did before. What makes you think he would start now?
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 Person - E-mail: bob...@home.com
Proudly running OS/2 Warp 4, WSeB and eCS on our network
MR/2 Ice 2.28a Registration Number 67
PATH=C:\DOS;C:\DOS\RUN;C:\WIN\CRASH\DOS;C:\ME\DEL\WIN
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ha...@pacbell.net
>
>And MCA was not proprietary. It was an open and published standard. Other companies,
>including NCR manufactured MCA PCs.
>
Well ... let me quote what was written about our friend Bill Lowe and MCA :
(Paul Carroll, _Big Blues_ )
"This time, Lowe thought IBM was prepared.
"He was set to file a barrage of patent applications that covered all parts
of the Micro Channel design. Anyone trying to clone it would require a year
or more, he told people at the time. [ so far, so good - IBM designed it, right ?]
Lowe even had two surprises awaiting anyone who tried to use the new
designs. The first was that he could increase the speed of the MicroChannel ...
The second was a gift from his lawyers. They had told him that companies
making AT clones had violated some key IBM patents. Although it would be
hard to enforce these in 1987, years after competitors began violating them,
anyone wanting to license the new patents was going to have to pay up on
the old ones, too. IBM also changed its patent-licensing policy. In the past,
licensees had had to pay IBM only 1 per cent of the price of the product
using the iBM patent, but Lowe was now going to demand 5 per cent of
the price of each clone sold - adding $150 to the price of a $3,000 clone
in a market that depended heavily on low prices."
They did come around to common sense later - but this move is what
created the mutiny of the Gang of Nine ... and precipitated IBM's total
loss of the pc market. Somehow, IBM got lost somewhere between
knowing their stuff and helping customers solve problems, and maybe
thinking they knew more than they really did and they were going to
*tell* customers what to do ... is this what Lord Acton meant about
power corrupting ?
--
härad ængravvåd
Bob St.John
"David T. Johnson" wrote:
> ha...@pacbell.net wrote:
> >
> > In <3B7D403D...@isomedia.com>, "David T. Johnson" <djoh...@isomedia.com> writes:
> > >>
> > >> Estridge was unusual ... as the product became more successful, he was removed
> > >> and replaced by Lowe, a more 'traditional' IBM exec .. famous for the remark,
> > >> "If PCs become a commodity product, IBM will get out of the business."
> > >
> > >Don Estridge was not "replaced." He died in a plane crash in 1985 and
> > >was an IBM senior vice president at the time of his death.
> > >
> >
> > You shouldn't argue with someone who knows what he's talking
> > about ... Don Estridge was removed to Armonk and relieved of his
> > position at Boca Raton, home of the PC, *five months* before he
> > died in a plane crash. He was in the penalty box ...
>
> The facts are that he died in a plane crash in 1985 and that he was a
> senior vice president at IBM at the time of his death.
Yes. After having been replaced as head of the PC independent business unit.
> I'll leave the rest of the spin
What spin ...?
> on that to you and Bob except to say that then, as now, manufacturing and selling personal
> computers was not the main corporate focus of IBM.
Absolutely true. A shame to see IBM almost create the PC market .. and then let it slip away
to the point where it couldn't hold on to 10% of the market.
> >It had taken
> > Frank Cary *three years* to get the pc project off the ground, &
> > he finally had to do it *outside* normal IBM channels. You don't
> > even wanna START on the diiscussion of how bad IBM blew it.
> >
>
> IBM did not blow it.
Sure they did. They went from 80% share to 9% share. In one year the PC Company lost a
billion dollars. That isn't spin ... those are the cold hard facts.
As you say, the IBM PC pretty much created the PC market. Gave it credibility. IBM owned
the market .. and they from that height to not even a player. That's pretty much blowing it
in anyone's book.
Bob St.John
ha...@pacbell.net wrote:
> The more interesting question is - Bob ? - how come ? IBM didn't
> start life as a bunch of fools. There are LOTS of clever, talented
> people working at IBM, even today. How did it manage to change
> from a pretty darn good company to being .. errrmm ... somewhat
> less than a full floor short of the top ?
IBM is still the world leader in technology .. the mainframe and network technologies are
wonders, and extremely profitable. No one can replace IBM as the vendor for mission
critical applications in large, international enterprise accounts.
IBM does seem to be challenged in some areas. One of those is the "Intel space", another is
the "indirect channel", that is .. selling through partners, supporting ISVs, developing
business partner programs.
One IBM hand just can't seem to resist competing with the channel that the other hand is
building. But I believe that IBM corporate culture is better than it used to be. That isn't
saying much, though.
Somewhere around 1995 I remember reading something published by Harvard on customer
satisfaction. It made the point that no one had to tell Herb Kelleher, head of SouthWest
Airlines, what his customers thought.
The message was, if you want to meet with Herb ... don't go to his office. He isn't there.
He's on a tarmac, on a plane, at a ticket counter, at the baggage claim. He know his
business, customers and employees ... first hand.
That made me think, what about IBM execs? Where are they? They are in offices in Somers and
Armonk. They are most likely in meetings .. and those meetings are likely with other IBM
executives. And nobody tells them anything that might be construed as "the wrong idea".
Those execs were (are?) spoon fed a diet of what they want to hear.
And who could argue? The company was and is very successful.
No one knew and understood this better, or used it to better advantage, than the execs from
MS .. heck, many of them, like Mike Maples, were former IBMers. That's why I think it is
ironic that the same arrogance permeates the MS organization and has for years.
Should make the coming "show" interesting to watch. If I was MS and the government said,
"two divisions" .. I'd take it and run with it .. try to make those two divisions wildly
successful. But that is for another thread ...
David T. Johnson
I suppose we need to clarify the subject that we are talking about a
little bit. I am talking about the development of the IBM PC product
"outside of normal channels" for which it took "*three years* to get the
pc project off the ground." I am not talking about the subsequent loss
of market share that IBM experienced after their initial success in the
early years.
Irv Spalten
h/w but the s/w that made the difference. Mainly Dan Bricklin's
VisiCalc. That was the killer app that was not on a TRS-80 or an Apple
II at the time.
The real major competitor was really Compaq, first with a 'luggable' and
first out of the shoot with the advanced (for those days) processors.
IBM did the IBM side of PC-DOS and MS worked with the 'clones', but I
recall most of the action was with Compaq.
It was also the word 'business' in IBM's name and the retail channel
that made a difference. What company would go into Radio Shack (talk
about your odds of getting a knowledgeable person to assist you) for
computers when you could go into ComputerLand and get Apple's or IBM's
and that storefront only sold computers.
Irv (who had a TRS-80 and got his first IBM PC for over $4K via
ComputerLand on the employee plan and HAD to wait to get it!)
Irv Spalten
Sorry,
"David T. Johnson" wrote:
>
> "Bob St.John" wrote:
> >
> > "David T. Johnson" wrote:
[snip]
> >
> > Estridge was unusual ... as the product became more successful, he was removed
> > and replaced by Lowe, a more 'traditional' IBM exec .. famous for the remark,
> > "If PCs become a commodity product, IBM will get out of the business."
>
> Don Estridge was not "replaced." He died in a plane crash in 1985 and
> was an IBM senior vice president at the time of his death.
Don was indeed replaced. He went to Armonk to work on something else. He
was a Senior VP when he died the tragic death.
> > Within a
> > few years IBM went from owning the PC market to a single digit market share ...
> > and the phrase went from "IBM PC Compatible" ... to "Microsoft Windows
> > Compatible".
>
> IBM lost the PC market when they tried to switch to their proprietary
> microchannel architecture with the PS/2 line of computers. Customers
> simply refused to go in this direction. IBM eventually reversed course
> but it was much too late.
Nah, don't think so. It wasn't customers that refused, it was the PC
Clone makers that didn't want to license it.
Irv
Wes newell
> On 08/15/2001 at 11:48 PM,
> Wes newell <w.ne...@verizon.net> said:
>
> > What a crock. Inovative my butt. They just threw together a computer
> > with off the shelf components. And picking the 8088 was about the worst
> > choice they could have made. 8 bit data bus, 16 bit internal bus, 20 bit
> > address bus. This choice has plagued us for 20 years now.
>
> Absolutely wrong and in direct apposition to IBM's reasons for developing
> a PC.
>
What the heck kind of statement is this? Sounds like doubletalk to me.
>
> Of the various technologies around the only viable choice from IBM's point
> of view was open architecture and that meant Intel 808x. Commodore, Tandy,
> etc., etc., etc. were all proprietary. Ditto for Apple.
>
So, you think only an intel based machine can be built with an open architecture? You can build an
open architecture machine with any cpu as long as you don't use proprietary interfaces, and
virtually all of the cpu's of the time had off the shelf support chips. They chose the 8080
architecture because they wanted it out fast, and that's what the engineers had experience with.
Not for some stupid open architecture reason.
>
> IBM didn't ever foresee the boom they would create; and moreover, it was
> not their desire to create one! The history behind the decision to create
> a PC must be understood in order to understand the decisions IBM made.
>
Yeah. I was around then, and not a youngster at that. Even had a friend that moved to Boca to work
on the project. I heard all the garbage 20 years ago.
>
> First you need to understand how IBM (and the seven dwarfs) sold
> mainframes and even mid-size computers. They were (are) sold on the basis
> of available machine cycles. The mid-1970's were boom times for the
> Fortune 1000 and most smaller but still significant IBM computer
> customers. Then came the election of Jimmy Carter, a 22% prime rate, and a
> deep recession. Virtually all of IBM's customers had machine cycles to
> spare up the wazoo. At the same time, the patents on the Selectric
> typewriters expired and everyone and his brother went into the ball (and
> daisy wheel) typewriter business. Hell, I even owned an Exxon typewriter
> in 1978!
>
> IBM's Customer Engineers (salesmen to the rest of humanity) noted that in
> days past they saw thousands of dumb terminals in shipping, billing,
> accounts receivable, sales, etc. They saw Selectrics and the odd Executive
> on the secretarial desks in the Executive suite. But now they were seeing
> Brothers, Olivettis, Smith Coronas, etc.
>
> Try as IBM might they could never get the bosses to have terminals in
> their offices or on their secretaries' desks. Then intended to keep
> confidential correspondence private and would not hear of having their
> secretaries keep files on a computer where they feared (with good reason)
> non-authorized people could see them.
>
Hmmm... I was working as a project engineer at a samll company called Rockwell at the time. And
you know what, our secretaries used Wangs and took the monster floppies with them.
>
> So, desparate to increase revenue, IBM came up with a business plan. They
> would produce a PC with its own storage. They could sell the machine to
> both the secretaries as well as the bosses since they wouldn't be putting
> confidential information on the corporate mainframe. Moreover, they saw
> the possibility of connecting all those neat new PC's to the mainframe so
> the boss, etc. could pull up unit sales of widgets for the third quarter
> in Outer Mongolia. Why they could sell a printer with each machine! Thus
> were born simultaneously with the PC TopView and Token Ring.
>
> Somehow, IBM's advertising agency hit upon a series of advertisements
> which when viewed dispassionately were geared to businessmen, mainly
> corporate decision makers. Remember, always, that the B in IBM stands for
> BUSINESS.
>
More like BS. I still remeber them advertising the PC as a 16 bit computer, which was total BS.
>
> But, the public fell in love with the Charlie Chaplin clone. Individuals
> who remember "I Love Lucy" roared with laughter at the one with the cakes
> coming off the production line faster than poor Charlie could catch them
> which was a direct ripoff of Lucy in the candy factory.
>
> The PC, which IBM never saw as a profit center in and of itself, suddenly
> became one. The plan would have been fulfilled even if Project Chess lost
> money as long as it soaked up mainframe cycles as it did. That they were
> able to produce and sell the PC itself in large enough quantities to make
> profits on the PC and its peripherals themselves was a pure bonus and in
> reality serendipity.
>
> IBM was more than happy to have third parties write applications for the
> PC. It sold more machines for IBM. They deliberately chose an open
> architecture so that others could copy the machines and hopefully soak up
> even more mainframe cycles.
>
Your story, or should I say book, does have a little merit as to why the IBM PC was created, but
that's not what we were talking about.
Jerry Lapham
> The only real problem
> with the new HP machine was that it would not run IBM PC software and
> needed its own special versions.
And if Tim Patterson (and later Microsoft) had done a better job with
QDOS/MSDOS so that programmers hadn't needed to write directly to video
memory to get acceptable speed, that wouldn't have been a problem.
-Jerry
--
============================================================
Jerry Lapham, Monroe, OH
E-Mail: rjla...@infinet.com
Written Friday, August 17, 2001 - 11:10 PM (EDT)
============================================================
MR/2 Ice tag: "Someone ran over my cat," said Tom flatly.
Jerry Lapham
at 10:48 PM, The REAL OS/2 PERSON <realos...@WarpMegacity.com>
said:
> But, the public fell in love with the Charlie Chaplin clone. Individuals
> who remember "I Love Lucy" roared with laughter at the one with the
> cakes coming off the production line faster than poor Charlie could
> catch them which was a direct ripoff of Lucy in the candy factory.
Which was a "ripoff" of an old Charlie Chaplin movie.
-Jerry
--
============================================================
Jerry Lapham, Monroe, OH
E-Mail: rjla...@infinet.com
Written Friday, August 17, 2001 - 11:22 PM (EDT)
William L. Hartzell
Jerry Lapham wrote:
>
> In <3b7d9f48$1$obot129$mr2ice@news>, on 08/17/01
> at 10:48 PM, The REAL OS/2 PERSON <realos...@WarpMegacity.com>
> said:
>
> > But, the public fell in love with the Charlie Chaplin clone. Individuals
> > who remember "I Love Lucy" roared with laughter at the one with the
> > cakes coming off the production line faster than poor Charlie could
> > catch them which was a direct ripoff of Lucy in the candy factory.
>
> Which was a "ripoff" of an old Charlie Chaplin movie.
>
Was that not "Modern Times"?
Will Honea
wrote:
> Absolutely true. A shame to see IBM almost create the PC market .. and then let it slip away
> to the point where it couldn't hold on to 10% of the market.
>
> > >It had taken
> > > Frank Cary *three years* to get the pc project off the ground, &
> > > he finally had to do it *outside* normal IBM channels. You don't
> > > even wanna START on the diiscussion of how bad IBM blew it.
> > >
> >
> > IBM did not blow it.
>
> Sure they did. They went from 80% share to 9% share. In one year the PC Company lost a
> billion dollars. That isn't spin ... those are the cold hard facts.
>
> As you say, the IBM PC pretty much created the PC market. Gave it credibility. IBM owned
> the market .. and they from that height to not even a player. That's pretty much blowing it
> in anyone's book.
Interestingly, all the discussion ignores IBMs fiasco with the PC Jr.
To me, that was (and is) symbolic of IBM's ouster from the PC market
they created. IBM appears to be inherently incapable of dealing with
the consumer market, be it by design or just coincidence. The PS/2
line did quite well, propietary hardware and all, but never in the
consumer segment. The PC Jr was a joke but it was never targeted at
IBM's core market: business. Had they put the money they threw at the
abortive consumer effort into backing an independant consumer oriented
company Compaq/Dell/Gateway might be myths today.
--
Will Honea <who...@codenet.net>
ha...@pacbell.net
>
>Interestingly, all the discussion ignores IBMs fiasco with the PC Jr.
>To me, that was (and is) symbolic of IBM's ouster from the PC market
>they created. IBM appears to be inherently incapable of dealing with
>the consumer market, be it by design or just coincidence.
You're not gonna catch me going Soft on IBM, but even I'd
have to admit that recently they've been doing *much* better.
Just look at the website - more attractive products, easier to
buy, better information, even things like refurbs and - omigod !
auctions ! Even the OS/2 end of things is more attractive and
easier to use. The products look good, performance is good,
service has been excellent on the things I've bought, prices
are even reasonable. Maybe it's my imagination, but I think
they're doing much better than even a year ago. (The next
"migration pak" that comes out and I'll be jumping up and
down yelling and screaming agian ! but for now, it looks
like someone is really doing their job :)
--
härad ængravvåd
ste...@earthlink.bogus.net
>Having lived and worked in 'those times' I'm not convinced it was the h/w
>but the s/w that made the difference. Mainly Dan Bricklin's VisiCalc.
>That was the killer app that was not on a TRS-80 or an Apple II at the
>time.
I suspect you mean 123. VisiCalc and all the Visi Products where
originally developed for the Apple II. I have fond memory of VisiDex
(sic?) spinning up the diskette drive in anticipation that I was going to
need the next record. VisiCorp was late to the PC market, so Lotus got in
with 123 and that was the beginning of the end for VisiCorp.
Steven
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven Levine <ste...@earthlink.bogus.net> MR2/ICE 2.28a #10183
Warp4/FP11.5 www.scoug.com irc.webbnet.org #scoug (Wed 7pm PST)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Wayne
:>You're not gonna catch me going Soft on IBM, but even I'd
:>have to admit that recently they've been doing *much* better.
:>Just look at the website - more attractive products, easier to
:>buy, better information, even things like refurbs and - omigod !
:>auctions ! Even the OS/2 end of things is more attractive and
:>easier to use. The products look good, performance is good,
:>service has been excellent on the things I've bought, prices
:>are even reasonable. Maybe it's my imagination, but I think
:>they're doing much better than even a year ago. (The next
:>"migration pak" that comes out and I'll be jumping up and
:>down yelling and screaming agian ! but for now, it looks
:>like someone is really doing their job :)
I just sent my TP390 back because I thought my floppy drive
was faulty. Turned out to be a corrupt INI file. They picked it
up by courier, checked it over and called me to tell me it was
fine, put on a new trackpoint red "nipple", glued on a plastic
bit that usually covers the bottom of the CD drive and sent it
back by courier. I can't complain :-)
I'd buy IBM again, but probably not a laptop. Parts are way
too expensive once they're out of warranty. It would have
cost about 25,000 yen including parts, labour and shipping
to change a 2000 yen (for a desktop) floppy drive.
Cheers
Wayne
--
Wayne Bickell
Tokyo, Japan
wa...@tkk.att.ne.jp
http://www.ej-net.com
******************************************************
Posted with PMINews 2 for OS/2
Running on OS/2 Warp 4 (UK) + FixPak 15
******************************************************
Tom Perrett
>> microchannel architecture with the PS/2 line of computers. Customers
>> simply refused to go in this direction. IBM eventually reversed course
>> but it was much too late.
>
>Nah, don't think so. It wasn't customers that refused, it was the PC
>Clone makers that didn't want to license it.
With Compaq being the leader of the pack in that effort.
Remember sitting through one of their presentations all
about their ISA machines.
Cheers,
Tom [Tom Perrett] ,to...@st.net.au>
The REAL OS/2 PERSON
rjla...@infinet.com (Jerry Lapham) said:
> In <3b7d9f48$1$obot129$mr2ice@news>, on 08/17/01
> at 10:48 PM, The REAL OS/2 PERSON <realos...@WarpMegacity.com>
> said:
> > But, the public fell in love with the Charlie Chaplin clone. Individuals
> > who remember "I Love Lucy" roared with laughter at the one with the
> > cakes coming off the production line faster than poor Charlie could
> > catch them which was a direct ripoff of Lucy in the candy factory.
> Which was a "ripoff" of an old Charlie Chaplin movie.
> -Jerry
I'm OLD. But you must be even OLDER if you saw Chaplin films.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 Person - E-mail: bob...@home.com
Proudly running OS/2 Warp 4, WSeB and eCS on our network
MR/2 Ice 2.28a Registration Number 67
Win96 just transformed from vaporware to bugware
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 PERSON
who...@codenet.net (Will Honea) said:
> Interestingly, all the discussion ignores IBMs fiasco with the PC Jr.
> To me, that was (and is) symbolic of IBM's ouster from the PC market
> they created. IBM appears to be inherently incapable of dealing with
> the consumer market, be it by design or just coincidence.
IBM stands for International Business Machines not Incompetent Bozo
Mentoring.
IBM never intended to support individual users. That is why they kept the
price of Selectrics well above all other choices for individual typewriter
purchasers. Even small businesses which bought Selectrics had no direct
support from IBM other than purchase of typeballs and ribbons which could
be had from IBM directly if memory serves. IBM did offer customer support
contracts at twice what independent retailers who were licensed IBM
dealers charged for the same or better service.
A good friend and competitor back in the 1970's had to beg to purchase a
MagCard Selectric which was well into four figures because he only wanted
one machine. I arranged for him to meet a CE friend of mine who somehow
got him the machine and a service contract which was far more expensive in
constant dollars than the $2,000 IBM charges for SWC for WarpServer. The
machine was sold by the Charlotte branch despite the purchaser being in
South Jersey and installed by my friend who was originally from this area
but transferred to Charlotte.
His office was in an out of the way location several miles from business
parks in South Jersey. When he needed service (frequently with that dog)
he had to give the technician directions to find his office which was a
converted house at a major intersection ¼ mile from a wildly successful
regional Mall developed by Rouse.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 Person - E-mail: bob...@home.com
Proudly running OS/2 Warp 4, WSeB and eCS on our network
MR/2 Ice 2.28a Registration Number 67
Windows 95 not found... accelerate to Warpspeed?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Stuyck
The REAL OS/2 PERSON wrote:
>
> On 08/18/2001 at 12:13 AM,
> who...@codenet.net (Will Honea) said:
>
> > Interestingly, all the discussion ignores IBMs fiasco with the PC Jr.
> > To me, that was (and is) symbolic of IBM's ouster from the PC market
> > they created. IBM appears to be inherently incapable of dealing with
> > the consumer market, be it by design or just coincidence.
>
> IBM stands for International Business Machines not Incompetent Bozo
> Mentoring.
>
> IBM never intended to support individual users.
Whoa, stop right there. Steering this discussion back toward
"PC" and "OS/2", we (IBM -- I was there) opened the "IBM Product
Centers" in an attempt to sell to consumers. Introduced the
PCJr (with the "chicklet" keyboard) for consumers. Even with the
first introduction of the PC you could buy "Microsoft Adventure,"
which was hardly intended for corporate purchase.
Programs like "Easywriter" were clearly intended for "consumers."
When OS/2 was being marketed, at places like CompUSA, to consumers,
the "Service and Support" organization attempted to gear up to
individual consumers calling for support problems. Matter of
fact, they were so overwhelmed that individual IBMers, scattered
throughout the USA (not sure about "the world") could "pick off"
a problem report from the queue and call individuals back to work
on their problem. In fact, the "free service period" for individuals
was increased almost indefinitely until the problems could be
resolved.
That's what was "intended." The fact that these attempts eventually
"failed" is another matter.
Jim Stuyck
PS: As to your comments about "consumers" buying the Selectric, it's
clear to me (since I bought several) that "consumers" could easily
arrange purchase. These were sold by the Office Products Division
of IBM, not the Data Processing Division, and OPD could handle low
volume, low revenue, stuff without difficulty. DPD was for the
mainframes (and punched card data processing stuff) and was more
difficult to deal with, although they did have "new account" sales
territories or small businesses. We (DPD -- I was there) never turned
away a potential customer, once we figured out whose "territory" the
prospect was in.
OH... and a "CE" was a "Customer Engineer" in IBM lingo. Thie person
installed and serviced our products; the "mechanic." He/she provided
valuable sales leads and "intelligence" (what the customer is thinking),
but was never the salesman. Sales were left to salesmen.
eegr...@dont-spam-me.org
>"David T. Johnson" wrote:
It may have been an "open and published standard", but it was not a free
one! If there had been no exorbitant licensing fees required to use it
in a system we would have had real, working "plug and play" support
years earlier without the wasted time in developing EISA and PCI to
replace a superior standard.
-- Dave
-----------------------------------------------------------
dhdurgee<at>verizon<dot>net
-----------------------------------------------------------
Irv Spalten
in. MS had one too, forgot the name? IBM put it out in a light green
denim binder I recall.
I has been 20 years and possibly I've merged things in my mind too... I
didn't start working in the PC area until DOS 2 (around '84 I think?),
and even then in the s/w Education area. Got to OS/2 right as 1.0
shipped and been there ever since.
Irv
Olafur Gunnlaugsson
William L. Hartzell wrote:
>Sir:
>
>Olafur Gunnlaugsson wrote:
>
>>ste...@earthlink.bogus.net wrote:
>>
>>>In <3B7B0B17...@verizon.net>, on 08/15/2001
>>> at 11:48 PM, Wes newell <w.ne...@verizon.net> said:
>>>
>>>>off the shelf components. And picking the 8088 was about the worst choice
>>>>they could have made. 8 bit data bus, 16 bit internal bus, 20 bit address
>>>>bus. This choice has plagued us for 20 years now.
>>>>
>>>I often think of the PC as a lab experiment that got out into the wild.
>>>
>>>There are times I like to consider what the world would be like if IBM had
>>>chosen to use the Motorola chips that were available at the time.
>>>
>>It did !
>>
>>Motorola could not supply them with the guaranteed volumes that they
>>wanted, so they choose to come out with the PC as a stopgap measure.
>>
>>They still went ahead with the design 68k version but the PC turned out
>>to be so popular that they only released that version as a
>>"instrumentation computer". (I bought one used in the 90's just to take a
>>look, completely useless).
>>
>>If you read interviews with the original team at IBM notice that they
>>"only expected the PC to live for a couple of years", it was meant to be
>>replace with the vastly superior 68k later on, but as the PC broke all
>>sales record this was understandably not possible.
>>
>>And funnily enough the Apple Mac was delayed too, Jobs wanted an 68k
>>based machine, the design team wanted an 6089 based design instead. If
>>that had gone through I do not think we would still have apple with us
>>today .....
>>
>
>Do you realize that the 68k was a TI design, that TI sold to Motorola
>along with a bunch of memory chip designs and the plants to produce
>them. This was back in 1978 or '79. TI had a fifteen year no compete
>agreement work out between TI, Motorola and Intel. When it expired,
>Cyrix came in being. Think where Apple would be if that had not
>happened. Remember that TI had a very good PC in production then.
>
No I did not know that, I read a long interview with the designer of the
68k at one time that threw some light on the architectural history of
the machine, but he did not mention TI
Interesting, this means that TI has f**ed up all their processor lines
Jerry Lapham
at 10:09 AM, The REAL OS/2 PERSON <realos...@WarpMegacity.com>
said:
> On 08/17/2001 at 11:22 PM,
> rjla...@infinet.com (Jerry Lapham) said:
> > In <3b7d9f48$1$obot129$mr2ice@news>, on 08/17/01
> > at 10:48 PM, The REAL OS/2 PERSON <realos...@WarpMegacity.com>
> > said:
> > > But, the public fell in love with the Charlie Chaplin clone. Individuals
> > > who remember "I Love Lucy" roared with laughter at the one with the
> > > cakes coming off the production line faster than poor Charlie could
> > > catch them which was a direct ripoff of Lucy in the candy factory.
> > Which was a "ripoff" of an old Charlie Chaplin movie.
> > -Jerry
> I'm OLD. But you must be even OLDER if you saw Chaplin films.
I never saw one in a theater but there were lots excerpts of Chaplin
movies on TV back in the 50s.
-Jerry
--
============================================================
Jerry Lapham, Monroe, OH
E-Mail: rjla...@infinet.com
Written Saturday, August 18, 2001 - 03:11 PM (EDT)
ha...@pacbell.net
>
>PS: As to your comments about "consumers" buying the Selectric, it's
>clear to me (since I bought several) that "consumers" could easily
>arrange purchase. These were sold by the Office Products Division
>of IBM, not the Data Processing Division, and OPD could handle low
>volume, low revenue, stuff without difficulty.
Yup - me, too. And I didn't even have any kind of IBM "in". The
hardest part was finding the phone number for the IBM guy who
handled them. They even financed the thing for a year. IBM obviously
had the manpower and the talent to create and keep the personal
computer market. What they didn't have was the vision *at the top*
to do the job.
--
härad ængravvåd
Mike Ruskai
>Of course, not all PS/2s were MCA. IBM continued to make ISA machines as part of the
>PS/2 product line. But these machines were still not targeted at "clones".
>
>And MCA was not proprietary. It was an open and published standard. Other companies,
>including NCR manufactured MCA PCs.
IBM required prospective OEM's to license MCA. But that's not why it
didn't catch on. It was a vastly superior as a bus architecture to ISA.
The reason for it's market failure was the attitude you mentioned - IBM
required back license fees on the ISA architecture (which IBM created, and
was never paid a dime for by any of the clone makers) for the privelege of
licensing the MCA architecture. This is something they could probably get
away with in the mainframe world.
But in the PC world, the clone makers said to hell with MCA, and kept
making inferior machines, with the bulk of consumers none the wiser.
MCA's functionality wasn't matched until PCI came along.
--
- Mike
Remove 'spambegone.net' and reverse to send e-mail.
Andrew Stephenson
realos...@WarpMegacity.com "The REAL OS/2 PERSON" writes:
> [...]
>
> IBM never intended to support individual users. That is why
> they kept the price of Selectrics well above all other choices
> for individual typewriter purchasers. Even small businesses
> which bought Selectrics had no direct support from IBM other
> than purchase of typeballs and ribbons which could be had from
> IBM directly if memory serves. IBM did offer customer support
> contracts at twice what independent retailers who were licensed
> IBM dealers charged for the same or better service.
>
> [...]
Being unable to speak for what was in IBM's collective mind back
in the 1970s, or what they would have charged a "business" for a
Selectric, I can only say that I bought two (a 735 and 835, IIRC)
in turn from IBM-direct with not a flicker of reluctance on their
part, which they sent a man to install (ie, unpack and give the
first check) and which they seemed happy to support for the whole
time I had them (7-8 years total). My office in my home was just
west of London. The prices they asked never felt inappropriate
to the service I received -- but maybe they serviced "businesses"
cheaper. FWIW as a sole self-employed person, I imagine I'd rate
as a "small business".
Okay, a lot the above is a subjective memory; but IMHO your own
version sounds much the same.
--
Andrew Stephenson
Jim Stuyck
Two points, as long as this thread is headed in that general direction:
1) The MCA machines had so many memory options -- incompatible memory
options -- that we (IBM, I had responsibility to provide technical
guidance to virtually every IBM US education site on "matters related
to PC's) found it very difficult to configure/swap/upgrade/get memory.
And this was IBM internal use. (Internally, we ran a "good faith"
swap meet over our internal systems and regularly traded gear.)
2) When I left full-time employ of IBM, in 1991, I had every intention
of purchasing (at the employee discount price) a top-of-the-line
PS/2 Model 80 with all the bells and whistles. PS/2 was "all I
knew." Didn't take long to get a reality-based education. Bought
TWO clones for about what I had budgeted for the PS/2, ran OS/2 on
both, and never had a regret.
Jim Stuyck
Bill Clark
> Some of the things IBM seem ridiculously obvious now but were not so in
> 1981. For example, IBM's design allowed one or two floppy disk drives
> to be optionally installed right into the computer case. The other
My pre '81 TRS80 Mod III certainly beat IBM to the punch in both their
two floppies in the case and booting directly from a floppy... All
though expensive as hell it even had a 5 meg harddrive...
--
Give a man a fish and he will eat it for dinner...
Teach a man to fish and he will be late for dinner...
Wojtek Bok
> Bought TWO clones for about what I had budgeted for the PS/2,
> ran OS/2 on both, and never had a regret.
And when I heard PS/2 and OS/2 at that time, the two were linked in my
mind. NOW I know that OS/2 could run on a clone PC, but back when I
first heard about them, I thought that to run OS/2 you NEEDED a PS/2,
and yes they were expensive.
--
Wojtek Bok
wojtek at bossi dot com
Will Honea
> In <3B7D673D...@us.ibm.com>, on 08/17/2001
> at 01:49 PM, Irv Spalten <ispa...@us.ibm.com> said:
>
> >Having lived and worked in 'those times' I'm not convinced it was the h/w
> >but the s/w that made the difference. Mainly Dan Bricklin's VisiCalc.
> >That was the killer app that was not on a TRS-80 or an Apple II at the
> >time.
>
> I suspect you mean 123. VisiCalc and all the Visi Products where
> originally developed for the Apple II. I have fond memory of VisiDex
> (sic?) spinning up the diskette drive in anticipation that I was going to
> need the next record. VisiCorp was late to the PC market, so Lotus got in
> with 123 and that was the beginning of the end for VisiCorp.
They also quickly deployed a version that ran on the TRS-80. I still
use ports of some of the programs I wrote for it. One of my favorite
memories is that of my wife's enthusiasm for the checkbook balancing
program I did for her on TRS-80 Visicalc. Problem was, she couldn't
figure out how to start it. Her solution was to bring our 4 year old
daughter in when she wanted to run. The 4 year old would turn the
machine on, find the 8" floppy, insert it and carefully type D I R.
She couldn't read but she had learned to recognize the names of the
games she liked (and the wife's checkbook script) on the screen and
would carefully copy the letters with the keyboard. It was the
mid-80s (with 123) before the wife finally figured out how to start
her program.
--
Will Honea <who...@codenet.net>
The REAL OS/2 PERSON
Jim Stuyck <jst...@home.com> said:
> The REAL OS/2 PERSON wrote:
> >
> > On 08/18/2001 at 12:13 AM,
> > who...@codenet.net (Will Honea) said:
> >
> > > Interestingly, all the discussion ignores IBMs fiasco with the PC Jr.
> > > To me, that was (and is) symbolic of IBM's ouster from the PC market
> > > they created. IBM appears to be inherently incapable of dealing with
> > > the consumer market, be it by design or just coincidence.
> >
> > IBM stands for International Business Machines not Incompetent Bozo
> > Mentoring.
> >
> > IBM never intended to support individual users.
> Whoa, stop right there. Steering this discussion back toward "PC" and
> "OS/2", we (IBM -- I was there) opened the "IBM Product Centers" in an
> attempt to sell to consumers. Introduced the PCJr (with the "chicklet"
> keyboard) for consumers. Even with the first introduction of the PC you
> could buy "Microsoft Adventure," which was hardly intended for corporate
> purchase.
The decision to attempt this was not well received by several powerful
people at Armonk. It was a reluctant, grudging "OK" at best. When the PC
division began losing money, it was "I told you so" time.
> Programs like "Easywriter" were clearly intended for "consumers."
> When OS/2 was being marketed, at places like CompUSA, to consumers, the
> "Service and Support" organization attempted to gear up to individual
> consumers calling for support problems. Matter of fact, they were so
> overwhelmed that individual IBMers, scattered throughout the USA (not
> sure about "the world") could "pick off" a problem report from the queue
> and call individuals back to work on their problem. In fact, the "free
> service period" for individuals was increased almost indefinitely until
> the problems could be resolved.
Proves my point. If IBM wanted to support individuals, they would have had
the support organization in place before marketing to individuals. They
would have had a budget, staffing, etc. before the fact.
> That's what was "intended." The fact that these attempts eventually
> "failed" is another matter.
Had they been enthusiastically supported by the top management, they
wouldn't have failed. That what top level support existed was grudging at
best and anti-success in fact with many top management people ensured
failure.
> Jim Stuyck
> PS: As to your comments about "consumers" buying the Selectric, it's
> clear to me (since I bought several) that "consumers" could easily
> arrange purchase. These were sold by the Office Products Division of
> IBM, not the Data Processing Division, and OPD could handle low volume,
> low revenue, stuff without difficulty. DPD was for the mainframes (and
> punched card data processing stuff) and was more difficult to deal with,
> although they did have "new account" sales territories or small
> businesses. We (DPD -- I was there) never turned away a potential
> customer, once we figured out whose "territory" the prospect was in.
I was talking about a specific Selectric, the mag card model which was NOT
sold (at least in the Philadelphia Office region) by the OPD to
individuals.
> OH... and a "CE" was a "Customer Engineer" in IBM lingo. Thie person
> installed and serviced our products; the "mechanic." He/she provided
> valuable sales leads and "intelligence" (what the customer is thinking),
> but was never the salesman. Sales were left to salesmen.
Depends on when you are talking about. Read "Father, Son, and Company" by
Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 Person - E-mail: bob...@home.com
Proudly running OS/2 Warp 4, WSeB and eCS on our network
MR/2 Ice 2.28a Registration Number 67
Windows Error: 005 - Multitasking attempted. System confused.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 PERSON
am...@deltrak.demon.co.uk (Andrew Stephenson) said:
> Being unable to speak for what was in IBM's collective mind back in the
> 1970s, or what they would have charged a "business" for a Selectric, I
> can only say that I bought two (a 735 and 835, IIRC) in turn from
> IBM-direct with not a flicker of reluctance on their part, which they
> sent a man to install (ie, unpack and give the first check) and which
> they seemed happy to support for the whole time I had them (7-8 years
> total). My office in my home was just west of London. The prices they
> asked never felt inappropriate to the service I received -- but maybe
> they serviced "businesses" cheaper. FWIW as a sole self-employed
> person, I imagine I'd rate as a "small business".
Ah, you were not dealing with the same IBM we dealt with in the US. Back
in the 60's and 70's, IBM Europe was a virtually autonomous fiefdom run by
the younger son of Tom Watson, Sr., Dick Watson. Tom Senior set up IBM
Europe (which included everything in the world but the US and either
Canada or Mexico - can't remember which). Tom Jr. ran IBM and Dick ran
IBM-Europe. The latter had products the US never saw. Their marketing was
different from that in the US. Tom Jr. was never happy with this setup and
eventually foiled his father's plan by bringing Dick to the US where he
drove him to an early grave. In his autobiography, "Father, Son and
Company" Tom Jr. admits this saying it was the worst decision he ever
made.
> Okay, a lot the above is a subjective memory; but IMHO your own version
> sounds much the same.
My own "version" as you put it is based on long personal experience going
back to 1954 as well as reading several books about IBM including the
autobiography of Tom Watson, Jr.
A lot of what happened at IBM differs from city to city in the US. The
Philadelphia Office, for example, had to be dragged kicking and screaming
to allow interested people to watch the launch of Warp 3 from Comdex in
Chicago. I had to provide the specific information from IBM's press
release to the people at 20th and Market in Philadelphia in order to get
an "invitation". When I arrived at the second floor reception area I was
given a blank visitor badge and told to proceed to some room or other with
no instructions on how to find it. Only four non-IBM'ers showed up in a
theater with an AT on a podium with no power cord (none was ever
provided). A technician barely got the projection TV set up when the
presentation began and never got the picture/sound properly coordinated.
Three IBM'ers sat in and criticized continually during the entire thing,
demeaning Gerstner, a man who had evidently lost both his hands or was
born without same who wore a grey suit and a flowered tie (One comment I
heard was "Nice Suit, Captain Hook".) When one of the Project Chess team
who had left IBM and was in the audience in a dark suit, white shirt, and
striped tie was introduced by Lou G., the comment was "At least FORMER
IBM'ers know how to dress in public. Lou G. got told, "OK, go get dressed
now after he came out in a ski suit after the opening video." There were
continual snide remarks about his wearing a sport shirt and IBM logo
sweater during the presentation. It was quite apparent that in
Philadelphia (which included all of South Jersey) the PC was regarded as a
toy beneath the dignity of IBM as were SOHO users of any IBM product.
Contrast this with the North Jersey office (New York may still have
controlled that territory at the time). They rented the largest conference
room in a major hotel adjacent to the Meadowlands Stadium, had machines
set up running Warp, had shrinkwrapped product they gave away as door
prizes, etc. When the crowd overflowed the room, they hastily arranged a
second room and TV for the overflow.
From the early 1930's until he resigned in 1967, my dad was what would be
called IT manager today for a large Philadelphia company with 5,500 -
6,000 employees. He was a relatively new bookkeeper who sold his boss on
the idea of machine accounting for payroll in 1932. This made his career.
He constantly had the latest models of various punch card equipment,
frequently beta testing proposed products. I began with Dad part time (4
hours a night and all day Saturday) when I was 13. I can still remember
the basics of wiring those breadboards which ran the punch card and early
electronic machines. I sang the Company Songs at 604 school when I was
only 14! I remember the word THINK on the steps leading to the classrooms.
In 1965, I was on active duty with the US Navy. I wanted a Selectric for
my personal use. There was no IBM Direct in the US then. The Navy had them
aboard ship. My Dad had dozens in his company offices along with even more
Executives (proportional spacing typewriters with a typical typewriter
layout using type bars). The Office Products Divison never returned any of
my many calls to purchase one (I was on a year's recruiting duty that
year). While IBM did sell the Selectric (not sure about the Executive),
they didn't yet sell equipment prior to the settlement of the second
Department of Justice suit so Dad couldn't get me one since all his were
leased as were all the other machines. I finally got one by getting a
relatively new salesman working from an office in upstate New York to buy
it for me. He sold bank teller machines at the time and later money
dispensing machines when they were introduced by which time he was in
Charlotte, NC. That Selectric constantly needed the bands which moved the
type ball adjusted. I had to learn to do it myself since I couldn't get
IBM to send a technician wherever I happened to be over the next few
years.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 Person - E-mail: bob...@home.com
Proudly running OS/2 Warp 4, WSeB and eCS on our network
MR/2 Ice 2.28a Registration Number 67
Windows Error: 015 - Unable to exit Windows. Try the door.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 PERSON
ha...@pacbell.net said:
> Yup - me, too. And I didn't even have any kind of IBM "in". The hardest
> part was finding the phone number for the IBM guy who handled them.
> They even financed the thing for a year. IBM obviously had the manpower
> and the talent to create and keep the personal computer market. What
> they didn't have was the vision *at the top* to do the job.
The typewriter division (later Office Product Division) nearly was closed
up not long before Project Chess began. Tom Watson, Jr. in his book talks
about the fact that it lost money for many years and he nearly pulled the
plug. It was run as a virtually independent subsidiary with little
movement of people into mainframe side of the company. Until the IBM
Building in Penn Center was built in the late 1980's, the typewriter
people weren't even in the same building as the rest of IBM Philadelphia.
For a while in the 1970's, they were headquartered in an office park in
Cherry Hill, NJ. while the mainframe types were in a building near
Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The REAL OS/2 Person - E-mail: bob...@home.com
Proudly running OS/2 Warp 4, WSeB and eCS on our network
MR/2 Ice 2.28a Registration Number 67
Windows Error: 123 - Windows not found -=Use Real Operating System=-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William L. Hartzell
Olafur Gunnlaugsson wrote:
>
> No I did not know that, I read a long interview with the designer of the
> 68k at one time that threw some light on the architectural history of
> the machine, but he did not mention TI
>
> Interesting, this means that TI has f**ed up all their processor lines
TI called the chip the LI 68000. They were offering demo boards, but it
was missing most of the glue chips necessary to make it a functional
system. TI is noted for starting many retail businesses and failing to
make any of them successful. Remember the TI digital watches or the TI
calculators? They also had a line of printers and computers. At one
time they were the leading supplier to the government of electronics
goods. And they had a very important memory production, but dropped
everything about 4 years ago and went with only DSP chips. I do know
that they built a cyclotron for x-ray production about 200 yards in the
inside diameter. Buried it fifty feet underground. Across the public
street Liquid Air corp. put up a Liquid Nitrogen plant., or at least
that is what the tanks are labeled. Don't know what this last part has
to with the PC though. :-)
William L. Hartzell
Irv Spalten wrote:
>
> Steve, it was VisiCalc that started it... and also gave Lotus the door
> in. MS had one too, forgot the name? IBM put it out in a light green
> denim binder I recall.
>
Microsoft had a spreadsheet program call Multiplan. Like all MS
packaging in those days, it came in a green plastic box. I also had
Wordstar and Realworld accounting package on that CPM machine I had.
Jim Stuyck
The REAL OS/2 PERSON wrote:
>
> On 08/18/2001 at 11:19 AM,
> Jim Stuyck <jst...@home.com> said:
>
> > The REAL OS/2 PERSON wrote:
> > >
> > > On 08/18/2001 at 12:13 AM,
> > > who...@codenet.net (Will Honea) said:
> > >
> > > > Interestingly, all the discussion ignores IBMs fiasco with the PC Jr.
> > > > To me, that was (and is) symbolic of IBM's ouster from the PC market
> > > > they created. IBM appears to be inherently incapable of dealing with
> > > > the consumer market, be it by design or just coincidence.
> > >
> > > IBM stands for International Business Machines not Incompetent Bozo
> > > Mentoring.
> > >
> > > IBM never intended to support individual users.
>
> > Whoa, stop right there. Steering this discussion back toward "PC" and
> > "OS/2", we (IBM -- I was there) opened the "IBM Product Centers" in an
> > attempt to sell to consumers. Introduced the PCJr (with the "chicklet"
> > keyboard) for consumers. Even with the first introduction of the PC you
> > could buy "Microsoft Adventure," which was hardly intended for corporate
> > purchase.
>
> The decision to attempt this was not well received by several powerful
> people at Armonk. It was a reluctant, grudging "OK" at best. When the PC
> division began losing money, it was "I told you so" time.
Ah...but your wrote "IBM never intended." Clearly, with the establishment
of the IBM Product Center, the introduction of PCJr and so on the decision
WAS made to support individual users. Whether or not the decision (note,
it WAS a DECISION that was IMLEMENTED) was "well received" is immaterial.
In IBM (like most everyplace else) there's always another opinion.
And, from the MOMENT of annoucement of the original PC, the plan was to
offer this machine to "individual consumers" at places like Computerland
and the Sears computer outlets (product centers? I forget.).
Your initial assertion was (and remains) incorrect.
> > Programs like "Easywriter" were clearly intended for "consumers."
>
> > When OS/2 was being marketed, at places like CompUSA, to consumers, the
> > "Service and Support" organization attempted to gear up to individual
> > consumers calling for support problems. Matter of fact, they were so
> > overwhelmed that individual IBMers, scattered throughout the USA (not
> > sure about "the world") could "pick off" a problem report from the queue
> > and call individuals back to work on their problem. In fact, the "free
> > service period" for individuals was increased almost indefinitely until
> > the problems could be resolved.
>
> Proves my point. If IBM wanted to support individuals, they would have had
> the support organization in place before marketing to individuals. They
> would have had a budget, staffing, etc. before the fact.
Wrong conclusion. They had a plan, a budget, and staffing. The plan,
budget and staffing were inadequate, that's for sure. The plan got modified
(I personally invited the head of OS/2 "service and support", and his
replacement, to address the Dallas/Fort Worth OS/2 User's Group. When
they visited, part of their presentation dealt exactly with the "plan" and
what they were doing to correct the "plan", including support of the
individual consumer. BTW, for a LONG time after, IBM continued to
actively market OS/2 at places like CompUSA to individual consumers.
> > That's what was "intended." The fact that these attempts eventually
> > "failed" is another matter.
>
> Had they been enthusiastically supported by the top management, they
> wouldn't have failed. That what top level support existed was grudging at
> best and anti-success in fact with many top management people ensured
> failure.
Perhaps. But that's conjecture. Remember that, at his first IBM stockholder's
meeting (Charlotte, NC), Lou Gerstner mentioned, positively, at three points
in his answers to questions from the floor, IBM's commitment to OS/2.
Now, a year later, the story changed. But for some time the Top Guy said
"do this." Yes, there were executives that dragged their feet. There were
ALWAYS, within IBM's subculture, those that had their own agendas. After
all, it was BIG Blue, with 400,000 employees.
And let's not forget the "OS/2 relatedness" of this. Recall the "IBM OS/2
Fiesta Bowl Football Classic?" Couple years' sponsorship. OS/2 logos all
over the place. Now, if being the logoed sponsor of a big time football
game isn't targeted at "individuals" and "consumers," then what's it for?
And then there were the TV commercials (the nuns, David Barnes' 15 minutes
of fame, the Alaskan village). At the grass roots, within IBM, there was
a lot of excitement over these things. End too soon? Unenthusiatic support
from some quarters of top management? Underfunded? Under THOUGHT out?
Yeah, probably, to all of the above.
But clearly targeted to "individual consumers."
> > Jim Stuyck
>
> > PS: As to your comments about "consumers" buying the Selectric, it's
> > clear to me (since I bought several) that "consumers" could easily
> > arrange purchase. These were sold by the Office Products Division of
> > IBM, not the Data Processing Division, and OPD could handle low volume,
> > low revenue, stuff without difficulty. DPD was for the mainframes (and
> > punched card data processing stuff) and was more difficult to deal with,
> > although they did have "new account" sales territories or small
> > businesses. We (DPD -- I was there) never turned away a potential
> > customer, once we figured out whose "territory" the prospect was in.
>
> I was talking about a specific Selectric, the mag card model which was NOT
> sold (at least in the Philadelphia Office region) by the OPD to
> individuals.
There are always "specific" exceptions. Heck, in some branch offices there
was indifference to "new accounts" for some strange reason.
> > OH... and a "CE" was a "Customer Engineer" in IBM lingo. Thie person
> > installed and serviced our products; the "mechanic." He/she provided
> > valuable sales leads and "intelligence" (what the customer is thinking),
> > but was never the salesman. Sales were left to salesmen.
>
> Depends on when you are talking about. Read "Father, Son, and Company" by
> Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
If Tom Jr. wrote "CE" and meant "sales," then he may have misspoken (miswritten)
because "CE's" WERE the "servicemen." At one point, CE's (who were really
terrific folks to have around) were transferred into a new division, the
Field Engineering Division. And around 1965 or so, they took over front-line
software support (things like OS/360), in addition to working on keypunches
and mainframes and such. BTW, typewriters were serviced by OPD's folks,
not FED's.
Jim Stuyck
Andrew Stephenson
realos...@WarpMegacity.com "The REAL OS/2 PERSON" writes:
> On 08/18/2001 at 08:48 PM,
> am...@deltrak.demon.co.uk (Andrew Stephenson) said:
>
> > [...]
>
> > Okay, a lot the above is a subjective memory; but IMHO your own version
> > sounds much the same.
>
> My own "version" as you put it is based on long personal experience going
> back to 1954 as well as reading several books about IBM including the
> autobiography of Tom Watson, Jr.
>
> [loads of history/justification]
BobG, all you say may be God's Truth but it doesn't excuse you
from making sweeping statements as if they applied everywhere.
We all (well, most of us) make such mistakes from time to time;
but you elevate it to an art form. I was pulling you up, that's
all. If you've read the books, lived the life and woven the T-
shirt, fine; just try to remember that some of what you cite only
is correct in limited portions of the space-time continuum, 'k?
--
Andrew Stephenson
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}
realos...@WarpMegacity.com "The REAL OS/2 PERSON" writes:
> On 08/17/2001 at 11:22 PM,
> rjla...@infinet.com (Jerry Lapham) said:
>
> > In <3b7d9f48$1$obot129$mr2ice@news>, on 08/17/01
> > at 10:48 PM, The REAL OS/2 PERSON <realos...@WarpMegacity.com>
> > said:
>
> > > But, the public fell in love with the Charlie Chaplin clone. Individuals
> > > who remember "I Love Lucy" roared with laughter at the one with the
> > > cakes coming off the production line faster than poor Charlie could
> > > catch them which was a direct ripoff of Lucy in the candy factory.
>
> > Which was a "ripoff" of an old Charlie Chaplin movie.
>
> > -Jerry
>
> I'm OLD. But you must be even OLDER if you saw Chaplin films.
Huh? British TV often used to show old Chaplin shorts at the week-ends
in the 1950s: right when they were making those I Love Lucy shows live.
Full-length Chaplin films, such as the aforementioned Modern Times and
others like The Great Dictator, were sometimes shown on Sunday
afternoons, and still get trotted out even nowadays during retrospectives
on various subjects (even if it's only one on industrialization, or
Fascism).
--
Brian {Hamilton Kelly} b...@dsl.co.uk
"We have gone from a world of concentrated knowledge and wisdom to one of
distributed ignorance. And we know and understand less while being incr-
easingly capable." Prof. Peter Cochrane, formerly of BT Labs
ha...@pacbell.net
> retrospectives
>on various subjects (even if it's only one on industrialization, or
>Fascism).
>
Is there a difference ? Or was your "or Fascism" an adjectival
parenthesis ?
--
härad ængravvåd
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}
realos...@WarpMegacity.com "The REAL OS/2 PERSON" writes:
> I was talking about a specific Selectric, the mag card model which was NOT
> sold (at least in the Philadelphia Office region) by the OPD to
> individuals.
IIRC, one "individual" who bought a Mag Card model of Selectric (I'm
unsure as to exactly which) was Len Deighton, the author, who wrote all
the Harry Palmer spy novels, such as the Ipcress Files (as well as other
spy novels, and other fiction and faction).
He was, SFAIAA, one of the first novelists to embrace the "information
age". Douglas Adams' forays into Apple ][ and DEC Rainbows considerably
post-dated Deighton. (If I'm not conflating it with some other event,
ISTR an IBM salesman telling me that Deighton was using this Selectric
way back at an exhibition in the late 1960s.)
Indeed, IIRC, he had two machines: one in the UK and one in (I think)
California, and used to travel between them relying upon the magenetic
cards (or was it cartridges?)
Bob McLellan
was a deal. They loved it. The next big boost came from the various 3270
connections/emulators.
As to whether the design sucked, it was fine for the time. The issue for
us chickens is that we have not seen any architectural evolution to
relieve constraints such as memory bandwidth and IRQ's. Why oh why
didn't IBM get the microchannel release right. Think of the problems
that would have solved (prug and pray).
--
------------------------------------------------------
Bob McLellan
The Little Blue Kiwi
OS/2 Solutions for New Zealand
Irv Spalten
could call in. There was a 24/7 operation there, and it transfered to
Austin as well.
I was the WizOP on CompuServe which was part of the overall consumer
'solution' for OS/2 as well.
Remember you picking me up in Dallas in your Miata (I think?) when I
spoke at the Dallas User's Group.
IBM supported end-users then. It was planned too.
Irv
Peter Moylan
>In <3B7B0B17...@verizon.net>, on 08/15/2001
> at 11:48 PM, Wes newell <w.ne...@verizon.net> said:
>
>>off the shelf components. And picking the 8088 was about the worst choice
>>they could have made. 8 bit data bus, 16 bit internal bus, 20 bit address
>>bus. This choice has plagued us for 20 years now.
>
>I often think of the PC as a lab experiment that got out into the wild.
>
>There are times I like to consider what the world would be like if IBM had
>chosen to use the Motorola chips that were available at the time.
Motorola had a superior processor architecture, but Intel was far
better at getting a design into silicon. It was also better at
getting chips into production, meeting deadlines, and the like.
It's true that some aspects of the Intel design look like kludges,
but they were kludges that worked. In terms of producing a
commercial success, Intel was the right path to take.
Something that always fascinated me: if you look at the
architectural details, it looks as if the Motorola people were
strongly influenced by DEC, while the Intel people probably got
their education on IBM mainframes. IBM, too, always managed
to specialise in designs that had a really crappy basic architecture
but that excelled in terms of efficient production and getting
the product to market. The IBM mainframes were grossly inferior
in basic design to the competition, and scandalously overpriced,
but they survived because of excellent backup and sales support.
--
Peter Moylan pe...@ee.newcastle.edu.au
http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au
Jim Stuyck
Irv Spalten wrote:
>
> Jim, right, IBM staffed Boca with a call center. ANY purchaser of OS/2
> could call in. There was a 24/7 operation there, and it transfered to
> Austin as well.
>
> I was the WizOP on CompuServe which was part of the overall consumer
> 'solution' for OS/2 as well.
>
> Remember you picking me up in Dallas in your Miata (I think?) when I
> spoke at the Dallas User's Group.
Yes, it was my Miata and I'm STILL attractive to good looking
women when I drive by with the top down! ;-) Barbeque at
Spring Creek was the pre-meeting meal.
But I wasn't thinking of you when I composed the original note.
It was Bob Albano (I think I got that right) and his successor
that Toby Pennycuff and I had visit the the user's group
meeting. Took those guys to a small TexMex restaurant.
> IBM supported end-users then. It was planned too.
Yes, and expensive to boot. It was easy to see that there was
no way the kind of "customer support" IBM was used to giving,
which was considerable and a matter of pride within the company,
could continue at the prices charged for OS/2.
Jim Stuyck
Wojtek Bok
Hmmm, then they bought it, not developed it.
I used Multiplan on my H100 machine, which was NOT MS-DOS but Z-DOS.
William L. Hartzell
Wojtek Bok wrote:
>
> Hmmm, then they bought it, not developed it.
>
> I used Multiplan on my H100 machine, which was NOT MS-DOS but Z-DOS.
>
Me don't know where MS got it. Me know that I paid $249 for it.
Olafur Gunnlaugsson
Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>
>Something that always fascinated me: if you look at the
>architectural details, it looks as if the Motorola people were
>strongly influenced by DEC,
>
more than that, the main 68k designer worked for DEC guess doing what :-)
Olafur Gunnlaugsson
William L. Hartzell wrote:
Do remember the TI calc & watches, think I have one of those watches
somewhere and still use the TI-82 now and then
Are they really out of the calculator business ?
I svear I was looking at calculator from them only a year ago ?
They are still active in some components mostly minor digital stuff and
asics, I have used their DSP's , but it's odd to see that company that
epitomized consumer hitech 20 years ago is a minor component supplier
today ...
Joe Osman
We had a Commodore 64. The first word my son could spell was run,
which he spelled "R-U-N-Enter".
Joe
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David T. Johnson
Irv Spalten wrote:
>
> Having lived and worked in 'those times' I'm not convinced it was the
> h/w but the s/w that made the difference. Mainly Dan Bricklin's
> VisiCalc. That was the killer app that was not on a TRS-80 or an Apple
> II at the time.
Visicalc was running on the Apple II at least a year before the IBM PC
appeared in 1981. IIRC, Visicalc was written for the Apple II.
Visicalc was such useful application, that IBM worked to ensure that
Visicalc was ported to the IBM PC for its launch along with a a
forgettable word processor called "Easy Writer." Apple II had many more
and better word processors available on it at the time of the IBM PC
launch.
>
> The real major competitor was really Compaq, first with a 'luggable' and
> first out of the shoot with the advanced (for those days) processors.
Compaq was not the first or biggest maker of IBM PC clones. A lot of
clone-makers popped up almost overnight making machines that were
software compatible with the IBM PC and they were all much bigger than
Compaq. Many existing "big" companies also entered the clone business
including Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) with their "rainbow" line
of computers with touch screens. Compaq's claim to fame was the
introduction of a portable IBM PC-compatible clone which was the basis
for their company name. Compaq was not the first company to sell a
portable. The Osborne I has that distinction. Compaq just adapted that
idea to the IBM PC-compatible market.
>
> IBM did the IBM side of PC-DOS and MS worked with the 'clones', but I
> recall most of the action was with Compaq.\
Compaq did not even produce their first machine until mid-1983 almost
two years after IBM started selling the IBM PC. Microsoft sold MS-DOS
directly to every clone maker under their agreement with IBM.
>
> It was also the word 'business' in IBM's name and the retail channel
> that made a difference. What company would go into Radio Shack (talk
> about your odds of getting a knowledgeable person to assist you) for
> computers when you could go into ComputerLand and get Apple's or IBM's
> and that storefront only sold computers.
>
> Irv (who had a TRS-80 and got his first IBM PC for over $4K via
> ComputerLand on the employee plan and HAD to wait to get it!)
>
> "David T. Johnson" wrote:
> >
> > Wojtek Bok wrote:
> > >
> > > On Thu, 16 Aug 2001 14:12:00, "David T. Johnson"
> > > <djoh...@isomedia.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > I don't think the IBM PC technology sucked. IBM took what was available
> > > > at the time and created a relatively powerful system with a relatively
> > > > low cost. Yes, a couple of years later, there was a lot of better stuff
> > > > but that is not the point. People have pointed out that the CGA
> > > > resolution and color depth was not very good by today's standards. Very
> > > > true. But the processors, memory, bus speed, and software were simply
> > > > not capable of delivering more at a price that normal users could
> > > > afford. The CGA was actually designed to work with color TV sets which
> > > > were commonly used with small desktop computers at the time that the IBM
> > > > PC was introduced. As a compromise solution, IBM also provided what
> > > > they called a monochrome display adapter along with a green monochrome
> > > > screen. This setup did not support colors or graphics but it did offer
> > > > a much higher resolution screen using only ASCII characters at a
> > > > reasonable speed.
> > >
> > > Yes, but you had a text mode and a graphices mode. The two could not
> > > be used together, except by graphically mapping characters onto the
> > > graphics mode, which was a PITA.
> > >
> > > By contrast I had a Heathkit H100 (Zenith Z100) which not only had a
> > > whopping 192K of RAM for the video, but supported text and graphics at
> > > the same time. There WAS no graphics/text modes. You had two planes of
> > > 16 colour video and could flip between them. Or you could interlace
> > > them for 640x480 resolution (amazing at the time).
> >
> > 192K of RAM memory was a large amount and quite expensive in 1981. The
> > first IBM PC came with exactly 16K or RAM on the motherboard with
> > sockets for an additional 48K.
> >
> > >
> > > Also the architecture (and Z-DOS) supported much more than 640K of
> > > RAM. I had at one time 768K of RAM, ALL of which was available.
> > > Moreover I could put into the machine via the S100 bus up to 16M of
> > > RAM (could not afford it, it would have been in the tens of thousands
> > > of dollars).
> > >
> > > The keyboard had F0 to F11, and a separate key marked HELP.
> > >
> > > It had two CPU chips (8088 and 8085(?)) so you could boot either CP/M
> > > or Z-DOS.
> > >
> > > It was a much better machine. But it was not easily upgradable. Yes it
> > > had the S100 bus, but the video was on a daughter board. I think a
> > > company produced an addon that upped the video RAM and resolution, but
> > > it was way to late for the machine.
> >
> > A LOT of companies took their best shot at producing a desktop computer
> > for the mass market. IBM's design was the first to really take off. It
> > was not the best, the cheapest, the fastest, or the most powerful but it
> > did seem to hit the price/performance/features target much better than
> > any of its contemporaries.
> >
> > After the IBM PC came out and proved to be a big hit, many companies
> > tried to usurp its position with various improvements. The most
> > important selling feature for any these machines was compatibility with
> > the IBM PC design. Hewlett Packard came out with its first x86 desktop
> > machine that had better performance than the IBM PC, more features, and
> > it came with MS-DOS. At the time, Hewlett Packard had a history of
> > building small standalone desktop computer systems for businesses and
> > universities and had a reputation for quality. The only real problem
> > with the new HP machine was that it would not run IBM PC software and
> > needed its own special versions. The first HP machine was a complete
> > failure and would be lost to memory except that HP also released the
> > very first little crude Inkjet printer with it. That Inkjet printer
> > didn't work very well and was expensive but it was the first of a long
> > line of inkjet printers that became better and better and are now
> > dominant in their market.
David T. Johnson
Irv Spalten wrote:
>
> David,
>
> Sorry,
>
> "David T. Johnson" wrote:
> >
> > "Bob St.John" wrote:
> > >
> > > "David T. Johnson" wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > >
> > > Estridge was unusual ... as the product became more successful, he was removed
> > > and replaced by Lowe, a more 'traditional' IBM exec .. famous for the remark,
> > > "If PCs become a commodity product, IBM will get out of the business."
> >
> > Don Estridge was not "replaced." He died in a plane crash in 1985 and
> > was an IBM senior vice president at the time of his death.
>
> Don was indeed replaced. He went to Armonk to work on something else. He
> was a Senior VP when he died the tragic death.
In the context that "replaced" was used, the implication was that Don
Estridge had somehow incurred disfavor and was being pushed aside. This
is one spin that can be applied to the facts but it was not surprising
that a promotion would imply working in another part of IBM. Don
Estridge did a great job in the IBM PC business but then, as now, it was
not the main focus of IBM and a talented and successful person would
have deserved and expected to be assigned to something more central to
the corporate focus as he was promoted. If IBM had left Don Estridge in
the IBM PC job, he would have likely felt that he was "passed over."
>
> > > Within a
> > > few years IBM went from owning the PC market to a single digit market share ...
> > > and the phrase went from "IBM PC Compatible" ... to "Microsoft Windows
> > > Compatible".
> >
> > IBM lost the PC market when they tried to switch to their proprietary
> > microchannel architecture with the PS/2 line of computers. Customers
> > simply refused to go in this direction. IBM eventually reversed course
> > but it was much too late.
>
> Nah, don't think so. It wasn't customers that refused, it was the PC
> Clone makers that didn't want to license it.
>
If customers had been pounding on their door, I think they would have
been persuaded to pony up the licensing fees.
David T. Johnson
Jerry Lapham wrote:
>
> In <3B7D2A8B...@isomedia.com>, on 08/17/01
> at 10:30 AM, "David T. Johnson" <djoh...@isomedia.com> said:
>
> > The only real problem
> > with the new HP machine was that it would not run IBM PC software and
> > needed its own special versions.
>
> And if Tim Patterson (and later Microsoft) had done a better job with
> QDOS/MSDOS so that programmers hadn't needed to write directly to video
> memory to get acceptable speed, that wouldn't have been a problem.
>
There was more to the HP incompatibilities than that. For example, the
HP used a 3.5 inch floppy which was rare at the time other than with the
original Macintosh. The 3.5-inch disk format was slightly different
than the eventual 720k disk format that became widespread a year or so
later.
David T. Johnson
ste...@earthlink.bogus.net wrote:
>
> In <3B7D673D...@us.ibm.com>, on 08/17/2001
> at 01:49 PM, Irv Spalten <ispa...@us.ibm.com> said:
>
> >Having lived and worked in 'those times' I'm not convinced it was the h/w
> >but the s/w that made the difference. Mainly Dan Bricklin's VisiCalc.
> >That was the killer app that was not on a TRS-80 or an Apple II at the
> >time.
>
> I suspect you mean 123. VisiCalc and all the Visi Products where
> originally developed for the Apple II. I have fond memory of VisiDex
> (sic?) spinning up the diskette drive in anticipation that I was going to
> need the next record. VisiCorp was late to the PC market, so Lotus got in
> with 123 and that was the beginning of the end for VisiCorp.
>
No, Visicorp sold "Visicalc" for the IBM PC when it was introduced and I
still have a copy. Lotus 123 was a later and much-improved spreadsheet
product with more features that was developed for the IBM PC platform.
When Lotus 123 came out, people stopped buying Visicalc even though
Visicalc was the first spreadsheet available for the IBM PC.
David T. Johnson
Irv Spalten wrote:
>
> Steve, it was VisiCalc that started it... and also gave Lotus the door
> in. MS had one too, forgot the name? IBM put it out in a light green
> denim binder I recall.
Microsoft sold a spreadsheet called "Multiplan" but it was never a
serious competitor of Lotus 123. Lotus 123 came out several years after
the original Visicalc and Multiplan came out a year or so after Lotus
123 IIRC.
Irv Spalten
"David T. Johnson" wrote:
>
> Irv Spalten wrote:
> >
> > David,
> >
> > Sorry,
> >
> > "David T. Johnson" wrote:
> > >
> > > "Bob St.John" wrote:
> > > >
> > > > "David T. Johnson" wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > >
> > > > Estridge was unusual ... as the product became more successful, he was removed
> > > > and replaced by Lowe, a more 'traditional' IBM exec .. famous for the remark,
> > > > "If PCs become a commodity product, IBM will get out of the business."
> > >
> > > Don Estridge was not "replaced." He died in a plane crash in 1985 and
> > > was an IBM senior vice president at the time of his death.
> >
> > Don was indeed replaced. He went to Armonk to work on something else. He
> > was a Senior VP when he died the tragic death.
>
> In the context that "replaced" was used, the implication was that Don
> Estridge had somehow incurred disfavor and was being pushed aside. This
> is one spin that can be applied to the facts but it was not surprising
> that a promotion would imply working in another part of IBM. Don
> Estridge did a great job in the IBM PC business but then, as now, it was
> not the main focus of IBM and a talented and successful person would
> have deserved and expected to be assigned to something more central to
> the corporate focus as he was promoted. If IBM had left Don Estridge in
> the IBM PC job, he would have likely felt that he was "passed over."
Many people wind up in 'IBM jail' for many reasons. Don was replaced,
period.
> >
> > > > Within a
> > > > few years IBM went from owning the PC market to a single digit market share ...
> > > > and the phrase went from "IBM PC Compatible" ... to "Microsoft Windows
> > > > Compatible".
> > >
> > > IBM lost the PC market when they tried to switch to their proprietary
> > > microchannel architecture with the PS/2 line of computers. Customers
> > > simply refused to go in this direction. IBM eventually reversed course
> > > but it was much too late.
> >
> > Nah, don't think so. It wasn't customers that refused, it was the PC
> > Clone makers that didn't want to license it.
> >
> If customers had been pounding on their door, I think they would have
> been persuaded to pony up the licensing fees.
MicroChannel was ahead of its time. IRQ sharing wasn't the problem in
the mid 80's that it is today. This is akin to the RAMBUS memory of
today. Intel is now backtracking Pentium 4's to SDR and DDR memory.
Costs less, and the loss of performance may not be easily detected. It
wasn't the customer that drove the issue, it was the clone makers. They
didn't want to pay the royalties, and what they had was good enough.
Why? Because IBM at that time traditionally over developed the PC's and
underpowered them. Never the first out of the chute with the latest
processor or peripheral. Even when they came out, they were more
expensive than the competition. Once PC's became more of a commodity,
they lost the 'glamor' of the IBM nameplate. Ma and Pa shops sprung up
creating cheap PC's that worked as well or better. Only recently have
these 'stores' migrated to parts or service. Today Dell, ComPaq, IBM,
HP, and Gateway can deliver systems at a price point the Ma and Pa
stores can't compete with. Heck, some of the above companies may be
losing money on every sale trying to ride out the lack of buyers and not
lose market share.
Bottom line, if customers wanted MC machines, they bought them. If they
wanted price, they didn't. Price won more often than not.
Irv
David T. Johnson
Irv Spalten wrote:
>
>
> MicroChannel was ahead of its time. IRQ sharing wasn't the problem in
> the mid 80's that it is today. This is akin to the RAMBUS memory of
> today. Intel is now backtracking Pentium 4's to SDR and DDR memory.
> Costs less, and the loss of performance may not be easily detected.
RDRAM memory licensed by Rambus suffers from many disadvantages compared
with DDR memory including heat/power consumption, 2 byte bus width vs. 8
byte DDR, and increased latency. It's relatively high cost (driven by
Rambus licensing) is the LEAST of the problems that RDRAM memory faces.
Pentium 4 currently uses only RDRAM not for technical or performance
advantages but because of a misguided licensing agreement between Intel
and Rambus that binds Intel to support RDRAM until its expiration at the
end of this year IIRC. Intel is rushing to offer an SDRAM solution for
Pentium 4 because it is phasing out the PIII and needs to have a cheap
P4 system which is impossible with RDRAM. As for DDR memory, it has
become the new high-performance memory standard and Intel will support
it just as soon as it is legally able to. VIA is attempting to offer a
DDR platform for the P4 in the meantime without Intel's blessing (which
would be a first) and a legal battle is looming.
Bob Eager
> Bottom line, if customers wanted MC machines, they bought them. If they
> wanted price, they didn't. Price won more often than not.
Quite true. It's still satisfying to have a well built machine!
I bought a Model 80 in 1989, and it's still running. At one point it
was left switched on for five and a half years. Nothing has ever
failed (apart from th monitor, which was repkaced under warranty in
THREE HOURS!).
--
Bob Eager
rde at tavi.co.uk
PC Server 325; PS/2s 8595*3, 9595*3 (2*P60 + P90), 8535, 8570, 9556*2,
8580*6,
8557*2, 8550, 9577, 8530, P70, PC/AT..
ha...@pacbell.net
>>
>Do remember the TI calc & watches, think I have one of those watches
>somewhere and still use the TI-82 now and then
>
HP made a watch, too. I wish I had one :)
--
härad ængravvåd
Bill Clark
> VisiCalc. That was the killer app that was not on a TRS-80
No but the TRS-80 had Multiplan... along with Profile Plus for
database work and Scripsit as a word processor...
--
Give a man a fish and he will eat it for dinner...
Teach a man to fish and he will be late for dinner...
Bob St.John
"David T. Johnson" wrote:
> In the context that "replaced" was used, the implication was that Don
> Estridge had somehow incurred disfavor and was being pushed aside.
No. You inferred this. It was not implied. What was implied was that he was replaced, and
he was. In IBM, when a person heads an organization .. that's important. Estridge headed
an IBU .. it may have been out of the main stream, but it was still his "ship of the
line".
He was moved out of this position to essentially executive staff. Was this a promotion?
It was not seen that way by anyone in my part of IBM. Did Estridge get in trouble? I
don't think so, but he wasn't "one of the boys".
But, IMO, it was more a case of some professional envy. The PC Co. was taking off,
becoming visible. I think the execs wanted "one of their own" as the head.
There was an old Peanuts strip ... really old. Had Linus sitting on the floor as a baby,
playing with a bunch of toys. Lucy comes by and picks them all up, claiming them as her
toys. As she leaves, she tosses him a rubber band, "Here, play with that."
He does. Soon he is having a ball with it. Lucy rushes back and grabs it. "I didn't mean
to have that much fun with it." That's pretty much my assessment of what happened to
Estridge ... the job got bigger than "they" wanted to entrust to him.
BTW ... I liked what Estridge did with PC Co. Very much a departure from how IBM tended
to handle things. But this doesn't mean he didn't have detractors, from the PC Co. and
from other positions prior to that job.
> This is one spin that can be applied to the facts but it was not surprising
> that a promotion would imply working in another part of IBM. Don
> Estridge did a great job in the IBM PC business but then, as now, it was
> not the main focus of IBM and a talented and successful person would
> have deserved and expected to be assigned to something more central to
> the corporate focus as he was promoted. If IBM had left Don Estridge in
> the IBM PC job, he would have likely felt that he was "passed over."
Why is it "likely" he would have felt this way? Going from an executive position, a
"command" position, to a "staff" position is not a promotion. Had his next position been
to lead another, more important, more mainstream, organization ... maybe. But it wasn't
Fact is, I don't recall what his last position was. But my impression is, in the words of
Catch 22, "they disappeared him".
Regards,
Bob St.John
Serenity Systems
Wojtek Bok
wrote:
> For the nostalgic part of us...
Yup.
And here is a link to a view of the history of the GUI.
http://www.webmasterbase.com/printTemplate.php?aid=511
Will Honea
<wlhar...@home.com> wrote:
> Sir:
>
> Olafur Gunnlaugsson wrote:
> >
> > No I did not know that, I read a long interview with the designer of the
> > 68k at one time that threw some light on the architectural history of
> > the machine, but he did not mention TI
> >
> > Interesting, this means that TI has f**ed up all their processor lines
>
> TI called the chip the LI 68000. They were offering demo boards, but it
> was missing most of the glue chips necessary to make it a functional
> system. TI is noted for starting many retail businesses and failing to
> make any of them successful. Remember the TI digital watches or the TI
> calculators? They also had a line of printers and computers. At one
> time they were the leading supplier to the government of electronics
> goods. And they had a very important memory production, but dropped
> everything about 4 years ago and went with only DSP chips. I do know
> that they built a cyclotron for x-ray production about 200 yards in the
> inside diameter. Buried it fifty feet underground. Across the public
> street Liquid Air corp. put up a Liquid Nitrogen plant., or at least
> that is what the tanks are labeled. Don't know what this last part has
> to with the PC though. :-)
I don't know about the 68000 - I was using TI pretty heavily in the
late 70's and ISTR that they were licensing that from Motorola instead
of the other way around.
TI started off doint just what the name inplies: instrumentation for
the petroleum industry. The had what I still think was one of the
best microprocessors around in the 9900 series. 16 bit in '76, ran
like a bat out of Hades. They had a charge coupled version that was
rad hardened and used by some space programs. It had the best real
time functionality of anything I've seen to date which was why I used
it in geophysical instrumentation designs for several years.
Just a passing recollection of the releative merits of the Intel
competition in those days: TI couldn't market anything and Motorola
had a virtually useless tech support operation. Intel was easy to
talk to and was free with samples.
--
Will Honea <who...@codenet.net>
Jerry Lapham
> Compaq was not the first or biggest maker of IBM PC clones. A lot of
> clone-makers popped up almost overnight making machines that were
> software compatible with the IBM PC and they were all much bigger than
> Compaq. Many existing "big" companies also entered the clone business
> including Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) with their "rainbow" line
> of computers with touch screens. Compaq's claim to fame was the
> introduction of a portable IBM PC-compatible clone which was the basis
> for their company name. Compaq was not the first company to sell a
> portable. The Osborne I has that distinction. Compaq just adapted that
> idea to the IBM PC-compatible market.
Compaq *was* the first IBM PC clone maker. The TI, Zenith, DEC, Victor,
Wang, etc., PCs all had significant differences in architecture. They
all bought MS-DOS (and CP/M86 and the UCSD P-system) as source code and
had to rewrite the routines to fit their own video displays, etc.
Software developers such as Lotus and Word Perfect had to write a
different version for each of them unless they wanted to limit themselves
to using DOS calls. Only Compaq could use the same version of Lotus 123
as IBM because they had "cloned" the IBM architecture and BIOS instead of
improving them.
I speak as a TIPC user at home and a Z-100 user at work during the early
80s, who resisted becoming "IBM PC compatible" until the 386 generation.
-Jerry
--
============================================================
Jerry Lapham, Monroe, OH
E-Mail: rjla...@infinet.com
Written Tuesday, August 21, 2001 - 12:22 AM (EDT)
============================================================
MR/2 Ice tag: Trackball: a mouse that went belly up.
ha...@pacbell.net
>
>Estridge did a great job in the IBM PC business but then, as now, it was
>not the main focus of IBM and a talented and successful person would
>have deserved and expected to be assigned to something more central to
>the corporate focus as he was promoted.
He became a VP in charge of manufacturing, where he had no
experience at all ... will you now tell us how manufacturing is
the fast track to the top at iBM ?
--
härad ængravvåd
William L. Hartzell
Got a drawer full of TI watches, well two of them. They still work.
Got an old Seiko with the original battery in it,, cannot get the damn
thing open to replace. In fact I got a dozen watches that I don't
wear. Give me a wall clock with nice big hands that I can see.
William L. Hartzell
Will Honea wrote:
>
> Just a passing recollection of the releative merits of the Intel
> competition in those days: TI couldn't market anything and Motorola
> had a virtually useless tech support operation. Intel was easy to
> talk to and was free with samples.
>
Same thing I remember.
David T. Johnson
>
> In <3B8125A5...@isomedia.com>, on 08/20/01
> at 10:58 AM, "David T. Johnson" <djoh...@isomedia.com> said:
>
> > Compaq was not the first or biggest maker of IBM PC clones. A lot of
> > clone-makers popped up almost overnight making machines that were
> > software compatible with the IBM PC and they were all much bigger than
> > Compaq. Many existing "big" companies also entered the clone business
> > including Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) with their "rainbow" line
> > of computers with touch screens. Compaq's claim to fame was the
> > introduction of a portable IBM PC-compatible clone which was the basis
> > for their company name. Compaq was not the first company to sell a
> > portable. The Osborne I has that distinction. Compaq just adapted that
> > idea to the IBM PC-compatible market.
>
> Compaq *was* the first IBM PC clone maker. The TI, Zenith, DEC, Victor,
> Wang, etc., PCs all had significant differences in architecture. They
> all bought MS-DOS (and CP/M86 and the UCSD P-system) as source code and
> had to rewrite the routines to fit their own video displays, etc.
> Software developers such as Lotus and Word Perfect had to write a
> different version for each of them unless they wanted to limit themselves
> to using DOS calls. Only Compaq could use the same version of Lotus 123
> as IBM because they had "cloned" the IBM architecture and BIOS instead of
> improving them.
The Compaq was not the first compatible clone of the IBM PC. Prior to
the first Compaq, there was the Canon AS-100, Sequa Chameleon, Corona
PC, Eagle 1600, Hyperion, Columbia Data Products, North Star Advantage
8/16, Victor 9000, Wang Professional Computer, Zenith Z-100, and others
that were all at least software compatible with the IBM PC. The Compaq
was more compatible than many but even Compaq only claimed 99 44/100
compatibility. The key to compatiblity was the use of a BIOS that did
not infringe upon IBM's copyrighted BIOS software. A compatible BIOS
was written by a group of programmers in a closed room without access to
the published IBM code and became the Phoenix BIOS used in many/most of
the clones. Phoenix still exists as an entity supplying BIOS software
to computer and motherboard manufacturers.