Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!think!snorkelwacker!spdcc!ima!esegue!johnl
From: johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: IBM PC prehistory
Message-ID: <1990Jan15.181550.2397@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us>
Date: 15 Jan 90 18:15:50 GMT
References: <1546@aber-cs.UUCP> <33896@mips.mips.COM> <21559@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <1989Dec30.235854.14254@world.std.com> <10131@microsoft.UUCP> <250@dg.dg.com> <129994@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <256@dg.dg.com>
Reply-To: johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine)
Organization: Segue Software, Cambridge MA
Lines: 24

In article <256@dg.dg.com> uunet!dg!rec (Robert Cousins) writes:
>Well, IBM did make a 68k based machine, the IBM 9000 from IBM Instruments.
>If memory serves me correctly, it was written up in BYTE at approximately
>the same time as the PC was becoming popular.  Does anyone care to 
>throw in more info?  

I know people who tried and failed to make Unix run on the 9000.  The problem
is that IBM Instruments was a little company in Connecticut that made gas
chromatographs, and the 9000 was designed to be a lab machine to control
instruments.

But then IBM bought them, apparently to have a toehold in the lab computer
instrument market, so here was this 68K box coming out with the IBM logo on
it.  Everyone got all excited, because it looked like it could be IBM's first
workstation.  (The RT project had barely begun at that point.)

Unfortunately, the 9000 was a kludgy and amateurish design, hard to build,
hard to maintain, and extremely hard to program.  Sort of like a Sun 1 in a
more attractive box.  It sank without a trace, and deserved to.  IBM disbanded
IBM Instruments shortly afterwards.
-- 
John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 864 9650
johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {ima|lotus|spdcc}!esegue!johnl
"Now, we are all jelly doughnuts."