Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: AMD vs. Intel Arbitration
Message-ID: <2787@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 24 Oct 90 19:25:35 GMT
References: <1416@msa3b.UUCP> <1990Oct19.232725.4421@amd.com> <2780@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <1990Oct22.213529.21911@amd.com>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 28

In article <1990Oct22.213529.21911@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes:

| All that would be moot if IBM had refused to use a single sourced
| 8088 in the original IBM PC.

  IBM wanted to be sure that there was acceptance of their system, so
they allowed it to be reasonably compatible with the best PC operating
system of the time, CP/M. Many applications could be mechanically
rewritten from 8080 assembler to 8088 assembler, and gotten running in a
very short time.

  If it were not for Digital Research letting IBM get away as a customer
CP/M would have been the one. And if a programmer at Seattle Computer
(RIP) had not written QDOS (Quick and Dirty OS) for the 8086, Microsoft
probably would have done something completely diferent.

  And if someone had been smart enough to port UNIX to the PC *early* in
the game, at a very low price, and push it like crazy, then UNIX might
be the o/s of choice for PCs, too. Of course AT&T didn't do that, even
though they could have marketed a $100 version of SysIII with compiler
and tools. And by the time INteractive wrote VP/ix for IBM, IBM was more
interested in keeping their proprietary o/s going and sold the UNIX port
at a high enough price to keep PC-DOS popular.

  There was a window of opportunity, and no one grabbed it. Pity.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
    VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use unix.