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From: dave@heurikon.UUCP (Dave Scidmore)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.arch
Subject: Re: What if IBM Had chosen the 68000?...
Message-ID: <143@heurikon.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Nov-85 18:51:08 EST
Article-I.D.: heurikon.143
Posted: Tue Nov 26 18:51:08 1985
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> Well, IBM *DID* choose the 68000... to use in a little box
> they called the CS9000.  Apparently it didn't catch on.
> 
As I recall (my memory may be faulty) the CS9000 was a lab machine designed
for an entirely different market than the "PC." It seems obvious to me that
a machine designed for lab use would generally be more expensive than a
business machine and incorporate features that the business market would not
be willing to pay for. To expect a machine that was designed for one
application to "catch on" in another does not make sense. In addition the
machine mentioned did not have nearly the marketing thrust behind it that the
PC did. Proof of this is the fact that it is such a little known machine.

Also I have heard some talk that IBM did not make the decision on which
processor was to go in the PC, some small firm did and was later bought out
by IBM. Somewhere down the line IBM had to make the internal decision to go
with the 8088 in as big a way as they did. Companies the size of IBM
simply do not put the vast amounts of money required into sales and third
party support for a new product without first checking out the sources for
all of the components. In the type of analysis required to get a product
to market the factors that weigh the most heavily are not technical at all.
The factors that weigh heaviest are factors such as the security of the
company supplying parts, cost of the parts and how that cost affects the
cost of the end product, will the cost of the end product be acceptable
to the market place. In the final analysis it was probably a balance of all
factors that made IBM choose the 8088 as the right tool for the job. To say
that it is all black and white, that IBM based their decision entirely on
performance or entirely on the market, or that some small company nobody
ever heard of made the decision on which processor to use for IBM, is to view
the corporate decision making process much too simplistically.

						Dave Scidmore