Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site peora.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!petsd!peora!jer From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) Newsgroups: net.micro,net.arch Subject: Re: What if IBM used a 68000 Message-ID: <1814@peora.UUCP> Date: Tue, 26-Nov-85 08:17:33 EST Article-I.D.: peora.1814 Posted: Tue Nov 26 08:17:33 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 27-Nov-85 06:24:31 EST References: <212@fas.ri.cmu.edu> Organization: CONCURRENT Computer SDC, Orlando, Fl. Lines: 35 Xref: watmath net.micro:12860 net.arch:2177 > Both were initially given the same kind of strong marketing support IBM > is famous for. Customers cast an economic vote for the 8088. IBM gave both strong marketing support, but in vastly different areas. The CS9000 was intended for use in a laboratory. If you look at it, it *looks* like a lab instrument... not at all the sort of thing you'd have sitting in your office. The overall design and "feel" of the machine is distinctly not that of a personal computer. And it was provided with a real-time OS, and peripherals for interfacing to lab instruments, rather than taking the "build it like the Apple II" approach that seems to have been used for the IBM PC (i.e., a simple ROM BIOS, very general, simple bus that was really just the 8088's bus brought out to some edge connector sockets, and a simple OS with a "home-grown" feel to it (which it was, at the time of PC-DOS version 1)). I think IBM eventually came out with a version of the CS9000 that had a lot of the lab interfaces omitted, for use in general computing, but that was apparently the result of market pressure rather than original design (just as the IBM PC and the Macintosh each changed under market pressure after they were announced). If you look at how it was presented in the popular press, you see the same thing. Before the IBM PC even became available, Byte magazine had written a long article praising the machine. In comparison, the CS9000 had been around for many months before an article appeared in Byte with a "forgotten PC" motif (i.e., the article started out with the premise that here was a machine designed for lab use by IBM Instruments which the author felt, despite IBM's marketing emphasis, might make a good personal computer). So I don't think it is really very accurate to try to claim that the relative merit of the 8088 over the 68000 at the time of introduction of the two machines was shown by which of the two sold better in the PC market; the CS9000 was never targeted for the same market. [Incidentally, the other "solid technical reasons" given in the referenced article, other than the additional area required to support the 16-bit bus, were not areas of concern at the time of the introduction of the original 5150 PC. There was no MMU; IBM refused to acknowledge that the empty socket on the CPU board was for an 8087 (despite the fact that everyone was fairly sure that it was, and a notation "N. P." on the CPU board diagrams suggested "Numeric Processor"); and the choices of buses where more a matter of the intent of supporting existing VME boards on the CS9000 than any sort of "Motorola-driven" requirement for a VME bus, which IBM could certainly have disregarded.] -- UUCP: Ofc: jer@peora.UUCP Home: jer@jerpc.CCC.UUCP CCC DNS: peora, pesnta US Mail: MS 795; CONCURRENT Computer Corp. SDC; (A Perkin-Elmer Company) 2486 Sand Lake Road, Orlando, FL 32809-7642