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From: esf00@amdahl.UUCP (Elliott S. Frank)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.arch
Subject: Re: Re: What if IBM Had chosen the 68000? Not what you think Re: 386 Family Products
Message-ID: <2355@amdahl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Dec-85 13:12:45 EST
Article-I.D.: amdahl.2355
Posted: Mon Dec  9 13:12:45 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Dec-85 21:04:31 EST
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Organization: Society for Megalithic Iron
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[...urp...]

Some more history that seems to have gotten overlooked....

Long before the IBM PC hit your local Byte shop (remember them...?) I
was involved in the design and implementation of a microprocessor based
system.

We ended up with an 8086 and a homebrew bus since

1) we could use the Intel (8085-based) MDS (the "blue box") for 8086
development and support.

2) the 8086 had software (specifically, a Pascal compiler and an assembler)
that we could use.  We were not (then) concerned with software quality.
The concern was having tools available for the development engineers to use.

3) the 8086 could use 8080/8085/Z-80 (8-bit!!!) peripheral chips.

4) we could get everything (software, development support tools, etc.)
in the timeframe that we needed to support our [very aggressive] product
schedule.

At the time, the 68000 did not have  e v e r y t h i n g   available.
By the time the IBM PC hit the streets, the 8086 and 8086 tools had
been proven in a large number of embedded 16-bit microprocessor products.
The 8088 was the 8086 with the 8-bit peripheral/16-bit processor
bus problem "solved".  The IBM PC represented the packaging of the most
common solution available at the time.


Elliott S Frank    ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,amd,nsc}!amdahl!esf00     (408) 746-6384

[the above opinions are strictly mine, if anyone's]