Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: IBM PC prehistory (was Japanese Jos
Message-ID: <1957@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 27 Dec 89 12:49:39 GMT
References: <21559@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <76700097@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <47021@sgi.sgi.com>
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 24
Reply-exos:@crdgw1:To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)

In article <47021@sgi.sgi.com> bruceh@brushwud.sgi.com (Bruce R. Holloway) writes:

| The reason IBM chose the 8-bit model was to keep the expansion bus only
| 8 bits wide.  This saved them on connectors & buffers & drivers, & made
| every board that plugged in cheaper as well.  It made memory expandable
| in smaller chunks, too.

  Since I don't have access to IBM thinking at that time I can't say
your last statement is wrong, but since small memory parts were
available at that time (and cheaply), it would be easy to make smaller
expansion boards. I doubt that IBM was worried about how SMALL they
could go.

  I'm most surprized at the parity. They was IBM's big contribution to
PC technology. Up to then all the PCs were just 8 bits, and most of us
who wanted reliability ran static RAM instead of dynamic. I still have
an S100 system with about 1.5MB of CMOS static in 4Kx8 packages as I
recall. Same pinout as a 32k ROM, allowing installation of firmware as
desired.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anon