Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hp-pcd!hpvcfs1!johne
From: johne@hpvcfs1.HP.COM (John Eaton)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Re: IBM PC prehistory (was Japanese Jos
Message-ID: <1080004@hpvcfs1.HP.COM>
Date: 28 Dec 89 18:39:17 GMT
References: <76700097@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Vancouver, WA
Lines: 26

<<<<
< Gee I thought that IBM bought the Intel stock after they adopted the Intel
<                                               ^^^^^
< architecture. I seem to remember the big stock deal having been made in 1983.
< Perhaps someone else remembers more precisely.
----------
It was after. The story I heard was that it was a preemptive strike to prevent
AT&T from coming in and buying it. Remember this was back when everyone thought
the phone company was about to come in and clean up in the pc market.

Parity bits were a good marketing idea. People were still woried about alpha
particle's and it positioned the PC as a "Business" machine as opposed to all
the home and school machines currently on the market.

8088 vs 8086 was probably decided based on granularity. Your base system
only needed 9 vs 18 chips and you only needed to run 8 Data lines to your
cards. The yahoo who decided to use Address line A0 in decoding the first
IBM I/O cards should be taken out and shot.  While they may not have wanted
to design the 8086 in they should not have done anything like that to design
it out. That decision prevented a clean transition to the 286 and beyond for
the PC buss that we are still paying for today.


John Eaton
!hpvcfs1!johne