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From: stevew@wyse.wyse.com (Steve Wilson xttemp dept303)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: IBM PC prehistory
Message-ID: <2567@wyse.wyse.com>
Date: 29 Dec 89 17:45:08 GMT
References: <21559@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <76700097@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <1957@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <47076@sgi.sgi.com> <73@zds-ux.UUCP>
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Reply-To: stevew@wyse.UUCP (Steve Wilson xttemp dept303)
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In article <73@zds-ux.UUCP> gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason) writes:
>>other stuff deleted so the mailer would let this posting through... 
>
>Only that at the time, 64kx1 DRAM's were pretty new, and the original
>PC's were socketted for 16kx1 chips, so the memory increment argument
>does not work.
>
>I don't know why, but there was a significant price differential between
>8088's and 8086's.
>
>Gerry Gleason

Gerry,

I think the arguement about 16 bits wide versus 8 bits wide is the crux
of the matter.  Memory was expensive( I still have a IBM PC-1 with the
16K drams running in it (along with 64K's and 256K's ...what a technology
mix ;-) ) and certainly was a consideration. 

By going to x-8 instead of x-16 a memory upgrade was cheaper, and anything
receiving the bus was cheaper to implement.  Also don't forget that
the whole world was still 8 bit oriented due to the proliferation of 
8 bit S100 systems using Z80's and such.  The user community didn't 
expect 16 bits yet. 

Steve Wilson

The above are my opinions only, not those of my employer.