To cite "Triumph of the Nerds" again. There were several things that came together to make it possible. IBM's support for it was pretty essential, their burea

To cite "Triumph of the Nerds" again. There were several things that came together to make it possible. IBM's support for it was pretty essential, their bureaucracy being incompatible with a fast changing market leading to them outsource all of the components, and the simplicity of the system making it easy to reverse engineer.