8 ms·

The IBM PC, Part 1 (2012)

116 points by Stratoscope 9y ago

walterbell 9y ago
> Rather than talking of an open architecture, we might do better to talk of a modular architecture. The IBM would be a sort of computer erector set, a set of interchangeable components that the purchaser could snap together in whatever combination suited her needs and her pocketbook. Has this been achieved with software components in any niche? Other than early IETF protocols, software mutation tends to challenge interoperability. Containers are making progress in this direction. On the hardware front, http://www.opencompute.org http://www.opencompute.org has increased choices for those who can buy servers in large quantity. But small business has less choice these days. Even Dell, pioneer of build-to-order PCs, now favors pre-configured PCs. On a positive note, it is now possible to buy some PCs without a Windows tax. Dell offers Linux and HP offers Linux/FreeDOS on select models. Is there room for PC OEM/ODMs to innovate in (free, non-bloatware) software components to increase the value of their mix-and-match hardware components?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- badsectoracula 9y ago
  > Has this been achieved with software components in any niche? Isn't this what "programs" and "files" do? There used to be a time when computers were really one (or few) trick machines but since the time when anyone could install any program on their computer and have programs work with any file (regardless of which program originally made it), software on the whole is as modular (if not more modular) as hardware. (which is also why i dislike the trend that iOS created with software being isolated both in terms of execution and file access, except a few preapproved holes here and there)
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Unix style pipes as well. Frankly all that is needed is a defined IPC protocol that the market sticks to. But sadly that has been an hard sell when devs see such protocols more like a ball and chain.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      > Frankly all that is needed is a defined IPC protocol that the market sticks to. We had one, and then we botched it. So now we went from HTML->HTML+JS->JS->webassembly. These are all steps back, not forward, soon we'll be simply using HTTP to ship application binaries that you no longer have any rights at all to, it is in many ways a situation worse than the one where everybody bought shrink wrapped software.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        And it will be coded everything in free software, hidden away behind server virtual walls, without a dime or any kind of compensation being given back to the original developers.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > There used to be a time when computers were really one (or few) trick machines You mean the time when programming was done with plug boards? Computers have been more or less universal since the time RAM was used to execute the programs, the fact that files are a convenient way to organize data does noes not detract from the fact that the internal structure of a file needs to be known if you want another program to make sense out of it. In that sense the text file is the most enabling element here, and binary files with unknown structure the least. The ability to quickly load a program quickly (rather than to load it in through elaborate means such as plugboards, switches, punched cards, paper tape or magnetic reel-to-reel tape) definitely has had a lot of effect on the universal application of computers but that doesn't mean they weren't universal machines. And even in the time of plug boards there were tricks that would keep multiple programs active by means of switching out an entire bank or segment of configured boards for another. Software is as modular as the hardware it runs on permits, but it can also very effectively restrict or expand that modularity, a nice example of this is virtual machines which present a machine entirely different than the one that the original hardware embodies.
    - laumars 9y ago
      > Computers have been more or less universal since the time RAM was used to execute the programs, the fact that files are a convenient way to organize data does noes not detract from the fact that the internal structure of a file needs to be known if you want another program to make sense out of it. > In that sense the text file is the most enabling element here, and binary files with unknown structure the least. text files haven't always been universal. There used to be different text encodings (ASCII hasn't always been universal) and even different sizes of byte (eg some systems would have 6 or 7 bits to a byte). And even if two machines you're wanting to share data between were both an 8bit ASCII system; there's no guarantee that they would share the same dialect of BASIC, LISP, Pascal or C.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        ASCII isn't universal even today (the page you are reading is UNICODE), but all text was much more readable and in general easier to process with ad-hoc filtering or other manipulation than binary formats. This is what underpins most of the power of UNIX, but at the same time is something of a weak point: good and error free text processing is actually quite hard.
  - lmm 9y ago
    > (which is also why i dislike the trend that iOS created with software being isolated both in terms of execution and file access, except a few preapproved holes here and there) It seems to be the way consumer software is going though. It's a bizarre truism that we still aren't very good at sending files from one computer to another, even as we've got a lot better at specific cases like sharing photos or collaboratively editing documents. Maybe the lowest-common-denominator file model isn't good enough?
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      In large part because we can't dial a computer like we dial a phone. This in part because everything consumer is sitting behind a NAT to try to stretch IPv4 as far as possible.
- organsnyder 9y ago
  On the software side, I'd argue that a SOA/microservice model accomplishes this: boundaries between services are defined by APIs based on open protocols and formats (HTTP, JSON, XML, graphQL...); new functionality can be achieved by writing a new microservice that mixes and matches functionality from existing services. Regarding hardware: There are still plenty of companies selling build-to-order PCs, and sourcing parts is extremely easy. In fact, I'd argue that in some segments (such as gaming), DIY builds are much more common than they were 20 years ago. Of course, these machines aren't truly "open" for every definition of the word, but that has never been the case for the modern PC market.
- douche 9y ago
  It's probably easier today to buy a bunch of components and snap them together to build a desktop tower than it is to put together an erector set. If I recall, the trickiest part of the whole process was putting the right amount of thermal paste on the CPU before attaching the cooler. Software, unfortunately seems to be going hard in the other direction. Half the time I can't even get copy/paste to work between apps on my smartphone. Just think of all the trillions of dollars that have been spent over the years trying to glue together different enterprise systems into Dr Moreauvian monstrosities.
  - bluedino 9y ago
    >> It's probably easier today to buy a bunch of components and snap them together to build a desktop tower than it is to put together an erector set. You don't even need many components these days. Right now you can put a PC together with: Motherboard CPU RAM HDD/SSD Power supply In the old days you needed these additional parts: Video card Sound card Disk controller card Printer card Serial card Hard disk drive Floppy disk drive
    - Zardoz84 9y ago
      And dot forget to set the jumpers and config the BIOS settings of the hard disk!
amelius 9y ago
Computing was more fun when hardware and software were separated. Unfortunately the trend is now going in the opposite direction.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  A trend driven by tighter hardware integration and "security" (sadly it is as much about who is actually in control as any security for the end user).
- mschaef 9y ago
  How far back do you want to go with that? I remember assembling computers out of video boards, motherboards, etc.... but there are some people that remember soldering chips together... or transistors... or tubes... or relays. The trend towards higher levels of integration in computing extends back to the 50's (or maybe 40's). > Computing was more fun Fun is where you choose to find it. Modern machines are so good that they can be fun too.
walshemj 9y ago
Interesting the 8 inch floppys look similar to the ones used in the IBM displaywriter hard sectored and made a distinctive "graunching" sound when the drives where accessed.
kpgraham 9y ago
My company sent me to Boca Raton in 1983 to learn how to use the PC. It was a week long class with hands on experience configuring PCs and BAT file programming using "EDLIN". I had PC serial #7 in the class and serial #1 was at the front of the classroom. The instructors were very excited that they could use BAT files and were bragging that the whole class roster was entered and managed on the PC using only the tools that came with PC-DOS. The course set me on the path of systems and programming and kept me fat and happy for the next 35 years.
- mschaef 9y ago
  > the whole class roster was entered and managed on the PC using only the tools that came with PC-DOS. Having once written a depth-first directory tree traversal using edlin and batch files, I can only imagine what this must have entailed.
forinti 9y ago
First time I used an IBM PC I thought it was awful. I was used to 8 bit micros that had: colour, OS in ROM, BASIC in ROM, and sound. You couldn't do anything with it before you used at least two disks: one for DOS and the other with an application. I thought business people liked them because they wanted boring machines on purpose. And then came the 16 bits machines: Amiga, ST, etc. And then the Acorn Archimedes. And IBM PCs were still awful. They started to make sense to me when 386s came about.
- rpiguy 9y ago
  The IBM PC came with Basic in ROM as well as the ability to load and save programs to tape. It was also available with color graphics. ...Of course most were sold with monochrome graphics and the clones cut out the built in Basic because it was IBM's code, as well as the tape routines, because floppies were so prevalent.
  - jhallenworld 9y ago
    80 column support was key. More or less CP/M compatibility was also key. One thing the 8088 PC had compared with the 8-bits was rudimentary memory management in the form of the segment registers. This decoupled the OS and BIOS from application code in a way that was not possible on previous 8-bits. People forget that in the world before memory management that if you wanted to change the OS your only option was to do something like "sysgen" a horrible slow process where you re-linked the OS and all application code. IBM's OS 360 and DEC's RSX-11 had this concept. People hated segment registers, but the only other alternative was position independent code, like on the 6809. I would argue that this is worse, because it slows execution time.
- bluedino 9y ago
  The 386's weren't even that great for games/graphics. Most games were still 286-compatible, and if you had a 386SX you might as well have had a 286. I remember being blown away by a friends Tandy because of the graphics and sound card it had, even though it was basically an IBM PC underneath. The CGA graphics options on the IBM really didn't do them any favors. EGA wasn't much better but at least you could do games like Commander Keen. I remember playing games like Prince of Persia, BattleChess, and thinking "Finally. My friends with Atari and Amiga (and even Apple) computers have had these games for years." It really took a 486 and a VGA card to let the PC start to shine. And then once the 3D games started coming out (Doom, Descent), you didn't even need a console anymore.
bogomipz 9y ago
Interesting I had no idea about this passage: >"In September of 1975 the company introduced the IBM 5100, their first “portable” computer. (“Portable” meant that it weighed just 55 pounds and you could buy a special travel case to lug it around in.)" 6 years later the "luggable" from Compaq became a real thorn in IBMs side. If you enjoy this type of computer history I highly recommend watching "Silicon Cowboys" a documentary about the rise of Compaq but also a bit about the history of the IBM PC and "clones". It's pretty fascinating and it's available on Netflix as well as free on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oylmFdZswCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oylmFdZswCM

116 points by Stratoscope 9y ago

> Rather than talking of an open architecture, we might do better to talk of a modular architecture. The IBM would be a sort of computer erector set, a set of interchangeable components that the purchaser could snap together in whatever combination suited her needs and her pocketbook. Has this been achieved with software components in any niche? Other than early IETF protocols, software mutation tends to challenge interoperability. Containers are making progress in this direction. On the hardware front, http://www.opencompute.org http://www.opencompute.org has increased choices for those who can buy servers in large quantity. But small business has less choice these days. Even Dell, pioneer of build-to-order PCs, now favors pre-configured PCs. On a positive note, it is now possible to buy some PCs without a Windows tax. Dell offers Linux and HP offers Linux/FreeDOS on select models. Is there room for PC OEM/ODMs to innovate in (free, non-bloatware) software components to increase the value of their mix-and-match hardware components?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
badsectoracula 9y ago
> Has this been achieved with software components in any niche? Isn't this what "programs" and "files" do? There used to be a time when computers were really one (or few) trick machines but since the time when anyone could install any program on their computer and have programs work with any file (regardless of which program originally made it), software on the whole is as modular (if not more modular) as hardware. (which is also why i dislike the trend that iOS created with software being isolated both in terms of execution and file access, except a few preapproved holes here and there)
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Unix style pipes as well. Frankly all that is needed is a defined IPC protocol that the market sticks to. But sadly that has been an hard sell when devs see such protocols more like a ball and chain.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > Frankly all that is needed is a defined IPC protocol that the market sticks to. We had one, and then we botched it. So now we went from HTML->HTML+JS->JS->webassembly. These are all steps back, not forward, soon we'll be simply using HTTP to ship application binaries that you no longer have any rights at all to, it is in many ways a situation worse than the one where everybody bought shrink wrapped software.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      And it will be coded everything in free software, hidden away behind server virtual walls, without a dime or any kind of compensation being given back to the original developers.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > There used to be a time when computers were really one (or few) trick machines You mean the time when programming was done with plug boards? Computers have been more or less universal since the time RAM was used to execute the programs, the fact that files are a convenient way to organize data does noes not detract from the fact that the internal structure of a file needs to be known if you want another program to make sense out of it. In that sense the text file is the most enabling element here, and binary files with unknown structure the least. The ability to quickly load a program quickly (rather than to load it in through elaborate means such as plugboards, switches, punched cards, paper tape or magnetic reel-to-reel tape) definitely has had a lot of effect on the universal application of computers but that doesn't mean they weren't universal machines. And even in the time of plug boards there were tricks that would keep multiple programs active by means of switching out an entire bank or segment of configured boards for another. Software is as modular as the hardware it runs on permits, but it can also very effectively restrict or expand that modularity, a nice example of this is virtual machines which present a machine entirely different than the one that the original hardware embodies.
  - laumars 9y ago
    > Computers have been more or less universal since the time RAM was used to execute the programs, the fact that files are a convenient way to organize data does noes not detract from the fact that the internal structure of a file needs to be known if you want another program to make sense out of it. > In that sense the text file is the most enabling element here, and binary files with unknown structure the least. text files haven't always been universal. There used to be different text encodings (ASCII hasn't always been universal) and even different sizes of byte (eg some systems would have 6 or 7 bits to a byte). And even if two machines you're wanting to share data between were both an 8bit ASCII system; there's no guarantee that they would share the same dialect of BASIC, LISP, Pascal or C.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      ASCII isn't universal even today (the page you are reading is UNICODE), but all text was much more readable and in general easier to process with ad-hoc filtering or other manipulation than binary formats. This is what underpins most of the power of UNIX, but at the same time is something of a weak point: good and error free text processing is actually quite hard.
- lmm 9y ago
  > (which is also why i dislike the trend that iOS created with software being isolated both in terms of execution and file access, except a few preapproved holes here and there) It seems to be the way consumer software is going though. It's a bizarre truism that we still aren't very good at sending files from one computer to another, even as we've got a lot better at specific cases like sharing photos or collaboratively editing documents. Maybe the lowest-common-denominator file model isn't good enough?
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    In large part because we can't dial a computer like we dial a phone. This in part because everything consumer is sitting behind a NAT to try to stretch IPv4 as far as possible.
organsnyder 9y ago
On the software side, I'd argue that a SOA/microservice model accomplishes this: boundaries between services are defined by APIs based on open protocols and formats (HTTP, JSON, XML, graphQL...); new functionality can be achieved by writing a new microservice that mixes and matches functionality from existing services. Regarding hardware: There are still plenty of companies selling build-to-order PCs, and sourcing parts is extremely easy. In fact, I'd argue that in some segments (such as gaming), DIY builds are much more common than they were 20 years ago. Of course, these machines aren't truly "open" for every definition of the word, but that has never been the case for the modern PC market.
douche 9y ago
It's probably easier today to buy a bunch of components and snap them together to build a desktop tower than it is to put together an erector set. If I recall, the trickiest part of the whole process was putting the right amount of thermal paste on the CPU before attaching the cooler. Software, unfortunately seems to be going hard in the other direction. Half the time I can't even get copy/paste to work between apps on my smartphone. Just think of all the trillions of dollars that have been spent over the years trying to glue together different enterprise systems into Dr Moreauvian monstrosities.
- bluedino 9y ago
  >> It's probably easier today to buy a bunch of components and snap them together to build a desktop tower than it is to put together an erector set. You don't even need many components these days. Right now you can put a PC together with: Motherboard CPU RAM HDD/SSD Power supply In the old days you needed these additional parts: Video card Sound card Disk controller card Printer card Serial card Hard disk drive Floppy disk drive
  - Zardoz84 9y ago
    And dot forget to set the jumpers and config the BIOS settings of the hard disk!

amelius 9y ago

Computing was more fun when hardware and software were separated. Unfortunately the trend is now going in the opposite direction.

digi_owl 9y ago
A trend driven by tighter hardware integration and "security" (sadly it is as much about who is actually in control as any security for the end user).
mschaef 9y ago
How far back do you want to go with that? I remember assembling computers out of video boards, motherboards, etc.... but there are some people that remember soldering chips together... or transistors... or tubes... or relays. The trend towards higher levels of integration in computing extends back to the 50's (or maybe 40's). > Computing was more fun Fun is where you choose to find it. Modern machines are so good that they can be fun too.

walshemj 9y ago

Interesting the 8 inch floppys look similar to the ones used in the IBM displaywriter hard sectored and made a distinctive "graunching" sound when the drives where accessed.

kpgraham 9y ago

My company sent me to Boca Raton in 1983 to learn how to use the PC. It was a week long class with hands on experience configuring PCs and BAT file programming using "EDLIN". I had PC serial #7 in the class and serial #1 was at the front of the classroom. The instructors were very excited that they could use BAT files and were bragging that the whole class roster was entered and managed on the PC using only the tools that came with PC-DOS. The course set me on the path of systems and programming and kept me fat and happy for the next 35 years.

mschaef 9y ago
> the whole class roster was entered and managed on the PC using only the tools that came with PC-DOS. Having once written a depth-first directory tree traversal using edlin and batch files, I can only imagine what this must have entailed.

forinti 9y ago

First time I used an IBM PC I thought it was awful. I was used to 8 bit micros that had: colour, OS in ROM, BASIC in ROM, and sound. You couldn't do anything with it before you used at least two disks: one for DOS and the other with an application. I thought business people liked them because they wanted boring machines on purpose. And then came the 16 bits machines: Amiga, ST, etc. And then the Acorn Archimedes. And IBM PCs were still awful. They started to make sense to me when 386s came about.

rpiguy 9y ago
The IBM PC came with Basic in ROM as well as the ability to load and save programs to tape. It was also available with color graphics. ...Of course most were sold with monochrome graphics and the clones cut out the built in Basic because it was IBM's code, as well as the tape routines, because floppies were so prevalent.
- jhallenworld 9y ago
  80 column support was key. More or less CP/M compatibility was also key. One thing the 8088 PC had compared with the 8-bits was rudimentary memory management in the form of the segment registers. This decoupled the OS and BIOS from application code in a way that was not possible on previous 8-bits. People forget that in the world before memory management that if you wanted to change the OS your only option was to do something like "sysgen" a horrible slow process where you re-linked the OS and all application code. IBM's OS 360 and DEC's RSX-11 had this concept. People hated segment registers, but the only other alternative was position independent code, like on the 6809. I would argue that this is worse, because it slows execution time.
bluedino 9y ago
The 386's weren't even that great for games/graphics. Most games were still 286-compatible, and if you had a 386SX you might as well have had a 286. I remember being blown away by a friends Tandy because of the graphics and sound card it had, even though it was basically an IBM PC underneath. The CGA graphics options on the IBM really didn't do them any favors. EGA wasn't much better but at least you could do games like Commander Keen. I remember playing games like Prince of Persia, BattleChess, and thinking "Finally. My friends with Atari and Amiga (and even Apple) computers have had these games for years." It really took a 486 and a VGA card to let the PC start to shine. And then once the 3D games started coming out (Doom, Descent), you didn't even need a console anymore.

bogomipz 9y ago

Interesting I had no idea about this passage: >"In September of 1975 the company introduced the IBM 5100, their first “portable” computer. (“Portable” meant that it weighed just 55 pounds and you could buy a special travel case to lug it around in.)" 6 years later the "luggable" from Compaq became a real thorn in IBMs side. If you enjoy this type of computer history I highly recommend watching "Silicon Cowboys" a documentary about the rise of Compaq but also a bit about the history of the IBM PC and "clones". It's pretty fascinating and it's available on Netflix as well as free on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oylmFdZswCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oylmFdZswCM