Many of those were only grand and expensive because they were implemented with discrete components instead of VLSI. If the people at Intel/IBM making the decis

Many of those were only grand and expensive because they were implemented with discrete components instead of VLSI. If the people at Intel/IBM making the decisions felt that one of those old mainframe architectures were worth purchasing, they could have put them on a chip just as easily as the whole x86 mess. I believe that eventually happened in the 80s for some form LISP machine as an expansion card for the mac. Not sure about that though... I think in many ways, PC architecture--especially the bus--was IBM's attempt at poisoning the well to give their mainframe lines a little more runway. Part of why Gates parted ways with IBM over OS/2 was how busted memory management was on the 286 along with IBM's relative indifference to that. As for Intel, their problem was that they were physics/chemistry guys, not architecture ones. So many of their architecture adventures have been disasters.