IIRC the IBM Microchannel stuff was perceived as a ploy to recover control of the PC industry by licensing a new bus. The licensing terms were pretty bad (it co

IIRC the IBM Microchannel stuff was perceived as a ploy to recover control of the PC industry by licensing a new bus. The licensing terms were pretty bad (it could be that "free" was the expected bar at the time, though) and the implementation was expensive, too. Unfortunately for IBM the industry was pretty happy using the existing buses, and when more performance was needed the industry was equally happy to invent new buses that didn't involve paying royalties to IBM. So regardless of MC's attractiveness from a systems standpoint, it was a nonstarter in an industry that was headed towards an ecology of clones and racing to the bottom in manufacturing costs. Many PC manufacturers ditched parity memory, too.