43 ms·
I believe you are correct. The IBM PC's direct competition was not so much Apple but 'business standard' CP/M Z80/8080 machines from a variety of vendors. Also
by flomo 5y ago
I believe you are correct. The IBM PC's direct competition was not so much Apple but 'business standard' CP/M Z80/8080 machines from a variety of vendors.
Also IBM was under an antitrust decree requiring reasonable and discriminatory licensing, so they didn't have much choice in the matter. Once this was lifted, they went the Microchannel route.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoYes - everyone seems to forget that S-100 CP/M business machines had been around since 1976. It wasn't a huge market, but it definitely wasn't negligible. And there were some home users, although most preferred Apple. So IBM didn't invent the PC. IBM invented mass marketing for its own brand of PC. And also - after a while - IBM started the constant upgrade treadmill. S-100 was more backward looking. You could get 8086 and 68000 cards for S100, but it was really a Z80 ecosystem. There was no clean upgrade path with backward compatibility. This was a showstopper for most businesses, which needed access to old data and software. IBM screwed themselves by hugely overcharging for PS/2, and Compaq stole their lunch. As soon as other clones appeared IBM were out.
- analog31 5y agoAward BIOS was probably a huge game changer. Knowing the contents of BIOS wasn't enough, after Franklin lost their lawsuit with Apple. Someone had to come up with a functional equivalent. A third party BIOS meant that anybody could crank out a machine.