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I didn't realize that Star and PC were released together - what a contrast! Unfortunately the Star was too closed and too expensive to succeed, but it also doe

I didn't realize that Star and PC were released together - what a contrast! Unfortunately the Star was too closed and too expensive to succeed, but it also doesn't seem that Xerox had the culture to do it any other way. Xerox continued being active in this field for a long time and showcased some amazing work on visualizing and navigating ordered graphs with 3D graphics (can't find the article I'm afraid) which were way ahead of the time.

watersb 5y ago
I'm not sure about the Xerox Star being "too closed" to succeed; I believe it incorporated Ethernet networking (another PARC innovation). Upon release, the IBM PC was not PC compatible, as the not-quite-ISA was 8 bits, only a single interrupt controller, the power connector was not ATX (neither was the motherboard). Nobody's monitor was multisync... Compatibility wasn't a thing. (So ironic, it must have been intentional: the BYTE issue featuring "Standards" as the theme has the Apple Lisa and Apple II on the cover: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-02 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-02
- anyfoo 5y ago
  How do you mean that? The IBM PC was not “PC compatible” because it defined what “PC compatible” meant. The 8bit bus it had is what became ISA, ATX was the successor to AT, which came from the IBM “Advanced Technology” PC, in a sense the grandchild of the original IBM PC (with the XT in between). I feel like there is a meaning to your comment that I’m missing, do you mean that the PC wasn’t compatible to anything, because it was what defined compatibility, and still it was successful (because everyone copied it, hence “compatible”)?
  - watersb 5y ago
    The IBM 5150 Personal Computer isn't the same beast that we refer to as "PC compatible". It was a barely-16-bit computer, no protected mode, funky connectors for the keyboard (no mouse, of course), the interrupt vectors were wired up wrong... the joystick ports... no real-time clock, system configured with DIP switches instead of BIOS, floppy drives were you could buy it without floppy disks, boot directly from ROM into Microsoft BASIC and just use the cassette recorder as mass storage, the power supply was underpowered, the expansion cards were only 8-bit (in part because the 8088 CPU I/O was only 8-bit)... IBM got from a design to actual product in the retail channel in some ludicrously short period of time, like nine months for this baby computer. The "PC" converged onto a set of standards. But if you manage to bring home an original IBM PC, you might be surprised at some of the work you will need to get it up and running.
  - watersb 5y ago
    Sorry for being confusing.. I have been digging in and refreshing my memories of that first and second wave of small computers in the early 1980s. It's a bit churlish to knock the IBM PC, the box that launched a thousand clones. The computer came with BIOS listings and schematics of the motherboard! It's just that, as built, that first incarnation of the IBM PC was a kludge. A brilliant kludge, but in truth a hack designed to be replaced in a year or two. At the time, there were very low expectations regarding "open" versus "closed" systems. At least in my group of computer ah, enthusiasts. Rather than an S-100 passive backplane, where you can swap out all modules, you had storage and video display in one smaller box. With the printer, a RAM card, and the floppy controller, you had two or three slots... High end video display terminals in 1980 could be expanded by installing big cards into a rack behind the CRT display. Then they could run with all processing locally!

watersb 5y ago

I'm not sure about the Xerox Star being "too closed" to succeed; I believe it incorporated Ethernet networking (another PARC innovation). Upon release, the IBM PC was not PC compatible, as the not-quite-ISA was 8 bits, only a single interrupt controller, the power connector was not ATX (neither was the motherboard). Nobody's monitor was multisync... Compatibility wasn't a thing. (So ironic, it must have been intentional: the BYTE issue featuring "Standards" as the theme has the Apple Lisa and Apple II on the cover: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-02 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-02

anyfoo 5y ago
How do you mean that? The IBM PC was not “PC compatible” because it defined what “PC compatible” meant. The 8bit bus it had is what became ISA, ATX was the successor to AT, which came from the IBM “Advanced Technology” PC, in a sense the grandchild of the original IBM PC (with the XT in between). I feel like there is a meaning to your comment that I’m missing, do you mean that the PC wasn’t compatible to anything, because it was what defined compatibility, and still it was successful (because everyone copied it, hence “compatible”)?
- watersb 5y ago
  The IBM 5150 Personal Computer isn't the same beast that we refer to as "PC compatible". It was a barely-16-bit computer, no protected mode, funky connectors for the keyboard (no mouse, of course), the interrupt vectors were wired up wrong... the joystick ports... no real-time clock, system configured with DIP switches instead of BIOS, floppy drives were you could buy it without floppy disks, boot directly from ROM into Microsoft BASIC and just use the cassette recorder as mass storage, the power supply was underpowered, the expansion cards were only 8-bit (in part because the 8088 CPU I/O was only 8-bit)... IBM got from a design to actual product in the retail channel in some ludicrously short period of time, like nine months for this baby computer. The "PC" converged onto a set of standards. But if you manage to bring home an original IBM PC, you might be surprised at some of the work you will need to get it up and running.
- watersb 5y ago
  Sorry for being confusing.. I have been digging in and refreshing my memories of that first and second wave of small computers in the early 1980s. It's a bit churlish to knock the IBM PC, the box that launched a thousand clones. The computer came with BIOS listings and schematics of the motherboard! It's just that, as built, that first incarnation of the IBM PC was a kludge. A brilliant kludge, but in truth a hack designed to be replaced in a year or two. At the time, there were very low expectations regarding "open" versus "closed" systems. At least in my group of computer ah, enthusiasts. Rather than an S-100 passive backplane, where you can swap out all modules, you had storage and video display in one smaller box. With the printer, a RAM card, and the floppy controller, you had two or three slots... High end video display terminals in 1980 could be expanded by installing big cards into a rack behind the CRT display. Then they could run with all processing locally!