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I don't have a source handy, but I remember reading it was because the 68k was too late to production; it was scheduled to be ready on time, but the Intel parts
by aidenn0 4y ago
I don't have a source handy, but I remember reading it was because the 68k was too late to production; it was scheduled to be ready on time, but the Intel parts were already available, and IBM didn't want the risk
- freitzkriesler2 4y agoAn alternate timeline where 68k was the dominant OS architecture? Man what a fun thought experiment. Reminds me of Palm OS and their OS5 68k emulator on top of arm.
- snvzz 4y agoOS architecture? Not ISA architecture?
- skissane 4y agoMy own thought experiment - what if “old IBM” had intervened in the product and tried to make it more “IBM”. Well, if they’d done that too much - e.g. a corporate edict that it had to use EBCDIC instead of ASCII - that probably would have killed it commercially. But what if “old IBM” had just demanded ASCII-EBCDIC conversion in the BIOS? With a “code page” field in each directory entry, which could be used to mark files as ASCII or EBCDIC (0=binary), with the BIOS ASCII-EBCDIC conversion service invoked to make EBCDIC files appear as ASCII to applications? That might have made the product more “interesting”, without adding so much complexity as would kill it. z/OS Unix has code page tagging in the filesystem; apparently IBM tried to get it added to DOS during DOS 4 development, but it got pulled before release (although that was not for EBCDIC, just for tagging which ASCII code page a file was) Maybe even demand some optional record-oriented support in the filesystem (e.g RECFM=F80). That would have been less alien to Microsoft than you’d think, because Microsoft BASIC always supported record-based file access.