4 ms·
My impression when the IBM PC came out, is that they intended to create an open system. They published the schematics. They encouraged anybody to create hardwar
by analog31 3y ago
My impression when the IBM PC came out, is that they intended to create an open system. They published the schematics. They encouraged anybody to create hardware and software. Their BIOS was copyrighted, but others came out with compatible BIOS's that were not owned by IBM, and that's what triggered the flood of clones. By the time that PC's reached the 386 level, IBM wasn't driving the bus any more.
The Apple II was an open system, but creating a compatible BIOS that wasn't a copy would have been impossible -- even for Apple, because of widespread software that made creative uses of the variables and entry points in the firmware. the Mac was intended to be a closed system.
- jecel 3y agoIBM simply followed the tradition created by the companies already in the microcomputer market. Apple's documentation, for example, included the full schematics and the source listing for the ROMs: http://cini.classiccmp.org/pdf/Apple/Apple%20II%20Reference%20Manual%20-%20Woz.pdf http://cini.classiccmp.org/pdf/Apple/Apple%20II%20Reference%... You could get similar documentation for all Radio Shack products and many others. MITS didn't set out to make their Altair 8800 an "open system". In their case it wouldn't make sense not to have the full documentation for the customers that were building their own machines from kits. But this resulted in clones and in competitors rebranding their "Altair bus" as the S100 (standard 100 pin) bus and making improvements to it as a group resulting in MITS losing control. So IBM should have known what would happen, but probably thought they were too big and important for history to repeat itself.