> to be fair, putting a symbol on a CGA screen is a two-byte affair - one for the symbol, one for attributes Text-heavy stuff was supposed to be done using MDA

> to be fair, putting a symbol on a CGA screen is a two-byte affair - one for the symbol, one for attributes Text-heavy stuff was supposed to be done using MDA graphics cards, which were praised at their introduction for allowing large amounts of readable text, especially on IBM's own monitors. I'm sure a lot of business users running 3270 terminal emulators and word processors got a lot of good use out of MDA, but the fact it was, as its name stated, monochrome pretty much killed it in the home market. Anyway, the IBM PC was very definitely built to a price point and a release date; it was also built to avoid cannibalizing any of IBM's pre-existing product line, which explains why Compaq, not IBM, would come out with the first PC built around the 80386. It was fairly impressive compared to S-100 bus computers running CP/M but the Apple II crowd would have been forgiven for not being bowled over.