On Tue, 23 Dec 2003, Rick Parrish wrote:
That would be the birthplace of the IBM PC. You know the one - Intel 8088 microprocessor with 64k DRAM, choice of monochrome or CGA graphics,
As somebody who cut his teath on the 6502 I can say I am well aware of that... However, I tend to use the term PC as only "IBM PC" and the term computer for everything else. I am certainly no lover of that architecture, the electrically ugly ISA bus, 4-bit latch DMA hacks, and inept firmware that is the PC.
Actually it *was* a great architecture because it was so open and easy to duplicate. We've enjoyed commodity "beige box" pricing on most of our hardware for most of the last two decades because of it.
I dunno. It may have been open, but it certainly wasn't good. Electrically the ISA bus had problems (which don't show up at 8MHz -- but the layout of the signals on the connector sure cause problems); the BIOS is pretty dumb. Had it been designed correctly we could have had multi-tasking in 8086 real mode... The DMA hacks on a PC are only now being somewhat removed.
The flaws in that system architecture have been kept around far too long.
Actually, I use Apple & Sun hardware at home (and mostly Sun 4m's for the Sun's), so PC hardware isn't helping me much with cost. PCI is nice but really came out of a somewhat unexpected area at Intel and is amazingly portable and clean -- in partiuclar the clever use of reflection for switching.
But the IBM Boca Plant housed many other projects besides the PC. In particular I happen to posess the sign that was at the front hallway: "The Home of OS/2" -- I passed on the "Birthplace of the PC" sign below it. ;-)
And I was certainly a big OS/2 fan back in the day (the workplace shell is far superior to Windows Explorer, IMHO).
L8r, Mark G.