Re: Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

JF Mezei wrote:
Neil Rieck wrote:

There is probably something weird happening when people entertain
themselves with the accomplishments of a bygone era.

1) The 1981 book "The Soul Of A New Machine" was republished in 2000.

In hindsight, that period may end up being a crucial period in history
for computing. Back in the 1980s, we just lived through it.

But when you look back, you look at Digital's heydays, the huge projects
such as Microvax II, VAX9000 and Alpha, and look at IBM doing a 180°
and reluctantly agreeing to make its IBM PC, apple unveiling the
MacIntosh in 1984, and the "bunch" of smaller computer makers
disapearing/merging.

The industry has since consolidated and apart from Microsoft and Apple,
there aren't any "big" projects anymore. Companies like HP and Dell are
out to maximize profit and lower costs, and there are no product
revolutions like we had in the 1980s.

I think 1984 might be the key year! That was when, IIRC, IBM started pushing out the PC/XT to educational institutions. The DEC Rainbow 100 came along a year or so after the PC/XT and the race was on. Somebody did a "clean" rewrite of the IBM BIOS code by having Team A analyze the code and produce a specification for a BIOS; e.g. what it did but not how. Team B used the specification to write the clean BIOS.

The actual IBM BIOS was copyright but since the reverse engineered BIOS was not a copy, copyright did not get in the way of the clone makers.

Radio Shack and the TRS80 or "Trash 80" brought computing within reach of just about anyone. Various third parties remedied many of the initial design defects. Radio Shack used tin on card edge connectors where they should have used gold, which made the machine somewhat less than reliable. Various vendors offered remedies for these deficiencies.

DEC got into the act with the Rainbow 100. The chief virtue of this box was that it gave me VT100 compatibility. Plug it into a MODEM and I could talk to my machines at work!





.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: DR Concurrent DOS
    ... >wild bill wrote: ... >> inside tech info about a product as IBM did for the PC. ... from Phoenix about the PC BIOS ROM? ... do you think IBM published the bios source code as a way to ...
    (comp.os.cpm)
  • Re: Canon DSLR Live View
    ... a listing of the BIOS. ... since ibm could claim people were illegally copying it. ... However, to do this Phoenix ... Phoenix developed a "clean room" technique that isolated the engineers ...
    (rec.photo.digital)
  • Re: Older PC with larger HDs
    ... motherboard), or motherboard markings in addition to listing the BIOS. ... OS to put on a Pentium 233 MHz MMX CPU system with only 96 MB RAM? ... My "real comuter" was an IBM A21m lap top with Win 2000 that I did this ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.classic)
  • Re: Microsoft vs. Apple innovation
    ... Gates came up with the idea of an OS that would work on IBM clones. ... end branch of personal computing that died off in the late 1980s. ... Looking at net profit -- which is the only thing that really matters ... its vision of bringing the PC to every household and every office ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: smttter IBMdroids
    ... I never worked for IBM, ... building supercomputers for technical computing. ... There are probably many possible taxonomies for computing, ... That's why itanium got so much of my attention and maybe ...
    (comp.arch)