7 May
2009
7 May
'09
11:47 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 7 May 2009 at 8:25, Jules Richardson wrote:
No, I suppose not. I wonder if they ever toyed with the idea of rolling their
own - perhaps a board containing a little 8-bitter which was responsible for a
few other useful functions (RS232, parallel maybe) too. I suppose RAM/ROM
costs around then made it unworkable even if they had the skills readily
on-tap (not to mention that it probably wouldn't fit in with the idea of what
the PC was supposed to be!)
I keep thinking it'd be interesting to hear
what folk think the IBM PC
*should* have been - although that could descend into utter chaos :-)
It does seem like the design was pretty compromised* - I'm curious as
to what folk think should have been done with the hardware of the time
whilst remaining in roughly the same price range...
Given that there were only two real choices for floppy controllers
(WD 17/27 series and the NEC 765) at the time of the 5150 launch, IBM
didn't do too badly. I suspect they also got a good price break for
staying with Intel (the 8272 is just the 765 by a different name).
Hmm, that's a possibility. I wonder if they ever considered moving to a
different CPU / support family in the very early days...
It's not a problem with a clear answer.
No, definitely not. I suppose I was thinking not just about floppy controller,
but about the CPU choice, system bus, video hardware etc. too; the PC seemed a
bit long in the tooth for the launch date - and perhaps relied more on IBM
marketing clout than anything to achieve success. I just find it interesting
to ponder about what other companies might have done if given IBM's resources
(and assuming a similar target price point, of course!)
cheers
Jules