9 Oct
2006
9 Oct
'06
5:03 p.m.
On 10/9/2006 at 7:29 PM Richard A. Cini wrote:
After reading the Technical Reference Manual I'm
beginning to
appreciate how oddly designed it was. When it was introduced in 1983 or
1984, PCs already existed for 2+ years so why, oh why, did they decide to
ignore the "PC compatible" trend?
Although it's hard to believe in retrospect, this was not at all uncommon.
There were still a bunch of manufacturers out there who thought that they
could "do better' than IBM at PC design. There was also a mistaken notion
that all one had to do was to be MS-DOS compatible.
If you think about it, how many systems around this time were truly "PC
compatible"? How many had Microsoft BASIC in ROM? While you might have
been able to boot PC-DOS, trying to run BASICA would result in failure.
There were a few applications that relied on the BASIC ROMs being present.
Didn't the Tandy 2000 use an 80186? IIRC, the 186 offered higher speeds
and integrated peripherals--a reasonable choice for a personal computer.
Heaven knows, they weren't the only one to make the 186 blunder.
Although we remember some of the big players, such as AT&T and Tandy, there
were many many others. How many folks, for example, have a Stearns PC in
their collection? (8086, made in Minnesota). All had varying degrees of
"PC Compatibility".
If you wanted a PC compatible, you bought something made in Taiwan.
Cheers,
Chuck