18 Apr
2013
18 Apr
'13
9:13 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2013 10:17 AM
To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Public mainframe system
On 04/18/2013 01:14 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
ISTR that they also overreacted to their blunder on the ISA bus (they reserved no
licensing rights) and overcompensated by demanding huge fees to license MCA. Third
parties said, no thanks.... -- Ian
Yeah. Every time I think of IBM mainframe
designs...I can't help but
wonder why microchannel for the microcomputer market never took off.
I'm not sure it's fair to say that it never took off. It was very popular for
a
long time. Many manufacturers made MCA cards. It was also big in the
RS/6000 world.
However...that has nothing at all to do with mainframes. Some of the
"baby" development system "mainframes" like the P/390 do use
MCA...there's an MCA version of the P/390 card. (that was the first one, the
next two were PCI)
MCA was really a microcomputers-only bus.