IBM ROM BASIC or lack thereof

If memory serves the one real thing that cloners couldn't duplicate, maybe due to copyright, was the ROM BASIC but that they'd duplicated everything else including the BIOS or a very good part of it. That pretty much led to IBM losing a lot in the PC market. Now why they kept the BASIC on ROM even into the PS/2 line is beyond me. It served no real purpose that late in life when most people had moved on to C++ and Pascal and it was rare to find someone that used BASIC or BASICA - especially since the cassette port was gone as of the XT 5160. The BASIC on ROM was in 40 column mode at start as well, I guess to accomodate any display that might be attached. -> -----Original Message----- -> From: owner-classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org -> [mailto:owner-classiccmp@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Glen Goodwin -> Tony, I think you are correct as I've never seen a clone mb with BASIC in -> ROM, but I *have* seen clone boards -- including early Pentium boards -- -> which would cough up "no rom basic" if they didn't find a -> bootable device. -> Oddly enough the text of this message is always displayed in 40-column -> low-res mode. Doesn't this suggest that part of the ROM BIOS code was -> "borrowed" from early IBM code?