25 Oct
2001
25 Oct
'01
1:58 p.m.
Yes, but were there any unbuffered slots on the orignal PC?
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 6:24 PM
Subject: Re: SLOT 8 (was: ISA cards for free..
never
On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> REALLY! I had no idea that they'd so something so silly as dedicate a slot
on
an otherwise
modern (unlike the APPLE-][) backplane.
A company as big as IBM "doesn't HAVE TO learn from the mistakes of
others". Remember the PCJr original keyboard?
What's different about that slot?
"Wrong" side of a buffer.
> I've never owned a "real" XT, so I've never
> had to wrestle with that. My first PC was a '186-based clone, and I've
> looked back. Was that "slot-8"
compatibility creature a bug in the PC as
well?
IBM had a LOT of serial cards that nobody wanted (on a 5 slot PC, the
market wanted multifunction!)
Every XT from IBM came with a "FREE" serial card. It blocked slot 8 from
being used by anything else that MIGHT have a problem with it, and gave
the public image impression of a generous (they were more expensive then!)
freebie.
Was that "slot-8" compatibility
creature a bug in the PC as well?
Yes and no. :-)
Since the PC had 5 slots, there was HARDLY EVER a problem with slot number
8!
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
<A HREF= "http://www.xenosoft.com/dogears" >DogEars</A>