On Jul 14, 2016, at 9:46 AM, Fred Cisin <cisin at
xenosoft.com> wrote:
When IBM decided to take over the personal computer market, they didn't do their
homework very well.
Intel convinced them to use the 8088, to have a gateway into 16 bit, instead of building
a true 8 bit machine.
One of the IBM people had seen a "Microsoft Softcard" (a Z80 co-processor plus
CP/M for Apple][).
IBM chose the 8088 because the bus was close enough to the 8085 that the peripherals from
the S/23 could
be re-used with minor tweaks (in many cases just a re-layout).
They wanted something that would allow > 64KB of RAM without having to go through the
pains of what was
done on S/23 (it was an 8085 system that has 192KB of ROM and upto 128KB of RAM) and none
of the 8-bit
micros could do that.
IBM had looked at the PC market for a while. It was actually TJ Watson Jr that instructed
that a ?skunk? team
be formed to see how quickly a PC with an IBM logo could be produced. He was afraid of
Apple making
inroads into IBM?s traditional markets and wanted to prevent that. It was never
envisioned to be a huge market
for these things?it was viewed only as a hobbyist thing that had the potential to take
away business from
IBM?s traditional machines.
TTFN - Guy