Christopher Smith skrev:
> Well when I first saw a PC ( clone that is ) , I
thought
> "WOW A real keyboard, good display ( Upper / Lower Case )
> and dual floppies all in one box". 512K ram max sounded
> like a lot of memory too. Compared to the 8 bit toy market
> at the time Z80's,C64's,Coco's that was a lot of power.
> From: Ben Franchuk [mailto:bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca]
> It was the small 16 bit addressing that killed the 8 bitters.
May have been unusual at the time. I doubt it was the
first machine to have
any of that. A VAX-11/750 with a vt-100, for instance, would have had all
that less the dual-floppies and with a much higher maximum RAM limit ;)
But who could by a VAX? And why one terminal only? The VAX wasn't a personal
computer by any means.
Not that just anyone could buy an IBM PC in '81, but chances were, your
employer could.
Seriously, though, some older CP/M boxes also had real
keyboards, decent
displays and dual floppies. (Some of which was optional, mind you... as were
_any_ floppies on the PC, AFAIK, in that you bought them separately :) Also
you could say that it was the first available 16-bit home computer
(depending on your definition of 16-bit), but you'd be wrong... (Quick
search says that several people believe this was the TI-99, actually, which
also had a real keyboard, and could have had the dual floppies)
OTOH, the TI99's processor had the same addressing problems as the 8-bitters,
15-bit addressing with a 16-bit word orientation led to the same addressable
space as the 6502 and Z80 micros. Arithmetically, the TI99 was a sixteen-
bitter, but not in the common definition of sixteen bits used from the
eighties and onwards.
Ultimately, the 32-bit systems were pretty close on its
heels -- I have a
timeline that places the PC in '82, and the Apple Lisa in '83. I don't know
if this is correct...
The PC was AFAIK released in '81.
I wouldn't define the 68000 as a 32-bitter, only as a more elegant sixteen-
bitter.
I have no idea how the peesee actually lasted as long
as it has. There were
several 32-bit systems on the market by 1984 or so (though, my personal
favorite was done in '87 with the Acorn Archimedes).
None were IBM, though, and none could be easily cloned.
--
En ligne avec Thor 2.6a.