Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Fred Cisin]

>> long before the Color Graphics Adapters were
>> available, about six months after launch, and the CGAs were only
>> produced in response to the completely unanticipated demand for the
>> PC.

On Fri, 19 Oct 2018, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:
> Are you certain? My then boss* and I went to a Computerland store in
> Denver** on August 12, 1981, to pick up a PC that he had preordered***. My
> (possibly faulty) recollection was that they had both MDA and CGA adapters
> on that day, though they might not have had the CGA monitor in stock.
> Our purchase included a PC configured with keyboard, 64KB of RAM, a memory
> expansion board with another 64KB of RAM, a floppy controller, one 160K
> floppy drive, a serial card, an MDA card, an MDA monitor, and (not
> installed) a CGA card, and IBM DOS 1.0. We used the CGA card with an NEC
> RGB monitor, and not all of the colors were correct. The NEC monitor wasn't
> designed for the PC, and I don't think it had an intensity signal at all,
> so we only got eight colors rather than 16. IIRC, yellow was brown, or
> perhaps vice versa, due to an oddity of how IBM encoded a particular
> combination of the RGBI signals.
> The software and documentation included CGA support from day one, so it
> definitely was not an afterthought.
> In addition to IBM DOS 1.0, we very quickly got a prerelease version of
> QNX****, and that was the first time I actually used a Unix-like operating
> system.

My experience was similar.  I got the technical Reference Manual 
immediately.  I then had to wait a few months to get a computer.  But, 
there was no apparent shortage of boards or accessories.
I got a PC, with keyboard, 16K of RAM, Floppy Disk controller, async 
card, PC-DOS 1.00, and CGA board.
Since the parts were same/compatible with TRS80 ones, which were cheaper, 
I put in my own RAM, Tandon TM100-1s, and used a [CCTV] composite monitor.
I soon got a 192K (ECC!) RAM card (Boulder Creek?), and serial and 
parallel cards.

Much (10 years?) later, I got a deal on some surplus Wyse 700 video 
displays.  (1280x800?)


There was apparently some perception among some users that MDA was for 
"serious"/business use, and CGA for games.  Many of those same users then 
complained about lack of [graphic-oriented??] games for MDA.  Soon, there 
were efforts to provide rationalizations why graphics were "essential" for 
business use.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com