More old stuff incoming

[Guy Sotomayor Jr]

Having worked at IBM “in the day”, the “official” reason (near as I could tell) was that IBM didn’t want to anthropomorphise computers.  So it was never “memory”, it was always “storage”.  So we didn’t have RAM or ROM, we had storage or ROS.  Disks were called DASD.  Main boards were called “planars”.

TTFN - Guy

> On Dec 19, 2018, at 1:16 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 19 Dec 2018, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:
>> I always liked the PS/2 cases.  Just about every one I've seen is tool less down to, and sometimes including, the system planar (as IBM called it).
> 
> Typically unreliable source (my uncle who worked for IBM) said that the reason that they REFUSED to call it a "motherboard" was due to some TV news broadcasts from Merritt College where Black Panthers were saying "UP AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHER!"
> I was there.  They said 'motherfucker", not "mother".
> (there was a New Yorker? cartoon with an elderly woman commenting that she loved how they kept saying "mother")
> Nevertheless, s'posedly it caused IBM to choose a different name.
>