Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 23:34:59 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: tlambert2@mindspring.com, j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: How did the MSFT monopoly start? Message-ID: <15218.4851.592770.804113@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <20010809130711.I73579@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <20010806142544.A64348@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <15214.52633.581653.632317@guru.mired.org> <3B6F98D0.A3C22CC9@mindspring.com> <20010808160551.Q78395@wantadilla.lemis.com> <3B7103A4.558B9B3B@mindspring.com> <15217.45815.8133.991656@guru.mired.org> <20010809130711.I73579@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> types: > > FWIW, the story about dropping Motorola due to Motorola not being > > able to provide the volume that IBM wanted matches the hearsay I > > recall from the era. I also heard that Intel made the commitment > > knowing they couldn't honor it. > Hmm. Recall that IBM had no idea this thing would be anywhere near as > successful. Yup. That's one of the reasons I tend to doubt that story. > >>> The 86 was later. > >> The 86 was earlier. 1976. The 8088 was just a low-cost 8086, with an > >> 8 bit bus, enabling machines to be made with a lower chip count. The > >> processor core was almost identical; I think the only difference was > >> the pipeline length. I suspect that the part count was what really > >> caused IBM to go with the 8088 and not the 68000; the former needed > >> only 8 memory chips (1 bit wide), the latter would have needed 32. > > Are you sure the 68K would have needed 32 memory chips? I recall the > > 68K as having a 16 bit external bus, meaning it would only have needed > > 16. > Hmm. You could have been right there. It was definitely 32 bits > internally, like the 8088 was 16 bits internally. Motorola weren't as > generous with their data books, so I can't check. My data books on it are in storage, but I recall it as having a 32 bit programming model - 32 bit registers and operations on them - so by one definition it could be said to be 32 bits internally. However, if you looked at the timing carefully, the 32 bit operations took twice as long as the 16 bit operations, implying that it was 16 bits internally but included operations for doing 32 bit arithmetic. The address space was 32 bits - the top 8 got thrown away when you left the CPU - and it didn't have special registers for addressing, so the general registers had to be 32 bits wide and it had to have those 32 bit operations. That address space - 16 meg flat - was why I chose it to use at home. In the terminology of the time, the 8088 was 8/16, the 8086 was 16/16, and the 68K and 16032 were 16/32. > > I never bought the thing - I went to a CP/M-68K system to transition > > to 16 bits - but recall hearing people complaining that 8086-based > > S-100 systems were pretty much useless due to lack of > > applications. Which matches my experience with CP/M-68K. > Yes. This is the real reason for the success of the IBM PC: it gave > developers something to target. That's also the real reason for the > success of Microsoft. The reason the had a target was the sales generated by the IBM label on the machine. That IBM paid to have some basic applications available certainly didn't hurt. The systems prior to that - CP/M, TRSDOS, OS/1, OS/9, Flex, etc. all attracted developers even though there wasn't a target like that. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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