Megalextoria
Retro computing and gaming, sci-fi books, tv and movies and other geeky stuff.

Home » Digital Archaeology » Computer Arcana » Computer Folklore » IBM2Dos
Show: Today's Messages :: Show Polls :: Message Navigator
E-mail to friend 
Switch to threaded view of this topic Create a new topic Submit Reply
IBM2Dos [message #412547] Mon, 29 November 2021 09:55 Go to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Maus

Would anyone recommend a book (Kindle if possible) or article about
the time that Bill Gates took over the control of PC market from IBM?

--
greymausg@mail.com
That's not a mousehole!
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412549 is a reply to message #412547] Mon, 29 November 2021 11:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 29 Nov 2021 14:55:40 GMT
Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:

> Would anyone recommend a book (Kindle if possible) or article about
> the time that Bill Gates took over the control of PC market from IBM?

He never did.

IBM lost the PC market to the clone makers not to Microsoft it was
and is a completely open market now dominated by Dell. The PC clones slowly
but surely killed off every other hardware architecture so that now apart
from tablets, netbooks and Z-series mainframes everything is essentially a
PC from laptops to rack mount servers by way of blades.

What Microsoft did was take control of the PC operating system
market by pushing Windows (3.1 IIRC) on everyone and forcing a shift away
from DOS applications. That was done by giving PC vendors a huge discount
on the Windows license (one told me they paid £5 per machine when at the
time buying your own copy cost £200) provided they installed it on *every*
machine they sold. They coupled this with dropping the DOS versions of all
their applications and of course making Windows non too good at running
most of the DOS applications around because nearly all of them bypassed DOS
and BIOS to get performance.

By the time they got their wrists slapped for it the damage was
done - Microsoft owned the PC operating system market - just in time to
destroy DesqView-X which could run multiple DOS and Windows applications
simultaneously - as well as WordPerfect which never made the transition to
Windows despite being dominant on DOS.

Microsoft didn't have any kind of competitor on the PC OS market
until Linux came along which they actively tried to kill until they shifted
strategy and stopped caring about the PC OS market.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412556 is a reply to message #412547] Mon, 29 November 2021 17:14 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Mon, 29 Nov 2021 14:48:44 -0500
Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:

> First they took over the OS market with MS-DOS,

Not really, IBM did that for them by commissioning PC-DOS and
arranging to get a lot of DOS software written (a new DOS program every day
I recall being advertised). That killed off CP/M-86, but there was
competition and DR-DOS was a very popular alternative to MS-DOS also there
was GEM and DesqView-X. I'm pretty sure they were in serious danger of
losing the market before they pulled the pre-installed Windows on every PC
stunt.

> but also were about the only supplier for BASIC;

Hardly, selling a crappy BASIC to Commodore, Tandy and Apple got
them started but nobody else in the eight bit era used their code -
everyone else made tighter and faster BASICs - in the Newbrain a full "16K"
BASIC fitted in 4K of ROM - there was a bit of a celebration when that was
achieved.

> not only for the IBM PC but almost the whole home
> computer rage, killing off CP/M in the process.

A lot of the early CP/M adopters didn't drop it because they had
become used to multi-user and networked systems based around MP/M and
MMMOST. A lot of them turned into unix early adopters and skipped the PC
completely.

When the AT came out one of our customers wanted us to port our
MP/M applications to it because it was new and shiny and IBM. I pointed out
that the AT was a single user system and he wouldn't be able to attach
terminals to it (he had four or five terminals in constant use with a
database application). He didn't believe us at first - surely IBM's
"Advanced Technology" with 16 bits and huge memory could do better than the
MP/M he'd been using for years, we must be mistaken (veiled implication
lying)! So I told him to go and ask the IBM salesman about adding
terminals and running multi-user applications. When next we saw him he had
confirmed what we said and couldn't understand why IBM were so proud of
something so primitive.

We sold him an Altos XENIX system next (they got a lot more
mileage out of an 80286 than IBM ever did - a couple of 80186s doing I/O
helped).

I heard similar stories from other people in the "vertical market"
business at trade shows and supplier events.

Not many people noticed it because the CP/M and MP/M early adopters
were swamped first by the "Now it's a real computer IBM made it" brigade
and then by the clones making it cheap for those who didn't care about the
name. But very few of them switched to the PC and the PC users didn't start
to catch up until Novell by which time they were a nearly invisible minority
mostly using unix boxes with Intel or Motorola or MIPS or ... it didn't
matter much they all had a QIC tape on the front and a bunch of 9 pin
RS-232 sockets on the back, the bigger ones were accused of looking like
fridges.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412561 is a reply to message #412556] Tue, 30 November 2021 02:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: A.T. Murray

On Monday, November 29, 2021 at 2:30:02 PM UTC-8, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Nov 2021 14:48:44 -0500
> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>
>> First they took over the OS market with MS-DOS,
>
> Not really, IBM did that for them by commissioning PC-DOS and
> arranging to get a lot of DOS software written (a new DOS program every day
> I recall being advertised). That killed off CP/M-86, but there was
> competition and DR-DOS was a very popular alternative to MS-DOS also there
> was GEM and DesqView-X. I'm pretty sure they were in serious danger of
> losing the market before they pulled the pre-installed Windows on every PC
> stunt.
>
>> but also were about the only supplier for BASIC;
>
> Hardly, selling a crappy BASIC to Commodore, Tandy and Apple got
> them started but nobody else in the eight bit era used their code -
> everyone else made tighter and faster BASICs - in the Newbrain a full "16K"
> BASIC fitted in 4K of ROM - there was a bit of a celebration when that was
> achieved.
>
>> not only for the IBM PC but almost the whole home
>> computer rage, killing off CP/M in the process.
>
> A lot of the early CP/M adopters didn't drop it because they had
> become used to multi-user and networked systems based around MP/M and
> MMMOST. A lot of them turned into unix early adopters and skipped the PC
> completely.
>
> When the AT came out one of our customers wanted us to port our
> MP/M applications to it because it was new and shiny and IBM. I pointed out
> that the AT was a single user system and he wouldn't be able to attach
> terminals to it (he had four or five terminals in constant use with a
> database application). He didn't believe us at first - surely IBM's
> "Advanced Technology" with 16 bits and huge memory could do better than the
> MP/M he'd been using for years, we must be mistaken (veiled implication
> lying)! So I told him to go and ask the IBM salesman about adding
> terminals and running multi-user applications. When next we saw him he had
> confirmed what we said and couldn't understand why IBM were so proud of
> something so primitive.
>
> We sold him an Altos XENIX system next (they got a lot more
> mileage out of an 80286 than IBM ever did - a couple of 80186s doing I/O
> helped).
>
> I heard similar stories from other people in the "vertical market"
> business at trade shows and supplier events.
>
> Not many people noticed it because the CP/M and MP/M early adopters
> were swamped first by the "Now it's a real computer IBM made it" brigade
> and then by the clones making it cheap for those who didn't care about the
> name. But very few of them switched to the PC and the PC users didn't start
> to catch up until Novell by which time they were a nearly invisible minority
> mostly using unix boxes with Intel or Motorola or MIPS or ... it didn't
> matter much they all had a QIC tape on the front and a bunch of 9 pin
> RS-232 sockets on the back, the bigger ones were accused of looking like
> fridges.
> --
> Steve O'Hara-Smith
> Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

Many outfits did not initially go with Mentifex AI, either.

Mentifex
--
http://ai.neocities.org/mentifex_faq.html
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412589 is a reply to message #412547] Thu, 02 December 2021 15:45 Go to previous messageGo to next message
usenet is currently offline  usenet
Messages: 556
Registered: May 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 29 Nov 2021 14:55:40 GMT, Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
> Would anyone recommend a book (Kindle if possible) or article about
> the time that Bill Gates took over the control of PC market from IBM?

It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s when they
tried to reign in control of the clone market by coming out with a proprietary
bus. (Was that EISA, or something else? I'm getting a memory error on the
correct acronym.) Anyway, it was spurned by the industry and the clone makers
went right on doing their thing.

Then around 1990 Microsoft did the rope-a-dope with IBM over their collaboration
on the OS/2 operating system. They dragged their feet on their contribution to
the project while moving ahead with Windows 3.0 and then 3.1. I think there is
a chapter about this in:

Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM
Paul Carroll
1993; Crown Publishing Group

This is part of what eventually killed WordPerfect, who placed their bets on
OS/2.
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412590 is a reply to message #412589] Thu, 02 December 2021 15:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Dick

On 12/2/21 3:45 PM, Questor wrote:
> On 29 Nov 2021 14:55:40 GMT, Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
>> Would anyone recommend a book (Kindle if possible) or article about
>> the time that Bill Gates took over the control of PC market from IBM?
>
> It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s when they
> tried to reign in control of the clone market by coming out with a proprietary
> bus. (Was that EISA, or something else? I'm getting a memory error on the
> correct acronym.) Anyway, it was spurned by the industry and the clone makers
> went right on doing their thing.
>
> Then around 1990 Microsoft did the rope-a-dope with IBM over their collaboration
> on the OS/2 operating system. They dragged their feet on their contribution to
> the project while moving ahead with Windows 3.0 and then 3.1. I think there is
> a chapter about this in:
>
> Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM
> Paul Carroll
> 1993; Crown Publishing Group
>
> This is part of what eventually killed WordPerfect, who placed their bets on
> OS/2.
>
MCA -- micro-channel architecture.
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412591 is a reply to message #412589] Thu, 02 December 2021 17:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2021-12-02, Questor <usenet@only.tnx> wrote:

> On 29 Nov 2021 14:55:40 GMT, Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
>
>> Would anyone recommend a book (Kindle if possible) or article about
>> the time that Bill Gates took over the control of PC market from IBM?
>
> It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s
> when they tried to reign in control of the clone market by coming out
> with a proprietary bus. (Was that EISA, or something else? I'm
> getting a memory error on the correct acronym.) Anyway, it was
> spurned by the industry and the clone makers went right on doing
> their thing.

s/reign/rein/

The metaphor refers to horses, not monarchs.

IBM realized that they had made a mistake when they completely opened
the box, publishing detailed technical specifications that enabled
anyone to clone it. The introduction of the MicroChannel bus was their
attempt to close the box again by going to a proprietary bus. But as
with Pandora, it was too late. As you said, the industry thumbed its
collective nose at IBM and came up with EISA - and the architecture
remained open. (In the Pandora legend, the last thing left in the
box was Hope.)

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412593 is a reply to message #412591] Thu, 02 December 2021 17:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: J. Clarke

On Thu, 02 Dec 2021 22:05:34 GMT, Charlie Gibbs
<cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

> On 2021-12-02, Questor <usenet@only.tnx> wrote:
>
>> On 29 Nov 2021 14:55:40 GMT, Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Would anyone recommend a book (Kindle if possible) or article about
>>> the time that Bill Gates took over the control of PC market from IBM?
>>
>> It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s
>> when they tried to reign in control of the clone market by coming out
>> with a proprietary bus. (Was that EISA, or something else? I'm
>> getting a memory error on the correct acronym.) Anyway, it was
>> spurned by the industry and the clone makers went right on doing
>> their thing.
>
> s/reign/rein/
>
> The metaphor refers to horses, not monarchs.
>
> IBM realized that they had made a mistake when they completely opened
> the box, publishing detailed technical specifications that enabled
> anyone to clone it. The introduction of the MicroChannel bus was their
> attempt to close the box again by going to a proprietary bus. But as
> with Pandora, it was too late. As you said, the industry thumbed its
> collective nose at IBM and came up with EISA - and the architecture
> remained open. (In the Pandora legend, the last thing left in the
> box was Hope.)

Their big error with Microchannel IMO was that it addressed all the
"issues" with ISA that IBM's engineers and technicians and managers
cared about, but customers didn't care about things like "better
grounding" and "not having to have an expensively trained technician
add cards" and the like. They cared about whether it would run their
workloads any faster and the answer was, in general, no.
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412595 is a reply to message #412593] Thu, 02 December 2021 18:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> writes:
> Their big error with Microchannel IMO was that it addressed all the
> "issues" with ISA that IBM's engineers and technicians and managers
> cared about, but customers didn't care about things like "better
> grounding" and "not having to have an expensively trained technician
> add cards" and the like. They cared about whether it would run their
> workloads any faster and the answer was, in general, no.

except the communication group performance kneecaped the PS2
microchannel cards ... part of its fiercely trying to fight off
client/server and distributed computing ... trying to preserve its dumb
terminal paradigm/business.

AWD (workstation division) had done the PC/RT with PC/AT bus ... and
did some of their own high performance cards ... like its own 4mbit
token-ring card.

Then with RS/6000 and microchannel ... AWD was told they couldn't do
their own microchannel cards, they had to use the (performance
knee-capped) PS2 microchannel cards. For instance the PS2 microchannel
($799) 16mbit token-ring card had lower (per card) throughput than the PC/RT
4mbit token-ring card. There was joke that if RS/6000 was limited to the
(knee-capped) PS2 microchannel cards ... for lots of things, RS/6000
wouldn't have any better throughput than PS2/486.

By comparison, there were $69 10mbitethernet cards with significantly
higher throughput than the ($799) 16mbit token-ring microchannel card
(nearly ten times the performance at 1/10th the cost).

In the late 80s, a senior disk (division) engineer got a talk scheduled
at the internal, world-wide, annual, communication group conference
supposedly on 3174 performance, but he opened his talk with the comment
that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise
of the disk division. The disk division was seeing a drop in disk sales
with customers moving to more client/server and distributed computing
friendly platforms. The disk division had come up with a number of
solutions that were constantly being vetoed by the communication group
(with its corporate strategic ownership of everything that crossed
datacenter walls).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412596 is a reply to message #412589] Thu, 02 December 2021 18:55 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Thu, 02 Dec 2021 20:45:25 GMT
usenet@only.tnx (Questor) wrote:

> It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s

by tripping over the shotgun while bolting them door on the empty
stable ...

> when they tried to reign in control of the clone market

... to where the horses had long since bolted and were temporarily
enjoying quality pasture with Compaq and endless acres of open scrub in
China before mostly legging it off to the mega-livery yards Dell and HP.

See Charlie he did mean reign :)

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412597 is a reply to message #412589] Thu, 02 December 2021 20:45 Go to previous messageGo to next message
John Levine is currently offline  John Levine
Messages: 1405
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
According to Questor <usenet@only.tnx>:
> On 29 Nov 2021 14:55:40 GMT, Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
>> Would anyone recommend a book (Kindle if possible) or article about
>> the time that Bill Gates took over the control of PC market from IBM?
>
> It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s when they
> tried to reign in control of the clone market by coming out with a proprietary
> bus. (Was that EISA, or something else?

Microchannel for the PS/2. It was better than ISA but not enough better to
pay license fees.

> Then around 1990 Microsoft did the rope-a-dope with IBM over their collaboration
> on the OS/2 operating system.

It was earlier than that. I was at IBM's 1984 PS/2 announcement event in Miami Beach,
where I met Bill Gates in a bar the night before (he ignored me) and the evening's
entertainment was the Beach Boys. At that point it was all about Microsoft OS/2,
but it's clear that even then Bill was planning to put all the effort into Windows,
not OS/2.



--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412598 is a reply to message #412589] Thu, 02 December 2021 21:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dan Espen is currently offline  Dan Espen
Messages: 3867
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
usenet@only.tnx (Questor) writes:

> On 29 Nov 2021 14:55:40 GMT, Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
>> Would anyone recommend a book (Kindle if possible) or article about
>> the time that Bill Gates took over the control of PC market from IBM?
>
> It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s when they
> tried to reign in control of the clone market by coming out with a proprietary
> bus. (Was that EISA, or something else? I'm getting a memory error on the
> correct acronym.) Anyway, it was spurned by the industry and the clone makers
> went right on doing their thing.

MCA - Micro Channel Architecture

This was to remove the restrictions on ISA which were supposedly
unfixable. In short order EISA appeared and IBM's new cash cow the
PS/2s started to lose market share.

> Then around 1990 Microsoft did the rope-a-dope with IBM over their collaboration
> on the OS/2 operating system. They dragged their feet on their contribution to
> the project while moving ahead with Windows 3.0 and then 3.1. I think there is
> a chapter about this in:
>
> Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM
> Paul Carroll
> 1993; Crown Publishing Group
>
> This is part of what eventually killed WordPerfect, who placed their bets on
> OS/2.

The culture clash between IBM and MSFT developers must have been epic.

I remember reading that IBM wanted it's mainframe graphics architecture
GDDM to be used in OS/2. I can just imagine the MSFT guys reading up on
GDDM.

--
Dan Espen
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412599 is a reply to message #412596] Thu, 02 December 2021 22:12 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2021-12-02, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 02 Dec 2021 20:45:25 GMT
> usenet@only.tnx (Questor) wrote:
>
>> It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s
>
> by tripping over the shotgun while bolting them door on the empty
> stable ...

Congratulations; you have won the Metaphor of the Day award.

>> when they tried to reign in control of the clone market
>
> ... to where the horses had long since bolted and were temporarily
> enjoying quality pasture with Compaq and endless acres of open scrub in
> China before mostly legging it off to the mega-livery yards Dell and HP.
>
> See Charlie he did mean reign :)

A horse is a hoarse? Off course, of coarse.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412600 is a reply to message #412547] Thu, 02 December 2021 22:14 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Thu, 02 Dec 2021 21:26:34 -0500
Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 02 Dec 2021 17:48:50 -0500, J. Clarke wrote:
>>
>> Their big error with Microchannel IMO was that it addressed all the
>> "issues" with ISA that IBM's engineers and technicians and managers
>> cared about, but customers didn't care about things like "better
>> grounding" and "not having to have an expensively trained technician
>> add cards" and the like. They cared about whether it would run their
>> workloads any faster and the answer was, in general, no.
>
> Wasn't MCA technically superior to ISA? From what I read is that MCA was
> not compatible, so users has to buy new cards for PS/2 machines.

Yes to both - but the big killer was that manufacturers had to
license MCA from IBM and it wasn't cheap to do so. Nearly all the clone
makers looked at the license fee, the terms, the lack of ISA card support
and decided their future lay elsewhere.

> The "alliance" of clone (Gang of Nine) manufacturers exploited it to
> create EISA (Extended Industry Standard Architecture), which was
> succeeded by PCI in 1993. According to Wikipedia:

Yep when it became obvious that IBM had a point and ISA was out of
steam and that license fee was still there cooperation seemed like a good
plan. There was VLB (Vesa Local Bus IIRC) somewhere in there, just before
EISA IIRC (that's not a bus) and of course PCIe after PCI. I'm sure there's
something coming soon PCIe's starting to feel long in the tooth - USB4 or
USB5 probably going by the way that's cranking up speeds - system looking
something like this at the chip/board level:

RAM <DDRn channel>|cache|<USBm> Peripherals
RAM <DDRn channel>|cache|<USBm> Peripherals
RAM <DDRn channel>|xCPUs|<USBm> Peripherals
RAM <DDRn channel>|cache|<USBm> Peripherals
RAM <DDRn channel>|cache|<USBm> Peripherals

Now anyone in the back who thinks it looks a tad familiar if you
change the labels please keep quiet the kids think it's all new ideas.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412601 is a reply to message #412597] Thu, 02 December 2021 22:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Fri, 3 Dec 2021 01:45:07 -0000 (UTC)
John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:

> Microchannel for the PS/2. It was better than ISA but not enough better
> to pay license fees.

The mouse and keyboard connector from the PS/2 did amazingly well
though. I still have a few adaptors to plug USB devices into them.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412602 is a reply to message #412601] Thu, 02 December 2021 23:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ted@loft.tnolan.com ( is currently offline  ted@loft.tnolan.com (
Messages: 161
Registered: August 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In article <20211203031550.44462f4ace6a80493c927f6b@eircom.net>,
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Dec 2021 01:45:07 -0000 (UTC)
> John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>
>> Microchannel for the PS/2. It was better than ISA but not enough better
>> to pay license fees.
>
> The mouse and keyboard connector from the PS/2 did amazingly well
> though. I still have a few adaptors to plug USB devices into them.
>
> --
> Steve O'Hara-Smith
> Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

I'm typing this on a keyboard with a PC style barrel connector,
connected to a PC to PS/2 adaptor, connected to a PS/2 to USB adaptor...
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412605 is a reply to message #412589] Fri, 03 December 2021 04:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Maus

On 2021-12-02, Questor <usenet@only.tnx> wrote:
> On 29 Nov 2021 14:55:40 GMT, Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
>> Would anyone recommend a book (Kindle if possible) or article about
>> the time that Bill Gates took over the control of PC market from IBM?
>
> It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s when they
> tried to reign in control of the clone market by coming out with a proprietary
> bus. (Was that EISA, or something else? I'm getting a memory error on the
> correct acronym.) Anyway, it was spurned by the industry and the clone makers
> went right on doing their thing.

This was what I wanted to know, and there is very little about it. I
remember that anyone who wanted to take the IBM route had to pay some
money down, including (Bernie Sugar(sp?)) who resented it fiercely.
Looking back, I wonder if os/2 was a sort of chromebook is some sort
followup?

I suppose the IBM was conflicted between the Boca Reton branch, and
their main business,
>
> Then around 1990 Microsoft did the rope-a-dope with IBM over their collaboration
> on the OS/2 operating system. They dragged their feet on their contribution to
> the project while moving ahead with Windows 3.0 and then 3.1. I think there is
> a chapter about this in:
>
> Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM
> Paul Carroll
> 1993; Crown Publishing Group
>
> This is part of what eventually killed WordPerfect, who placed their bets on
> OS/2.
>


--
greymausg@mail.com
That's not a mousehole!
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412607 is a reply to message #412602] Fri, 03 December 2021 06:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Bob Eager

On Fri, 03 Dec 2021 04:50:35 +0000, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

> In article <20211203031550.44462f4ace6a80493c927f6b@eircom.net>,
> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 3 Dec 2021 01:45:07 -0000 (UTC)
>> John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Microchannel for the PS/2. It was better than ISA but not enough
>>> better to pay license fees.
>>
>> The mouse and keyboard connector from the PS/2 did amazingly well
>> though. I still have a few adaptors to plug USB devices into them.
>>
>> --
>> Steve O'Hara-Smith Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
>
> I'm typing this on a keyboard with a PC style barrel connector,
> connected to a PC to PS/2 adaptor, connected to a PS/2 to USB adaptor...

I'm typing this on a 1989 Model M keyboard, in daily use since November
of that year. Plugged into a KVM that does good conversions.

--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412608 is a reply to message #412600] Fri, 03 December 2021 09:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Andreas Kohlbach is currently offline  Andreas Kohlbach
Messages: 1456
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Fri, 3 Dec 2021 03:14:08 +0000, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>
> On Thu, 02 Dec 2021 21:26:34 -0500
> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 02 Dec 2021 17:48:50 -0500, J. Clarke wrote:
>>>
>>> Their big error with Microchannel IMO was that it addressed all the
>>> "issues" with ISA that IBM's engineers and technicians and managers
>>> cared about, but customers didn't care about things like "better
>>> grounding" and "not having to have an expensively trained technician
>>> add cards" and the like. They cared about whether it would run their
>>> workloads any faster and the answer was, in general, no.
>>
>> Wasn't MCA technically superior to ISA? From what I read is that MCA was
>> not compatible, so users has to buy new cards for PS/2 machines.
>
> Yes to both - but the big killer was that manufacturers had to
> license MCA from IBM and it wasn't cheap to do so. Nearly all the clone
> makers looked at the license fee, the terms, the lack of ISA card support
> and decided their future lay elsewhere.

Interesting to see, how IBM could be so blind not to have forecasted
this. OK, they did big business with large corporations before the birth
of the IBM PC in 1981. But until the release of PS/2, six years
passed. IMO enough time to gather some experience with small companies
and the use in home offices.

Heck, IBM could even had asked Charlie Chaplin (or his look alike). He
would have known better. ;-)
--
Andreas
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412610 is a reply to message #412605] Fri, 03 December 2021 09:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 3 Dec 2021 09:47:27 GMT
Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:

> This was what I wanted to know, and there is very little about it. I
> remember that anyone who wanted to take the IBM route had to pay some
> money down, including (Bernie Sugar(sp?)) who resented it fiercely.
> Looking back, I wonder if os/2 was a sort of chromebook is some sort
> followup?

Nothing to do with OS/2 - what they had to pay for was the license
to use the proprietary MCA bus which added a chunk onto the cost of a PC
and without which you couldn't use PS/2 expansion cards. I think the
license also came with strings because I don't recall seeing a dual bus
machine.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412611 is a reply to message #412549] Fri, 03 December 2021 11:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Robin Vowels is currently offline  Robin Vowels
Messages: 426
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Tuesday, November 30, 2021 at 3:30:03 AM UTC+11, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On 29 Nov 2021 14:55:40 GMT
> Maus <Grey...@mail.com> wrote:
>
>> Would anyone recommend a book (Kindle if possible) or article about
>> the time that Bill Gates took over the control of PC market from IBM?
> He never did.
>
> IBM lost the PC market to the clone makers not to Microsoft it was
> and is a completely open market now dominated by Dell. The PC clones slowly
> but surely killed off every other hardware architecture so that now apart
> from tablets, netbooks and Z-series mainframes everything is essentially a
> PC from laptops to rack mount servers by way of blades.
>
> What Microsoft did was take control of the PC operating system
> market by pushing Windows (3.1 IIRC) on everyone and forcing a shift away
> from DOS applications.
..
IBM and Microsoft were working in a co-operative venture,
that enabled OS/2 and Windows to be run on the same
computer.
..
IBM gave up on that venture after OS/2 Warp.
..
DOS was still popular and in use long after windows 3.1
..
I still use it, including with Windows 3.1 and Word 1.1a.
..
> That was done by giving PC vendors a huge discount
> on the Windows license (one told me they paid £5 per machine when at the
> time buying your own copy cost £200) provided they installed it on *every*
> machine they sold. They coupled this with dropping the DOS versions of all
> their applications and of course making Windows non too good at running
> most of the DOS applications around because nearly all of them bypassed DOS
> and BIOS to get performance.
>
> By the time they got their wrists slapped for it the damage was
> done - Microsoft owned the PC operating system market - just in time to
> destroy DesqView-X which could run multiple DOS and Windows applications
> simultaneously - as well as WordPerfect which never made the transition to
> Windows despite being dominant on DOS.
>
> Microsoft didn't have any kind of competitor on the PC OS market
..
There was OS/2 -- a far better OS than Windows.
..
> until Linux came along which they actively tried to kill until they shifted
> strategy and stopped caring about the PC OS market.
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412612 is a reply to message #412600] Fri, 03 December 2021 12:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2021-12-03, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 02 Dec 2021 21:26:34 -0500
> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>
>> Wasn't MCA technically superior to ISA? From what I read is that MCA was
>> not compatible, so users has to buy new cards for PS/2 machines.
>
> Yes to both - but the big killer was that manufacturers had to
> license MCA from IBM and it wasn't cheap to do so. Nearly all the clone
> makers looked at the license fee, the terms, the lack of ISA card support
> and decided their future lay elsewhere.

One exception I recall is Tandy / Radio Shack.
I don't see much of them anymore...

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412614 is a reply to message #412547] Fri, 03 December 2021 14:00 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
> On 3 Dec 2021 09:47:27 GMT, Maus wrote:
>>
>> On 2021-12-02, Questor <usenet@only.tnx> wrote:
>>> On 29 Nov 2021 14:55:40 GMT, Maus <Greymaus@mail.com> wrote:
>>>> Would anyone recommend a book (Kindle if possible) or article about
>>>> the time that Bill Gates took over the control of PC market from IBM?
>>>
>>> It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s when they
>>> tried to reign in control of the clone market by coming out with a proprietary
>>> bus. (Was that EISA, or something else? I'm getting a memory error on the
>>> correct acronym.) Anyway, it was spurned by the industry and the clone makers
>>> went right on doing their thing.
>>
>> This was what I wanted to know, and there is very little about it. I
>> remember that anyone who wanted to take the IBM route had to pay some
>> money down, including (Bernie Sugar(sp?)) who resented it fiercely.
>> Looking back, I wonder if os/2 was a sort of chromebook is some sort
>> followup?
>
> I don't have the feeling of a Chromebook with OS/2. My first PC came with
> Windows 95, and a computer store sold off OS/2 Warp 3 (or was it
> 4?). They had like 50 packages stapled somewhere on the floor. I guess I
> was one of the few to pick one up. It just felt like "another Windows" to
> me.

When OS/2 was in it’s death throes IBM came out with “Workspace on Demand”
(WSOD) that was sort of like Chrome or an XTerm where your customized OS/2
was downloaded to whatever machine you logged on to.

>
> ..
>
> At home I managed to kill the existing Windows 95. I had no boot disk and
> the CD-ROM (or the Windows installation CD itself) had no autoboot. I
> called a friend if he could create an MS-DOS boot disk for me. But "he
> was too busy". So I went to a small local computer store and asked the
> guy to create one. He asked for the equivalent of $5 today! SOAB! But I
> needed Windows 95 back, so I paid. Never went to that shop again.
>

Cut the storeowner some slack, he has to make a living.

I never used windows myself until XP. I went right from DOS to OS/2, and
compared to OS/2, all versions of windows were cr@p.

--
Pete
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412617 is a reply to message #412608] Fri, 03 December 2021 15:22 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Fri, 03 Dec 2021 09:46:49 -0500
Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:

> Interesting to see, how IBM could be so blind not to have forecasted
> this. OK, they did big business with large corporations before the birth
> of the IBM PC in 1981.

I think that's the point. IBM were never really a hardware company
they provided hardware and software as part of a package that included the
up front consultancy and ongoing support. The main business was in the
service contracts, training courses, media and stationary supplies, forward
planning consultancy and any other ongoing contracts they could find to sell
once they had a customer on the hook.

The PC was supposed to fit into this like the phone systems and
tape storage racks. It worked for a bit but then customers started to buy
clones instead (first as well) because they were cheaper and faster and in
the shop round the corner. Even when they had real PCs supplied by IBM they
kept putting competitor's expansion cards and drives in rather than let
their IBM rep tell them what to buy as normal.

The PS/2 was an attempt to fix this - IBM didn't care much about
the mass market but their captive market was finding out that there was
more to the world than IBM ... not good from IBM's perspective. So enter
the PS/2, make the bus expensive so their won't be much competition for
the expansion cards or the machines then our customers will have to buy
from us to get the real IBM experience that they can't get elsewhere. OK
that didn't quite go as planned - try something else ...

... which worked out a treat in the end, they still have the
Z-series market working just the way they want it and they even got some
dosh out of Lenovo for that pesky PC business.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412619 is a reply to message #412611] Fri, 03 December 2021 16:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Bob Eager

On Fri, 03 Dec 2021 08:50:03 -0800, Robin Vowels wrote:

> IBM and Microsoft were working in a co-operative venture, that enabled
> OS/2 and Windows to be run on the same computer.
> .
> IBM gave up on that venture after OS/2 Warp.

It wasn't co-operative. Microsoft hated it.

Steve Ballmer was quoted as saying that if IBM got Windows running inside
OS/2, he'd east a floppy disk.

IBM did it, but Steve reneged. IBM distributed free chocolate floppy
disks on a number of occasions.

The last IBM version of OS/2 (which I have) supported Windows 3.1
programs. Even some Win32 ones - I have my Palm Pilot software running
nicely.



--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412620 is a reply to message #412619] Fri, 03 December 2021 18:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ted@loft.tnolan.com ( is currently offline  ted@loft.tnolan.com (
Messages: 161
Registered: August 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In article <j0vi7mFhvioU9@mid.individual.net>,
Bob Eager <news0009@eager.cx> wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Dec 2021 08:50:03 -0800, Robin Vowels wrote:
>
>> IBM and Microsoft were working in a co-operative venture, that enabled
>> OS/2 and Windows to be run on the same computer.
>> .
>> IBM gave up on that venture after OS/2 Warp.
>
> It wasn't co-operative. Microsoft hated it.
>
> Steve Ballmer was quoted as saying that if IBM got Windows running inside
> OS/2, he'd east a floppy disk.
>
> IBM did it, but Steve reneged. IBM distributed free chocolate floppy
> disks on a number of occasions.
>
> The last IBM version of OS/2 (which I have) supported Windows 3.1
> programs. Even some Win32 ones - I have my Palm Pilot software running
> nicely.
>

I drove up to a Bank of America (or whatever it was called then)
ATM that was rebooting after a thunderstorm once, and it was OS/2.

Only time I ever saw a copy..
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412625 is a reply to message #412547] Sat, 04 December 2021 01:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ted@loft.tnolan.com ( is currently offline  ted@loft.tnolan.com (
Messages: 161
Registered: August 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In article <soefiq$sst$1@dont-email.me>,
Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> wrote:
> On 12/2/2021 10:50 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>
>> I'm typing this on a keyboard with a PC style barrel connector,
>> connected to a PC to PS/2 adaptor, connected to a PS/2 to USB adaptor...
>>
> Oy veh, potential failure point stacked upon failure point. Everything
> I ever did that involved stacked adaptors.

Plugged into a dual KVM switch..
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412663 is a reply to message #412547] Mon, 06 December 2021 10:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Kurt Weiske

To: Andreas Kohlbach
-=> Andreas Kohlbach wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

AK> Cannot remember what ports a desktop had (my last desktop; switched to
AK> notebooks thereafter) I bought late 1999. A 56.000 baud modem was
AK> plugged into one of these - probably serial, and PS/2 faded into
AK> history already.

Most only had an AT-style keyboard port. All of the other ports were on add-
on cards.

I had an AT; it had a ISA multi-IO card with 2 serial, one parallel and one
game port. Video was on a separate card. If you had a bus mouse or a
proprietary CD-ROM, they had their own card. Ditto for sound.

The hard disk controller was also on a card, first MFM using two ribbon
cables and later 40-pin ATA ribbon cables. Kids these days don't know how
easy they've got it with regards to cable management. :)

kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet


--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
* realitycheckBBS - Aptos, CA - telnet://realitycheckbbs.org
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412666 is a reply to message #412589] Thu, 09 December 2021 09:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Quadibloc is currently offline  Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Thursday, December 2, 2021 at 1:43:00 PM UTC-7, Questor wrote:

> It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s when they
> tried to reign in control of the clone market by coming out with a proprietary
> bus. (Was that EISA, or something else? I'm getting a memory error on the
> correct acronym.)

No; ISA was the original bus of the AT, and EISA was the alternative to the
proprietary bus used by IBM in the PS/2. Which didn't have an acronym, it
was just called the Micro Channel bus.

John Savard
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412668 is a reply to message #412666] Thu, 09 December 2021 10:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: J. Clarke

On Thu, 9 Dec 2021 06:18:39 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca>
wrote:

> On Thursday, December 2, 2021 at 1:43:00 PM UTC-7, Questor wrote:
>
>> It wasn't all Microsoft. IBM shot themselves in the foot in the '80s when they
>> tried to reign in control of the clone market by coming out with a proprietary
>> bus. (Was that EISA, or something else? I'm getting a memory error on the
>> correct acronym.)
>
> No; ISA was the original bus of the AT, and EISA was the alternative to the
> proprietary bus used by IBM in the PS/2. Which didn't have an acronym, it
> was just called the Micro Channel bus.

Most of us called it "MCA". IBM didn't officially because the Music
Corporation of America got snotty about it--I once got a cease and
desist letter from them over posting on either USENET or CompuServe. I
told them that if they wanted to sue me I would save them the trouble
and that they should let me know where to send the two pairs of torn
jeans, 5 stained t-shirts, 8 pairs of of used underwear, and the worn
out sneakers, but that if they wanted the beat-up tomcat they were
going to have to arrange transportation. I continued using "MCA" and
never heard another peep out of them.


>
> John Savard
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412670 is a reply to message #412620] Fri, 10 December 2021 07:12 Go to previous message
Jan van den Broek is currently offline  Jan van den Broek
Messages: 70
Registered: April 2012
Karma: 0
Member
3 Dec 2021 23:24:34 GMT
ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) schrieb:

[Schnipp]

> I drove up to a Bank of America (or whatever it was called then)
> ATM that was rebooting after a thunderstorm once, and it was OS/2.

At a ppoe (fifteen years ago), we sold network-equipment which ran on
OS/2, very stable, but we weren't allowed to tell the clients that it
wasn't a Windows-machine.
--
A tuna is a way of Liff

Jan v/d Broek
balglaas@xs4all.nl
Re: IBM2Dos [message #412672 is a reply to message #412666] Thu, 09 December 2021 11:17 Go to previous message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Kurt Weiske

To: Quadibloc
-=> Quadibloc wrote to alt.folklore.computers <=-

Qu> No; ISA was the original bus of the AT, and EISA was the alternative to
Qu> the proprietary bus used by IBM in the PS/2. Which didn't have an
Qu> acronym, it was just called the Micro Channel bus.

I heard MCA a lot - Micro Channel Architecture.

I worked for a large retail/mail order company back in 1991 as an IT
"Generalist" and the shop was all IBM, from the token ring network to 2
S/38s and 2 AS/400s, PS/2 model 60s for admin users and 80s for power users.
IBM 4019 laser printers. The IBM reps referred to MCA a lot.

Oddly enough, I went to work in local government in 2016. The raised floor
server room was still there and you could see the outlines where the
midrange iron used to be, now filled with racks of intel servers. In the
corner was the last remaining AS/400, and next to it was a PS/2 model 80,
Model M keyboard, IBM ball mouse, 8514 VGA monitor and a 4019 laser printer
- they kept it around with an external tape drive to pull data from AS/400
backups. The kit looked like the same one I had used 25 years earlier.


kurt weiske | kweiske at realitycheckbbs dot org
| http://realitycheckbbs.org
| 1:218/700@fidonet





.... Always the first steps
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
* realitycheckBBS - Aptos, CA - telnet://realitycheckbbs.org
  Switch to threaded view of this topic Create a new topic Submit Reply
Previous Topic: BTC is not Bitcoin - Craig Wright Wins
Next Topic: Halcyon days of cereal
Goto Forum:
  

-=] Back to Top [=-
[ Syndicate this forum (XML) ] [ RSS ] [ PDF ]

Current Time: Thu Mar 28 09:08:16 EDT 2024

Total time taken to generate the page: 0.09505 seconds