In the mid-1980’s, Microsoft produced an expansion card for the IBM PC and PC XT, known as the Mach 10. In addition to occupying an expansion slot, it also replaced your CPU: You unplugged your old and busted 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU and plugged into the now-empty socket a special adapter that led via a ribbon cable back to the Mach 10 card. On the Mach 10 card was the new hotness: A 9.54 MHz 8086 CPU. This gave you a 2× performance upgrade for a lot less money than an IBM PC AT. The Mach 10 also came with a mouse port, so you could add a mouse without having to burn an additional expansion slot.
[…]The Mach 20 took the same basic idea as the Mach 10, but to the next level: As before, you unplugged your old 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU and replaced it with an adapter that led via ribbon cable to the Mach 20 card, which you plugged into an expansion slot. This time, the Mach 20 had an 8 MHz 80286 CPU, so you were really cooking with gas now. And, like the Mach 10, it had a mouse port built in. According to a review in Info World, it retailed for $495.
[…]Microsoft also produced a customized version of OS/2 for the Mach 20. Despite being tailor-made for the Mach 20, it still had terrible performance problems.
One of my former colleagues spoke with the person who took over from him as the support specialist for OS/2 for Mach 20. According to that person’s memory (which given the amount time that has elapsed, means that we should basically be saying “according to legend” at this point), a total of eleven copies of “OS/2 for Mach 20” were ever sold, and eight of them were returned.
That leaves three customers who purchased a copy and didn’t return it. And the support specialist had personally spoken with two of them.
If these numbers are accurate, I believe this makes OS/2 for Mach 20 a strong candidate for being the worst-selling actually-shipped Microsoft software product of all time.
We have to find this. Someone must have a copy of OS/2 for Mach 20 in a box in the attic somewhere. This is the final boss of software preservation.
Read the InfoWorld article – it provides so much context for why this flopped.
The article is called “With Mach 20 PCs, XTs Can Now Run OS/2”, and goes on to list the ability to run OS/2 as being the primary reason to buy the hardware. However, actually running OS/2 also requires a memory upgrade, so in addition to the $495 Mach 20, there’s a $495 Memory Plus card that includes 512Kb of RAM. It can support up to 3.5Mb, although prices for that are not provided. OS/2 will need more than 512Kb – OS/2 1.0 lists 1.5Mb as a minimum requirement, and 2Mb is needed to run DOS applications in OS/2. An XT would only include 640Kb maximum, so the absolute minimum would be an additional 1Mb.
The article also mentions that it performed badly because it’s still using the original XT MFM disk, which is much slower than an AT IDE disk. The article mentions it’s possible to use SmartDrive, but that requires more memory.
OS/2 for the Mach 20 costs $325. So the article says it costs at least $1315, but would need to cost much more for enough memory to actually run OS/2, and after that it’ll still perform much worse for every disk operation than a real AT.
I had no idea there were CPU upgrade boards for the XT.
Certainly sounded like a bad idea.
Getting a CPU upgrade board was cheaper than a new computer and often didn’t require approval from senior management. Double or triple performance without having to annoy a senior VP was good reason.
I mean, back in the day those weren’t cheap computers. So getting 2x the CPU for a fraction of the price seemed like a good investment.
One of the points made when Raymond Chen published this back in December was budgeting. The XTs were purchased from capital budgets with depreciation schedules and planned lifetimes. Once hand-me-down computers have reached all the empty desks, replacing an unexpectedly-obsolete one on someone’s desk had to come out of operations budget like repair. And it was still cheaper.
So these products existed to adapt the pace of tech in the 80s to processes and regulations that pre-date computers and post-date the proliferation of cars.
I recall at least two other CPU upgrades for XT (I was reading their reviews in due time). One was 386 for XT. Another was more interesting – it contained Motorola 68k.
Very interesting, yes, but keep scrolling on the advertisement and you get a lovely add for a Northgate omnikey 102. https://books.google.com/books?id=pDsEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PT16&pg=PT19#v=onepage&q&f=false God tier keyboard and they knew it . Just checkout some of the quotes on it
” 12 function keys on the left where God intended them”
“Built to last with full metal base (many keyboards are all plastic). Omnikey/102 has a solid 5.5 lb “sit down on your desk to stay feel”:
And yes, they have the holy grail of key switches: Blue alps.
Now this, this is an awesome article!
More, please!
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