Submitted by “August 12, 1981 marks the birth of the IBM PC, the computer that single-handedly turned personal computing to the business market. IBM’s success forced Apple and others to change their focus, and most personal computer companies from the pre-IBM era have become historical footnotes. By 2006, even Apple Computer had followed IBM’s lead and adopted Intel CPUs and built Macs that can boot Microsoft Windows.” Yes, boys and girls, she’s that old. A ‘thank you’ is in order, I suppose.
I wonder what it would be like right now if IBM had chosen the motorola 68k cpu. They supposedly decided it was ‘too powerful’ for their purposes and stuck with the intel chips…
The should have waited for the IBM 801, the precursor to the PPC 601. The decision to license the Intel 8088 was primarily due to the need to show management a prototype in a month’s time. Likewise, they could have licensed CP/M from the leading PC OS vendor, Digital Research, but they wouldn’t let them do the port without signing an NDA.
Part of the reason why Microsoft’s QDOS port was so crappy was because IBM only gave MS one IBM PC prototype and imposed paranoid restrictions on its use. After the IBM PC came out, IBM didn’t have a license to distribute modified versions of QDOS, but Microsoft quickly improved it and sold it as MS-DOS.
In short, IBM made a huge mistake with the IBM PC by 1) rushing to market with a third-party microprocessor before their own superior chip was ready, and 2) licensing the OS from a small company with big eyes. The result? By far and away the most successful computing platform in history, and IBM’s most dreaded competitor to this day.
Disclaimer: On these forums I comment as an independent observer, not as an IBM employee or a representative thereof.
The should have waited for the IBM 801, the precursor to the PPC 601.
Waiting for the 801 would have been a mistake, because it turned out to be a compromised implementation with poor performance.
IBM didn’t go with the 68k because it was late, not because it was ‘too powerful’.
This article just hits the high points with little political or emotional insight into the personalities involved. But it’s a good overview. For those who want more, I noticed Steve Levy has re-released his excellent computer history book, “Hackers, Heros of the Computer Revolution.”
I believe that we should have changed architectures already, both processor and chipset. More efficient architectures can be built, with reasonably good emulation to run legacy software (pun intended), and then re-compile to native mode. Apple proved it can be done.
The burden carried by the current PC compatibles, how powerful they may be, is still quite high. I think we would all benefit from a new architecture. I believed the time had come when Motorola, IBM and Apple announced the PREP/CHRP platform, and Microsoft supported it. But it sank faster than a rock.
I hope we’re going on a good path…
We have changed architectures. As far as “chipsets”, whatever that means, today’s PC looks nothing like the original PC. We’ve gone through several generations of busses, hard drive interfaces and memory architectures. Don’t even get me started on video architecture. The modern PC has advanced, optimized I/O, and has rid itself of all legacy PC I/O support (unless you count the PS/2 mouse).
As for the processor – a modern AMD or Intel x86-64 CPU looks nothing at all like the original 80×86 CPUs. Maybe even up to the 486 you could have made the claim that were were hobbled by the past, but with each successive generation, beginning with the Pentium, the old architecture has been abstracted away.
You can still run some original DOS programs on a modern PC on windows, but it’s in a heavily emulated evironment. Many such old binaries need full emulation, windows can’t do it all in a VDM.
It’s gotten to the point where many PCs, even if they had the floppy required, won’t boot DOS.
“The burden carried by the current PC compatibles, how powerful they may be, is still quite high.”
Please substantiate this. I’ve read that the overhead required to support and convert the x86 instruction set to something more readily optimized on modern CPUs is relatively fixed, thus the percentage of chip realestate dedicated to this task shrinks with each generation. At this point, it less than 10%.
Apple, who you hold up as an example of successfully switching to a new architecture, did in fact just recently complete a switch to a new architecture – the standard Intel PC architecture – the result? The fasted Macs ever.
“and has rid itself of all legacy PC I/O support”
I’ve seen a few “legacy free” PCs but other than those new PCs today still have a parallel port, support for two serial ports, game port, and floppy drive. Every one of them has basic VGA support and ancient things like the two cascaded IRQ controllers. Basically any program that would run on the original IBM PC will probably still run today. Incompatibilities with the OS you are running such as Windows don’t count. I’ve yet to ever see any PC that cannot boot DOS. If there was one it wouldn’t be an x86 compatible PC.
“By 2006, even Apple Computer had followed IBM’s lead and adopted Intel CPUs and built Macs that can boot Microsoft Windows.””
The really funny thing is that Apple moved from IBM CPUs to Intel. Not even IBM uses their Power chips for their PCs. OK, they sold their PC business to Leveno (spelling?)
IBM uses POWER chips in all System P and some System I servers. Starting in 2007, System I, P, and Z (midrange cross-platform, high-end UNIX, and mainframes) will all share a common processor architecture based on eClipz (POWER6). System X will continue to use Intel processors, and will begin using AMD processors, especially in the BladeCenter line.
The consumer PC market is low-ticket and low-margin, and the only reason to stay in this business is to build mindshare for your enterprise-class platforms. Part of the reason why IBM can afford to divest of its PC division is because of the growth of open standards and cross-platform software in the enterprise. The other justification is the focus on global business services as a sales tool.
For what it’s worth (very little), Intel’s flagship Woodcrest chips aren’t exactly trouncing the G5, IBM’s 3-year-old, stripped-down, single-core version of the POWER4. But it gives some perspective on how IBM and Apple are in two different markets and two different leagues.
Disclaimer: All information is public, not talking for IBM.
“Starting in 2007, System I, P, and Z (midrange cross-platform, high-end UNIX, and mainframes) will all share a common processor architecture based on eClipz (POWER6).”
Watch it! Some people will read “common processor architecture” and jump to “AIX, zOS, and AS400 will be able to run on the same machine because there is only 1 processor. They’re emulating the zArchitecture.” There will be a z6 and a p6. They are 2 distinct processors with some shared logic outside of the pipeline! The design mantra is to share where it is practical.
right now it is like $150 for a new computer
It always amazes me just how powerful the IBM brand name was in the business world back then.
Compare the IBM PC with some of the other business computers around at the time. The IBM was more expensive than most, yet comparatively primitive in a lot of ways.
For example, look at the ACT Sirius 1 (also known as the Victor 9000), an 8088 based desktop PC around at the same time. For significantly less than the cheapest IBM PC it offered 128Kb RAM, an 800×400 display, and two 1.2Mb floppy drives. While the basic IBM PC had half the RAM, much lower resolution graphics, and a pretty pathetic 160Kb floppy drive. The IBM PC didn’t even have the advantage of a large catalogue of software, at the time there was more available for CP/M than MS DOS.
Yet purely because of the IBM brand it was far more popular than it’s competitors and now most of them are long forgotten. Of course that brand name didn’t help as much when IBM were competing with cheaper PC clones…
Such fond memories, skipped quite a few meals to bag a year old smokin’ 4.77mhz 8088 with a 13 inch amber, added a tallgrass 10/10 10 meg winchester/dc300 cartridge tape unit so heavy it bowed the top of the pc case running pcdos with lattice C and man I was one happy camper.
Here are some more links:
IBM has an intro piece
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_intro.html
which leads into a short but interesting set of pages with specifics, genealogy and original press release of the model 5150 and subsequent IBM PC offerings (including the PS/2s)
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_reference.html
News.com also has a feature that starts with a Michael Dell interview http://news.com.com/Age+of+computing+The+PC+turns+25/2009-1042_3-60…
but frankly it is rather dull.
Much better is the linked piece published for the 20th anniversary of the PC
http://news.com.com/The+IBM+PC+turns+20/2009-1040_3-271341.html
Digibarn has also a feature and some movies
http://www.digibarn.com/stories/ibm-pc-25/index.html
They also show the cover of the original brochure for the IBM PC which had a Chaplin lookalike. It’s just the cover but I managed to scan the internal pages from my copy and put them on my Flickr account
http://www.flickr.com/search/?z=t&w=all&q=PC+IBM+brochure
Oh, and… happy birthday, PC!
nda
p.s. For the Admins: if you merge the info and links to the OSAlert item feel free to remove this comment.
Edited 2006-08-12 00:10
Ahhh, memories. That huge, solid-feeling power switch. One of the best keyboards ever. Running Lotus 1-2-3 from 6 floppy disks. That cheesy donkey game that came with it. A game collection that consisted of Zork and Microsoft Decathlon. Incessant arguments with my friends at school about Apple vs PC.
To me, the period of time between the Apple ][ and Windows 3.1 was probably the most dynamic and exciting time in the history of the industry. You can take memory, gigahertz, 3d and drive space for granted now, but back then men were men and applications were crammed on floppies and squeezed into tiny amounts of memory that occupied more motherboard space than a Mac Mini and if you were lucky, displayed on horrific headache inducing 12″ color monitors the size of a microwave oven. It was good times…
*happy sigh*
…and the big egos of the Amiga crowd as their machine tromped both the Macs and Win 3.1 for less than either of them cost.
It’s kind of a pity that geoWorks didn’t get their PC operating system bundled with DR-DOS. You’d have had a real challenger to Windows then on the PC clones.
But alas that was the time that Commodore’s management decided to shoot themselves in the foot and strip down the Amiga 600 from the Amiga 500 that preceeded it and then go into voluntary liquidation rather than admit what they did was wrong.
*sad sigh*
hmm, i still have a A500 with 1MB in the basement.
to bad i was just a kid when i used it, and didnt know what i could have done with it besides playing games…
I never had the original PC but I do still have an IBM PC/XT with the green monochrome display. Even when I got my first new computer in 1998 I eventually turned back to the XT to have fun with. Windows 95 was ok but it just wasn’t the same. Getting on the internet and checking my email from DOS on the XT was much more enjoyable to me than clicking on the blue IE icon. It felt like I was really doing something, where the new Windows PC was less of a computer and more of an appliance like a microwave or dish washer. My XT still works but it’s in storage now. I just don’t have room to set it up. Perhaps I’ll dig it out and celebrate the PC’s birthday with a game of Zork though.
Perhaps I’ll dig it out and celebrate the PC’s birthday with a game of Zork though.
See, and that’s the thing… In this crazy world of mega fps and crazy first person shooters with 38-channel digital sound, people no longer appreciate the simple elegance of “GET SWORD” and avoiding Grues.
As far as I’m concerned, Zork is one of the greatest computer games of all time. Got my father to buy it the same day we picked up our original IBM PC 5150, first thing I loaded after it was unpacked and set up. Loved it so much that I even became a beta-tester for Infocom before I was old enough to have a driver’s license. How geeky is that?
It was a simpler time…
* One more sigh *
I actually quite enjoy the infocom games
I play MUDs and games like nethack and zork a lot. People I know just can’t see why I like them so much…
Indeed the old games are excellent. I think the best thing lately is Scummvm. Lets you play most of the old Lucasarts adventure games…. But it was a company called Revolution that decided to open source 2 of its games.
The worst things though, can be found here…. http://donley.tk
ScummVM is really nice. They are adding support for more and more old games all the time, like Simon the Sorcerer and Legend of Kyrandia. The old LucasArts adventures are still my favorites though.
the infamous “ad”: http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/newads2/seriouslyIBM_l.jpg
Well, I can link to some hilariously dated IBM ads instead
http://digitize.textfiles.com/items/1983-ibm-usingcomputers/
Ok, the rest isn’t funny, just quaint:
http://digitize.textfiles.com/items/1982-ibm-personal-computer/
http://digitize.textfiles.com/items/1982-ibm-education/
That kid beside the keyboard should not have been allowed in front of a camera with hair like that.
did his mum put a pudding bowl over his head, and cut the hair around it ?
I vet he is looking at that picture today and wondering what is worse…
1: his hairdo (or hairdon’t in that case)
2: his grooooooovy jumper
3: his “STEPFORD WIVES” mum
4: his geriatric dad
5: his keyboard not plugged in !
Wow, they’ve been pulling those sort of facile stunts for quite a long time.