Slashdot Mirror
How the IBM PC Changed the World
Sabah Arif writes "On August 12, 1981, IBM released the IBM PC 5150. In less than two years, IBM had created a computer that would not only change IBM, but the entire world, mostly because it did not follow IBM tradition. It used an outside microprocessor (instead of the nascent IBM 801), operating system and software. Low End Mac recounts the birth of the IBM PC 5150."
I don't know why it is considered so great historically. CPM machines had spreadsheets and dBASE and word-processors and were doing quite well. The IBM PC stole that market and killed CPM because of the brand name. CPM would have been the base framework of the machines we use today had it not been for the IBM PC. In fact, the PC barrowed CPM-machine hardware in many cases.
Table-ized A.I.
On the one hand, the x86 is a terrible design. It doesn't have enough registers, and the assembly interface is awkward (especially in the FPU). On the other hand, the openness of the architecture has freed us from the shackles of dependency on a single company for hardware (which DRM would like to lay back on us). If you don't like Intel, you can go to AMD. There are tons of board manufacturers to choose from, and all the parts need to be (more or less) interoperable.
This prevents one manufacturer from imposing their wishes on us. If Microsoft had control of their personal computer platform the way apple does, we surely would have lost the battle to DRM already. Computers would be more expensive because there wouldn't be competition from cheap manufacturers in Taiwan to drive the prices down.
The x86 may be an ugly beast, but it gives us the freedom that only openness can bring. And I will drink to that.
Qxe4
Just after the PC introduction (at NCC fall 1981) I told my father-in-law that we should re-implement the software used for OCR processing in his downtown office. We should select something PC-compatible since this new open architecture was bound to generate compatibles, thereby ensuring a pretty long lifetime.
:-)
After looking around the market, we bought two Columbia PCs, one desktop (with an immense, never to be filled, 10 MB hard drive) and one luggable, for the same price as a single IBM PC.
The Columbia machine came with a BIOS/HW manual that documented all the various lowlevel interfaces, including the port adresses for things like the serial port and the interrupt controller, which allowed me to write a hw interrupt driver for the incoming 9600 baud OCR data stream.
Columbia was both earlier than Compaq and more compatible, but that didn't matter, they still went under a couple of years later. The PCs lived for many years however.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
"Probably"? :-) When I was in college, Apples were 'it' for the in-school computers -- IBM hadn't developed the 'PC' yet. We still had terminals and modems for accessing the CDC mainframe, but the Apples were there, and they were all yours. No sharing, no operators, just pop in your disc and go. It was an amazing machine.
I wanted to get one for home, but my dad told me we weren't going to buy an Apple. He was waiting for the IBM home computer to come out. He said "IBM doesn't do anything half-assed. If there's a business need for it, IBM will come along and completely dominate the market. Apple will be pushed aside; they'll never make it as the mainstream computer for businesses."
I, of course, couldn't believe that for a second. Every school in the state had Apples, they were everywhere, and this IBM thing didn't even exist! How could he even think that a company with no experience in home computers would take over the market, especially since Apple was so well entrenched?
Y'know, I wish I'd listened to my dad more. He was a very, very wise man.
John
What the IBM 5100 really represents, in retrospect, is the beginning of the turnaround for IBM in the minds of the public. It's difficult to think of another example of a company so large and so universally despised eventually becoming the (mostly) developer friendly company it is today.
By allowing their teams to skirt the system occasionally, we've seen truly open hardware (PowerPC) availablity, open source contributions, free training seminars for developers, etc. The 5100 was the first great example of the success that a little rule-breaking can bring to the company.
IMO, it was exactly that product and the example that it was to IBM internally that allowed IBM to do the one thing no one was entirely sure it would be able to do in the age of personal computers -- survive.
My hat's off to the improvements IBM has made in the last 25 years, and I hope that those lessons won't be forgotten over the next 25 years.
* Before some humourless nerd points this out, yes, I know a good chunk of the graphics in modern games is generated by a dedicated GPU. Lets pretend the turbo button affects the video card too, okay? It's a personal fantasy of mine.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
In fact all the early processors had their architectural horrors. The 9900 had an absurd system in which the bit order of IO was reverse numbered with respect to the bus and we actually got an I/O board into production before we realised this owing to the poor documentation. The 68000 constantly caught out assembly programmers because of its word alignment issues, resulting in one occasion in a programmer going near berserk and having a screaming fit in the lab, fortunately when the boss was out at a meeting. And don't talk to me about the F100/L except to say that Ferranti did not get as much pain as they deserved for creating it. Not that it would ever have become mainstream...
It's easy to be clever with hindsight, but the Power architecture came later and too late. After, as I recall, the NS32032 which, despite some performance issues, was a processor I really liked.
Pining for the fjords
What I find interesting to speculate on, is if they would've been bigger now if they had used some sort of "trusted hardware" contract, the same as which microsoft already tries to put through for some time now: forcing suppliers to develop hardware/software only under contract, and making sure that only hardware from those suppliers will actually function on their platform (not that the hardware capacity was there to check stuff like that at the time, I guess).
Or, would they have been marginalized by the more open competition if they would've chosen that path, and their current technique to support open standards, but deliver paid service and support for companies that need reliable software/hardware, is actually the best one?
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
For the record, all the popular small systems of the time had third party add-ons. That's a tradition that goes back all the way to the Altair. The Apple II didn't even have an RF modulator, because a third-party deal saved some headaches for Apple. All the systems came with full documentation. Apple even gave you the source code for the whole ROM in a separate manual right in the box, along with the schematics. Cloning the BIOS happened long after the PC had established its place - and the first clones had significant compatibility problems. Clones really didn't take off until Compac beat IBM to market with a 386-based machine.
Funny you should mention it. I was just reading this fascinating account by Steve Wozniak about how he invented the Apple I (semi-technical), and he talks a bit about the Altair.
//gs?
Anyone have a "Woz"
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Actually, had PC clones not emerged, Microsoft would have been relegated to the scrapheap of history as just another vendor of a BASIC interpreter. And a fairly crappy BASIC at that.
However, once the clones emerged, MS had it made. IBM was certainly not prepared to put in the engineering work to make PC-DOS run on non-IBM hardware. Microsoft, however, was willing to do that work (or at least let PC OEMs pay Microsoft to teach them how to do it themselves), and offer pack-in deals. As such, IBM PCs came bundled with PC-DOS, and every other machine came bundled with MS-DOS.
Back then, just about everyone in the engineering community knew MS-DOS was shit, and would steer anyone who would listen toward PC-DOS, or Digital Research's CP/M-86 or Concurrent CP/M. However, most end-users considered MS-DOS to be "good enough," and it was "free," and they wanted to be able to run the same software they used on the real IBM PC at work on their cheap(er) clone at home. And besides any bugs were the application's fault.
Oh, and you're also forgetting what the gold standard of PC compatibility was at the time:
Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Amazing foresight? Maybe, to some degree. But in large measure Gates fell flat on his face into a pile of amazingly good luck.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
>Business people tended to view Apple computers and Commodore computers as toys.
I'm not convinced. Over here in the UK CBM Pets and Apple IIs were all over the business world. Heck, even huge multinational banks used Apple II's. I knew some poor guy who had to log credits in to an Apple II running a database by Stoneware.
Business magazines of that era were full of ads for Apple IIs and all the business software/hardware you could buy for them.
Early reviews of the PC were also very negative, most noting Apple had nothing to worry about.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil