Re: Stolen designs

In article <59ru829m1p0u7iui8luip9tibt5sh4dq0c@xxxxxxx>,
gfretwell@xxxxxxx says...
On 13 Jun 2006 21:08:21 +0200, David <david@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:19:01 GMT, mzenier@xxxxxxxxxx (Mark Zenier)
wrote:


Microsoft was a half a dozen guys eating Pizza in Albuquerque, and
IBM was in full "we invent everything we need" mode back when the 8086
was cooked up.

It always seemed to me that both Microsoft and Intel were out of the
mainstream of computing, which is why we wound up locked into the
bizarre, short-sighted kluges we have today. If IBM had picked the 68K
and Digital Research...

John



The IBM engineers wanted the 68k - it was vastly better suited for the
job. But some suit decided the 68k was too expensive, and the 8088 was
cheaper. It didn't matter that it was old-fashioned and a poor design
even when it was made, since they didn't plan on selling more than a few
thousand machines anyway. The original PC was just a marketing
experiment, to help find out what the market really needed - then they
would re-design it with a sensible choice of processor.
The strange thing is IBM had plenty of 68k experience. It was the
engine in a lot of IBM custom built test equipment and the Personal
Terminal (an 80s version of the blackberry) that every field guy
carried was 68k based.

Intel was selected for business reasons, not technical ones, nor
price.

--
Keith
.

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