20th Anniversary Of The PC

cmowire writes "I didn't realize this till I was debugging a stock database and saw the PR piece, but today is the twentieth aniversary of the IBM PC. IBM has a tribute page."

Re:Back in my day...

[Anonymous Coward]

*shrug*

Back in my day, which happens to be your day, *I* had a fully pre-emtive multitasking operating system running on a machine full of co-processors with no such silly 640k limit. AND I had graphics capabilities that left most PC heads drooling.

It's a damn pity the IBM PC won the race. We've spent almost 20 years catching up to where we were back in the early 80's.

Re:Microsoft's New Slogan

[flynt]

As opposed to Linux, which has made huge inroads in originality, striking advances in graphical user interfaces, etc...

Seriously, what would qualify as an "original operating system"? Can you name one? Can you tell me what features it has that can't be traced back to some prior development?

You were using the wrong computer.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll never understand what drew people to the archaic monster called the IBM PC. It's not like we didn't have more advanced computers at the time--we did, and they weren't filled with stupidities like segmented addressing, DOS and fiddling with IRQ's. The IBM PC was an el-cheapo cobbled-together beast. IBM KNEW they were cutting corners and going with the cheapest crap they could get their hands on.

Celebrate the IBM PC? Certainly not. The "PC" has been the millstone around the neck of this industry for 20 years.

Re:I dunno, it's kinda disturbing actually.

[kfg]

Well no, not JUST marketing. First of all there was accident. IBM adopted the open architecture of the PC because they came late to the market and then had to release product on as short a development cycle as possible. Thus off the shelf parts from outside suppliers. Had they gotten off their butts just a year or two earlier and developed from the ground up it never would have happened the way it did.

The existence of Microsoft as we know it is due to the accident of IBM not being able to strike a deal with Digital right off the bat, ( they DID reach a deal with Digital and by the time the PC hit the market you COULD by it off the shelf with Digital's CP/M, nobody did though).

The NEXT accident was IBM figuring that the open architechture was safe because the *BIOS* was propriatary. Little did they think that it would not only be reverse engineered but that the *courts* would find this legal.

The NEXT accident was the UNIX guys looking at the whole affair as "toy" computers and operating systems. Everyone at the time WANTED to run UNIX. Everyone knew it was the REAL operating system.

It cost $2500 minimum, CP/M was one tenth that and PC-DOS was one tenth THAT. Had the UNIX guys taken the PC seriously and realized the potential market and priced accordingly, about $50, we'd all be using UNIX today and not having to dual boot. *MS itself would have used UNIX had it been financially feasable.* Indeed, "Quick and Dirty OS" was a quick and dirty ripoff of UNIX needing a few years more development.

( As an aside have you noticed that depending on the circumstances MS attacks Linux either for being "Old" tech OR "Too new and undeveloped"? Cute, huh?)

And thus was the Intel/MS/IBM unholy trinity born.

Pure accident.

THEN came the marketing, and it was good. Good enough for a few years to invoke the third factor that has brought us the pile of cruft and kludge we all know and love today.

The leverage of installed base.

IBM/Intel/MS all realized the value of installed base and maintained backward compatability. All of their competitors relied on developing higher quality, more advanced systems. The consumer didn't want that. They wanted cheap, and they wanted to continue to run the programs they already had.

I was a Tandy guy. Why did I buy my first PC? Because none of my friends had TRS-80s. They all had IBM compatables.

This is the power of installed base.

What do we do about it? Damned if *I* know.

The fact of the matter is that the average high school geek could, at this point, pull an "Apple" and develop a new home computer and operating system combo that blows everything on the market right now clean away with an investment of about two years time.

But who would BUY it? THAT is the question. And the answer is clearly noone. Why not? Because we don't do it that way. The leverage of installed base again, although this time on a largely psychological factor.

Think about this. The most commonly voiced complaint about *NIX is that the CLI is too opaque. Why dosn't someone rewrite the CLI?

Well, the fact of the matter is that literally dozens HAVE. Linux allows anyone who wants to take the time to set up a directory structure, named however they wish, and a CL shell with any command structure they want. Many of those that have already written are in many ways superior to what we all use and available for download if you take a little time to search them out.

Nobody cares. Why not? We don't do it that way.

The power of installed base.

Gnome and KDE are most criticized for reproducing the Windows GUI interface. Just about everyone old enough to remember its introduction hates it. Remember seeing the "START" button for the first time and thinking "What the fsck is THAT and what goofball thought it up?"?

Other superior GUI's are available. We don't use them. Why not? Well, we just don't, that's all.

The power of installed base.

When will the PC as we know it die and finally be replaced with superior technology, most of it availble for years already? The instant no one cares about the installed base anymore.

And not one instant before.

KFG

house built upon the sand

[beanerspace]

Gad, 20 years ?! Who would have thought that a machine, built on something so lame as a 16-bit program counter, a 16-bit ALU, four 16-bit general purpose registers, along with a few 16-bit index registers, and oh yes, that all important 8-bit external bus, would have so forever changed teh face of computing ?

Personally, while the PC is significant, I believe it was the ... and please forgive the bad joke, the attack of the clones in the 80's, that finally put the brain-damaged 80n86 PCs over the top of superior personal computer architectures.

Should we mourn for the Home Computers them?

[Pope Raymond Lama]

I don't know about you, but this plataform is just sick. Do I get mad all the times I stop to think on what the home computer industry could have brought us. Instead, from the tenths of playfull, colorfull, imaginative toys from the early 80's, what did emerge as the "winner" for the 90's, and now, beyond?

The only "Personal Computer" of the time that was, ground up, designed for "serious businness", and thus could display 80 characters of green text in a row, and wow, it could even beep. Who would want pretty toys like the Apple II's, ZX Spectruns, Atari ST's, Amigas? SO much color capacity, sound, speed...it could not be possible fopr one to want to work with stuff like this.

You may be all happy and well with this crap, being refurbished over and over. Were it not for the other only alternative [apple.com] in the market, I doubt if today's almighty 80x86 PC's would ever had got advanced peripheralls like USB connection, 3'1/2 floppies, firewire --how? no firewire yet? sorry - and maybe even the mouse. After all...who would ever want such a toy on a Serious Machine like those sold by International Business Machines?

Be happy and party on. I am wearing black for this "Anniversary"!