more on Twenty five years of the IBM PC

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Shoch <shoch () alloyventures com>
Date: August 11, 2006 6:35:21 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com
Cc: John Shoch <shoch () alloyventures com>
Subject: RE: [IP] more on Twenty five years of the IBM PC

Dave,

At the time the IBM PC came out I was at Xerox, with the high-end  
Star workstation group.

A little later I remember trying to explain to senior management that  
the machine itself was pretty mundane, but I waved around the MOST  
important part of the machine -- an early copy of PC World (?) with  
hundreds of pages describing software, hardware, quilted dust-covers,  
and more!

Our recommendation was to focus on higher-end workstations/printers/ 
servers/Ethernets/etc., and concede the very low-end by offering a  
clone.

I think we identified the Hyperion, from Canada -- an early "almost  
close" which ran DOS, but was not 100% compatible.
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757/HYPERION.HTML
And then some of the first true desk-top clones, the Columbia and the  
Corona, which I think were before the Compaq portable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Data_Products
http://digitize.textfiles.com/items/1983-columbia-eval/.m/1983- 
columbia-eval-02.jpg

John Shoch
Alloy Ventures

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 11:47 AM
To: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: [IP] more on Twenty five years of the IBM PC




Begin forwarded message:

From: Mary Shaw <mary.shaw () gmail com>
Date: August 11, 2006 2:26:44 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Twenty five years of the IBM PC

Dave,

Even back when it came out, I figured that the most valuable part of
the IBM PC was the logo on the chassis.

Yes, lots of other computers preceded it.  And you could replace
virtually all the components with third-party alternatives.

What the IBM PC did, though, was create a viable marketplace.  The
IBM logo meant a commitment to a product that would still be there in
a couple of years, which gave third-party component producers some
assurance of a real market for products and therefore the incentive
to create the third-party products.

Mary


On 8/11/06, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jim DeLong <jdelong () pff org>
Date: August 11, 2006 11:44:58 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: RE: [IP] Twenty five years of the IBM PC

The IBM PCmay have made business history, but it did not make
technological history.

Even leaving aside the Apple and the NorthStar, by 1981 there were
numerous CP/M machines (I actually owned a brown-case Osbourne), most of
which were regarded as superior to the initial IBM. At first, the
CP/Mers were jubilant, regarding the IBM as unimpressive and
over-priced, but of course the IBM name carried the day with business.
Then people reverse engineered the IBM chip, the clone was born, the
CP/M guys went broke, and Bill Gates got rich with MS-DOS, which was a
CP/M variant.

CP/M -- Ave atque sale.  But the history should be kept straight. .

Cheers,

James V. DeLong
Senior Fellow & Director -- IPCentral.Info
Progress & Freedom Foundation
1444 Eye St., NW -- Suite  500
Washington, DC 20005
202-969-2944 Direct
202-289-8928 Main
202-302-5827 Cell
jdelong () pff org
www.IPcentral.Info
www.pff.org


-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 11:05 AM
To: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: [IP] Twenty five years of the IBM PC



Begin forwarded message:

From: Claudio Gutierrez <claudio.gutierrez.m () gmail com>
Date: August 11, 2006 10:04:20 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Twenty five years of the IBM PC

Computer firm IBM made technological history on 12 August 1981 with the
announcement of a personal computer - the IBM 5150.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4780963.stm

Costing $1,565, the 5150 had just 16K of memory - scarcely more than a
couple of modest e-mails worth.

The machine was not the first attempt to popularise computing but it
soon came to define the global standard.

It altered the way business was done forever and sparked a revolution in
home computing.

"It's hard to imagine what people used to do with computers in those
days because by modern standards they really couldn't do anything,"
said Tom Standage, the Economist magazine's business editor told the
World Service's Analysis programme.

"But there were still things you could do with a computer that you
couldn't do without it like spreadsheets and word processing."

<snip>


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