--- Mayuresh A Kathe mayuresh@vsnl.com wrote:
That was an excellent write up by Krishnan...
Thank you!
Bravo, keep it up...
And adding my own 64 bits to eliminate some errors and elaborating a couple of points, read on....
The PC was introduced some time in the early eighties (1982, IIRC).
Apple I, The first PC was launched in 1976 by Apple, it was in a Semi Assembled form. Apple II, The first really usable PC was launched in 1978 again by Apple,
I meant the IBM PC, since the Apple was never commonly referred to by the handle "PC".
ROM BIOS details weren't released by IBM, you had to purchase them from IBM.
You're wrong here. IBM published complete ROM BIOS listings for all their PC products in the "Technical Reference" manuals for each product. I have myself referred to the PC-AT Technical Reference extensively to understand the character generator code so that I could write a similar character generator routine for a Xenix video device driver that I was writing at the time. All it took to obtain this stuff was the $15 or so that IBM charged at that time for the Tech Ref. They stopped this practice with the release of Micro Channel, IBM's subsequent failed attempt at locking the box up and throwing the keys away.
It took the sheer genius of the guys at a fledgling company called "Compaq" to reverse engineer that and then open it up, in fact, I would say Compaq really pioneered Open Source.
No way. The BIOS copy boys (Compaq, AMI, Award and the rest) did what are called "clean-room" implementations of the IBM PC BIOS. This means that they employed programmers who had "never" seen the IBM listings, so that IBM could not come back and point fingers at them for lifting code, and gave them the API that they had to implement, along with the full programming details of the X86 processor family, through Intel's very detailed manuals. Thus the non-IBM ROM BIOS implementations, while an excellent example of reverse engineering and pretty sophisticated coding, were not rocket science.
This factor, coupled with the CP/M compatible API of
PC-DOS
(yes, the very same MS-DOS of today), rendered the
PC
a very attractive backward-compatible development
in
the microcomputer world as opposed to the
closed-box
nature of the Apple Macintosh.
The Macintosh was never supposed to be a standard computing device, it was more targeted to be a consumer computing device created for the masses.
Never knew anybody opening up their Washing machines or Televisions...
Well, I do. Just take a walk down Lamington Road and see the number of domestic appliance service manuals on sale!
But seriously, from what you say, it appears that you have not understood the gist of my post regarding the Macintosh. You say that the Macintosh was "never supposed to be a standard computing device". What else was it supposed to be, then? A standard computing device, by your definition, preumably means a device that performs standard computing functions. "Standard computing functions" would, I guess, mean a Turing machine which runs computer programs. I believe the Mac is a typical example of such a machine, albeit with superior graphics and UI functionality. Consumer computing devices intended for the masses means computers targeted at the home market - and here too the PC has far outstripped the Mac in sales. AFAIK, the Mac runs office applications, can connect to the Internet, do e-mail, et al, all of which other computers too do, whether they run Windows, OS/2, Linux or FreeBSD. So then how does it differ from a "standard computing device"?
AFAIK, the Mac runs office applications, can connect to the Internet, do e-mail, et al. So then how does it differ from a "standard computing device"?
the PC has always won because of its open architecture and API.
The PC won primarily because it had IBM as its Godfather... When IBM backed it, corporates embraced it, old saying "Nobody ever gets fired for buying an IBM product" When the corporates embraced it, the general public followed...
Then why did IBM's proprietary Micro Channel Architecture and OS/2 (a product that was clearly superior to Microsoft Windows) fail? ISA and later EISA won the war because they were open standards, and MCA was not. OS/2 flopped in spite of IBM's best efforts to make it the standard PC GUI OS.
Apple lost, purely and simply, because the Mac was an absolutely closed proprietary product, so that it was very difficult to write the kind or programs that could be written for the PC, programming down to the bare metal, in short That was how a lot of programs managed to run well on the PC, by doing otherwise verboten things such as directly addressing video memory, disk controllers, etc. Also, the PC's open hardware architecture led to a lot of addons being developed for it, while Apple with its rigid concealment of system design did not allow this to happen. I have myself developed an add-on data capture card for the PC, and was able to do so simply because everyting I needed in the way of information was available - and that too in the pre-Internet days. Well, they lost....
The open architecture meant that a lot of people
could
produce competing products to IBM's, thus allowing
the
Not just competing products but also products which could supplement it, products like graphic cards, keyboards, displays, etc...
Apple chose to lock up its designs and architecture, and paid the
price
for it in a meagre market share.
A perfect example of a great product killed by a management full of Jokers... (Steve Jobs was thrown out before that)
Actually IBM had originally sought to use CP/M-86
as
the default PC operating system, but difficulties
with
Gary Kildall, owner of Digital Research, led to
their
Gary Kildall wasn't really the undoing, it was rather his wife, who refused to sign the NDA when IBM engineers came knocking and Gary was out somewhere taking a break...
Not really. Gary had confirmed an appointment with the IBM suits, who turned up at the appointed time and place, which was Gary's home. Gary however had taken off on a long flight in his private plane, something which cheesed the suits off no end and led them to recommend that Microsoft be tasked with developing the OS for the PC.
backing Microsoft, who did not even have an OS to offer at that time (when they got the contract,
they
bought a readymade OS called 86-DOS from a company called Seattle Computer, hired its creator Tim Paterson to code for them, renamed it PC-DOS and
sold
it to IBM).
The ready made OS wasn't even an OS, it was actually a test program to check motherboards made for the 8080. Tim Paterson called it the QDOS for Quick and Dirty Operating System.
Dont you mean the 8086/8088?
just become a low-level Windows programmer - you'll
learn
to curse it PDQ!
Why a low level, try becoming a real Windows programmer, try coding using VC++ and you'll get to know all the idiosyncracies hidden by the resource sucker called "Visual Basic"...
Regards,
Krishnan
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