on 29/7/2001 11:50 AM, S. Krishnan at sri_krishnan@yahoo.com wrote:
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".
That¹s where you are wrong, the term PC was coined for the Apple II, because it was really a Personal Computer compared to rest of them sold in kit form, or even compared to the Apple I.
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.
You go round the circle and come back to the same point, I said, IBM didn't publish it straight away, you had to buy it from them. You said, it took $15 to obtain the PC-AT technical Reference.
Whats the difference??
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.
What is the difference between clean room implementations and reverse engineering? Do reverse engineering people get to see a piece of code?
You are taking conflicting stands. In the earlier part of your para you say, "No way, it wasn't reverse engineering", and in the later part you say "non-IBM ROM BIOS implementations, while an excellent example of reverse engineering..."
Infact, "Clean-Room" implementations done by virgin programmers _should_ be considered Rocket Science because they did have to start from scratch and also be compatible with IBM.
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!
You do?? I never knew you were in the business of manufacturing Washing machines and television sets...
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"?
A standard computing device is what you are using now-a-days... The computer on your desktop is a standard computing device... What a consumer oriented computing device means is a device with a set number of features, non expandable and non openable (or rather non-fiddleable) ;-)
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 Mac was meant only to be a way for people to benefit from the awesome power of computers with so much ease that they don't have to worry about remembering sickly commands to accomplish simplistic tasks like copying files from a disk or even simpler tasks like launching an application...
The Mac that you have probably used is not what it was originally designed for, the current day Macs were basically created to compete with IBM + DOS systems in the corporate world...
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.
Because by then Microsoft had already got a strangle hold on the market, not in terms of user base, but in terms of hardware manufacturers backing... In computing, it is not the players with maximum clout or players with best technology win, but its players who have got the maximum momentum behind them that win... Microsoft didn't truly win because of the sheer genius of their leader, but it won because 80% of the x86 hardware was being powered by MS-DOS. Maximum apps were being written for MS-DOS, not CP/M or any other 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....
Just think about it, in the years from 1984 (when Mac was introduced) till today, why has there never been even a single product in the x86 camp which even measures up to the high level of user satisfaction of Macintosh? Its primarily because by maintaining strict control over the system design, Apple was able to enforce a certain amount of quality control which is absent in the Wintel world... Infact, "Quality Wintel products" is an oxymoron...
Or rather, most Wintel users probably won't know what really good hardware quality and intuitive design means unless they have used a Macintosh...
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?
Yup, I meant those, mistake... :-)
~Mayuresh