yogesh schrieb:
>
> One question always comes to my mind whenever i read about the history
> of PC.
> why ibm had to search for another OS?
> couldn't it go for the existing mainframe OS or unix which were
> available at that time???

Way too expensive?

For a mainframe that costs $50000, an OS for $5000 isn't that problem
(pretty much what perople pay in relation for Windoze)
but for a computer of $2500, an OS for $5000 isn't really a good selling
factor.

Grossibaer


--
If Microsoft would invest only 5 minutes to make Windows boot 1/1000
second faster,
we would save 30 working hours worldwide every day.

"yogesh" wrote in message
news:f88a27e4.0401311956.524e41c6@posting.google.c om...
> One question always comes to my mind whenever i read about the history
> of PC.
> why ibm had to search for another OS?
> couldn't it go for the existing mainframe OS or unix which were
> available at that time???

The first IBM PC was a floppy based system with 64KB of memory. The OS had
to scale down to that level. Most mainframe OS had more resources, and
especially I/O bandwidth and storage for random access. The competing OS
were Apple II, CP/M, et al. Unix could not possibly run on the first
diskless PCs.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa031599.htm


> since unix is a true multiuser and multitasking OS right from the
> beginning,selecting it would certainly have avoided to design for
> another multitasking OS like OS/2 and the software world would be very
> much different then onwards...

Your not reading the true history of the period. There is a book that
specifically discusses the IBM project and all the names of the inventors
within IBM and how the first PC was put together part by part, almost day by
day.

> What iss the point in hunting for a different OS then???

Read above. It had a specific design goal to run on a 64KB PC.

On 1/31/04 9:56 PM, in article
f88a27e4.0401311956.524e41c6@posting.google.com, "yogesh"
wrote:

> One question always comes to my mind whenever i read about the history
> of PC.
> why ibm had to search for another OS?
> couldn't it go for the existing mainframe OS or unix which were
> available at that time???

IBM had been involved with an anti trust suit earlier dealing with their
supplying both the hardware and software for their main frame systems. By
going to an outside source for an OS they avoided more scrutiny from the
justice department.

Bill

It is a bit more complex again (I didn't realise the anti-trust thing
though, good info, might explain a few things though).

IBM wanted to crash the home computer market, but didn't want to develope
their own machine. They were advised to buy Atari but the IBM brass
decided they would go for Apple but failed to get the deal through (might
have ben the other way about). So licking their wonds the alternative was
CP/M for business, but for some strange reason went for the 8086 with a
CPM look alike (sold by Gates who latter actually found one and bought it
to sell to IBM). From a Byte magazine (I think it was) or maybe Circuit
Cella Ink magaize, it read it implied that a certain Byte columnist was
having coffe with a IBM excutive telling him to go with Intel's 8086
rather than the Motorola 68000, my best bet is that Intel had a better
magagment future than he competition, rather than a better chip (they go
long and hard). But wait it gets worse. In what must have been near
record time, in those days, they knocked up the beast (Integrated Beast
Machine - Potent Crash) in around 8-14 months (can't rember which), and it
was a beast, seldom did you see so many chips and components on a home
computer in those days (maybe the CPM ones) except maybe the British
Sirius, also a 8086 machine but much more advanced with hi-res colour too
somewhere near that time. Even today the beast still raises it's ugly
head in the modern P(otent) C(rash). A year or two latter IBM showed the
prototype of their true Business machine, with Unix and I think pobably a
68000 family processor (can't remember), but by then it was too late, the
P(otent C(rash) had takn controll. So the CPM like DOS became more like
Unix and other things???? So the IBM PC was a market crashing stop gap
that got away. If they had based it on the Z80 based CPM standard or
Atari maybe IBM could have shown market leadership by moving into Linux in
a year or two. The problem with CPM and the Z-80 though was that Zilog
landed up being way overdue in replacing the z80 witha 16-bit version, and
I have heard (though cannot confirm this story as being credible) that The
Digital Research Boss (CPM and GEM GUI) was out on a trip when the IBM
executives turned up at his house and his wife would not sign the non
disclosure agreement so they could tell them what it was about. So you
can understand how IBM excutives might not have liked to do business this
way.

Pity I didn't see this thread earlier, but this is about all I know:
Books, "The Home Computer Wars" Times big enclopedic book on HI-Tech
(part of a science series I think), maybe some more books, variouse
magazine articles and etc.


Thanks

Wayne.

.. or Apple (I forget which) but the On 31 Jan 2004 19:56:32 -0800, yogesh
wrote:

> One question always comes to my mind whenever i read about the history
> of PC.
> why ibm had to search for another OS?
> couldn't it go for the existing mainframe OS or unix which were
> available at that time???
> since unix is a true multiuser and multitasking OS right from the
> beginning,selecting it would certainly have avoided to design for
> another multitasking OS like OS/2 and the software world would be very
> much different then onwards...
>
> what was the point in hunting for a different OS then???
>
> regds,
> yogesh joshi



--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/