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The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today

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Re: The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today

#51
post #9

>72pin simm in 1988 Afaik other companies picked up 32bit simms very slowly. SUN in 1991 in SPARCstation IPX. First x86 support showing up in 1992 on 486 boards just before introduction of VLB slots. Apple was year later with LC III/520 and Centris in 1993.

Sure, yes, because the purpose of 72-pin SIMMs was for 32-bit wide memory access. Before 72-pin SIMMs were 30-pin SIMMs.

Simple arithmetic shows you that you can't route a 32-bit memory bus over 30 pins. You need banks of SIMMs and that means they need to be matched.

But the 386DX was too expensive, because it needed a 32-bit memory bus. So it didn't sell well and was mainly used in PCs used as servers. PC servers didn't really exist yet in 1985.

That's why the 386SX was invented, with a 16-bit memory bus. It meant the motherboard only needed a 16-bit memory bus, meaning it was much cheaper.

But that means it doesn't really need 72-pin RAM.

It wasn't until the 486 (and 68040) went mainstream that ordinary desktop computers needed 32-bit memory buses and therefore 72-pin RAM, but over time, economies of scale drove down the cost of 72-pin RAM so it became cheaper and gradually got adopted, and the 16-bit-bus 386SX (and derivative chips with the 486 instruction set, such as the 486SL and 486SLC) gradually went away.

Re: The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today

#52
post #8

http://www.postbulletin.com/magazine/2004/08/index.shtml "According to Bob Dubke, the second engineer on IBM's 5100 team in Rochester (who now co-owns a locally-based company called eXport Ventures Corp. and also works for Edina Realty), that secret function was his contribution to the design of the computer. The function, which IBM suppressed because of worries about how their competition might use it, was an interf…

Interesting comment but the link brings up a 404 now for me.

Try this.

https://patiomensch.wordpress.com/further/john-titor/

Hint: just Google a fragment in quotes, for an exact match.

Re: The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today

#53
post #35
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A HN poster questioned the existence of 80286 computers with VGA displays. Young uns... I personally had a 286 with VGA back then...

My brother in law had a 286 with SVGA around 1990...

I don't think I ever had an original VGA limited to 640x480. For a while I did have a monitor that wouldn't do more than 640x480 though.

Re: The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today

#54
Not to understate the importance of the PS/2, but...

To say OS/2 failed because it didn't run more than one DOS app at a time is not really accurate. Well before Windows 3 (or NT) was established, OS/2 had its own app ecosystem and it was very pleasing to use, if you had a fast computer. Early OS/2 was meh, but from Warp and on, it was a very nice desktop OS.

OS/2 died because Microsoft cut deals with all big OEMs where they got Windows almost for free, as long as they didn't offer OS/2. It didn't help that, in order to run Windows software, OS/2 needed an expensive Windows license (and an almost full Windows).

There were other personal computers with GUI's back then as well - the Mac is still with us (well, not really - all current Macs are more NeXT than Mac), but there were Atari's and Amigas (and some Ataris and Amigas could run Unix). By then, any 386 with sufficient resources could run X (Sun had the 386i, running Unix and DOS apps side by side).

In the end, OS/2 failed because Windows had to succeed, and Microsoft made sure it did.

Re: The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today

#55
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting comment but the link brings up a 404 now for me.

Try this. https://patiomensch.wordpress.com/further/john-titor/ Hint: just Google a fragment in quotes, for an exact match.

Thanks!

Re: The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today

#56
post #54

Not to understate the importance of the PS/2, but... To say OS/2 failed because it didn't run more than one DOS app at a time is not really accurate. Well before Windows 3 (or NT) was established, OS/2 had its own app ecosystem and it was very pleasing to use, if you had a fast computer. Early OS/2 was meh, but from Warp and on, it was a very nice desktop OS. OS/2 died because Microsoft cut deals with all big OEMs wh…

Are you talking about Microsoft/IBM OS/2, i.e. 1.x, or IBM-only OS.2, i.e. >=2.x here?

For 2 and above, the IBM only versions, well, yes, kinda sorta. But that was too late. The game was already over.

OS/2 2.0 came out in April 1992.

Windows 3.0 came out in May 1990, 2 whole years earlier. It already had established an ecosystem before 32-bit OS/2 appeared.

Secondly, OS/2 2 really wanted a 386DX and 4MB of RAM, and a quality PC with quality name-brand parts. I owned it. I ran it on clones. I had to buy a driver for my mouse. From another CONTINENT.

Windows 3.0 ran on any old random junk PC, even on a PC XT class box with EGA. At first only high-end users of high-end executive-class workstations got the fun of 386 Enhanced Mode, but that was all OS/2 2.0 could run on at all.

OS/2 died when OS/2 1.x was a high-end OS with low-end features, and a cheapo low-end 386SX PC with 1 or 2MB of RAM, with MS-DOS and DESQview (not DESQview/X, just plain old text-mode DESQview) could outperform it.

(Remember the 386SX came out in 1988 and was common by the time Windows 3.0 shipped.)

Re: The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today

#57
post #38

Speaking of pivotal, both IBM and Microsoft poured an ungodly amount of money into translating Windows 95 and OS/2 Warp to a great number of languages, as far as I am aware this didn't happen before. I was a journalist at a computer monthly in Hungary at the time. Now, MS and IBM teams were not talking to each other, in fact Microsoft was working in "ivory tower" mode: the translation happened in house almost in secr…

Relevant:

https://www.os2museum.com/wp/slovenian-os-2-warp-4/

Re: The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today

#58
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A HN poster questioned the existence of 80286 computers with VGA displays. Young uns... I personally had a 286 with VGA back then...

Well, then I might as well point out, that IBM did make a 8-bit adapter for VGA, so I could use my Sony Trinitron with my PC XT 10Mhz clone. Beat the daylights out of my roommates 6Mhz AT, and ran Xenix, which most unfortunately turned me into a Xenix expert of crap ware. After a bad compile, it destroyed both drives file system, so I went back to just Windows 1.0.6, and DOS.

IBM itself or a 3rd party?

Because the last IBM 8086 PC, AFAIK, was the PS/2 Model 30 and it didn't ship with VGA.

It's an important difference.

Re: The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today

#59
post #43

PS/2 failure is also one of the reasons why PC compatibles stayed around, its main goal was to regain control of the PC.

The PS/2 was PC compatible.

The term means "can run IBM PC software". The PS/2 could. It was compatible. Same OSes, same apps.

Remember this was the 1980s. There were almost no protect-mode 32-bit OSes around, and the few that there were then had PS/2 versions. DOS and DOS apps ran fine on PS/2s, unmodified.

Re: The pivotal importance of IBM's PS/2 range on computers, even today

#60
post #53
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother in law had a 286 with SVGA around 1990...

I don't think I ever had an original VGA limited to 640x480. For a while I did have a monitor that wouldn't do more than 640x480 though.

Yeah, I think these didn't last for long? Maybe only late 80s. SVGA came about pretty quick.
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