[TriLUG] even more interesting

al johson alfjon at mindspring.com
Fri Nov 9 02:52:00 EST 2001


Well if truth be told, Commodore made the first inexpensive PC's. It was
they who forced IBM, Apple, TI and the rest to compete on prices. At the
time the C-64 was created an Apple II cost ca. $1000, ditto an IBM PC. The
C-64 cost $600 when it was first released and later fell in price to around
$200. The cost of an IBM PC didn't fall until a company reverse engineered
its bios which effectively allowed all sorts of Asian companies to make
their own PC clones. This was not done at the blessing of IBM who was
scarcely happy about what happened at the time. As I recall it was the
Phoenix bios which made the cheap PC's we all have on our desks
possible--not Microsoft or IBM!! I know because I lived through this entire
period of personal computing history. IBM's only contribution was that by
putting their name on a personal computer it became kosher for small and
large corporations to purchase them. However, there were a number of small
companies at the time who actually did their computing on Commodore 64's ,
Commodore Pets, TI's and lots of other computers you've probably never heard
of. A two dollar prize to anyone who can tell me the name of the company
which reverse engineered the first stable PC bios!! Here's something else
that's interesting. Since a lot of IBM's software wouldn't run unless the
letters IBM were present in the bios, they got around breaking IBM's
copyright by putting in the bios these words: "Some software expects the
letters IBM here."
----- Original Message -----
From: Matt Jezorek <matt at bluelinux.org>
To: <trilug at trilug.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 3:57 PM
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] even more interesting


>
> > Search on GPL.  Very interesting.  M$ takes a degree of credit for
> > opensource and that opensource is good kinda because later it can be
made
> > commercial but GPL is bad....  (stiffles innovation you know)
>
> Okay. I am not a MS endorsee or do I appreciate everything BG has done.
But
> you do have to
> give him credit where credit deserves. Bill has make the average pc
> reasonably priced. Maybe not
> now but back when computers where a large object that no one understood he
> helped simplify usage
> Also, he did help standardize the IT industry to a way. So you do have to
> give him credit for helping
> put a desktop system on a lot of desks.
>
> Matt
>
> P.S. if this was moderated it would probably be noted as Flamebait.
>
>
>
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