[TriLUG] What did the PS in PS/2 stand for?

[Rick DeNatale]

On 12/7/05, Carl Crider <c.crider at gmail.com> wrote:
> pre-SCSI, micro-channel days. "Personal System/2"

Not sure how to parse this statement, but...

The PS/2 (which did indeed stand for Personal System/2) introduced the
microchannel architecture. Some of the low end models (25 and 30) were
pretty much a rev on the AT and had ISA busses and ESDI harddrive
interfaces (but not necessessarily the harddrives themselves). The Mod
25 had an integrated monitor a la the original Macintosh.

The higher end PS/2s used MCA busses and SCSI drives, although later
models like the PS/2E bowed to the inevitable and uses ISA busses.

Someone said that the PS/2 came from the PS/1, in fact it was the
reverse, the PS/1 was a "home computer" which came out in 1990 to
re-enter the market surrendered by the PCjr.  The PS/1 name evolved
into Aptiva. The PS/2 nomenclature was more in line with OS/2. The
PS/2 line and OS/2 were both announced in 1987, and IIRC concurrently.

Nowadays, besides the mouse/keyboard interface, I beleive that more
folks associate PS/2 and PS/1 with Sony playstations than with IBM
computers.
--
Rick DeNatale

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