Return of the '70s Microsoft Weirdos

Tag : Computers For Less


The 8088 processor was chosen by IBM for the IBM PC specifically tohold personal computing back. The processor series was a very poor choice for a desktopmachine.

The 6809 was a far superior chip, good enough that a reasonablyconvincing Unix clone was available in 1980, the year IBM decidedto create the "IBM PC". That was bad from their perspectives, because it would strengthen Unix as acompetitor in the midrange business. You can still get OS-9 forembedded use or set-top box use. The 6809 shared many architecturalfeatures and philosophy with the much more powerful 68000 (whichalso appeared in an eight bit external bus form in 1982). Thiswould have eased the transition to 32 bit computing, which alsowould have been a bad thing.

This, of course, is not Microsoft's fault. IBM didn't give a damnthat the processor wasn't the best choice of a desktop OS, nor didthey very much care about the fact that the "OS" they chose wasn'tmuch more than a set of primitive libraries and provided no realhardware management at all. These were, in fact, desirable from their point of view. They wanted something quick, on whichthey could slap the IBM nameplate and make a lot of short termbucks selling expensive doorstops, along the way keeping Apple IIsout of businesses. They succeeded on all counts in the short term,which was all the term there was meant to be. The "IBM PC" wouldhave been a technological dead end, it was in fact intended to be so, if it wasn't for the fact somebody ended up creating akiller app for all those doorstops: Lotus 1-2-3.

Windows 3 (ca. 1990) was a tremendous achievement, given what theyhad to work with. But it was technically far behind what wasavailable at the time. MacOS 6 had been available for a couple ofyears, and it not only had a superior GUI, it had built in supportfor sound and networking (which didn't come on most PCs). Therewas, of course, OS-9. Even Microsoft had a better OS than Windows 3on top of DOS, namely XENIX.

So it is true that Windows accelerated the usage of MS-DOS by theaverage user. But DOS itself, which was the underpinnings ofWindows, held the user back. How many users had to learn thenuances of TSRs, extended memory vs. expanded memory etc? How manyprogramers had to deal with non-productive technical details likethunks as they struggled to take advantage of 32 bit hardware witha sixteen bit operating system? How long was networking delayed byproprietary protocols shoehorned onto an operating system with nofundamental support for networking, when TCP/IP had already beenexistence for years?

All in all, its a mixed bag. Windows made a really bad computerwith really bad system software a lot more tolerable for users, andMicrosoft deserves credit for this. But they don't deserve creditfor personal computing. The whole "IBM PC" and "DOS" enterprise setcomputing back almost a decade.