7 Dec
2024
7 Dec
'24
9:11 a.m.
On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 at 17:53, Yeechang Lee <ylee(a)columbia.edu> wrote:
John Levine says:
I may be showing my ignorance here, but Compaq rushed to market a 386
machine so it could run... what? 16 bit DOS? Other 16 bit operating
systems? It's kind of astonishing to me that no one had a 32 bit operating
system ready for the 386 PC market, especially given that Intel had
released the chip to developers a year earlier. SVR2 was readily available
as a porting base but it appears that pretty much everyone dropped the ball
on having a UNIX ready for a fairly powerful $10k machine with a clearly
established market acceptance (from any vendor, not just Compaq or IBM).
-Henry
That was oddly shortsighted of IBM. Was it 16
bits is enough for
anything you'd do on your desktop, or 32 bits is too close to
competing with our big machines?
Compaq got its Deskpro 386 out by late 1986. IBM didn't see the urgency
and released the PS/2 Model 80 in June 1987. Not just IBM; HP, for example,
in 1987 was still saying publicly that it was evaluating when and how to
release its own 386 system.
Compaq's move panicked smaller competitors who didn't need to preserve
their dignity and knew what the computer meant, with many showing hastily
built prototypes at November 1986 Comdex.
While Microsoft did help Compaq while designing Deskpro 386, and Gates
attended the computer's announcement, I don't think it affected its plans
for Xenix and OS/2. The announcement did establish Compaq as arguably the
standard setter in IBM's place by 1990, or more accurately proved that IBM
was no longer the standard setter. Had Dell been the first out with a 386
box that might have affected its plans for Dell Unix, but Compaq never had
its own operating system until the DEC acquisition.