I wonder. IBM introduced the IBM PC in August of
1981.
That was years after a non-memory managed version of
Unix was created by Heinze Lycklama, LSX. Is anyone
on this list familiar with Bell Labs management thoughts
on selling IBM on LSX rather than "dos"?
IBM famously failed to buy the well-established CP/M in
1980. (CP/M had been introduced in 1974, before the
advent of the LSI-11 on which LSX ran.) By then IBM had
settled on Basic and Intel. I do not believe they ever
considered Unix and DEC, nor that AT&T considered
selling to IBM. (AT&T had--fortunately--long since been
rebuffed in an attempt to sell to DEC.)
Doug