> On Jul 14, 2016, at 9:46 AM, Fred Cisin <ci...@xenosoft.com> wrote: > > > When IBM decided to take over the personal computer market, they didn't do > their homework very well. > Intel convinced them to use the 8088, to have a gateway into 16 bit, instead > of building a true 8 bit machine. > One of the IBM people had seen a "Microsoft Softcard" (a Z80 co-processor > plus CP/M for Apple][). >
IBM chose the 8088 because the bus was close enough to the 8085 that the peripherals from the S/23 could be re-used with minor tweaks (in many cases just a re-layout). They wanted something that would allow > 64KB of RAM without having to go through the pains of what was done on S/23 (it was an 8085 system that has 192KB of ROM and upto 128KB of RAM) and none of the 8-bit micros could do that. IBM had looked at the PC market for a while. It was actually TJ Watson Jr that instructed that a “skunk” team be formed to see how quickly a PC with an IBM logo could be produced. He was afraid of Apple making inroads into IBM’s traditional markets and wanted to prevent that. It was never envisioned to be a huge market for these things…it was viewed only as a hobbyist thing that had the potential to take away business from IBM’s traditional machines. TTFN - Guy
