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The origins of this platform came with the decision by IBM in 1981 to market a personal computer as quickly as possible in response to Apple Computer's rapid success (50% marketshare) in the burgeoning PC market. In licensing an operating system from Microsoft, IBM's agreements allowed Microsoft to sell MS-DOS for non-IBM platforms (the IBM version was called PC-DOSIBM PC-DOS was one of the three major operating systems that dominated the personal computer market from about 1985 to 1995. The original 1981 arrangement between IBM and Microsoft was that Microsoft would provide the base product (at that time a rather p). Also, in creating the platform, IBM used only one proprietary component: the BIOSIn computing, the Basic Input-Output System or BIOS is computer interface code that locates and loads the operating system into RAM. It provides low-level communication, operation and configuration to the hardware of a system, which at a minimum drives th.
ColumbiaJune 1982: Columbia Data Products introduced the MPC Multi Personal Computer . An exact copy of the IBM PC model 5150 apart from the BIOS which was clean roomed. IBM had published the BUS and BIOS specifications assuming that this would be enough to encou produced the first IBM PC compatiblein 1982Events January January 6 William Bonin is convicted of being the "freeway killer". January 8 AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions January 11 Mark Thatcher, son of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, disappears in the Sahara du. Compaq Computer Corp.Compaq Computer Corporation was founded in February 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto, three senior managers from semiconductor manufacturer Texas Instruments. Each invested $1,000 to form the company. Their first venture capital came from Ben produced an early IBM PC compatible (which was also the first sewing machineA sewing machine is a mechanical (or electrical) device that joins fabric using thread, in a manner similar to manual sewing. Sewing machines make a stitch, called a sewing-machine stitch usually using two threads although machines exist that stitch using-sized portablePortable communications devices refer to hand-held or wearable devices. For example, the Walkie Talkie is a device that is hand-held when in use, and wearable when not in use. Most walkie talkies have a belt clip or a housing, such as a leather holder, th PC) a few months later in 1982. Compaq could not directly copy the BIOSIn computing, the Basic Input-Output System or BIOS is computer interface code that locates and loads the operating system into RAM. It provides low-level communication, operation and configuration to the hardware of a system, which at a minimum drives th as a result of the court decision in Apple v. Franklin, but it could reverse-engineer the IBM BIOS and then write its own BIOS using clean room design. Compaq became a very successful PC manufacturer, and was bought out by Hewlett-Packard in 2002.
Simultaneously, many manufacturers such as Xerox, Digital, and Sanyo introduced PCs that were, although x86- and MS-DOS-based, not completely hardware-compatible with IBM. While such decisions seem foolish in retrospect, it is not always appreciated just how fast the rise of the IBM clone market was, and the degree to which it took the industry by surprise.
Microsoft's intention, and the mindset of the industry from 1981 to as late as the mid- 1980s, was that application writers would write to the API's in MS-DOS, and in some cases to the firmware BIOS, and that these components would form what would now be called a hardware abstraction layer. Each computer would have its own OEM version of MS-DOS, customized to its hardware. Any piece of software written for MS-DOS would run on any MS-DOS computer, regardless of variations in hardware design.
During this time MS-DOS was sold only as an OEM product. There was no Microsoft-branded MS-DOS, MS-DOS could not be purchased directly from Microsoft, and the manual's cover had the corporate color and logo of the PC vendor. Bugs were to be reported to the OEM, not to Microsoft. However, in the case of the clones, it soon became clear that the OEM versions of MS-DOS were virtually identical, except perhaps for the provision of a few utility programs.
MS-DOS provided adequate support for character-oriented applications, such as those that could have been implemented on a minicomputer and a Digital VT100 terminal. Had the bulk of commercially important software fallen within these bounds, hardware compatibility might not have mattered. However, from the very beginning, many significant pieces of popular commercial software wrote directly to the hardware, for a variety of reasons:
At first, other than Compaq's models, few "compatibles" really lived up to their claim. "95% compatibility" was seen as excellent. Gradually vendors discovered, not only how to emulate the IBM BIOS, but the places where they needed to use identical hardware chips to perform key functions within the system. Reviewers and users developed suites of programs to test compatibility, generally including Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Flight Simulator, the two most popular "stress tests." Meanwhile, IBM damaged its own franchise by failing to appreciate the important of "IBM compatibility," when they introduced products such as the IBM Portable (essentially a Compaq knockoff), and later the PCjr, which had significant incompatibilities with the mainline PCs. Eventually, the Phoenix BIOS and similar commercially-available products permitted computer makers to build essentially 100%-compatible clones without having to reverse-engineer the IBM PC BIOS themselves.
By the mid-to-late 1980s buyers began to regard PCs as commodity items, and became skeptical as to whether the security blanket of the IBM name warranted the price differential. Meanwhile, of course, the incompatible Xeroxes and Digitals and Wangs were left in the dust. Nobody cared that they ran MS-DOS; the issue was that they did not run off-the-shelf software written for IBM compatibles.
Since 1982, IBM PC compatibles have conquered both the home and business markets of commodity computers so that the only notable remaining competition comes from Apple Macintosh computers with a market share of only a few per cent. Meanwhile, IBM has long since lost its leadership role in the market for IBM PC compatibles; currently the leading players include Dell and Hewlett-Packard.
Despite advances in computer technology, all current IBM PC compatibles remain very much compatible with the original IBM PC computers, although most of the components implement the compatibility in special backward compatibility modes used only during a system boot.
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