Timeline for First 80286 Based Computer
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 28, 2019 at 7:20 | comment | added | MarkP | It's easy to forget in this day and age where new CPU revisions are being barfed out every few months and immediately put into use in the newest generation of PCs, that processors didn't immediately go from lab to high street back in the day. The 6502 is possibly a notable exception, but it otherwise generally took at least a couple of years, if not longer, for a chip to go from being the new jewel-encrusted hotness... that no-one in the street can afford, and no-one in the industry yet knows how to program... to actually being something in a real, useful machine that an ordinary person could | |
| Apr 26, 2018 at 17:25 | comment | added | rwallace | @rackandboneman Excluding. 'The competition' means personal computers in roughly the same price bracket e.g. the Apple II and Commodore PET, not workstations costing many times as much. | |
| Apr 25, 2018 at 21:47 | comment | added | rackandboneman | @rwallace including or excluding deskside workstations ala PERQ, Xerox Alto and Star, Symbolics, Apollo? | |
| Apr 25, 2018 at 14:26 | comment | added | rwallace | @JeremyP How do you reckon? What other personal computer do you think was a match for the IBM PC in 1981? | |
| Apr 24, 2018 at 9:50 | comment | added | JeremyP | "IBM felt they could take it easy because their PC already had technical superiority over the competition" The IBM PC didn't have technical superiority on the day it was first released. | |
| Apr 21, 2018 at 4:23 | comment | added | Jules | @WillHartung - of course, the project that eventually produced the IBM 5150 PC was set up with the explicit goal of finding out whether a large globe spanning corporation could compete with the likes of Apple in rapid development. They developed the first prototype in 30 days, and had the product in retail within a year, including sourcing OS and languages and finding manufacturing and retail partners (as IBM had never used either before, having done everything themselves historically). I think they did quite well, considering... | |
| Apr 21, 2018 at 2:10 | vote | accept | rwallace | ||
| Apr 20, 2018 at 14:21 | comment | added | rackandboneman | Is the MDK-286 in scope here? | |
| Apr 19, 2018 at 23:29 | comment | added | Will Hartung | @Raffzahn And now you've highlighted the difference between a globe spanning, bazillion dollar corporation and a guy in a garage. | |
| Apr 19, 2018 at 22:38 | comment | added | Raffzahn | @WillHartung Even back then a new computer could be done in a matter of several month, not years. Don't underestimate our 'forefathers' craftmanship. Woz designed the Apple II in under a year with way less resources than Intel or IBM had. | |
| Apr 19, 2018 at 22:12 | history | edited | Raffzahn | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
edited title
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| Apr 19, 2018 at 21:20 | comment | added | tofro | I would assume had they not targetted for a modest upgrade of an existing computer but rather an entirely new one without any compatibility, development could have been much faster. | |
| Apr 19, 2018 at 20:42 | answer | added | Raffzahn | timeline score: 11 | |
| Apr 19, 2018 at 20:29 | comment | added | Will Hartung | Just gonna chime in that 2 1/2 years isn't a lot of time to engineer a brand new product. It's not a casual upgrade to the PC. New motherboard, new processors, 3 times faster, new bus, new BIOS, new case, new keyboard, new floppy drive, etc. And this is back in the day when folks were still designing stuff with stone knives and bear skins, all of which affect time to market. | |
| Apr 19, 2018 at 20:05 | history | asked | rwallace | CC BY-SA 3.0 |