Choosing an outdated gimpy CPU and low-grade OS also made it less likely to compete with their lucrative mainframe business.^^^Agreed. In all likelihood it came down to price just like it always does. IBM wasn't expecting the PC to be the booming success that it was so it makes sense that they would choose the lowly Intel 8086.
Cyrix PR-300.
They didnt even use the proper PCI bus divider so the clocks on the PCI bus were way out of spec and alot of
PCI cards would not even work on a cyrix system.
There were better options when IBM picked DOS than CP/M.That would have been interesting. I recently purchased a used copy of Peter Nortons DOS 5 Guide and he goes into a few details about the early history of the IBM PC and DOS. According to him the DOS variant of the PC was quickly preferred by users and vendors over the CP/M and p-System versions and since this was a PC targeted for home and small business' IBM listened.
Windows isn't what I was referring to, as it came out later and was a success because of the IBM deal. However, early versions of Windows were certainly primitive.I do find it ironic that the "low-grade os" as you put it came back to bite them in the ass later down the road. I often wonder what it would be like if OS/2 would have taken off and been a success in the consumer market.
Those were Peter Nortons observations not mine. I honestly don't know enough about the subject to form an honest opinion on it. I just thought it was interesting when I read it and he felt strongly enough about it to mention it in one of his books. An older book I know and yes opinions can change over time as more information becomes available.There were better options when IBM picked DOS than CP/M.
I wasn't necessarily referring to Windows. More to the fact that IBM put their faith in Microsoft and once DOS 5.0 became available the partnership broke down. It was poor judgement on my part to mention OS/2 because it was released many years later.Windows isn't what I was referring to, as it came out later and was a success because of the IBM deal. However, early versions of Windows were certainly primitive.
Worse is an understatement. A Willamette P4-1400 was about as fast as a P3-900. The first P4's were dreadful. Once Intel beefed up the cache, better compliers were written, and the clock speeds went past 2 GHz, it was a competitive part, but still was terribly inefficient. I voted for the Itanic in the poll, but I would have voted for Netburst as the worst CPU architecture. Even as bad as AMD K15h was when it first came out, it looks like masterful execution compared to early Netburst. Intel even sold Willamette systems with SDRAM memory for a while, because of the Rambus fiasco, which took away the only redeeming quality of the first P4's, their enormous memory bandwidth.
15h is bulldozer....
It could be argued that Intel made way more money back then they spent on developing Itantium by all of the x86-64 Xeons they sold to companies that were using SPARCs, Alphas, MIPS, etc previously. Intel just didn't count on AMD extending the x86 ISA to 64-bits, and Microsoft supporting it.Oh god yes to all of that. Bulldozer has it's issues but it really comes down to not being very fast it's a bad design and it predates the shift they expected by probably about 10 years. But the release of the P4 was an epic failure. Costly systems with costly Ram, limited to two slots and the platform as a whole was a mess Intel figured out late that it wouldn't take 3 sticks so OEM's were selling systems with a sticker over the ram slots. The fact that it's overall performance was poor and Intel had to dump it pretty quick (quicker than they could even come up with an alternative) is a lot like Bulldozer. But Bulldozer didn't have nearly the rocky road at release and on.
But the winner has to be Merced/Itantium as a whole. Intel wasted 10's of Billions on that platform. It was going to replace X86. It was going to break all their cross licensing deals. It convinced several other chip companies that they weren't needed any more. It absolutely devastated the high end server market and had absolutely nothing to show for it. Hell Intel is probably likely to sell more 7980xe's than all AI64 sales put together.
If Gary Kildall had shown up, they would have. They had to settle for a quick and dirty hack from a garage company call Microsoft.I wonder what it would have been like had IBM simply chosen CP/M instead.
Obfuscation to hide what he doesn't want people to vote for. Nice way to tilt results.
Nice way to cover up your own inability to Google.
Why should I have to google obscure code names in a poll?
It is clearly a biased attempt to tilt the poll results.
If Gary Kildall had shown up, they would have. They had to settle for a quick and dirty hack from a garage company call Microsoft.