Xenix ?

From: UberTechnoid_at_home.com <(UberTechnoid_at_home.com)>
Date: Sun Nov 11 21:44:23 2001

The way I remember it, most of the clone makers of the time were scared to
death of IBM and the forthcoming lawsuit were they to use a copied bios in
a machine.

Companies like Sanyo (mbc series) and Victor (remember the v9000?) used
bios's that were Bdos compatible meaning that programs that stayed within
the DOS environment and made dos calls (such as PKZIP) would work fine but
software written for the PC's hardware would not. There were patches etc.
Kinda like the PC junior but the hardware was better....

Pheonix was the first company to release a 'clean-room' PC compatible bios
- to much fanfare as I recall. This opened the door to other makers and
thier clean-room bios products to join the fray.

As far as open architecture, ISA was very well documented and noone needed
to pay IBM to use the buss. MCA was a different story. The PC wasn't an
open architecture, but the effects were something of the same. Heck there
are ISA slots on Amigas, Ataris, etc.....

Regards,

Jeff

In <Pine.GSO.4.05.10111111318580.21847-100000_at_sundance.cse.ucsc.edu>, on
11/11/01
   at 01:32 PM, "Francis. Javier Mesa" <javi_at_cse.ucsc.edu> said:

>Speaking of M$, I was reading the other day a keynote speech by BillyBoy
>in which he claimed that DOS got such a widespread use because they
>contributed with an open architecture, the PC. As far as I know the PC
>was not open at all (i.e. the BIOS, etc), and most importantly the PC was
>not their architecture! The key components of what made a PC a PCE were
>supposed to be propietary, and most of the early clones that used DOS had
>copied BIOSs which were theoretically illegal. So basically BillyBoy was
>admiting that his empire was based on the encouragement of piracy by
>their OEM clients of IBM's IP. Interesting, eh?

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey S. Worley
Asheville, NC USA
828-6984887
UberTechnoid_at_Home.com
-----------------------------------------------------------
Received on Sun Nov 11 2001 - 21:44:23 GMT

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