SLOT 8 (was: ISA cards for free..

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Thu Oct 25 19:24:12 2001

On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> REALLY! I had no idea that they'd so something so silly as dedicate a slot on
> an otherwise modern (unlike the APPLE-][) backplane.

A company as big as IBM "doesn't HAVE TO learn from the mistakes of
others". Remember the PCJr original keyboard?


> What's different about that slot?

"Wrong" side of a buffer.

> I've never owned a "real" XT, so I've never
> had to wrestle with that. My first PC was a '186-based clone, and I've never
> looked back. Was that "slot-8" compatibility creature a bug in the PC as well?

IBM had a LOT of serial cards that nobody wanted (on a 5 slot PC, the
market wanted multifunction!)
Every XT from IBM came with a "FREE" serial card. It blocked slot 8 from
being used by anything else that MIGHT have a problem with it, and gave
the public image impression of a generous (they were more expensive then!)
freebie.

> Was that "slot-8" compatibility creature a bug in the PC as well?
Yes and no. :-)
Since the PC had 5 slots, there was HARDLY EVER a problem with slot number
8!

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred        cisin_at_xenosoft.com
<A HREF= "http://www.xenosoft.com/dogears" >DogEars</A>
Received on Thu Oct 25 2001 - 19:24:12 BST

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