> > incompatible, and they had a giant surplus of serial (RS232 and current
> > loop) cards that nobody wanted, so they provided a "FREE" serial card to
On Thu, 3 Apr 2003, Tony Duell wrote:
> Why did 'mobody' want them? A serial port is a very useful thing to have...
Because they occupied an entire slot (out of 5 on the PC), and other
companies sold "multifunction" cards that could use the same slot for
serial, parallel, clock, and memory. Most of those were marketed as SIX
functions - how many people remember what the other two functions were?
However, the IBM "Async" card could ALSO do current loop, which most of
the after market cards could NOT.
> One of the most stupid things IBM ever did was in the 5155 PortablePC.
It has my nomination for the silliest design. (particularly when compared
with the comparable Compaq machine which has all slots usable)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin_at_xenosoft.com
Received on Wed Apr 02 2003 - 18:45:00 BST