Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
that allowed two computers to share a single hard disk drive. Soon Novell would develop
their Novell NetWare operating system, which allowed computers to share resources over a
network. Ashton-Tate released the dBase II package which was the standard database pack-
age for many years.
For Intel, the adoption of the 8088 in the IBM PC was a godsend, and they had great dif-
ficulties keeping up with the supply of the processor. Unlike the 8080, though, they did not
actively seek AMD for a second source for the processor. Intel had learnt that some second -
source rights caused problems when the second source company actually moved ahead of
them in their technology. Typically, second- source companies are able to charge a lower
rate, as they do not have to recoup the initial research and development investment. Intel
would eventually seek other companies, and AMD sought out Zilog for second source rights
for their up-and-coming Z8000 device. It seemed to AMD that Zilog would have greatest
potential for their new device, as they had shown with their Z80 device.
Intel was starting to realise that the processor market was a winner as it had a great deal
of intellectual effort added to it. It differed from the memory market where designs could be
easily copied by competitors. With microprocessors, they could set new standards and pro-
tect their designs with copyrights. If they established a lead in the processor market, and kept
one step ahead of the copiers, they could make a great deal of profit in releasing new prod-
ucts and producing support devices for their processors, especially for the 8086/8088. For
this, Intel released the 8087 math coprocessor, which greatly speeded up mathematical calcu-
lations, especially floating point ones. The use of floating point long division would eventu-
ally come back to haunt Intel, when a college tutor discovered a bug in their Pentium proces-
sor.
Intel were an innovative company, and had produced the first 4-bit and the first 8-bit
processor, but with the 16-bit market they were beaten by Texas Instruments (TI). Unfortu-
nately, for TI, the TMS 9900 was a rehash of an earlier product, and was generally under-
powered. Intel, though, had the great strength in their 8088 processor of releasing a whole
series of support devices which made it easier for designers to integrate the new processor.
Anyway, no one could have guessed the impact that the IBM PC would have on the market.
Intel was also beaten by National Semiconductor for the first 32-bit processor (the 32000).
The year 1982 would see IBM throw open the market for computers, with the IBM PC,
and also through two great mistakes. Apart from IBM, five other companies would dominate
the year: Commodore, Sinclair, Compaq, Apple and Sun. Three of them, Commodore, Apple
and Sinclair, were from the old school, and the other two, Compaq and Sun Microsystems,
were from the new school, and would learn to adapt to the new 'serious' market in comput-
ing that the IBM PC had created. In the same year, the US Justice Department threw out an
antitrust lawsuit filed against IBM 13 years earlier. Within 15 years, it would be Microsoft
who was facing similar action.
At IBM, the PC was taking off in ways that could never have been imagined. The IBM
PC was a work of genius in which everything had been planned with perfection. It would sell
over 200 000 computers within 12 months of its introduction, but the following year would
see two major mistakes by IBM. The first was the introduction of the PCjr, which was inten-
tionally incompatible with the IBM PC (because IBM did not want it to effect the IBM PC
market) and the IBM AT. The PCjr failed because of its incompatibility, whereas the AT
failed as it used a 16-bit processor (the 80286), while other computers were released using
the new Intel 32-bit processor (the 80386). IBM could have easily have overcome these
drawbacks, but, as these developments involved a much wider team than the IBM PC, they
were held back by the interests of other parties. For example, the mainframe division was
keen for the AT to use 16-bit processors, rather than the more powerful 32-bit processors, as
