PeeCee clones; was:PCW's 25 worst tech products

[Jim Leonard]

J.C. Wren wrote:
> On 6/27/2006 at 7:11 PM Jim Leonard wrote:
>>>> I was *all over* IBM until PS/2.  "I can't put my existing boards in 
>>>> it?
>>>>  Why the hell not?  Who made *that* stupid decision?
>    What makes you think this was a "stupid decision"?  The MCA bus was 
> capable of *40MB/S*, which at the time was rather remarkable.  ISA is 

Yes, that is remarkable, but last I checked the PS/2 line doesn't have 
*any* ISA slots which means people had to buy sound cards, joystick 
adapters, SuperVGA boards, internal modems, etc. etc. all over again. 
At 2X the price.  That was a colossally bad move for the consumer 
market, which ended up driving the market the most anyway.

>    Everyone seems to think every damn card, bus, and system made should 
> be backwards to the AND gate.  Get over it, move in to the 90's.  At the 
> very least.

Hold on a second:  PS/2 came out in 1987.  For someone who bought their 
XT for $3000+ just four years earlier, it did not sit well that all the 
internal hardware (HD, HD adapter, etc.) had to be purchased all over again.

The reason EISA, VESA local bus, PCI, etc. were adopted is because the 
new technology and old technology were on the same board.  So users 
could grow gradually, adapt as necessary.

I'm in the same proverbial boat today, actually:  I want to upgrade my 
ailing video card with one with a faster GPU (read carefully:  faster 
processor, not bus architecture) but all the cards that fit the bill are 
PCI Express and I don't have a PCI Express slot on my motherboard.  So 
I'd have to upgrade the motherboard... and memory and CPU because the 
new motherboard doesn't support what I have either.  Just because I want 
to get a better video card.  So I'm understandably irritated.
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)            http://www.oldskool.org/
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A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/