From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: rochkind@basepath.com (Marc Rochkind) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2016 19:21:52 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] Algol68 vs. C at Bell Labs In-Reply-To: References: <0f57f9d8248db61cba34372814d2f45e.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com> <2c674075-db86-827b-fd97-30921757e9ae@aueb.gr> Message-ID: thanks for these comments... lots of interesting stuff On Thursday, June 30, 2016, Clem Cole wrote: > Marc, > > I mostly agree but you have a little history out of order. Apple and > Franklin really are important here. More inline... > > On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 7:16 PM, Marc Rochkind > wrote: > >> Clem Cole: "IBM allowed the system to be cloned" >> >> I never looked at it that way. To discourage cloning, IBM published and >> copyrighted the BIOS source code. >> > ​Hang on that it was not quite that simple. In fact IBM did publish > everything because that was what all the PC folks did at the time. As did > IBM themselves in their mainframes. Remember when the PC was originally > developed, Judge Green has not yet left IBM from its bondage.​ So IBM was > very careful in those days to follow industry norms. The PC folks (like > Apple, Altair, Cromemco et al) published the schematics and the ROM > listings. The OS's and higher level tools were closed but the rest tended > to be generally available so IBM followed suit. > > > > > >> ​....​ >> A few outfits sprang up to do clean-room BIOS clones, including an >> outfit called Phoenix, which had the best. Compaq's internal BIOS was also >> excellent. >> > ​This post the Franklin Computer case.​ Clones of Apple II sprung up, > with CPU motherboards coming from Taiwan. Hey I made an Apple II clone, > as well as an Xerox 820 clone in those days myself (I may still have the > later). > > Franklin Computer of Philadelphia started to sell their Apple II to run > Visacalc - which was the "killer app" of the day (note a theme here). Jobs > did not like it and took them to court. I actually knew the main attorney > for Franklin at the time (one of the few big cases he even lost). Apple > won because it was the contents of the ROM (bit for bit) that was found to > be identical. The question became could you "copyright" the bits. [There > is a whole side discussion about what the memory chip guys of that day did > to try to keep people from copying them BTW]. > > Anyway, once that became case law, the concept of a "clean room" was > created. As you say, Phoenix did a remarkable job. BTW: in an > interested side note, years later, IBM sold Phoenix its BIOS and started to > use theirs when the Phoenix BIOS became the gold standard. > > > >> >> As for the computer hardware, it was just Intel parts >> > ​Motorola, WD, and TI parts originally.​ > > > > >> For the clones, no copyrighted code was used, the programmers had never >> seen the code, and the function of the BIOS wasn't copyrightable. So, IBM >> really had no way to prevent the clones. >> > ​If they had not published the original material, I suspect it would have > been far, far harder and less attractive. But also remember, clone in the > IBM land was already around. Amdahl was selling like hot cakes. IBM had > learned that with the clone market, they sold more of their own product. > It was an interesting business view. The pie was getting bigger faster, > so they got a larger amount of pie, even though the percentage of the pie > got smaller.​ So IBM made more money. > > This was a lesson a lot of companies, particularly computer firms, never > quite understood. Having a weak, buy alive competitor is better than no > competition. > > > > >> >> >> There were a lot of PCs in the early 1980s that weren't clones. >> > ​Absolutely.​ But if the OS has been reasonable and had be able to hide > the differences (and you not be able to go directly to HW addresses etc..) > this would have been less of an issue. > > > > >> ​... >> DEC, which had their own weird version of a PC, was the worst. >> > ​No doubt.​ > > > >> One might ask why we had such a primitive system with 384K, when UNIX had >> been developed over 10 years before on a smaller system. Simple: UNIX had >> swapping. >> > ​Truth is folks built systems that swapped to floppies (and cassette tape > et al) in those days. Originally Magix was going to be in that same camp > when it was a "G-job" by Roger and myself. When our boss funded its the > first thing we did was add a 10M disk.​ > > > > >> ​... ​ >> To get the screen speed on a PC, the application had to own the hardware. >> > ​That was a deficiency of the PC HW design. Other systems, such as the > Magnolia and later Apollo/Masscomp/Sun, showed you could have fine speed > with out having to do that. Also in "PC land" consider when the '20 Mac > came out and Apple started to get religion (as did NeXT shortly there > after). > > You could do it, but the original PC designs were sloppy and did not care > -- the feeling was that extra HW (and SW to support) was unnecessary. > In many ways, the original PC guys were right given how far and how long > those systems lived. But it was painful for the SW building as you > pointed out. You should not have had to do such "unnatural" or "unsafe" > acts. > > > > >> UNIX insists on standing between the application and the hardware. >> > ​As it should ;-) ​It required good HW under the covers and then UNIX > drivers that did the the right things. In the same time frame as the PC > was developed it was definitely possible and would not have cost more.​ > > > > >> In PC land that would be unacceptable. >> > ​Only because the HW sucked and the OS did not have the right types of > structures to make it work.​ > > Seriously, Marc I get it and you are better man for dealing with the craziness > of the day. Many of the rest of us would not at the time, and until we got > "real HW" did not mess that much with it. Then again, I did not care to > run a VisaCalc or a Word Perfect :-) > > Clem > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: