[TUHS] Interesting post about Microsoft and UNIX

[Henry Bent]

On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 at 17:53, Yeechang Lee <ylee at columbia.edu> wrote:

> John Levine says:
> > That was oddly shortsighted of IBM.  Was it 16 bits is enough for
> > anything you'd do on your desktop, or 32 bits is too close to
> > competing with our big machines?
>
> Compaq got its Deskpro 386 out by late 1986. IBM didn't see the urgency
> and released the PS/2 Model 80 in June 1987. Not just IBM; HP, for example,
> in 1987 was still saying publicly that it was evaluating when and how to
> release its own 386 system.
>
> Compaq's move panicked smaller competitors who didn't need to preserve
> their dignity and knew what the computer meant, with many showing hastily
> built prototypes at November 1986 Comdex.
>
> While Microsoft did help Compaq while designing Deskpro 386, and Gates
> attended the computer's announcement, I don't think it affected its plans
> for Xenix and OS/2. The announcement did establish Compaq as arguably the
> standard setter in IBM's place by 1990, or more accurately proved that IBM
> was no longer the standard setter. Had Dell been the first out with a 386
> box that might have affected its plans for Dell Unix, but Compaq never had
> its own operating system until the DEC acquisition.
>

I may be showing my ignorance here, but Compaq rushed to market a 386
machine so it could run... what?  16 bit DOS?  Other 16 bit operating
systems?  It's kind of astonishing to me that no one had a 32 bit operating
system ready for the 386 PC market, especially given that Intel had
released the chip to developers a year earlier.  SVR2 was readily available
as a porting base but it appears that pretty much everyone dropped the ball
on having a UNIX ready for a fairly powerful $10k machine with a clearly
established market acceptance (from any vendor, not just Compaq or IBM).

-Henry
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