[TUHS] Interesting post about Microsoft and UNIX

[Yeechang Lee]

Henry Bent says:
> 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?

Yes. Contemporary news articles on the announcement discuss this, stating that a) no current software takes full advantage of the 386's power, and b) regardless, those who need the added horsepower would still benefit. The Deskpro 386's strong sales proved that this view was correct.

> It's kind of astonishing to me that no one had a 32 bit operating
> system ready for the 386 PC market

IBM, as mentioned, did not think the market wanted or needed a 386-based computer. In 1986 its fastest PC was the 286-based IBM AT, and in the two years since no one had released any software requiring the 286; everyone treated it as a faster 8088 or 8086.

The AT was in 1984 an aberration, really the only time in the IBM PC's history that the IBM product was state of the art. IBM otherwise followed a PC product lifecycle similar to that of its big iron; the original 1981 IBM PC was still sold until the PS/2 introduction in 1987, for example. The company was very surprised when its 1985 discontinuation of the PCjr upset customers, because IBM expected that its normal practice of promising ongoing support for a period of years into the future would be sufficient.

The only vendors with credibility to establish a new industry standard with an operating system in 1984 or 1986 were IBM and Microsoft. Had AT&T's entry into the computer market after divestiture not occurred, Microsoft would likely have continued pushing Xenix and might well have had a 386-specific version ready soon after the Deskpro 386. Such a product would in time surely have used the virtual 8086 hardware feature to execute DOS software on Xenix, akin to contemporary Windows's similar feature but with the advantages of a) actually working and b) with preemptive multitasking.