What's so bad about Intel 8086 in technical terms?

[freqmax]

Off-topic: IBM was early with computing for commercial companies and thus had a foothold with business people (MBA beancounters). IBM wanted to a bite of the personal computer market so they throw together a team that put together some crappy chips from some crappy chip designer like Intel. They then tried to get CP/M but were too important to wait for a good deal so got a crap software to go with this design.

The next phase is that because they consider it an unimportant product they release drawings and documentation. Businesses buy it because (1) IBM reputation (2) cheap compared to mainframe. And then it takes of.

So what's needed for world domination is contacts and reputation..
x86 was bought by clueless MBA:s because it had "IBM" stamped onto it. Now the actual people doing the buying may be different people but the management culture still permeates. And once there was software for crap hw/sw the other software had to be compatible with the former which was used in the all important "business environment" ..

Take out the reputation and contacts from IBM in the 1980s and the problem would likely been a lot less severe. Add compability layer to other platforms to snuff out the compability aspect and there might be a solution. The current solution seems to be that x86 is to inefficient and Windows is just a too big blob of code for mobile environments where power and resources utilization really counts. Besides Microsoft was just too busy entrenching themself in a market that was soon to be competing with a whole new market they perhaps didn't "get".

[nicholas]

Even if IBM had chosen the 68k as the CPU and CP/M as the OS it would still have been crap.  The Atari ST is proof.

[psxphill]

IBM wanted to a bite of the personal computer market so they throw together a team that put together some crappy chips from some crappy chip designer like Intel. They then tried to get CP/M but were too important to wait for a good deal so got a crap software to go with this design.

The 68000 was on the table for the PC but Intel came in and priced the 8086 aggressively to make sure their chip got used. Motorola missed their chance.
 
Microsoft sent IBM to Digital Research, but Gary Kildal wanted a royalty and not an outright payment & didn't want it sold as PC DOS. So Microsoft bought QDOS and sold it to IBM, they didn't want a per copy royalty but wanted to be able to sell it to other people. The Gary Kildal was out flying story is a lie. IBM did a deal with Digital Research, including an advance in royalties (and according to Tom Rolander a payment for writing the BIOS). The IBM PC wasn't bundled with an operating system. PC DOS was $40, CPM86 was $240. The majority spoke and PC DOS became standard.
 

The current solution seems to be that x86 is to inefficient and Windows is just a too big blob of code for mobile environments where power and resources utilization really counts. Besides Microsoft was just too busy entrenching themself in a market that was soon to be competing with a whole new market they perhaps didn't "get".

The problem with being big is that it becomes hard to move. People have wanted more and more functionality from Windows and dropping functionality to make it smaller isn't always that easy (maybe you need to drop 50% of every sub system which effectively means you're re-writing it all). They could have done like Apple did and just start mostly from scratch, but Microsoft try to avoid fragmentation.
 
Android is the most fragmented, but because it's so cheap it has really taken off.
 

Even if IBM had chosen the 68k as the CPU and CP/M as the OS it would still have been crap. The Atari ST is proof.

Interestingly the person that drove the PC project through at IBM wanted to buy Atari, to get their expertise at designing and manufacturing consumer level micro computers.
 
Instead of the ST being sold by Atari it would have the less catch name of Tramel Technology, Ltd.

[nicholas]

double post

[nicholas]

Microsoft sent IBM to Digital Research, but Gary Kildal wanted a royalty and not an outright payment & didn't want it sold as PC DOS. So Microsoft bought QDOS and sold it to IBM. The Gary Kildal was out flying story is a lie.

When the IBM team arrived in Pacific Grove they met with Dorothy and  worked with company attorney Gervaise “Gerry” Davis to settle the terms  of a non-disclosure agreement.  Gary, who had flown his aircraft to  Oakland to meet an important customer, returned as scheduled to discuss  technical matters. The meeting ended in an impasse over financial terms.  IBM wished to purchase CP/M outright, whereas DRI sought a per-copy  royalty payment in order to protect its existing base of business. With  some alternative approaches in mind, Kildall tried to renew the  negotiations a week later but IBM did not respond.

In the meantime, Gates negotiated terms to purchase 86-DOS from  Brock. He then sold a one-time, non-exclusive license to IBM, who used  the designation PC DOS, but retained the right to license the product as  MS-DOS to others. When Kildall discovered that the function calls of  the programmer’s application interface were identical to those of the CP/M Interface Guide that was copyrighted and marked “Proprietary to Digital Research” he threatened IBM with a lawsuit.
 
 Kildall and Davis negotiated a resolution that required IBM to market  CP/M-86 alongside PC DOS. However the list price differential, $40 vs.  $240 for the DRI product, discouraged consumer interest in the latter.  Davis says “IBM clearly betrayed the impression they gave Gary and me.”

http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/gary-kildall-40th-anniversary-of-the-birth-of-the-pc-operating-system/

More historical info from the original developer of QDOS here: http://dosmandrivel.blogspot.co.uk/

[Nlandas]

The 8086 was the kind of chip that commodore would have put out in it's 8 bit days.

I really want a LIKE(vote up) function on Amiga.org.

I wish we could find archives of all the old discussions on this topic. LOL!

The really sad thing is that Motorola didn't position the 68000 into markets that would end up winning the PC wars.

[psxphill]

http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/gary-kildall-40th-anniversary-of-the-birth-of-the-pc-operating-system/
 
More historical info from the original developer of QDOS here: http://dosmandrivel.blogspot.co.uk/

I'll go with the account of the person who was in the plane at the time that IBM turned up.
 
http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1593/the-rest-of-the-story-how-bill-gates-beat-gary-kildall-in-os-war-part-1
 
Gary Kildall was in a plane on that day, but IBM waited and they sorted out the NDA issue. But IBM didn't want to pay a royalty and so they went away. Digital Research contacted IBM because they were going to sue over QDOS and IBM gave into all their licensing demands & said they weren't going to bundle either PC DOS or CPM86 and just let the customers choose plus giving them $100,000 dollars to do the BIOS. Gary signed thinking that IBM wouldn't be successful but they should just take the money and run, he was wrong.
 
You can argue that IBM overpriced CPM86 on purpose, but Gary let them do it because he didn't think it would matter. But PC DOS winning over CPM86 was nothing to do with IBM not wanting to wait.
 
CPM86 supposedly supported multitasking, but for people buying the 16k model you had so little memory that multitasking wasn't viable. The choice of PC DOS and the 8086 made less sense once shipping in quantity pushed the prices of all the chips down, but nobody predicted that volume would be reached. There isn't enough technical details about CPM86 online, but it appears that it's pretty much the same as DOS 1 apart from the multitasking (it's not even clear that what they shipped supported multitasking). I'm not convinced it would have made much technical difference if CPM86 had been the one and only OS, it just wouldn't be Bill Gates that made all the money.

[nicholas]

I'll go with the account of the person who was in the plane at the time that IBM turned up.
 
http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1593/the-rest-of-the-story-how-bill-gates-beat-gary-kildall-in-os-war-part-1
 
Gary Kildall was in a plane on that day, but IBM waited and they sorted out the NDA issue. But IBM didn't want to pay a royalty and so they went away. Digital Research contacted IBM because they were going to sue over QDOS and IBM gave into all their demands & said they weren't going to bundle either PC DOS or CPM86 and let the customers choose plus giving them $100,000 dollars to do the BIOS. Gary signed thinking that IBM wouldn't be successful but they should just take the money and run, he was wrong.
 
You can argue that IBM overpriced CPM86 on purpose, but Gary let them do it because he didn't think it would matter. But PC DOS winning over CPM86 was nothing to do with IBM not wanting to wait.
 
CPM86 supposedly supported multitasking, but for people buying the 16k model you had so little memory that multitasking wasn't viable. The choice of PC DOS and the 8086 made less sense once shipping in quantity pushed the prices of all the chips down, but nobody predicted that volume would be reached.

Which is the same as the write up in the computerhistory article narrates it.

[psxphill]

Which is the same as the write up in the computerhistory article narrates it.

Not really, it says:
 
"With some alternative approaches in mind, Kildall tried to renew the negotiations a week later but IBM did not respond."
 
And according to the interview that didn't happen. He wrote to them saying they were considering suing over QDOS and IBM did respond.
 
"Kildall and Davis negotiated a resolution that required IBM to market CP/M-86 alongside PC DOS"
 
According to the interview it was IBM that suggested both operating systems be available & the deal that IBM came up with was a no brainer for them, they were so quick to bite the hand off IBM that they didn't negotiate anything.
 
It also doesn't have anything about IBM paying $100,000 for BIOS development.
 
But you're right, it doesn't validate the IBM not wanting to wait for Gary to come back from flying his plane story (which I think Bill Gates might have made up).
 
Without being there we can't know what happened, supposedly he was there and there is nobody else who was there that has covered the story in so much detail. So unless someone can offer better evidence we might as well take his word (some of Bil Herd's stories change with every telling and because so many of them have been documented online you can compare how they diverge but you can't tell which one is true).
 
 

The really sad thing is that Motorola didn't position the 68000 into markets that would end up winning the PC wars.

They were pricing it for the mini computer market, if they'd priced it to compete with the 8086 then they'd have lost money from the mini computer sales they were making. Someone (or lots of someones) at Motorola failed to predict the microcomputer taking over. The also priced the 6809 too high, which is how the 6502 came about in the first place. You could argue that Motorola were evil money grabbers.

[A6000]

I read somewhere that IBM developed a version of the 68000 that executed the IBM 360 instruction set, I wonder if they did anything with that.

[ElPolloDiabl]

IBM PC had upgrade cards from the beginning.
Theres one reason why IBM PC beat Amiga... Mass produced generic add on cards.
We had to wait for any large production of cards.

[psxphill]

I read somewhere that IBM developed a version of the 68000 that executed the IBM 360 instruction set, I wonder if they did anything with that.

They tried to sell it in the XT/370, I don't know how successful they were.
 
I don't know how true the custom microcode story is http://marc.info/?l=classiccmp&m=109279766418496&w=2
It might be that there was external hardware that translated the instructions.

[freqmax]

Makes you wonder what would have happened if the "PC" got an 68000 and CP/M to go with it

[psxphill]

Makes you wonder what would have happened if the "PC" got an 68000 and CP/M to go with it

CP/M had stagnated due to lack of competition & it was expensive, so I'd expect the PC wouldn't have been so successful. At that point it's hard to predict, we might not have become so reliant on computers at all. The butterfly effect of something that big could have caused the Amiga to never exist. It's unlikely the Atari ST would have ended up with software by digital research if they had IBM breathing down their necks for new stuff.

[freqmax]

Perhaps Amiga would have gone with MIPS and some more unix like sw?

[commodorejohn]

Perhaps Amiga would have gone with MIPS and some more unix like sw?

Good Lord no. MIPS was still professional Unix workstation stuff in 1985. The Amiga didn't pick 68k because IBM didn't, they picked it because it was a powerful but cost-effective architecture for the time.