Re: And you thought Apple II users were screwed by Apple...

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney) wrote:

>salfter@chakotay.ncc74656.org (Scott Alfter) wrote:
>
>>On second thought, I suppose I also forgot about Micro Channel as a way to
>>screw customers.  Then again, the market mostly ignored Micro Channel.  It
>>was easy for people to do that; IBM wasn't the only game in town.
>
>Micro Channel wasn't a way to screw customers.  It was a new, and
>better, standard that IBM was trying to create.  Their mistake was not
>giving away the specs for free.  They required the clone makers to pay
>them a fee to be able to use Micro Channel on their motherboards so
>the clone makers just said, no thanks, and made their own standard.

IBM tried to pull an Apple on the PC world.  ;-)

It is not so much that Micro Channel Architecture wasn't better.
Of course it was.  It was the way IBM presented it.  IBM failed
to provide a transition platform having both ISA and MCA support.
They tried to make users switch immediately, just like Apple
tried to force us Apple II users into Mac users without first
giving us a transition platform with one foot in both boats.

When the clone makers plus IBM finally came up with another
improved architecture, PCI, they were smarter and provided
motherboards with both ISA and PCI slots.  Messier, yes, but
not forever.  Soon, motherboards will have only PCI.  But the
users have been given their 5 year transition, so this is ok.