Comments on: How the IBM PC became the de facto standard for desktop computers https://dfarq.homeip.net/how-the-ibm-pc-became-the-de-facto-standard-for-desktop-computers/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-the-ibm-pc-became-the-de-facto-standard-for-desktop-computers David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more Thu, 01 May 2025 22:12:09 +0000 hourly 1 By: Dave Farquhar https://dfarq.homeip.net/how-the-ibm-pc-became-the-de-facto-standard-for-desktop-computers/#comment-31403 Sat, 04 May 2013 19:08:05 +0000 https://dfarq.homeip.net/?p=6576#comment-31403 In reply to Glaurung.

True enough, though it took quite a while for PCs to standardize on IDE. In the PC/XT days, ST-506 ruled the roost, then RLL followed, then IDE and SCSI had the deathmatch. Macs were pretty much SCSI all the way until they switched to IDE. Amigas and STs flirted with ST-506 early on because it was cheap, then moved to SCSI and IDE around the same time PCs did. SCSI was the performance choice, and IDE was the budget choice.

When Be came out with its BeBox, they said they deliberately used the “PC clone organ donor bank” as much as they could, as did Macs from the mid 1990s onward. DEC licensed the Alpha bus to AMD for the Athlon, which meant DEC could use commodity Athlon chipsets in the final days of the Alpha (and they did).

Even as the PC was evolving, the cheapest standard was always whatever was most common in the PC world, because it was widely available.

]]> By: Glaurung https://dfarq.homeip.net/how-the-ibm-pc-became-the-de-facto-standard-for-desktop-computers/#comment-31402 Sat, 04 May 2013 18:05:28 +0000 https://dfarq.homeip.net/?p=6576#comment-31402 Don’t forget standardization. When the IBM PC came out, there were several different disk drive standards, each with its own controller card. Ditto for floppy drives, graphics cards, etc. Every personal computer company from Apple to Commodore to Atari to Kaypro either rolled their own disk, video, sound, etc controllers, or they chose from among a variety of incompatible alternatives. Then during the 80’s, all the formats that IBM had happened to have chosen for their system became the new standard for everyone, even for supposedly incompatible architectures — the power PC iMac, for instance, used AGP graphics and IDE hard drives.

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