You need to appreciate the IBM sales force back in the early 80s. My dad owned a small business in a small town and in 1980 was looking to get one of these new computers to run his business. I suggested the TRS-80 Model 2 which was about $3,500 (something like $12,000 today) since it already had business applications that he could purchase. He called IBM and they sent over a sales guy who for a week became my dad's new best friend. They went to lunch four days in a row and the guy even took our whole family to the best restaurant in town. As you can imagine, he worked on my dad very hard, convincing him that the only computer he could rationally purchase was the IBM 5110 at a mere $9,500 (around $35,000 today). Well, it did come with a second 8" drive and a printer and IBM would fix the printer when it broke every few months. But the software? There was none. IBM sent him to an IBM-approved programmer who, over a period of months, wrote all the applications he needed in BASIC from scratch, another huge expense. Also the guy never quite got the bugs out of them. Every few months a customer would disappear from the database and wouldn't receive a bill that month. Since it was a small town the customers always called my dad to tell him they hadn't received a bill. The programmer would show up at my dad's business in a suit and tie, type a few things and say he fixed it which of course he hadn't. Five years later Dad replaced it with an IBM PC and some off the shelf software and never had any problems.
@@mercsterIt wasn't the Bureaucracy, but the sales and marketing that help keep IBM going despite itself. IBM was never the best choice, it still isn't. However being that sales keep a close connection with the businesses higher-ups it is difficult to get them out when they are in. For the bosses of big companies and government tech is scary, they really don't trust their own staff who speaks funny talk to them. A confident IBM rep who speaks their language creates trust. Just as long as the product doesn't completely suck. They keep the business.
@@mercster Z Series mainframe, AIX,DB2, IBM PCs from the XT - Thinkpad before being sold to Lenovo. As well the slow and expensive IBM Global Services consulting. There stuff wasn't bad, but it wasn't great just a kinda middle of the road tech that was maintained well enough to avoid being obsolete, but rarely something exceptional.
@@toddfraser3353 I've worked in several shops that used IBM gear, including a US military contractor... their RS/4000 boxen and AIX are incredibly stable and well-regarded systems. I don't know what you mean by "exceptional"... their system management tools were, for a long time, head and shoulders above similar offerings from DEC, Sun, HP and others... like most mid-range, they were reliable workhorses. (AIX went through some strange changes 3 -> 4, but that was mostly a user-facing issue.) I've been around a Z system, but never got to play with it. I don't know of another architecture (at least when Z series came out) that was as flexible when it comes to virtualization. EDIT: Oh yeah, JFS! What systems, in your mind, were "exceptional" where IBM was not?
0:50 IBM invented the 8” floppy. I think it was Shugart that shrank the form factor to 5¼”. And Sony that invented the rigid shell with the convenient protective slider. That way, you never actually had to touch the “floppy” part!
2:31 This why DEC branded its products “PDP” (“Programmed Data Processor”), instead of calling them “computers”. So that they could sell them to engineers, without the beancounters and management higher-ups coming in to wonder why they were not buying from IBM.
My first PC was a PCjr, which I bought because it was dirt cheap when IBM was liquidating them. By then they'd put a semi-decent keyboard on it, and with an expansion deck that added more memory and a second diskette drive it wasn't a bad machine. Eventually I replaced the processor with an NEC V-20 chip which gave a modest performance boost, and I kept it until about 1989 when I upgraded to a 20MHz 80386-powered computer.
I remember Don Estridge. Was in a meeting with him leading the group and he impressed me more than any other manager at IBM. Super smart, got to the point, made a decision and the meeting was over! (As the video hints at, that is not a typical meeting.) Another video somewhere points out that Microsoft was IBM’s SECOND CHOICE for software after the first choice refused to sign a standard non-disclosure agreement! Weird huh with all those billions at stake although not apparent then.
This is such a classic case of the stodgy, cobweb encrusted bureaucracy completely missing what was evolving around them, clinging like barnacles to a rock with slow, plodding development schedules with vast layers of management and paperwork. Everyone was comfortable with things being just the way they were, with the "this is the way we've always done things, and the way it's going to stay" mantra chiseled into many of the diehard senior bureaucrat's thought processes.
IBM was really crazy, I have these business PC magazines from around 1990 from my youth... you can see reviews of 486 IBM machines priced as high as $20000, where clone 486 were $4000. That price gap was just too large, even if the IBM was of slighlty higher quality
Yes. It was the marketing theme for Wintel to win the PC market with constant performance improvement and high volume; therefore, much lower price making afforable price to the mass population, not only engineers or technical personnel.
Thanks for the kind words, this was definitely my favorite video to create so far. Part 2 is still early in production right now as I have another video to get out before I can work on it. Part 2 should be released in another 6 weeks or so if my schedule holds :) Glad you enjoyed it!
The fall of big corporations due to bureaucracy! It reminds me of a joke that my dad says was doing the rounds in the early 1960s. The Chair of British Rail was arguing with the chair of ICI (then one of the biggest companies in the world) whose organisation was biggest. In the end they agreed that British Rail was bigger, but ICI carried more passengers!!!
When Don Estridge was demoted and left the PC management, it was the death knell of their PC line. Bill Lowe and the IBM stodgy management ruined their PC business.
1:29 Cray was never in the conventional “mainframe” market. And CDC had a lot of success with its 6000-series supercomputers (plus it won, against all expectations, a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against IBM for its FUD campaign against CDC) in the 1960s and into the 1970s. IBM had nothing like them. Company President Thomas Watson sent out a scathing memo: “Last week Control Data had a press conference during which they officially announced their 6600 system. I understand that, in the laboratory developing this system there were only 34 people, including the janitor. Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are programmers, and only one person has a PhD, a relatively junior programmer. Contrasting this modest effort with our own vast development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world’s most powerful computer.”
IBM always felt it was too big and too important to deal with trivial things like customers. I worked for the Army ordering computer equipment and software for a system that the Army had developed. Now despite IBM's belief that they were the big dog in the house, the Army is much bigger. I needed to purchase some servers for the system we installing at various installations. I saw that IBM had some blade servers which would be what we needed. So I called IBM. The lady at IBM who would order the systems for us answered. She said: "How much are you planning to spend?" I answered: "$250,000". She said that was too little and they were only interested in orders of a million dollars or more. I said: "Ok" and hung up. I never called IBM again for anything. They lost more than a million dollars in sales.
@@AnotherBoringTopic Yeah, I guessed so. But I was puzzled, when I first saw it in the video. Took me a sec to realize, that the image was just flipped ;)
@@AnotherBoringTopic Ah, don't worry. It's there to drive your point home, and so it does. All fine for me, plus a little wiggle in the comment section. :)
I remember working as a teenager in a microcomputer store when the Compaq Deskpro 386 arrived. There had been PC clones before but for the first 386 machine to not be from IBM made me dizzy for a moment. I tried the new machine and noted its superb build quality. It ran XENIX like a bat out of hell. EISA was supported by enough companies that didn't care if IBM wasn't on board. I thought, this changes everything... IBM is no longer a leader, no longer in charge. The hardware design is owned by no one, and everyone.
And of course Microsoft got rid of Xenix, the only OS it had that could take advantage of the capabilities of the 386 processor, in favour of MS-DOS, which could not.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 AT&T introduced UNIX System V and Microsoft didn't want to get into a fight, especially with Windows being more important long term.
Yup...arrogance, pride, bureaucracy, and refusal to expand with the flow of technological advances regardless how it might affect prior developments was Big Blue's downfall. I had a used PS/2 unit in 2001 from among the units I actually worked on to sell as is, however, I can't remember the exact model now. They were ok, but I preferred the Compatible units for a variety of reasons.
Periphials? ;) As an IBM CE in the early 80's, I happened to open the box of the very first 5150 into the company headquarters in Sydney, Australia. As medium systems engineers, we all looked at it on the table and I remember us saying "this will never catch on"....
I just found your channel , and I really like it - you have videos starting 3 years back- I Have NO CLUE why you don’t have more subscribers. Am I missing something here?
Welcome to the channel! Well we kind of break all of the rules that make TH-cam’s algorithm love you, so growth has been slow. Scripts can take months to write, editing can take more months, and so the end result is that we upload infrequently (only two videos last year). This year we are trying to step things up and upload at least every couple months. Not sure how successful we are going to be, but that’s the goal :)
Great video, I'm enjoying the whole season!! Maybe something you forgot to mention is the proprietary BIOS, the only copyright protected part of the IBM PC (and later XT). Oh, well, maybe you're talking about that in the next episode.
Ifind it misleading to say, that the OS was "provided" by Gates, as one would interpret it as being self-made. In the contrary, the operating system "provided" by Gates was not made by them, but bought as "86-DOS" from another company.
9:59 Actually, they did try again for the home market with another product, the PC JX. This was only released in Japan and Australasia. Let’s just say there’s a reason why you never heard of it before. ;)
The personal computer was the best thing that has ever happened to the business office. Today, it is not as popular as before. Applications programs, known as app, can be downloaded and used in smartphones. Users can do functional tasks on the smartphones. Data and images can be printed on today's printers via wi-fi. Creating documents from scratch is done easily on the microcomputer. I use business productivity software which is Microsoft Office 2019 Professional, including Access and Publisher. Creating and printing documents and files are much easier than doing things the old-fashioned way. The microcomputer is very flexible in document and file management. The beauty of it all is that I work in the privacy of my home-no jacket required.
I love your videos man... though I have to say, one consistency is your inability to pronounce some words, like "peripherals." 😂 Not throwing shade, I promise... thanks! Also I don't think you ever made that OS/2 video, as someone who ran OS/2 and thought it was a cool system, I'd love to see it! It had some pretty forward thinking-ideas.
Oh I have a long-standing tendency to mispronounce words, mostly due to my doing a lot of reading without commensurately using the words. I do my best, but I just assume that there are going to be some words that I mangle, get called out on, and hopefully have the correct pronunciation going forward :) You have to have a thick skin to do TH-cam, so I don't get bent out of shape when somebody points out a mangled word :) The OS/2 video will be the next major release on the channel, I will be recording the audio for it this week. Script is over 17,000 words long so I am probably going to be editing it for quite a few weeks. But it's coming I promise! Thanks so much for taking the time to comment, I really appreciate it and its great to hear that you are enjoying the videos!
@@AnotherBoringTopic Yep I get ya... as a nerdy loner teenager, there were dozens (hundreds?) of words I knew well and could use in context, but had no idea how to pronounce correctly. Embarrassed myself more than once...It happens! So excited for OS/2 video! Thanks buddy!
Thanks for the compliment! I've been working on Part 2, its probably going to be almost twice as long as Part 1. This series will be at least 5-6 videos long when it's done, hopefully Part 2 (Attack of the Cloners) will be done within the next few weeks.
Great video! But some incorrect info about the creation of the first PC. - MS was initially not contacted because a need for an OS, as they planned to use DR, cp/m-86. They came anboard due to experience in home computer marked and to deliver programming languages. MS was not into OS at all, came later. - IBM never had close to 75% of home computer marked.
OS/2 may have been bloated, but was superior to Windows in terms of interrupt driven, pre-emptive multitasking. Windows NT 3.5 was probably the first version to match it. Loss of market leadership was due more to Big Blue's fundamental lack of comprehension of how the micro market worked. Their decision to go with COTS parts destined them to failure. Your video didn't mention the difference between MS-DOS compatible and IBM compatible. There were many early machines that were only MS-DOS compatible. Many programmers learned they could get better performance by writing directly to the hardware instead of using DOS calls. This was an obstacle until Compaq developed a BIOS that performed the same as the IBM BIOS. Big Blue even sued them, to no avail. Later Phoenix developed its own compatible BIOS that they licensed to clone builders. At that point IBM was no longer in charge.
re: "Many programmers learned they could get better performance by writing directly to the hardware instead of using DOS calls. " Many, many engineering tools did it that way, ignoring WIndows even until the later versions. We always had for board layout and schematic capture tools graphical interfaces, and don't forget early Autocad worked the same way too!
The trouble with OS/2 is that it was originally written for the 80286 segmented architecture, not the linear address space of the 80386 (which was already shipping in sizeable amounts by that time). That was a dumb decision which made it harder to program.
Atari is back btw - how much is anyone's guess (prob not much - just because I'm a fan doesn't mean I have any illusions on it's marketplace performance) but they do have a nice mini-computer profile with their VCS which can service a Linux or Windows OS install and I've found it compelling enough in price-performance that I'm migrating from Mac OS to Linux at a rate that's even surprising me. Is it the best PC - of course not. But it is less than 1/3 the price of a new Mac Mini and I've been enjoying it quite a bit. Certainly my Steam library has expanded - and I'm now hosting a Minecraft server where before I could barely push 15 fps on anything from the aqauatic version onwards on the Mac (it was an old mac granted - but Minecraft is now smooth as butter thanks to the dual core Ryzen which can be easily overclocked to 2X it's base performance with a RAM upgrade, installing an M2 SSD and a little thermal paste for safety.). Nitpicks aside - love your work - subbed and want more More MORE!
I was somewhat confused when Atari announced the VCS, it seemed like massive overkill for playing old games. However when the price/performance/expandability is taken into account, I think it represents a fairly solid value and I am interested to see what people do with it. Steam Linux gaming also has certainly come a long way, mostly thanks to Valve's hard work. You may be interested to hear that as of last year, I switched to a full Linux system (Pop!OS) for all video and audio editing (I edit in DaVinci Resolve) and a good chunk of the graphics creation. The price to performance ratio of Ryzen is considerably ahead of Intel and upgrading from an old i7 3930k to a Ryzen 3900x was such a huge leap that I haven't even bothered with overclocking yet. Appreciate the sub! Should be a new video (software history related this time, kicking off a new series) completed by the end of June.
@@AnotherBoringTopic Oh Valve's Wine fork Proton is amazing! It seems since most 'native linux' builds tend to break on assorted distro updates - people have reported 2x performance or greater in Proton (which compared to classic emulation just blows my mind). Cool on the video tool front too. I made mention of it in a support zine from a while back that I put out for the early VCS adopters : www.scribd.com/document/396603102/Atari-Age-Magazine-Nov-Dec-2018
The woodgrain fetish the 70s had for electronics has never appealed to me, but I do think that the Commodore PET is a very stylish piece of work, something that represents the best of 70s design.
Your channel name is ironic because you are entertaining to watch, I think you should change it. In addition, your content is well researched and simply intriguing. The TH-cam algorithm is not doing you justice
@@AnotherBoringTopic I understand the ironic channel name but remember that the people who watch your channel will not think of these topics as boring and people who would have otherwise clicked out of curiosity on the topic but are less interested in the technical details will be discouraged. I am a bookworm and a nerd and despite that I was discouraged from clicking and the only way I did was because I saved it to watch later and it just appeared after watching the videos I had saved before it. I plead with you to change it to something positive or just neutral, such as the abbreviation ABT or ABTips, ABTech. If so many people are complaining, then there is something unappealing about your channel name
Thank you for taking the time to give such a detailed, well thought out critique of the channel name, I really appreciate it. Feedback like yours helps make the channel better and I assure you both myself and my business partner take it seriously. You are not the first to suggest changing the name, and we are not opposed to it (channel name and branding was already slightly changed a while ago as it used to be called “Boring Topics”) if we can think of a better name. We are going to do some brainstorming and see what we can come up with, including considering your name suggestions. Again, thank you for your feedback :)
these are some of the most interesting videos I watched in a while I was quite gripped by the series, very vexed that part 3 is not available My Son, aged 12 refused to go to bed, as he wanted to stop up, watching it with me (no joke) so why call the channel "Another Boring Topic " ??? you know how to make excellent videos, and could be a hit channel on youtube, but how about calling yourself "the interesting video guy" "knowledge injection" "Everything you wanted to know about computers, but were too embarrassed to ask" don't bash your own product, you got talent, and your videos are good, a new name for channel needed Other videos on this topic, have 500.000 views, and they were very poor in comparison to your excellent videos but you shot yourself in the foot, with calling yourself "another boring topic"
First of all let me say that I really appreciate you taking the time to post your thoughts and give feedback, it’s always great to hear both what we did great and what we can improve. The channel name was chosen to emphasize that the two of us who run the channel are trying to make interesting videos out of what are normally very boring topics. It’s not just computers, we have videos on history, the Soviet Union, and North Korea already up, plus other videos planned on subjects such as the workings of the Soviet economy and various aspects of WW2. We are definitely not opposed to rebranding the channel (in fact we already have slightly, the original name was Boring Topics) but any name would need to be broad enough to cover the multitude of topics that we are interested in. I do personally like “knowledge injection” as a possible title though, I will add it to our list :) Once again, thanks so much for taking the time to give us a well thought out critique, it means a lot to me personally as this video in particular took me almost 5 months of work to put together. Part 3 is coming, script is almost done and the CG artist I hired is working on some of the visuals. Hopefully be ready end of September
Actually i worked IBM in texas 90 time Ibm only make mainframe and super computers cpu manufacturing heavily AI industrial medical defence government systems
I would tend to mostly agree, although it is fair to point out that Microsoft has managed to reinvent itself multiple times and branch out into new areas of business (Xbox, Azure, Bing), sometimes creating multi billion dollar new revenue streams. They aren’t always successful(Windows Phone, Zune) but they are at least trying to avoid settling into complacency. But there is no getting around the fact that Microsoft does have a large bureaucracy these days and many of its recent efforts haven’t worked out well or have stumbled out of the gate(Xbox One).
Not giving the job to Atari was a big mistake. An Atari ST running TOS on a 8MHz Motorola 68000 was a much better computer than any PC under DOS or early versions of Windows.
The legendary IBM bureaucracy was not a place for rapid innovation, its a miracle that Estridge was able to do what he did in creating the PC, and he was only able to do that by taking his team far away and basically treating the whole project like a start up with limited resources and a pressing need to get to market. Very smart way of doing things, but as soon as the project was shown to be a success, the bureaucracy came in and took over. The cloners could come up with new systems in way less time than IBM, Compaq shipped its 386 machine 7 months prior to IBMs first 386, and I suspect that might have marked a high point in IBM's speed to market, with things only getting slower from there.
IBM is hardly dead. They never really took the PC very seriously anyways -- and it showed. They went back to doing what they do best, which was mainframe computing. Hardly dead, 90% of the large banks still used them even today because of their incredible I/O performance. They also lead in quantum computing. If that wasn't enough they bought Red Hat Linux and promote open software today.
I can't help but think of the law enforcement code for the criminally insane or mentally disturbed whenever the IBM 5150 is mentioned. And then wonder how a Sammy Hagar and VanHalen endorsement could have helped market it.
Can you expand on this a bit? I know a bit about the series 1 from my research, but I don’t remember hearing anything negative about it…isn’t it still running a lot of the USA’s nukes?
@@AnotherBoringTopic My first job out of college in ‘83 was with a software company that developed an MAI Basic Four compatible Business Basic with a suite of accounting software (GL, AR, AP, Inventory, Payroll etc.) We also had a 4-GL tool called IDOL to allow some degree of customization without code. It was available on a plethora of Intel, Zilog and Motorola based Unix systems from startups like Plexus, Onyx, Wicat, Altos, Zilog, Charles River Data Systems, CCI and Fortune Systems. The BASIC interpreter was written in assembly language. The Series 1 was the only machine that used EBCDIC. It was also our least popular seller. The series one really was pretty much an industrial control beast and not a business machine. It clearly was a response to the DEC PDP line. By the time the Series 1 came out, Digital was working on the VAX which was a serious challenge to IBM’s mainframes .
I don't like the old at&t and i don't like the new one, either one made a monopoly on phones and baby bell made a monopoly off of the original at&ts name, absolutely disgusting
And IBM was extremely scared of potentially facing a similar reaction and possibly even being broken up into “Baby IBMs” just as the original AT&T was. The years long ordeal with the government suit against them made them gun shy. Hence why they were so wary of being seen as too controlling and had no problem outsourcing the OS to Microsoft. Not that that strategy backfired or anything ;)
NVidea, isn't Obsolete, Yet. We Need to Reverse Engineer, Steam OS 3.0 There's an Arch Linux Version of Steam OS 3.0, that Runs on ARM and Risc-V and x86-64. This Needs to be Reversed and the x86-64: Accelerations Adopted. The Debian Version can then be Made to Run Cyberpunk 2099. Steam, Release a Live CD - Which is Like the Hackintosh. We Can get the Drivers for Hardware from That. Then we can make HTC Vive VR. The Real SteamOS (obtained from Hardware), is Protected Like the Mackintosh / Hackintosh. We need to do a Replay Attack, and Replace the One in the Live CD.
You need to appreciate the IBM sales force back in the early 80s. My dad owned a small business in a small town and in 1980 was looking to get one of these new computers to run his business. I suggested the TRS-80 Model 2 which was about $3,500 (something like $12,000 today) since it already had business applications that he could purchase. He called IBM and they sent over a sales guy who for a week became my dad's new best friend. They went to lunch four days in a row and the guy even took our whole family to the best restaurant in town. As you can imagine, he worked on my dad very hard, convincing him that the only computer he could rationally purchase was the IBM 5110 at a mere $9,500 (around $35,000 today). Well, it did come with a second 8" drive and a printer and IBM would fix the printer when it broke every few months.
But the software? There was none. IBM sent him to an IBM-approved programmer who, over a period of months, wrote all the applications he needed in BASIC from scratch, another huge expense. Also the guy never quite got the bugs out of them. Every few months a customer would disappear from the database and wouldn't receive a bill that month. Since it was a small town the customers always called my dad to tell him they hadn't received a bill. The programmer would show up at my dad's business in a suit and tie, type a few things and say he fixed it which of course he hadn't. Five years later Dad replaced it with an IBM PC and some off the shelf software and never had any problems.
In your Dad's case IBM stands for I've Been Manipulated.
replaced an IBM PC by an IBM PC???
Absolutely incredible, I had no idea how cold, corporate and over-bureaucratic IBM was.
That's why they were so successful for so many years, and continue to be.
@@mercsterIt wasn't the Bureaucracy, but the sales and marketing that help keep IBM going despite itself. IBM was never the best choice, it still isn't. However being that sales keep a close connection with the businesses higher-ups it is difficult to get them out when they are in. For the bosses of big companies and government tech is scary, they really don't trust their own staff who speaks funny talk to them. A confident IBM rep who speaks their language creates trust. Just as long as the product doesn't completely suck. They keep the business.
@@toddfraser3353 What IBM systems have you worked with?
@@mercster Z Series mainframe, AIX,DB2, IBM PCs from the XT - Thinkpad before being sold to Lenovo. As well the slow and expensive IBM Global Services consulting. There stuff wasn't bad, but it wasn't great just a kinda middle of the road tech that was maintained well enough to avoid being obsolete, but rarely something exceptional.
@@toddfraser3353 I've worked in several shops that used IBM gear, including a US military contractor... their RS/4000 boxen and AIX are incredibly stable and well-regarded systems. I don't know what you mean by "exceptional"... their system management tools were, for a long time, head and shoulders above similar offerings from DEC, Sun, HP and others... like most mid-range, they were reliable workhorses. (AIX went through some strange changes 3 -> 4, but that was mostly a user-facing issue.) I've been around a Z system, but never got to play with it. I don't know of another architecture (at least when Z series came out) that was as flexible when it comes to virtualization. EDIT: Oh yeah, JFS!
What systems, in your mind, were "exceptional" where IBM was not?
0:50 IBM invented the 8” floppy. I think it was Shugart that shrank the form factor to 5¼”. And Sony that invented the rigid shell with the convenient protective slider. That way, you never actually had to touch the “floppy” part!
2:31 This why DEC branded its products “PDP” (“Programmed Data Processor”), instead of calling them “computers”. So that they could sell them to engineers, without the beancounters and management higher-ups coming in to wonder why they were not buying from IBM.
My first PC was a PCjr, which I bought because it was dirt cheap when IBM was liquidating them. By then they'd put a semi-decent keyboard on it, and with an expansion deck that added more memory and a second diskette drive it wasn't a bad machine. Eventually I replaced the processor with an NEC V-20 chip which gave a modest performance boost, and I kept it until about 1989 when I upgraded to a 20MHz 80386-powered computer.
I remember Don Estridge. Was in a meeting with him leading the group and he impressed me more than any other manager at IBM. Super smart, got to the point, made a decision and the meeting was over! (As the video hints at, that is not a typical meeting.)
Another video somewhere points out that Microsoft was IBM’s SECOND CHOICE for software after the first choice refused to sign a standard non-disclosure agreement!
Weird huh with all those billions at stake although not apparent then.
.......this is Hard Work
This is such a classic case of the stodgy, cobweb encrusted bureaucracy completely missing what was evolving around them, clinging like barnacles to a rock with slow, plodding development schedules with vast layers of management and paperwork. Everyone was comfortable with things being just the way they were, with the "this is the way we've always done things, and the way it's going to stay" mantra chiseled into many of the diehard senior bureaucrat's thought processes.
IBM was really crazy, I have these business PC magazines from around 1990 from my youth... you can see reviews of 486 IBM machines priced as high as $20000, where clone 486 were $4000. That price gap was just too large, even if the IBM was of slighlty higher quality
Are the Apple prices in those same magazines?
Yes. It was the marketing theme for Wintel to win the PC market with constant performance improvement and high volume; therefore, much lower price making afforable price to the mass population, not only engineers or technical personnel.
The ads were probably targeted at big businesses and governments federal, state, and local.
Thank you so much for this video, you have no idea how much it helped out a business student from The Netherlands:D
Glad to be of assistance :D I’m curious what you are working on, is it something to do with IBMs business practices back in the 1980s?
I'd wanna contact u Mr.business student from The Netherlands, As I'm so in love with The Netherlands ♥
I just realized that there's no pt 2. Please continue this, your video is fantastic and informative.
Thanks for the kind words, this was definitely my favorite video to create so far. Part 2 is still early in production right now as I have another video to get out before I can work on it. Part 2 should be released in another 6 weeks or so if my schedule holds :) Glad you enjoyed it!
The fall of big corporations due to bureaucracy! It reminds me of a joke that my dad says was doing the rounds in the early 1960s. The Chair of British Rail was arguing with the chair of ICI (then one of the biggest companies in the world) whose organisation was biggest. In the end they agreed that British Rail was bigger, but ICI carried more passengers!!!
I am only on part 1. Very excited for IBM and OS/2. Go Blue!
Hope you enjoy it :)
I know it is great fun to trash the PC Junior, but don't forget that the Tandy 1000 is basically the PC Jr done right.
"Done right" being the operative word
When Don Estridge was demoted and left the PC management, it was the death knell of their PC line. Bill Lowe and the IBM stodgy management ruined their PC business.
1:29 Cray was never in the conventional “mainframe” market. And CDC had a lot of success with its 6000-series supercomputers (plus it won, against all expectations, a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against IBM for its FUD campaign against CDC) in the 1960s and into the 1970s. IBM had nothing like them. Company President Thomas Watson sent out a scathing memo:
“Last week Control Data had a press conference during which they officially announced their 6600 system. I understand that, in the laboratory developing this system there were only 34 people, including the janitor. Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are programmers, and only one person has a PhD, a relatively junior programmer. Contrasting this modest effort with our own vast development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world’s most powerful computer.”
IBM always felt it was too big and too important to deal with trivial things like customers. I worked for the Army ordering computer equipment and software for a system that the Army had developed. Now despite IBM's belief that they were the big dog in the house, the Army is much bigger. I needed to purchase some servers for the system we installing at various installations. I saw that IBM had some blade servers which would be what we needed. So I called IBM. The lady at IBM who would order the systems for us answered. She said: "How much are you planning to spend?" I answered: "$250,000". She said that was too little and they were only interested in orders of a million dollars or more. I said: "Ok" and hung up. I never called IBM again for anything. They lost more than a million dollars in sales.
I absolutely love the image of an ultra-rare left-handed IBM AT, shown in 10:19 and various other occasions 8-)
😂 or possibly the image was flipped while I was editing it…since I have never even heard of a left handed AT 😜
@@AnotherBoringTopic Yeah, I guessed so. But I was puzzled, when I first saw it in the video. Took me a sec to realize, that the image was just flipped ;)
Good eye for catching it though! Now it’s going to annoy me every time I see it…
@@AnotherBoringTopic Ah, don't worry. It's there to drive your point home, and so it does. All fine for me, plus a little wiggle in the comment section. :)
I had a 386sx IBM PS/2 on my desktop in 1992 and it was crap. The only valuable device was the IBM Type M keyboard
I remember working as a teenager in a microcomputer store when the Compaq Deskpro 386 arrived. There had been PC clones before but for the first 386 machine to not be from IBM made me dizzy for a moment. I tried the new machine and noted its superb build quality. It ran XENIX like a bat out of hell. EISA was supported by enough companies that didn't care if IBM wasn't on board. I thought, this changes everything... IBM is no longer a leader, no longer in charge. The hardware design is owned by no one, and everyone.
And of course Microsoft got rid of Xenix, the only OS it had that could take advantage of the capabilities of the 386 processor, in favour of MS-DOS, which could not.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 SCO took over XENIX and did the 386 version. It eventually became SCO UNIX.
@@perfectionbox Why do you think Microsoft gave up on it?
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 AT&T introduced UNIX System V and Microsoft didn't want to get into a fight, especially with Windows being more important long term.
@@perfectionbox Funny, isn’t it, that other Unix licensees didn’t see such a need to “get into a fight”.
Yup...arrogance, pride, bureaucracy, and refusal to expand with the flow of technological advances regardless how it might affect prior developments was Big Blue's downfall. I had a used PS/2 unit in 2001 from among the units I actually worked on to sell as is, however, I can't remember the exact model now. They were ok, but I preferred the Compatible units for a variety of reasons.
Periphials? ;) As an IBM CE in the early 80's, I happened to open the box of the very first 5150 into the company headquarters in Sydney, Australia. As medium systems engineers, we all looked at it on the table and I remember us saying "this will never catch on"....
I just found your channel , and I really like it - you have videos starting 3 years back- I Have NO CLUE why you don’t have more subscribers. Am I missing something here?
Welcome to the channel! Well we kind of break all of the rules that make TH-cam’s algorithm love you, so growth has been slow. Scripts can take months to write, editing can take more months, and so the end result is that we upload infrequently (only two videos last year).
This year we are trying to step things up and upload at least every couple months. Not sure how successful we are going to be, but that’s the goal :)
Being a 80s kid i remember IBM being massive at the start and being a joke by the end.
You deserve more subscribers.
Great video, I'm enjoying the whole season!!
Maybe something you forgot to mention is the proprietary BIOS, the only copyright protected part of the IBM PC (and later XT). Oh, well, maybe you're talking about that in the next episode.
Ifind it misleading to say, that the OS was "provided" by Gates, as one would interpret it as being self-made. In the contrary, the operating system "provided" by Gates was not made by them, but bought as "86-DOS" from another company.
Woah, good work, just what i was looking for! Interesting, concise and informative, thanks alot dude ;D
Appreciate the compliment! Glad you enjoyed it :)
9:59 Actually, they did try again for the home market with another product, the PC JX. This was only released in Japan and Australasia.
Let’s just say there’s a reason why you never heard of it before. ;)
IBM were they're own worst enemy.
The personal computer was the best thing that has ever happened to the business office. Today, it is not as popular as before. Applications programs, known as app, can be downloaded and used in smartphones. Users can do functional tasks on the smartphones. Data and images can be printed on today's printers via wi-fi. Creating documents from scratch is done easily on the microcomputer. I use business productivity software which is Microsoft Office 2019 Professional, including Access and Publisher. Creating and printing documents and files are much easier than doing things the old-fashioned way. The microcomputer is very flexible in document and file management. The beauty of it all is that I work in the privacy of my home-no jacket required.
Excellent video!
I love your videos man... though I have to say, one consistency is your inability to pronounce some words, like "peripherals." 😂 Not throwing shade, I promise... thanks! Also I don't think you ever made that OS/2 video, as someone who ran OS/2 and thought it was a cool system, I'd love to see it! It had some pretty forward thinking-ideas.
Oh I have a long-standing tendency to mispronounce words, mostly due to my doing a lot of reading without commensurately using the words. I do my best, but I just assume that there are going to be some words that I mangle, get called out on, and hopefully have the correct pronunciation going forward :) You have to have a thick skin to do TH-cam, so I don't get bent out of shape when somebody points out a mangled word :)
The OS/2 video will be the next major release on the channel, I will be recording the audio for it this week. Script is over 17,000 words long so I am probably going to be editing it for quite a few weeks. But it's coming I promise!
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment, I really appreciate it and its great to hear that you are enjoying the videos!
@@AnotherBoringTopic Yep I get ya... as a nerdy loner teenager, there were dozens (hundreds?) of words I knew well and could use in context, but had no idea how to pronounce correctly. Embarrassed myself more than once...It happens!
So excited for OS/2 video! Thanks buddy!
7:47 What to heck is this? Mirrored AT??
Great job when will you meak part 2?
Thanks for the compliment! I've been working on Part 2, its probably going to be almost twice as long as Part 1. This series will be at least 5-6 videos long when it's done, hopefully Part 2 (Attack of the Cloners) will be done within the next few weeks.
Very interesting, thanks.
This is why companies need visionary leadership.
Please upload part 2
Great video! But some incorrect info about the creation of the first PC.
- MS was initially not contacted because a need for an OS, as they planned to use DR, cp/m-86. They came anboard due to experience in home computer marked and to deliver programming languages. MS was not into OS at all, came later.
- IBM never had close to 75% of home computer marked.
just wanna point out that it's peripheRALs, not peripheals
They didn’t take RISC , Apple did, and ARM is dominant.
OS/2 may have been bloated, but was superior to Windows in terms of interrupt driven, pre-emptive multitasking. Windows NT 3.5 was probably the first version to match it.
Loss of market leadership was due more to Big Blue's fundamental lack of comprehension of how the micro market worked. Their decision to go with COTS parts destined them to failure. Your video didn't mention the difference between MS-DOS compatible and IBM compatible. There were many early machines that were only MS-DOS compatible. Many programmers learned they could get better performance by writing directly to the hardware instead of using DOS calls.
This was an obstacle until Compaq developed a BIOS that performed the same as the IBM BIOS. Big Blue even sued them, to no avail. Later Phoenix developed its own compatible BIOS that they licensed to clone builders. At that point IBM was no longer in charge.
re: "Many programmers learned they could get better performance by writing directly to the hardware instead of using DOS calls. "
Many, many engineering tools did it that way, ignoring WIndows even until the later versions. We always had for board layout and schematic capture tools graphical interfaces, and don't forget early Autocad worked the same way too!
The trouble with OS/2 is that it was originally written for the 80286 segmented architecture, not the linear address space of the 80386 (which was already shipping in sizeable amounts by that time). That was a dumb decision which made it harder to program.
You failed to mention that Bill Gates father was quite cozy with IBM and that was how he was able to get a deal like he did with IBM.
His mother was on the board of directors his father was a lawyer
No, neither of his parents worked with or for IBM. His mother was on the board of directors of the United Way along with John Pern-- CEO of IBM.
Atari is back btw - how much is anyone's guess (prob not much - just because I'm a fan doesn't mean I have any illusions on it's marketplace performance) but they do have a nice mini-computer profile with their VCS which can service a Linux or Windows OS install and I've found it compelling enough in price-performance that I'm migrating from Mac OS to Linux at a rate that's even surprising me. Is it the best PC - of course not. But it is less than 1/3 the price of a new Mac Mini and I've been enjoying it quite a bit. Certainly my Steam library has expanded - and I'm now hosting a Minecraft server where before I could barely push 15 fps on anything from the aqauatic version onwards on the Mac (it was an old mac granted - but Minecraft is now smooth as butter thanks to the dual core Ryzen which can be easily overclocked to 2X it's base performance with a RAM upgrade, installing an M2 SSD and a little thermal paste for safety.).
Nitpicks aside - love your work - subbed and want more More MORE!
I was somewhat confused when Atari announced the VCS, it seemed like massive overkill for playing old games. However when the price/performance/expandability is taken into account, I think it represents a fairly solid value and I am interested to see what people do with it. Steam Linux gaming also has certainly come a long way, mostly thanks to Valve's hard work.
You may be interested to hear that as of last year, I switched to a full Linux system (Pop!OS) for all video and audio editing (I edit in DaVinci Resolve) and a good chunk of the graphics creation. The price to performance ratio of Ryzen is considerably ahead of Intel and upgrading from an old i7 3930k to a Ryzen 3900x was such a huge leap that I haven't even bothered with overclocking yet.
Appreciate the sub! Should be a new video (software history related this time, kicking off a new series) completed by the end of June.
@@AnotherBoringTopic Oh Valve's Wine fork Proton is amazing! It seems since most 'native linux' builds tend to break on assorted distro updates - people have reported 2x performance or greater in Proton (which compared to classic emulation just blows my mind). Cool on the video tool front too. I made mention of it in a support zine from a while back that I put out for the early VCS adopters : www.scribd.com/document/396603102/Atari-Age-Magazine-Nov-Dec-2018
ya know. paying programmers 'per 1000 lines of code' prooobably isn't the bestest idea that results in the most optimized software. :P
I'm just not using functions at that point. Just rewrite the same code block over and over again.
you r really good plz continue making content
Glad you enjoyed the video! We are definitely continuing to make videos, part 3 of the IBM PC series is in production right now :)
This should have more veiws
The videos in this playlist are out of order, two and one are swapped
Nice catch! I just fixed it, thanks for pointing it out 👍
@@AnotherBoringTopic No problem!
Most beautiful PC Ever!!!!
Just packed up my 5150 after 2 years, and got literally scared of its ugliness. Late '70s vulgarity at its finest.
The woodgrain fetish the 70s had for electronics has never appealed to me, but I do think that the Commodore PET is a very stylish piece of work, something that represents the best of 70s design.
That was awesome
Glad you enjoyed it!
Was the original IBM PC actually good, or was it successful because it had the IBM brand?
Your channel name is ironic because you are entertaining to watch, I think you should change it. In addition, your content is well researched and simply intriguing. The TH-cam algorithm is not doing you justice
Thanks for the comment! Our goal is to make entertaining videos out of what are otherwise boring topics, hence the channel name :)
@@AnotherBoringTopic I understand the ironic channel name but remember that the people who watch your channel will not think of these topics as boring and people who would have otherwise clicked out of curiosity on the topic but are less interested in the technical details will be discouraged. I am a bookworm and a nerd and despite that I was discouraged from clicking and the only way I did was because I saved it to watch later and it just appeared after watching the videos I had saved before it. I plead with you to change it to something positive or just neutral, such as the abbreviation ABT or ABTips, ABTech. If so many people are complaining, then there is something unappealing about your channel name
Thank you for taking the time to give such a detailed, well thought out critique of the channel name, I really appreciate it. Feedback like yours helps make the channel better and I assure you both myself and my business partner take it seriously. You are not the first to suggest changing the name, and we are not opposed to it (channel name and branding was already slightly changed a while ago as it used to be called “Boring Topics”) if we can think of a better name. We are going to do some brainstorming and see what we can come up with, including considering your name suggestions. Again, thank you for your feedback :)
these are some of the most interesting videos I watched in a while
I was quite gripped by the series, very vexed that part 3 is not available
My Son, aged 12 refused to go to bed, as he wanted to stop up, watching it with me (no joke)
so why call the channel "Another Boring Topic " ???
you know how to make excellent videos, and could be a hit channel on youtube, but how about calling yourself
"the interesting video guy"
"knowledge injection"
"Everything you wanted to know about computers, but were too embarrassed to ask"
don't bash your own product,
you got talent, and your videos are good, a new name for channel needed
Other videos on this topic, have 500.000 views, and they were very poor in comparison to your excellent videos
but you shot yourself in the foot, with calling yourself "another boring topic"
First of all let me say that I really appreciate you taking the time to post your thoughts and give feedback, it’s always great to hear both what we did great and what we can improve.
The channel name was chosen to emphasize that the two of us who run the channel are trying to make interesting videos out of what are normally very boring topics.
It’s not just computers, we have videos on history, the Soviet Union, and North Korea already up, plus other videos planned on subjects such as the workings of the Soviet economy and various aspects of WW2.
We are definitely not opposed to rebranding the channel (in fact we already have slightly, the original name was Boring Topics) but any name would need to be broad enough to cover the multitude of topics that we are interested in. I do personally like “knowledge injection” as a possible title though, I will add it to our list :)
Once again, thanks so much for taking the time to give us a well thought out critique, it means a lot to me personally as this video in particular took me almost 5 months of work to put together.
Part 3 is coming, script is almost done and the CG artist I hired is working on some of the visuals. Hopefully be ready end of September
How could IBM do differently to continue dominate the PC space ?
This is a very good video
Glad you enjoyed it! Part 2 slipped a bit in the schedule but I am working on it and it should be done within the next few weeks.
Why nobody watch your channel? Only good videos about ibm in depth on TH-cam are yours
Every channel has to start somewhere :) Glad you enjoyed the IBM videos!
@2:17 "3.6 billion dollars of 'PRODITS'"
wheres pt 2?
Really enjoy the content of your videos, but the pace is too frenetic! Stretch this out to 20 minutes and allow some breathing space.
I smell foul play with that plane crash
With sure big company and lot of resources and man power how did it fell so hard? Poor management!
nice
how about not editing out every tiny pause. I'm trying to breathe here.
Actually i worked IBM in texas 90 time Ibm only make mainframe and super computers cpu manufacturing heavily AI industrial medical defence government systems
These PC companies seem to thrive when their the underdog, the success seems to kill them. I would say Microsoft mirrors IBM now.
I would tend to mostly agree, although it is fair to point out that Microsoft has managed to reinvent itself multiple times and branch out into new areas of business (Xbox, Azure, Bing), sometimes creating multi billion dollar new revenue streams. They aren’t always successful(Windows Phone, Zune) but they are at least trying to avoid settling into complacency. But there is no getting around the fact that Microsoft does have a large bureaucracy these days and many of its recent efforts haven’t worked out well or have stumbled out of the gate(Xbox One).
Not giving the job to Atari was a big mistake. An Atari ST running TOS on a 8MHz Motorola 68000 was a much better computer than any PC under DOS or early versions of Windows.
The ST wasn’t released until 1985 though, IBM were taking to Atari in 1980 when they were selling the 8Bit 400/800 machines.
The Motorola 680x0 family was much more pleasant to program. Trouble is, I think it was a bit more expensive than Intel’s x86 line.
So bureaucracy killed it..
The legendary IBM bureaucracy was not a place for rapid innovation, its a miracle that Estridge was able to do what he did in creating the PC, and he was only able to do that by taking his team far away and basically treating the whole project like a start up with limited resources and a pressing need to get to market. Very smart way of doing things, but as soon as the project was shown to be a success, the bureaucracy came in and took over.
The cloners could come up with new systems in way less time than IBM, Compaq shipped its 386 machine 7 months prior to IBMs first 386, and I suspect that might have marked a high point in IBM's speed to market, with things only getting slower from there.
IBM is hardly dead. They never really took the PC very seriously anyways -- and it showed. They went back to doing what they do best, which was mainframe computing. Hardly dead, 90% of the large banks still used them even today because of their incredible I/O performance. They also lead in quantum computing. If that wasn't enough they bought Red Hat Linux and promote open software today.
>mfw I start an Another Boring Topic series and it actually has a part 2
I can't help but think of the law enforcement code for the criminally insane or mentally disturbed whenever the IBM 5150 is mentioned. And then wonder how a Sammy Hagar and VanHalen endorsement could have helped market it.
Well it didn't hurt Peavy when they made their iconic 5150 guitar amp. When Van Halen and James Brown left, they just renamed it.
The XT was “5160” and the AT was “5170”. What do those codes mean?
2:47 can we talk about how slutty that 3d stock icon's pose is? Haha
Good info but I would slow down when speaking if you haven't already. You might've, this is from like 4 years ago. Otherwise really informative
One can adjust playback speed. However, the background music is a bit too loud, and also more distracting if you change playback speed up or down.
subscriber 700
could not listen because of the background music
Paying people per 1000 lines of code?
What a great idea, this won't encourage bloated programming at all!
I would make the mother of all comments in the code.
Bottom Line: The Suits are so good at killing companies! CDC, IBM PC ... and many more ...
Ah, the infamous IBM Series-1! 🤮
Can you expand on this a bit? I know a bit about the series 1 from my research, but I don’t remember hearing anything negative about it…isn’t it still running a lot of the USA’s nukes?
@@AnotherBoringTopic It used EBCDIC. Need I say more? 🙄 I suspect very few are used anymore if any.
I know enough to know that IBM had its own way of encoding alphanumerics that wasn’t ASCII, but I’m afraid I don’t know very much about the OS.
@@AnotherBoringTopic My first job out of college in ‘83 was with a software company that developed an MAI Basic Four compatible Business Basic with a suite of accounting software (GL, AR, AP, Inventory, Payroll etc.) We also had a 4-GL tool called IDOL to allow some degree of customization without code. It was available on a plethora of Intel, Zilog and Motorola based Unix systems from startups like Plexus, Onyx, Wicat, Altos, Zilog, Charles River Data Systems, CCI and Fortune Systems. The BASIC interpreter was written in assembly language. The Series 1 was the only machine that used EBCDIC. It was also our least popular seller. The series one really was pretty much an industrial control beast and not a business machine. It clearly was a response to the DEC PDP line. By the time the Series 1 came out, Digital was working on the VAX which was a serious challenge to IBM’s mainframes .
I don't like the old at&t
and i don't like the new one, either
one made a monopoly on phones
and baby bell made a monopoly off of the original at&ts name, absolutely disgusting
And IBM was extremely scared of potentially facing a similar reaction and possibly even being broken up into “Baby IBMs” just as the original AT&T was. The years long ordeal with the government suit against them made them gun shy.
Hence why they were so wary of being seen as too controlling and had no problem outsourcing the OS to Microsoft.
Not that that strategy backfired or anything ;)
Ibm made a deal with the devil and his name was Bill
The word is pronounced byoo·raa·kruh·see, sir.
Wtf is a mid level executive?
could you please not steal the opening theme from level 1 techs 'links with friends' show?
I don’t think I’ve even heard of that show, it just was a piece of royalty free music from Kevin MacLeod that I felt worked well 😂
NVidea, isn't Obsolete, Yet.
We Need to Reverse Engineer, Steam OS 3.0
There's an Arch Linux Version of Steam OS 3.0, that Runs on ARM and Risc-V and x86-64. This Needs to be Reversed and the x86-64: Accelerations Adopted. The Debian Version can then be Made to Run Cyberpunk 2099.
Steam, Release a Live CD - Which is Like the Hackintosh.
We Can get the Drivers for Hardware from That.
Then we can make HTC Vive VR.
The Real SteamOS (obtained from Hardware), is Protected Like the Mackintosh / Hackintosh. We need to do a Replay Attack, and Replace the One in the Live CD.