- #Open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing update
- #Open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing upgrade
- #Open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing software
- #Open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing Pc
#Open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing Pc
That machine included 16-bit expansion slots, which were backwards-compatible with the 8-bit slots on the original IBM PC.Ĭompanies like Compaq grew quite large off the back of the IBM PC market, but by the late ’80s, IBM was ready to reassert its dominance over the market. This approach was followed throughout the ’80s, especially after the 1984 release of the IBM PC/AT, which is when the clone market really picked up.
#Open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing software
That ecosystem of PCs, clones, peripherals, and software is why the PC won over Apple. “Making that information public is what created the clone industry. “It had all the logic and software used to build a machine, so a technician could debug or fix it, like a television set,” Mark E. Its existence was arguably the reason the clean-room approach was even possible.
![open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CsZprhBXYAAF9QM.jpg)
This was made possible through the release of the IBM Personal Computer Technical Reference Manual. Without diving too deep into the rise of the clones, manufacturers took advantage of the fact that IBM mostly used off-the-shelf parts for its machines, then created devices that were closely compatible with those specifications. So, how did this infrastructure get its best-known name? Well, the answer is intertwined with the rise of the clone market. ( D Coetzee/Flickr) The confusing way that the Industry Standard Architecture got its name In fact, it had a decidedly less attention-grabby name: The I/O Channel.Ĭertainly, it was snappier than PCMCIA, but it was a name only an engineer could love.Īn IBM PC/AT, which included 16-bit expansion slots that later became industry standard.
![open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing](https://www.pcjs.org/blog/images/compaq/COMPAQ_Jacket_and_Cap.jpg)
This opened the door to radical PC customization.ĭean’s work, for which he received a patent with Dennis Moeller in 1984, was not known as the Integrated System Architecture upon its creation. By tweaking his master’s project, Dean developed a bus that would enable the PC’s processor to send some data to a graphics card or a modem, which would carry out any additional processing remotely. The PC did all its processing in an 8-bit processor and had no way to off-load some of that computing burden to other devices on the system. This made it possible to take information from a mainframe and display it graphically. By taking advantage of faster 16-bit processors and low-cost memory, he was able to store information about each pixel and paint it onto the screen. His thesis project was a high-performance graphics terminal.Īt the time, the state of the art was the vector terminal, a complicated device the size of a small refrigerator. In 1982, he was 25 and had just earned his master’s degree from Florida Atlantic University. In a 2015 article for The Bent, the magazine of the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi, the story of Dean’s direct influence on the structure of the IBM PC was laid clear:
![open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing](https://images.computerhistory.org/timeline/timeline_computers_1968.agcdsky.jpg)
#Open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing upgrade
Fortunately for IBM, Dean had already worked on the groundwork for a more user-maintainable upgrade approach while in grad school.
#Open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing update
(He also, side note, was later responsible for leading the team that developed the first 1-gigahertz processor.)ĭean was part of the small team that was developing PCs in the mainframe-heavy world of IBM, and it was clear that there would be a need for PC users to update and maintain their own equipment, which differed from IBM’s more controlled mainframe strategy. Of the nine earliest patents that IBM received for the machine, Dean holds at least partial credit for three. Dean, one of the most prominent black engineers of the early PC computing era, and one whose work directly influenced the basic shape of the IBM PC. This work can, in large part, be credited to Mark E. At least not one that consumers would really remember.īut this technology, which would eventually become known as the Industry Standard Architecture, nonetheless set the stage for a diverse, upgradeable computer ecosystem that lasts to this day. (IBM) The engineer that gave the IBM PC its defining architectureĭuring the early period of the IBM PC, the expansion slots that commonly came with its machines didn’t really have a name.
![open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing open: how compaq ended ibm’s pc domination and helped invent modern computing](https://www.pcjs.org/blog/images/compaq/COMPAQ_Newsletters.jpg)
Earlier in his career, he co-created the system bus that came to define the personal computer. Dean, shown with the 1-gigahertz processor he helped spearhead.