IBM Personal Computer: Difference between revisions

 

=== The Rise of the Clones ===

At first, the IBM PC didn't have much to offer home users and gamers. It was new, expensive, not as good with graphics as the Apple II or the Atari 800, and was directed squarely at business users. However, IBM's name on the machine made it a safe buy for businesses that already used IBM hardware, and they ended up buying the machines in droves. The machine's open design sparked a huge third-party expansion market, with dozens of vendors selling memory expansion boards, hard drive upgrades and more. It wasn't long until other computer makers started examining the PC's design and figuring out how to make clones of the machine that could run PC software without issues. The one thing stopping them, however, was the ROM. IBM had a copyright on what they called the "ROM BIOS", and while cloning the hardware was easy, cloning the ROM would be much harder, with few vendors able to get it completely right. It wasn't until Compaq introduced the Portable in 1983 that a truly 100% IBM compatible PC was available, and after that, software houses such as Phoenix and AMI followed suit, opening the floodgates to an entire industry of low-priced PC compatibles.