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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Why VAX Was the Ultimate CISC and Not RISC
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2025 02:09:04 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Taughannock Networks
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According to Brian G. Lucas <bagel99@gmail.com>:
>>>> That was not what customers were interested in.  There were various
>>>> Unix variants available for the PC, but the customers preferred using
>>>> DOS, which was preinstalled and did not cost extra. ...
>> 
>> Yup.  PC/IX was a really nice Unix port for the IBM PC and nobody was interested.
>> 
>As this (the kernel part) was my project, it was very disappointing.  I think 
>IBM priced such that with DOS being "free", it had no chance.

Nobody knew what the market for PC/IX was supposed to be beyond some
handwaving "if 5% if PC users buy it we'll be rich."  PC/IX could do
anything a PDP-11 running Unix could do, give or take peripherals,
but the PC market was very different from the PDP-11 market and by
that time the PDP-11 was rather long in the tooth.

-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly