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> IBM in their infinite wisdom decided to have the interrupts
> on the PC be active high.  Thus, the simplest way of making
> a driver that can share the line is to use a 3-state buffer
> chip whose input is always high; the enable on the buffer
> then switches the output between floating and high.

My understanding was that the PC came about as a way to control the market,
and help prevent erosion of their mini sales. Since the PC explosion was
going to happen anyway, this was an opportunity to poison the well by
introducing a functional but broken standard.

Here we are, still bound by our peripherals. They blew it with the PS-2
line, when they apparently didn't understand how well bound we were. All you
had to do was dump your entire in-box investment and buy a new one, to get
on board with a much better hardware system..  Anyone running PS-2?

Then we had the comical re-invention of the PS-1, as a face-saving fallback.