On Sat, 21 Apr 2001, Michael C. Reid wrote:

> another interesting bit of trivia is that when IBM built the first "PC", for
> the first time they chose off the shelf parts instead of proprietary IBM
> stuff. Zilog was in the hunt for the Z80 processor, but they were late to
> develop one with the 16 bit bus, so Intel got the nod.  If Zilog had won
> out, they would be the 800 pound gorilla!

Well.....  not exactly, really.  There were prior examples, just not that
everyone has seen.  I remember working on some earlier systems that used
8085 and other Intel CPUs (the machine types escape me at the moment).
Some were dedicated word processors, some programmable in BASIC or PL/1 or
some such nonsense as general purpose computers.  Plus there were plenty
of VTL logic machines built (the 3271 was the first I rememebr seeing).
VTL was "vendor transistor logic", common 7400 series TTL chips re-marked
with IBM part numbers.  At one time we were working on a cross-reference
of IBM to 74xx parts.

The PC was, however, the first time I ever saw IBM use someone else's
chips without having their own part numbers on them, though.  Up until
that point every component had an IBM part number and none other.

Dale
---
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
                -- Isaac Asimov

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