On Thu, 1 Oct 2015 11:08:18 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 05:48:01 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

stuff snipped

I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as it
was
without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal
computing than an IBM-only world would have.

I worked for 5 years for a small high-end clone mfg here in Canada -
the first PCs to be sold with a 3 year warranty.
They were really good machines, at a very competetive price, until a
beancounter took over the company with the help of a socalled "Harvard
MBA" - between the 2 they killed the quality and bled the company into
backrupsy within about 3 years. (I was gone in about 1 1/2)

Those same bean counters ran through my old employer's company destroying
value while alleging to make us more efficient. I think they're soon to
collapse with the coming changes in government contracting.

Compatibility-wise, I think the clones (good ones, anyway) really helped
move the PC revolution along. My first *real* IBM PC cost over $5,000 (this
is when full height diskette drives were also about $600). The clones
helped force prices of all peripherals out of the IBM stratosphere and into
the real world. Eventually I was buying the surplus IBM half-height
diskette drives (from the botched PC JR) for $40 - quite a drop from $600.

Some of the clones offered options that even IBM didn't. One board I bought
had 8 sockets for BIOS chips. That really fascinated my friend who liked to
program in assembler.

Another AT clone had a CPU that wasn't artificially prevented from running
at 8MHz like the IBM AT was for a while.

IIRC, the ultimate test of a PC's compatibility was:

"Can it run flight simulator?"
We has 20Mhz PCs using Harris chips - and we built 12mhz ATs whenIBM
was doing good to get 8 - and soon had 24s running stable, and selling
for less than "Big Blue" sold their 8.
We also had CDRom long before IBM did - as well as providing larger
hard drives. Lots of features that pushed "big Blue" ahead. The Tier 2
mfgs were also technically "clones" - including AST, Packard Bell,
Compaq, HP, Sanyo, etc.

All Trillium clones passed ALL compatability tests.