How IBM's Project Chess Launched the Personal Computer Revolution
The IBM PC, Part 1: Arrival
In the early 1980s, the personal computer market was a chaotic bazaar of incompatible systems. IBM, a colossus in mainframes, struggled to enter this space until CEO Frank Cary authorized Project Chess. Led by Don Estridge, this initiative broke corporate norms by sourcing third-party parts and selling through external retailers, ultimately creating the IBM PC and reshaping the industry.
Ironically, the ecosystem was closed by openness.
- st_goliath
If you have a few hours to kill, the Youtube Channel "Another Boring Topic" has a multi part series on the "rise and fall of the IBM PC". The comparatively short Part 1 is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er8wcWsG7sE
The Channel has similar video series on OS/2, VisiCalc, Microsoft Excel and early Windows (far from completion). The videos are generally very detailed and well researched, often contrasting accounts from different source or even reaching out to people involved.
The already slow pace of the channel has slowed down a lot. In an update video a while back, the author has announced that the background research for the IBM PC led down an unexpectedly deep rabbit hole and his script eventually spiraled into an unfinished book that will now probably turn into a two-parter itself.
- Instantix
When you think of it, Apple (and so Jobs) have really missed the mark with the Apple III. The Apple II (1977) was really good with its expandability capacities, its keyboard, its monitor, its floppies drive and its good installed base. It was a very advanced machine. The PC is a kind of copy. So the Apple III (1980) should have been the one which became the market standard. It miserably flopped.
Commodore with the PET (1977) was a pioneer too with a good installed base but the CBM-II (1982) was a poor upgrade which had no internal cards connectors. Not very appealing. And the C64 was not quickly upgraded in the way it could have be.
And those three machines were stuck with the brilliant 6502 (1975) but which did not appeared into a 16 bits version until 1985 thanks to Commodore which did not really invested to develop MOS Technology.
So the choice of the 8088 8/16 bits CPU (1979) by IBM was really a game changer. It made the machine open to the future and viable. Another reason to choose it.
- gumby
Having lived through that time I find this article extremely accurate and focused on the important stuff.
I didn’t pay much attention to the PC at that point (I was programming Lispms, Dorados and KL-20s) but it was impossible to ignore.