Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
Indeed. And documented it, allowing many vendors to design hardware and software for it. Almost an open platform. Not sure about the 'open' part. Compaq engineers were 'sealed in a room' and had to reverse engineer it using only the machine itself. This then allowed Compaq to make their own PC machines with their own BIOS that let DOS run. I do not think IBM expected anyone to do that. If they had I am sure they could have made the task more difficult. But I would still hesitate to call it open.
Back in those days, it was common to provide such info. However, Compaq's problem was that it was copyrighted, which meant they couldn't just copy it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org