
Mindset micro; pushing the envelope, or whatever happened to innovation? (1985) - rbanffy
https://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v11n2/50_Mindset_micro_pushing_th.php
======
smacktoward
_> I must add my now-standard disclaimer, which has evolved over the series of
so-called "compatible" reviews I have amassed recently. I have yet to see a
compatible that was truly 100% compatible._

And this is why the Mindset (and many other almost-but-not-quite-100% IBM
compatible products like it) failed: because they didn't realize that 100%
compatibility with the IBM PC actually was possible. Compaq had proven that
all the way back in 1982, three years before this article was written, with
the release of the Compaq Portable
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable)).

Compaq had realized that the only truly proprietary component in the IBM PC
was its BIOS; to speed development and keep costs down, IBM had chosen to use
off-the-shelf components for everything else. So Compaq launched a clean-room
reverse-engineering project to clone the IBM BIOS. That cost them a pretty
penny, but once it was done they had the key to a truly IBM-compatible
machine.

By 1984 -- again, a year before this article -- chipmaker Phoenix Technologies
had also reverse-engineered the BIOS, and unlike Compaq they were willing to
license their design out (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_the_IBM_PC_BIOS)).
So making a "100% compatible" PC clone became something _anyone_ could do,
just by cutting a check to Phoenix.

So for companies like Mindset, coming to market in 1985 with a kinda-sorta-
IBM-compatible machine meant coming to market too late. With multiple
companies already selling 100% compatible machines and lots more on the way,
kinda-sorta compatibility was no longer good enough.

~~~
neilv
Also noteworthy on Compaq compatibility with PC... Compaq came out with an
80386 PC-compatible before IBM did. As did at least one other company around
the same time, IIRC (ALR?).

I don't know the reason IBM was beat to the punch on 386, and maybe HN knows.
My first guess is that they were working on all the changes for launching the
PS/2 series (e.g., different bus). There was also IBM's PC/RT (before the
RS/6000), and I guess maybe they thought they'd move away from x86 and all the
clones.

~~~
smacktoward
IBM had made big commitments to enterprise customers to get them to adopt the
PC's successor, the PC/AT
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer/AT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer/AT)),
which used the older, transitional 80286 processor. These commitments created
a big drag on lots of other IBM projects, as they couldn't do anything that
would be perceived by those enterprise customers as devaluing their investment
in the AT. So not only was IBM slow to adopt the vastly superior 386, it also
insisted on things like OS/2 having to be compatible with the 286, where
Microsoft was free to let their competing product, Windows NT, abandon the 286
and all its baggage completely.

This is a great illustration of the idea of the "strategy tax" (see
[http://scripting.com/davenet/2001/04/30/strategyTax.html](http://scripting.com/davenet/2001/04/30/strategyTax.html)),
where various parts of a business that are deemed non-strategic have to give
up things that would make them more competitive to prop up another part of the
business that is deemed strategic. IBM's bet on the 286 was so big that they
were still pushing 286 machines well into the PS/2 era, by which time the
clone makers had long since flocked to to the much more capable 386. Those
commitments to enterprise customers meant that the 286 became an anchor tied
around the waist of IBM's PC business.

~~~
neilv
Thank you, the enterprise commitments explanation makes a lot of sense. Did
that enterprise bet make business sense at the time, or were decisions biased
by the traditional businesses and leadership (despite IBM having already
shaken up industry with the PC)?

~~~
AstralStorm
IBM coasted on the mainframe customers it kept for some 20 years from then...
So yes it did make sense. Except just a short to mid term sense.

------
bitwize
Ah, the Mindset -- basically an x86 Amiga released a full year before the
actual Amiga -- about which I'd heard some but have never seen (and YouTube
has but a single video showing its capabilities). Strange how these old
obscure computers get lost to time.

