14.002 11. The Computer Wars Chronicles: ISSUE 74/ : Report from the Computer Wars IV. IBM: Grud-maker
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This article is from the Apple II Csa2 FAQ, by Jeff Hurlburt with numerous contributions by others.
14.002 11. The Computer Wars Chronicles: ISSUE 74/ : Report from the Computer Wars IV. IBM: Grud-maker
IBM's first PC was chiefly remarkable for what it was not. It was not a
closed-box, highly complex machine packed with proprietary hardware. Featuring
an out-of-the-Intel-manual design with slots for peripheral boards, it was
virtually Apple's II+ 'done in business grey'.
From the start, PC's simple, straightforward profile proved both a
blessing and a curse. The blessing was that flocks of third party manufacturers
quickly began to fill the machine with performance-enhancing boards and
peripherals. The curse, from IBM's point of view, is that it proved impossible
to protect PC from hordes of grud-like cloners.
[Note: In case you missed playing "Dark Forest" or a sequel, gruds are short,
green, swarthy, fast-multiplying reptiles-- sort of a one-horned ninja turtle
without the shell.]
Anybody could make a "PC compatible" and, from AT&T to one-garage assembly
shops, 'anybody' did. Worse still, as IBM moved first to the XT and then the
AT, it encountered successively more cloners taking progressively less time to
develop better copies at lower prices! When, at last, Big Blue moved to its
supposedly less clonable PS/2 platform, it was already widely understood that
the best grud AT's were at least as good as the IBM original AND cheaper.
Had the Mainframe Moguls set out purposefully to create a
dangerously competitive computer making sub-culture, they could
hardly have improved upon the course followed. Faced with such
inept meddling, the Apple Lords must have felt a bit like the old
Sorcerer watching his Apprentice chop the animated broom into a
million pieces. Naturally, by the time Big Blue ran for the
hills, the small computing landscape was knee-deep in
gruds. (Even today, it is said, Apple's Consummate Enlightened
One will awaken in the dead of night, sit up bolt straight in his
bed, and scream "Why must I lose to such idiots!")
For good or ill, IBM had delivered big manufacturer technology and the
market to go with it into the hands of countless small manufacturing free
enterprise fanatics. Here the "big names" appear on metallic stickers slapped
into square indentations thoughtfully provided by PC case manufacturers; and
you're only as good as your prices are low.
Though, in this maze of interlocking board makers, assemblers, and sellers,
each component may come from almost anywhere, by 1988 the cloners had managed a
'stock' AT featuring VGA color. Soon there followed compatible '386 models, low
cost Ad Lib sound; and (barely months after the chip became available) the
first '486 machines were ready. Incredibly, the no-name gruds had moved beyond
mere clone-making without missing a beat.
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