Dan Knight - 2002.11.15

The personal computing industry began with standard parts: Intel's new CPU, memory chips, etc. From there, it sometimes diverged in interesting directions.

Today Good Idea Bad Idea looks at what happens when a computer maker gets on the wrong bus.

Good Idea

Use readily available CPUs, memory chips, interfaces, buses, and so forth to build a PC with minimal R&D expense.

Successes: The Apple II series, a host of CP/M computers, the IBM PC, and a legion of PC clones.

Bad Idea

Trying to kill off the clones with a proprietary architecture - even if it is better.

Failure: IBM's amazingly over-engineered Micro Channel Architecture. MCA had much greater bandwidth than the AT bus used in PC clones and even allowed bus mastering, but even IBM wasn't big enough to lead the industry in this direction. Still, several MCA innovations eventually made their way into today's PCI bus.

Failure: Adoption of the emerging NuBus architecture in the Apple Macintosh II, NeXT Cube, and nothing else anyone remembers. Compared to the industry standard 8 MHz 16-bit bus used in PC clones, the 10 MHz 32-bit NuBus was good enough for Apple to ride from 1987 to late 1995, but convincing vendors to make cards for an almost proprietary bus on a minority hardware platform wasn't easy. NuBus didn't doom the Mac, but Apple's adoption of the PCI bus in 1995 was a much smarter move.

Conclusion

Teamwork pays off. The broadest success comes from following a widely accepted standard, such as ISA, PCI, and AGP.

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Good Idea Bad Idea was inspired by a few too many episodes of Animaniacs - if there is such a thing. GIBI is an irreverent look back that the history of computing in the hopes that we'll learn from the mistakes of the past rather than repeat them.

Recent Good Idea Bad Idea Columns

• Good Idea Bad Idea looks at operating systems, 11.27. Good idea: giving consumers a choice in operating systems. Bad idea: competing with Microsoft.
• Good Idea Bad Idea Looks at disk format confusion, 11.21. Good idea: increased capacity for removable media. Bad idea: too many formats to pick from.
• Good Idea Bad Idea gets on the bus, 11.15. Good idea: an industry standard bus. Bad idea: a bus nobody else uses.

Other Recent Content on LEPC

• Value and cost: With a PC, you get what you pay for, Katherine Keller, Thinking From the Box, 02.26. With the right choices, your PC can be easy to upgrade and avoid becoming a doorstop.
• Networking 101, Dan Knight, Online Tech Journal, 02.10. An introduction to ethernet, hubs, switches, routers, and wireless networking.
• Pixels and points, screens and paper, Dan Knight, Online Tech Journal, 02.06. What you see on the screen corresponds to what you get on the printed page. A brief history of points, pixels, and the changing face of computer displays.
• Deliver us from evil: Thoughts on computer self defense, Dan Knight, The Knight Line, 01.16. "Should you have the right to take active steps to stop a computerized attack on your computer system?"
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• Tying up loose ends on bitty boxen, Buttercup, and the state of tech, Michelle Klein-Häss, Geek Speak, 12.02. Mandrake Linux rocks, Buttercup gets a new motherboard, and the sorry state of the tech sector today.
• more in our editorial archive

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