Most of the Taiwanese PC makers were just your bog-standard PC clone makers and typically while
Sampo might be the brand, and being Taiwanese may have made the case and power supply, maybe even the motherboard too depending, it most likely has parts from all over the place running chips from all
over the world.
Nothing wrong with that, but I'd like to add that especially in the east, IBM PC clones weren't the only x86 PC systems beeing made.
In the early to mid-80s, there were also countless so-called "MS-DOS compatibles" that ran MS-DOS but
either didn't follow the IBM specs at all or only partial. The NEC PC-9800 series is a notable example,
but there were more. Fuji FM-Towns, AX-Computer, Hitachi B16/32 series, etc.
In the western world, we had Victor 9000/Sirius 1, Tandy 2000, Sanyo MBC-555, Alphatronic PC, BBC Master 512,
Amstrad/Schneider PC1512 (8086 CPU, custom "CGA") and countless of 8018x/NEC V40-based designs,
that were by design not 100% PC compatible.
Again, nothing wrong with what was said. I just wanted to point out that not all PC makers were lazy copycats
and that let us all -believe it or not- IBM was not the measure of all things (initially). 😀
In fact, some vendors (and MS itself) expected MS-DOS to go the same way as CP/M did:
Different hardware, with MS-DOS beeing "the glue" that held everything togehter.
The tasks of a BIOS as we know it, originated by the lowest part of CP/M (the others were BDOS, CCP and TTA).
That's also why Microsoft sold MS-DOS not as a retail product initially, but to PC makers.
Unfortuntately, thing went a different way and programmers firstly bypassed DOS and used the PC-BOS,
and secondly, they went havoc and started the habit to program all things in a low-level manner.
Even if there was no fallback that complied to the official programming guidelines.
Or even worse, they programmed low-level even if there was no need for (not including CPU, I mean SIOs/PIOs and timers).
That was when other computer makes had to clone the IBM architecure with all its goods and bads.
brostenen wrote:That is a very special looking machine you have gotten there. It's a 286 right?
Is it supposed to be blue from the factory?
I thought the same when I looked at it. It has CHIPs chips, 16-Bit ISA and a LCC socket. Perhaps a NEAT mainboard.
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