Posted by Justin on 01/17/96 11:49

Roy L Fuchs wrote on [Mon, 05 Jun 2006 01:50:19 GMT]:
>>On Sun, 4 Jun 2006 18:52:10 -0500, "Jay G." <Jay@tmbg.org> Gave us:
>
>>On Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:41:40 GMT, Roy L. Fuchs wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 4 Jun 2006 05:43:12 -0500, "Jay G." <Jay@tmbg.org> Gave us:
>>>
>>>>It's only proprietary if it doesn't become the new standard.
>>>
>>> Wrong. IBM fully intended to reap license fees throughout the
>>> lifespan of the micro-channel bus.
>>
>>My bad, I misunderstood the word proprietary. I was thinking in terms of
>>limited use, not in terms of private ownership.
>>
>>>> There are
>>>>almost always competing formats.
>>>
>>> That is not why it went under. It was the fastest, best
>>> implementation yet. It still died, however.
>>
>>It was a competing format to ISA, and eventually PCI.
>
>
> No. It was a competing standard to EISA, and beat it due to the
> fact that EISA was locked at 7MHz bus speeds. It was around long
> before PCI ever even came out, and even died before PCI hit the
> markets.
>
>> Its advantages over
>>ISA were not enough for most people to switch initially,
>
> It was well over twice as fast, being a 32 bit bus, and ISA being a
> mere 16 bit bus. The reason it died is because IBM wanted money from
> peripheral device makers. It wouldn't surprise me if they didn't want
> money for drivers (from driver authors) as well.
>
>> especially since
>>it wasn't backwards compatable with ISA.
>
> It was never meant to be. It was yet another attempt by IBM of
> controlling an entire market.
>
>> Later, when something more
>>powerful than ISA was needed, PCI was a much more attractive format.
>
> You seem to always forget that EISA came out long before PCI did.
> PCI was also a tertiary bus and had direct access to the cpu, and ALL
> peripherals and other busses were subordinate to it.

VLB was also in there.

[Back to original message]