IBM PS/2

The Personal System/2 or PS/2 is IBM's second generation of personal computers. Released in 1987, it officially replaced the IBM PC, XT, AT, and PC Convertible in IBM's lineup. Many of the PS/2's innovations, such as the 16550 UART (serial port), 1440 KB 3.5-inch floppy disk format, 72-pin SIMMs, PS/2 mouse and keyboard port, and VGA, went on to become standards in the broader IBM PC compatibles market. The PS/2 line was created by IBM partly in an attempt to recapture control of the PC market by introducing the advanced yet proprietary Micro Channel architecture (MCA) on higher-end models. These models were in the strange position of being incompatible with the hardware standards previously established by IBM and adopted in the IBM PC compatible industry. Most major PC manufacturers balked at IBM's licensing terms for MCA-compatible hardware, particularly the per-machine royalties. The OS/2 operating system was announced at the same time as the PS/2 line and was intended to be the primary operating system for models with Intel 80286 or later processors. However, at the time of the first shipments, only IBM PC DOS 3.3 was available. OS/2 1.0 (text-mode only) and Microsoft's Windows 2.0 became available several months later. IBM also released AIX PS/2, a UNIX operating system for PS/2 models with Intel 386 or later processors. IBM's initial PS/2 computers were popular with target market corporate buyers, and by September 1988, IBM reported that it had sold 3 million PS/2 machines in the past 18 months. However, the PS/2 was unsuccessful in the consumer market since IBM failed to establish a link in the consumer's mind between the PS/2 MicroChannel architecture and the immature OS/2 1.x operating system (the more capable OS/2 version 2.0 was not released until 1992) to justify the PS/2's price premium, in contrast to...