Does IBM get a cut off all PC's made.. and why aren't there MAC compatible computers ?

[deftron]

All PC's are labled "IBM compatible" computers, but most are not manufactured by them

Does IBM get any royalty money from PC's made today ?

What happened that allowed other companies to manufacture PC's ?


And on a related note, why is there not any third party's making "MAC compatible" computers?


(just curious...)

 

[amnesiac]

I've never seen a computer Labeled "IBM Compatible" before.
I've seen "IBM PC Compatible" a long time ago when that was the standard, but it's been years.

As far as Mac clones go, there were a couple companies that did make clones way back when.. I think either Apple ate them or something happened to that extent.

 

[chiwawa626]

LoL who wants a mac clone, let alone a mac

 

[Lucky]

Originally posted by: chiwawa626
LoL who wants a mac clone, let alone a mac

please educate us on your reasons for saying that.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Apple licensed out their software/hardware or something a while back, but those companies cut into Apple's profits so they discontinued the practice. There are no clones because Apple doesnt license out the necessary parts.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Lucky

Originally posted by: chiwawa626
LoL who wants a mac clone, let alone a mac

please educate us on your reasons for saying that.

He is an AOL user.

 

[deftron]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Apple licensed out their software/hardware or something a while back, but those companies cut into Apple's profits so they discontinued the practice. There are no clones because Apple doesnt license out the necessary parts.

So does IBM license their parts/patents?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: deftron

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Apple licensed out their software/hardware or something a while back, but those companies cut into Apple's profits so they discontinued the practice. There are no clones because Apple doesnt license out the necessary parts.

So does IBM license their parts/patents?

Some. I think Intel owns the righs to the x86 architecture, so AMD would have to license that from them. So would chipset makes. hard drives, ram, etc are all owned by different companies or groups of standard makers.

 

[Nefrodite]

pbs had a kewl film about that kinda stuff, the start of the pc and mac and stuff maybe they have a web version, u should be able to find it at the library on tape u should watch it, the twists and turns and stupid mistakes certain companies made are amazing like the guy selling billgates dos for 50k oops!

comps used to be pc compatible, but then compaq reverse engineered their bios.

apple had compatibles for a few years trying to get market share back, but it wasn't profitable enuph

 

[StattlichPassat]

Originally posted by: deftron
All PC's are labled "IBM compatible" computers, but most are not manufactured by them

Does IBM get any royalty money from PC's made today ?

What happened that allowed other companies to manufacture PC's ?


And on a related note, why is there not any third party's making "MAC compatible" computers?


(just curious...)

Good question- we really need to lose the 'IBM compatible' likeness. It's unneeded now, obviously. And there used to be a few MAC clones, even just 5 years ago. UMAX (as we know them for retail scanners) used to make a line of PowerMac computers.

IBM compatible needs to be changed to PC.
MAC needs to just stay as a MAC, not a PC.

 

[tcsenter]

So does IBM license their parts/patents?

Sure, and IBM has lots of patents, but not for anything inside the personal computer that hasn't expired long ago.

The term "IBM Compatible" is antiquated and really just a marketing term from the 1980's that never went away. The term should have been replaced with "Windows compatible", "PC compatible", "x86 compatible", or some permutation of those.

IBM never really 'owned' the standard, its just that computers manufactured by IBM dominated first the business and then personal use markets. When IBM clones became available, it was important to consumer acceptance for there to be compatibility with IBM's products. They were, after all, IBM clones.

Intel owned most of the patents on x86 and various bus architecture. The PC world split from IBM when it tried to ram its proprietary and patented PS/2 and Micro-Channel Architecture (MCA) down everyone's throat and the industry chose to go with EISA instead, which was the product of an industry working group.

 

[manly]

I think you hardly hear the term "IBM PC compatible" anymore.

Originally, the only significant proprietary component of the IBM PC design was the ROM BIOS (they chose off-the-shelf components and basic designs to speed up time-to-market). The BIOS was clean-room implemented (cloned) by Compaq and Phoenix BIOS, which unleashed the clone revolution. IBM later tried to fight back with a highly proprietary design in the PS/2 line but by then it was too late to go their own way.

As others mentioned, Intel and Mickeysoft are more responsible for modern PC standards than IBM.

 

[Nefrodite]

yup, if ms had rolled over to imbs pressure tactics u'd be running an ibm o/s hehe

those proprietary ibms back then sucked, they came out with their own upgrade to the isa bus i think. their os2 o/s -> os2 warp. very annoying stuff ibm was dragged kicking and screaming into the current pc era

 

[DivideBYZero]

As far as AMD and x86 goes, as the instructions you need to translate are common knowledge as long as you accept them from the OS/software and responding with expected results and the design is a clean-room job then no issue.

 

[paulee]

I work in the industry and do quite a bit of shopping as well. I hardly ever hear the term IBM-compatible any more, except from out of date customers(this is not intended as a tongue in cheek insult, just the honest truth).

The industry standard now is (I believe) PC-compatible.

 

[aswedc]

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero
As far as AMD and x86 goes, as the instructions you need to translate are common knowledge as long as you accept them from the OS/software and responding with expected results and the design is a clean-room job then no issue.

I don't know whether it is necessary legaly but AMD does have a x86 licence agreement with Intel.

AMD and Intel have renewed the patent cross-license agreement between the two companies for another 10 years, keeping AMD in the x86 business and both companies out of court. Other than the length of the agreement, no details were released. AMD's last patent agreement with Intel was rumored to preclude AMD from shipping processors with buses compatible with P6 or later Intel processors. AMD had revealed that the old agreement precluded AMD from manufacturing more than 20% of the x86 processors in non-AMD fabs. Whether the new agreement modifies either of these conditions was not revealed.?K.K.

 

[hans007]

the reason apple cant be cloned is they put a special rom in their computer.


back in the mid 90's they were thinking of making a apple stadard called chrp or something, that IBM and motorola were involved in. instead they apple licensed off clone licenses to companies like powercomputing, umax, motorola, etc.


they gave them the boot roms for the motherboards so that mac os will recognize it as a mac i guess.


thats why now you cant just go buy an IBM power4 workstation and run mac os x on it or something. at least thats what i think

 

[BDawg]

And on a related note, why is there not any third party's making "MAC compatible" computers?

All computers are MAC compatable. You just need to put in a network card of some type (Ethernet, Tokenring) to realise that.