"Where IBM targeted OS/2 1 at the new 386 chip and every DOS power used wanted it. Where Windows never happened, but maybe OS/2 NT did happen."
That requires IBM to have been willing to make the PS/2 models 50 and 60 significantly more expensive, by giving them 386 processors (rather than 286) and more RAM (4MB rather than 2MB). They promised large, lawsuit-prone customers that those machines would run OS/2, so they had to deliver on that. Even if they did that, a falling-out between MS and IBM was more or less inevitable, because the company cultures were so different.
"Emboldened by this it also did a proper multitasking Concurrent CP/M-68K which Atari sold in a cheap multitasking VME-slot 68030 workstation."
That requires Jack Tramiel to have died or become incapable of running Atari in about 1986. He was very focussed on consumer systems, and wasn't very interested in flexibility. I worked for Perihelion Hardware while they were trying to turn the Atari Transputer Workstation into something saleable, as opposed to demonstrable, and Jack did not seem interested.
"Where the GNU Project adopted the BSD-Lite kernel and had a practical, working, and Free xNix OS by 1989 or so, so Linux and the HURD and Free/Open/Net/Dragonfly BSD never happened."
Not all that different from today, really. This OS would have got established earlier than Linux did (and would have killed off Xenix and Solaris/i386), but it could not become dominant until x86-64 hardware became available, and Linux was ready for that when it happened.
My favourite alternate was something I suggested to my Intel customer engineer when they announced that they were going to soft-pedal Itanium for a couple of years "until the manufacturing technology caught up with it. But this was not the end! Itanium would be back, and this time it would rule the world!"
What they needed, I suggested, was a 64-bit processor that could be built with today's technology, and had room for growth: "Itanium Pro," formerly known as Alpha EV7. Intel owned all the Alpha IP, because Compaq had sold it to them. My engineer reckoned this was funny, but he wasn't going to suggest it to marketing.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2022-08-15 03:44 pm (UTC)That requires IBM to have been willing to make the PS/2 models 50 and 60 significantly more expensive, by giving them 386 processors (rather than 286) and more RAM (4MB rather than 2MB). They promised large, lawsuit-prone customers that those machines would run OS/2, so they had to deliver on that. Even if they did that, a falling-out between MS and IBM was more or less inevitable, because the company cultures were so different.
"Emboldened by this it also did a proper multitasking Concurrent CP/M-68K which Atari sold in a cheap multitasking VME-slot 68030 workstation."
That requires Jack Tramiel to have died or become incapable of running Atari in about 1986. He was very focussed on consumer systems, and wasn't very interested in flexibility. I worked for Perihelion Hardware while they were trying to turn the Atari Transputer Workstation into something saleable, as opposed to demonstrable, and Jack did not seem interested.
"Where the GNU Project adopted the BSD-Lite kernel and had a practical, working, and Free xNix OS by 1989 or so, so Linux and the HURD and Free/Open/Net/Dragonfly BSD never happened."
Not all that different from today, really. This OS would have got established earlier than Linux did (and would have killed off Xenix and Solaris/i386), but it could not become dominant until x86-64 hardware became available, and Linux was ready for that when it happened.
My favourite alternate was something I suggested to my Intel customer engineer when they announced that they were going to soft-pedal Itanium for a couple of years "until the manufacturing technology caught up with it. But this was not the end! Itanium would be back, and this time it would rule the world!"
What they needed, I suggested, was a 64-bit processor that could be built with today's technology, and had room for growth: "Itanium Pro," formerly known as Alpha EV7. Intel owned all the Alpha IP, because Compaq had sold it to them. My engineer reckoned this was funny, but he wasn't going to suggest it to marketing.