When did PCs stop being PCs?

[zzip]

15 hours ago, Keatah said:

VGA went to 640x480@16. SVGA went higher to 1280x1024 with a 24-bit palette.

 

Duke 3D let me play at 800x600@256 as did Microsoft Space Simulator. This without UniVBE or other tools, just the BIOS on the videocard. A Cirrus Logic GD5422 with 1MB RAM. Pretty sure I remember seeing something at 1024x768@16, can't recall what. But yes most DOS games stuck with the lower resolutions.

But wasn't the issue that SVGA wasn't a standard?  Each manufacturer implemented their own scheme and slapped on the SVGA label,  that's why most DOS games stuck with the safe VGA standard resolutions.

[Keatah]

I suppose. Then there was also the issue of moving more data. IIRC I'd lose 5 or more FPS going to SVGA on ISA bus. when you're game is working at 20-30FPS, 5 is a significant fraction. Again IIRC.

 

Pretty sure most BIOSes had VESA 2.0 in them. And then 3.0 via external software.

 

SVGA usually meant 800x600 and a hodgepodge of extensions going higher. SVGA also included the official IBM VGA specification. I have to run so maybe read this 1-page wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_VGA

[mr_me]

In the 1980s graphics card manufacturers like ATI did provide high resolution drivers for applications like Autocad, GEM/Ventura and Lotus 123.  Businesses would often buy computer hardware for one specific application.

 

For consumers, VGA hardware was very expensive in the 1980s and in the early 90s most consumer VGA monitors sold were fixed scan VGA monitors anyway, still capable of 640x480.  Standard ega 640x350 or vga 640x480 would have been high resolution for games at the time.

[+splendidnut]

SVGA was non-standarized.  Each manufacturer came up with their own methods of expanding upon the VGA register set.  This led to needing device specific code to set the graphics mode and access the video memory.  The light at the end of the tunnel, ironically, was DirectX, a relatively low-level graphics system in Windows that hid the device specific headaches from the user/programmer while providing relatively fast access to the hardware.

[Koopa64]

If the PC in question can natively run MS-DOS and display CGA graphics, then it should still count as an IBM PC clone. There are still some PCs from the 2010s that can do that, even ones with EFI and UEFI. I would assume compatibility with MS-DOS and CGA has gone downhill as of late though. As for how MS-DOS is loaded, the media used shouldn't be a huge factor I feel. MS-DOS can be put onto a bootable USB stick or put right on the internal boot drive, that should count no differently from a floppy disk.

 

Someone here said PC literally means "personal computer" and should apply to anything, not just IBM PC systems. I hard disagree with that, PC = IBM PC is so ingrained in our culture and society, you can't just say PC without immediately having to clarify further. It feels so very, very wrong to call a Mac or Amiga or C64 a "PC".

 

"IBM PC" is a very specific brand of computer. The real generic term would be home computer.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Koopa64

[Keatah]

I generally labeled 8-bit machines as home computers. Maybe because so many advertisements did. And it was still uncommon for homes to have computers in them.

 

From the 286 to around the early 2000's I called PCs PC Compatibles. Sometimes clones. Especially in the Compaq era. Somewhere along the way I just started referring to them by processor name.

[wierd_w]

I was a pc owner, and called them 'AT clones', because the basic architecture they were cloning/extending was the IBM PC AT.

 

Later, after the big push into 386 flat mode, and x64 architectures, I started calling the cutoff at middle pentium systems and how the memory map was handled, 'realmode machines and 32bit optimized', and other personal parlances.

 

These days, uefi systems with a csm that can boot dos, are so internally alien from actual realmode, calling them dos pcs is just wrong. It would be like taking a modern ARM equipped system, building a special boot resource stack for it, then running original Archimedes stuff on bare metal. The CSM is really just a software resource stack to fake having a bios present.

 

They are also passe, and no longer being made. The detachment is complete now. 

[wierd_w]

On 12/2/2022 at 6:35 AM, splendidnut said:

SVGA was non-standarized.  Each manufacturer came up with their own methods of expanding upon the VGA register set.  This led to needing device specific code to set the graphics mode and access the video memory.  The light at the end of the tunnel, ironically, was DirectX, a relatively low-level graphics system in Windows that hid the device specific headaches from the user/programmer while providing relatively fast access to the hardware.

Before then, the VESA working group had a standardized interface for that, and their solution is still present on video cards today.  That is, all the requisite software routines to switch the modes, and a standard software interface to instruct the switch, were baked into the video bios, with differing levels of featureset, based on VESA bios spec level that was targeted.

 

That way your software could focus on JUST accessing via the VESA interfaces, and the video hardware would be jiggled by the software supplied in ROM by the manufacturer (or by a software alternative handler, supplied by a 3rd party, such as with SciTech's UniVBE/DIsplayDoctor) . This predated DirectX by quite a long time, at least 6 years.

 

 

[+splendidnut]

Yes, I skipped VESA... sorry about that.  It was mentioned previously in this very topic:  

 

I was more or less making the point that DirectX (and Windows) was the light at the end of the tunnel leading towards the proliferation of higher-color + higher-resolution gaming on PCs.

[MrMaddog]

On 12/2/2022 at 7:48 PM, Koopa64 said:

Someone here said PC literally means "personal computer" and should apply to anything, not just IBM PC systems. I hard disagree with that, PC = IBM PC is so ingrained in our culture and society, you can't just say PC without immediately having to clarify further. It feels so very, very wrong to call a Mac or Amiga or C64 a "PC".

 

"IBM PC" is a very specific brand of computer. The real generic term would be home computer.

 

The term personal computer used to be for any microcomputer in the 70's but when IBM made their own PC, other companies made clones instead of incompatible computers to compete. 

So hence "PC" is now a common standard for x86 compatibility. 

 

And yes you can boot 16-bit MS-DOS even on a 64-bit Intel/AMD which boots into real mode, though some modern video cards can't handle CGA/EGA properly (text mode is no problem).

 

LGR made a video on that, so Happy #DOScember folks...

 

 

 

Edited December 5, 2022 by MrMaddog

[wierd_w]

Again, it is VERY important to stress that the most modern boards cannot actually run DOS on bare metal.  They really cannot. The system firmware they ship with DOES NOT contain a CSM, and thus boot directly into 32bit flat mode / protected mode. (Or even 64bit flat mode!)

 

Computers that are about 5 years old or so, will still have a CSM, (Compatibility Support Module) baked into the UEFI firmware, which provides implementations of the oldschool BIOS service routines, and sets up the DOS interrupt vector so that realmode software can be run. They CAN run DOS on bare metal, but really modern machines cannot.  This issue is very well known by groups like the FreeDOS group.

 

http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/UEFI

 

Many new video cards don't properly do the full VGA register set, which is the source of the "Cannot do CGA/EGA modes" issue. The only real reason they still support that interface at all, is for the "Generic VGA adapter" driver support, so that "Something" can be displayed on the screen until you load the correct drivers. Microsoft has gotten smart, and started targeting generic VESA interfaces also (probably because modern displays cannot handle 640x480x4bit color @ 60hz) which means that VESA bios routines remain a thing.

 

Eventually though, even those legacy trappings of the old DOS days will fall away. Probably in the next decade or so.

 

 

[zzip]

15 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

And yes you can boot 16-bit MS-DOS even on a 64-bit Intel/AMD which boots into real mode, though some modern video cards can't handle CGA/EGA properly (text mode is no problem).

I noticed that my Nvidia card only has three legacy graphics modes:  640x480, 800x600, 1024x768,  and the aspect ratio is wrong in the first two.   It expects to emulate anything else through software.   The software emulation usually works fine, but some software will trigger one of the legacy hardware modes to be used, and it sucks because nothing I try will fix the aspect ratio.

[Keatah]

Which card is it?

 

I always hoped that all modes since day one would've been retained. But it seems that as "progress" is made features just go missing. Backward compatibility used to be a hallmark of PC's. Unfortunately the trend is accelerating in the wrong direction. IMHO of course.

 

 

[mr_me]

On 12/4/2022 at 6:22 AM, wierd_w said:

Before then, the VESA working group had a standardized interface for that, and their solution is still present on video cards today.  That is, all the requisite software routines to switch the modes, and a standard software interface to instruct the switch, were baked into the video bios, with differing levels of featureset, based on VESA bios spec level that was targeted.

 

That way your software could focus on JUST accessing via the VESA interfaces, and the video hardware would be jiggled by the software supplied in ROM by the manufacturer (or by a software alternative handler, supplied by a 3rd party, such as with SciTech's UniVBE/DIsplayDoctor) . This predated DirectX by quite a long time, at least 6 years.

 

 

OpenGL also predated DirectX, going back to the early 1990s.

[MrMaddog]

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

Which card is it?

 

I always hoped that all modes since day one would've been retained. But it seems that as "progress" is made features just go missing. Backward compatibility used to be a hallmark of PC's. Unfortunately the trend is accelerating in the wrong direction. IMHO of course.

 

 

 

"Backwards Compatibility" is a loose term when you want to be able to run at least most of the old PC programs out there but at the same time get rid of the cruft that holds back the advancement of Windows.  I wouldn't want to have Microsoft's job...

 

Anyway, even with a modern 64-bit Windows PC I can still run DOS games and applications using DOSBOX and VDOS (which uses the Windows clipboard for full screen text based programs).  Plus there are also ways to run DOS command line programs in the CMD window and even 16-bit Windows applications using custom VDMs.

 

Yes I know these are VMs and not "real" hardware but at least it keeps the spirit of true PC compatibility alive.

[Keatah]

2 minutes ago, MrMaddog said:

"Backwards Compatibility" is a loose term when you want to be able to run at least most of the old PC programs out there but at the same time get rid of the cruft that holds back the advancement of Windows.  I wouldn't want to have Microsoft's job...

I sort of get that. The vast majority of productivity oriented users won't mind that state of affairs. Hobbyists? That's a big stink for us.

 

2 minutes ago, MrMaddog said:

Anyway, even with a modern 64-bit Windows PC I can still run DOS games and applications using DOSBOX and VDOS (which uses the Windows clipboard for full screen text based programs).  Plus there are also ways to run DOS command line programs in the CMD window and even 16-bit Windows applications using custom VDMs.

 

Yes I know these are VMs and not "real" hardware but at least it keeps the spirit of true PC compatibility alive.

I'm not too upset here. Some VMs are better at certain functions than others. I'm working on having different VMs/emus set up to try and cover everything. Certain things are going to work better in one VM/emu than another. We're still nowhere near having a one-size-fits-all rodeo here.

 

Some stuff even works better in VM than on real period hardware. At the same time installing things in VMs can be different and a little tricky. Sometimes things must be in disk image format, other times you can simply move the files over and install that way. And we're all so used to the second method our skills at the former have lapsed. There's WinImage to help us along the way, but it's also a little unconventional with its earlier drag'n'drop protocol. But it is vintage virtualizer's best friend.

 

Certainly hope that PCEM is updated shortly. Seems development is active and they're working hard on things at BIOS level. I hear that PCEM can be used as a plug-in module, a virtual 286/386 bridgeboard, to endow your emulated-by-WinUAE Amiga 2000 to have PC compatibility. Not sure I want to drill down that far. That things like this are being experimented with is testament to the comprehensiveness of some projects.

[zzip]

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

I always hoped that all modes since day one would've been retained. But it seems that as "progress" is made features just go missing. Backward compatibility used to be a hallmark of PC's. Unfortunately the trend is accelerating in the wrong direction. IMHO of course.

This is why I'm a proponent of using stuff like DOSbox/PCem/Virtualbox to run old software because I wouldn't trust modern hardware to handle it natively.   I have Windows 98 running under Dosbox, so that should cover me for pre-XP Dos/Windows programs that don't behave in modern versions.

[1980gamer]

On 11/30/2022 at 4:43 PM, 5-11under said:

Water and electricity. One of my favorite combinations.

That's shocking!

[CapitanClassic]

Its interesting that PC was a generic term, that grew to be brand specific (IBM compatible PC).

Usually it is the other way around, Xerox this for me, Google it, you have a Kleenex, escalator,  Thermos, Jacuzzi,  at some point all games were Atari's / Nintendo's etc...

 

Has any other generic term been co-opted by a brand such that most people associate with a specific brand?

[CatPix]

The only other example I can think of is cassette, which was a generic term for a small box (usage may vary by country) and at least by the 90's mostly/only referred to Philips' Compact Cassette.

[zzip]

12 hours ago, CapitanClassic said:

Its interesting that PC was a generic term, that grew to be brand specific (IBM compatible PC).

Usually it is the other way around, Xerox this for me, Google it, you have a Kleenex, escalator,  Thermos, Jacuzzi,  at some point all games were Atari's / Nintendo's etc...

 

Has any other generic term been co-opted by a brand such that most people associate with a specific brand?

Off the top of my head no.   I think it might be because computers were a small market before the IBM juggernaut got involved.   I wonder if IBM intended to make the term personal computer synonymous with their brand or it just kind of happened that way? 

[Hwlngmad]

59 minutes ago, zzip said:

Off the top of my head no.   I think it might be because computers were a small market before the IBM juggernaut got involved.   I wonder if IBM intended to make the term personal computer synonymous with their brand or it just kind of happened that way? 

Yes, it was intended as one IBM chairman said that he wanted "the hearts and minds of the consumer".

[Krebizfan]

IBM only planned on making 250,000 machines over the span of 5 years. The total sales of the IBM PC caught IBM by surprise just like everyone else. 

[mr_me]

18 hours ago, zzip said:

Off the top of my head no.   I think it might be because computers were a small market before the IBM juggernaut got involved.   I wonder if IBM intended to make the term personal computer synonymous with their brand or it just kind of happened that way? 

They named their computer the "IBM Personal Computer", "IBM PC" for short.  Clones were IBM PC compatible which became PC compatible and PC clone.

 

On 12/8/2022 at 9:45 PM, CapitanClassic said:

Its interesting that PC was a generic term, that grew to be brand specific (IBM compatible PC).

Usually it is the other way around, Xerox this for me, Google it, you have a Kleenex, escalator,  Thermos, Jacuzzi,  at some point all games were Atari's / Nintendo's etc...

 

...

Was "PC" a term prior to the IBM PC.  As a class they were referred to as microcomputers, in business they did use the term "personal computer", but not sure if "PC" was a term.  The term "PC" seemed to refer specifically to the IBM PC and compatibles.

[wierd_w]

11 minutes ago, mr_me said:

They named their computer the "IBM Personal Computer", "IBM PC" for short.  Clones were IBM PC compatible which became PC compatible and PC clone.

 

Was "PC" a term prior to the IBM PC.  As a class they were referred to as microcomputers, in business they did use the term "personal computer", but not sure if "PC" was a term.  The term "PC" seemed to refer specifically to the IBM PC and compatibles.

 

Not exactly.

 

The first one was "IBM Personal Computer" (IBM 5150), followed by the "IBM Personal Computer XT" (IBM 5160), and then "IBM Personal Computer AT" (IBM 5170).

 

The clones are all of either the 5160 or 5170.  This is because that is the revision of the IBM Bios that was reverse engineered by Phoenix Technologies, to create the clone bios that was the foundation for all the IBM compatible clones. The vast majority of them were AT clones (5170). A few were XT clones (like the first compaq portable.)

 

Nobody was really interested in making PC clones.  The correct jargon was "XT Clone" and "AT Clone."  Both of those were "PC Compatible."

 

The "system requirements" jargon was usually "IBM PC/AT or 100% compatible" or "IBM PC/XT or 100% compatible."