Jim Henderson wrote:
> My recollection was that Compaq was first with the reverse-engineering, 
> but Wikipedia conflicts with what I recall as well.  It may well have 
> been Phoenix.

I think Compaq bought the reverse-engineered BIOS from Pheonix. That's 
my memory, at least.

> I used to sell hardware (Amigas were the main machines, but we had some 
> PC hardware that was sold).  The commoditization of PC hardware lowered 
> the entry level price to where it was affordable for normal people.

Oh, you're talking about selling end units. I was talking about selling 
it OEM. Kind of hard to make a good profit on commodity manufacturing, 
is what I meant.

> That could be it - a combination of what you remember and what I remember 
> is probably closer to reality. :-)

Yeah. I'm pretty sure my first clone was indeed a Compaq, at least. But 
I remember the lawsuits about Phoenix, too.

> I know (from reading that Wikipedia article) that Phoenix was concerned 
> about it - but I don't recall IBM suing over it.  But I didn't follow the 
> legal issues then the way I do now, either.

They did, or at least went far enough into the discovery process to 
figure out they'd lose. I actually studied that one in one of my 
graduate classes.  IANAL.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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