🚀 go-pugleaf

I remember some years ago the U.S. govt. was getting set to require all
vendors selling to the government to use a standard peripheral interface
so they could have competition in the peripherals market.  The standard
was going to be the IBM channel-to-control-unit interface because there was
already competition in peripherals for IBM 360 systems.  The other
mainframe makers were against it because (a) they didn't want competition,
wanted to keep their proprietary interfaces, (b) they didn't want to redesign
products to use a different interface, (c) they thought their own interfaces
were better (like not being limited to 8 bits wide).  The minicomputer makers
didn't like it because it was very costly to implement, compared to what
they were offering.  Even IBM didn't want it (a) because they wanted to
be able to change the interface to thwart the plug-compatible peripheral
vendors, and (b) because they didn't want to be bound to an interface
that was showing its age even at the time.

Whatever happened - did the standardization effort die from lack of 
support?  Or was it enacted and then so many exemptions were given
that it became meaningless?
-- 
haynes@cats.ucsc.edu
haynes@cats.bitnet

"Ya can argue all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was!"
"No it aint!  But ya gotta know the territory!"
        Meredith Willson: "The Music Man"