Quote:
Originally Posted by idrougge
IBM PC was the only factor. Apart from the PC and a few failed school computers (based on 80186), I can't come up with a single design built around the x86. The 68000 was everywhere, from workstations to game consoles, from home computers to print servers, from arcade machines to lab instruments.
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It sounds contradictory for me. Everybody had been happy with 68k and after a few moments they became unhappy... Why?! I can again say about quite popular Apple Macintosh which could successfully compete with IBM PC. Atari and Amiga had their respectable ecosystems. There was a world of 68k based Unix workstations. So your argument rather contrived for me.
IMHO it is quite natural to consider that ARM began the era of fast processors and Motorola couldn't convert its huge ISA for the new technology fast enough. Motorola wanted to share DEC VAX success in the late 70s but it caused the necessity to share its failure too in the beginning of 90s.
I can repeat Intel and ARM didn't follow DEC or IBM/370 - they just created better processors. On the contrary Motorola and National Semiconductor tried to create a processor with ISA similar to VAX.
BTW computers for Unix also needed something better than 68k so Sun developed its famous SPARC processor for them and became the leader for that market. It didn' use x86 even despite of the presence of a terrible monster "IBM PC".