It was announced in September 1988 by a consortium of PC clone vendors ( the " Gang of Nine ") as a counter to IBM's use of its proprietary Micro Channel architecture ( MCA ) in its PS / 2 series.

Some of IBM's engineers and other employees wanted to use the IBM 801 processor, some would prefer the new Motorola 68000, while others argued for a small and simple microprocessor, such as the MOS Technology 6502 or Zilog Z80, which had been used in earlier personal computers.

The agreement with Intel limited their use to IBM's own line of computers and upgrade boards only, so they were not available on the open market.

In practice many customers use multiple mainframes linked either by Parallel Sysplex and shared DASD ( in IBM's case ), or with shared, geographically dispersed storage provided by EMC or Hitachi.

Other MultiMate products included foreign language versions of the software ( i. e., " MultiTexto " in Spanish ), a hardware interface card for file-transfer with Wang systems and versions of MultiMate for different PC clone MS-DOS computers, and for use on Novell, 3COM and IBM's PC Token Ring networks.

Microsoft programmers also became frustrated with IBM's bureaucracy and its use of lines of code to measure programmer productivity.

As the market evolved, however, despite the failure of MCA, IBM derived a considerable income from license fees from companies who paid for licenses to use IBM patents that were in the PC design — to the extent that IBM's emphasis changed from discouraging PC clones to maximizing its revenue from license sales.

Although both the consumer desktop and the workstation benefit from CPUs designed around the multicore concept ( essentially, multiple processors on a die, the application of which IBM's POWER4 was a pioneer ), modern workstations typically use multiple multicore CPUs, error correcting memory and much larger on-die caches than those found on " consumer-level " CPUs.

BS12's lasting contribution to history was the use of a new query language based on ISBL, created at IBM's UK Scientific Centre.

The PC clone market did not want to pay royalties to IBM in order to use this new technology, and for desktop machines vendors of PC-compatibles stayed largely with the 16-bit AT bus, ( embraced and renamed as ISA to avoid IBM's " AT " trademark ) and manual configuration, although the VESA Local Bus was briefly popular for Intel ' 486 machines.

In any case, IBM's original plans for the AT had been to equip it with a proper next-generation OS that would use its extended features, but this never materialized.

PC DOS 3. 2 added support for 3½-inch double-density 720 kB floppy disk drives, supporting the IBM PC Convertible, IBM's first computer to use 3½-inch floppy disks, released April 1986.

* CMS was originally developed as part of IBM's CP / CMS operating system, which went into production use in 1967.

The term code page originated from IBM's EBCDIC-based mainframe systems, but many vendors use this term including Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle Corporation.

IBM's tablet computer was the first to use the ThinkPad name and used IBM's handwriting recognition.

The SCO Group asserted that there are legal uncertainties regarding the use of the Linux operating system due to alleged violations of IBM's Unix licenses in the development of Linux code at IBM.

The ADS, marketed directly by IBM and for a short while by AT & T, was richly featured for voice messaging, the result of IBM's enormous research in human factors and observing SFS in real operational use.

IBM's later attempt to build a computer targeted at home users, the PS / 2 Model 30 was also unsuccessful due to its similar use of nonstandard technologies that were less capable than alternatives already available from IBM's competitors.

VM remained an important platform within IBM, used for operating system development and time-sharing use ; but for customers it remained IBM's " other operating system ".

Fundamental CP / CMS architectural and strategic parameters were established in CP-40, which began production use at IBM's Cambridge Scientific Center in early 1967.

IBM's solution was provided by quarter-inch cartridge ( QIC ) magnetic tape drives that use standard DC300 cartridges to store 204 Kbytes.

SOM was intended to be used universally from IBM's mainframe computers right down to the desktop in OS / 2, allowing programs to be written that would run on the desktop but use mainframes for processing and data storage.

Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr. ( born April 19, 1931 ) is a software engineer and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System / 360 family of computers and the OS / 360 software support package, then later writing candidly about the process in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month.

Software upgrades usually require setting up the operating system or portions thereof, and are non-disruptive only when using virtualizing facilities such as IBM's Z / OS and Parallel Sysplex, or Unisys ' XPCL, which support workload sharing so that one system can take over another's application while it is being refreshed.

Mach 3 led to a number of efforts to port other operating systems parts for the microkernel, including IBM's Workplace OS and several efforts by Apple Computer to build a cross-platform version of the Mac OS.

* OS / 2 1. x targeted the 80286 processor: IBM insisted on supporting the Intel 80286 processor, with its 16-bit segmented memory mode, due to commitments made to customers who had purchased many 80286-based PS / 2's because of IBM's promises surrounding OS / 2.

OS / 2 failed to develop much penetration in the consumer and stand-alone desktop PC segments ; there were reports that it could not be installed properly on IBM's own Aptiva series of home PCs.

Open source operating systems such as Linux have already profited from OS / 2 indirectly through IBM's release of the improved JFS file system which was ported from the OS / 2 code base.

ParcPlace Systems tended to focus on the Unix / Sun Microsystems market, while Digitalk focused on Intel-based PCs running Microsoft Windows or IBM's OS / 2.

For example, IBM's z / OS has 3 modes ( virtual-virtual, virtual-real and virtual-fixed ).

IBM's standard support period for each z / OS release is three years, so, combined with z / OS's uniquely rigorous coexistence and fallback commitments, IBM's customers routinely maintain z / OS release currency ( or near-currency ) with few or zero service interruptions and without paying extended support fees.

* Multiprogramming with a Fixed number of Tasks, an option of the OS / 360 operating system that was available for IBM's System / 360 mainframe

Historically, this term was essentially associated with IBM's line of mainframe operating systems starting with OS / 360.

* IBM's OS / 2 Warp 4 included VoiceType, a precursor to IBM ViaVoice.

The decreasing cost of display equipment and processors made it practical to provide graphical user interfaces for many operating systems, such as the generic X Window System that is provided with many Unix systems, or other graphical systems such as Microsoft Windows, the RadioShack Color Computer's OS-9 Level II / MultiVue, Commodore's AmigaOS, Apple's Mac OS, or even IBM's OS / 2.

* Innovation Access Method, a high-performance indexed access-method for IBM's z / OS and OS / 390 operating systems that provides a transparent alternative to IBM's VSAM

AIX / 370 was IBM's third attempt to offer Unix-like functionality for their mainframe line, specifically the System / 370 ( the prior versions were a TSS / 370 based Unix system developed jointly with AT & T c. 1980, and VM / IX a VM / 370 based system developed jointly with Interactive Systems Corporation c. 1984 ).

The SCC cost about $ 5 more than a UART, but offered much higher speeds up to 250 kbit / s ( or higher with additional hardware ) and internally supported a number of basic networking-like protocols like IBM's Bisync.

Most of IBM's early binary " scientific " computers, beginning with the vacuum tube IBM 701 in 1952, used a single 36-bit accumulator, along with a separate multiplier / quotient register to handle operations with longer results.

TWA canceled the project in 1970, acquiring one IBM System / 360 Model 75, two IBM System / 360 model 65s, and IBM's PARS software for its reservations system.

The expression ' time sharing ' was usually used to designate computers shared by interactive users at terminals, such as IBM's TSO, and VM / CMS

Mature versions of the Commodore, SWTPC, Atari and Apple home computer systems all featured a disk operating system ( actually called ' DOS ' in the case of the Commodore 64 ( CBM DOS ), Atari 800 ( Atari DOS ), and Apple II machines ( Apple DOS )), as did ( at the other end of the hardware spectrum, and much earlier ) IBM's System / 360, 370 and ( later ) 390 series of mainframes ( e. g., DOS / 360: Disk Operating System / 360 and DOS / VSE: Disk Operating System / Virtual Storage Extended ).

In large machines there were other disk operating systems, such as IBM's VM, DEC's RSTS / RT-11 / VMS / TOPS-10 / TWENEX, MIT's ITS / CTSS, Control Data's assorted NOS variants, Harris's Vulcan, Bell Labs ' Unix, and so on.

EISA extends the AT bus, which the Gang of Nine retroactively renamed to the ISA bus to avoid infringing IBM's trademark on its PC / AT computer, to 32 bits and allows more than one CPU to share the bus.

Although his career in computing spanned more than two decades, he is mainly remembered in connection with IBM's unsuccessful attempt in 1980 to license CP / M for the IBM PC.