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The IBM PC in 1981 was rapidly followed by a rich ecosystem of computers with x86 CPUs running MS-DOS, not all of which were compatible at the hardware level.

There is a list of some early MS-DOS computers at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_2000#History (go down a page or so). I'm interested in sales figures, though; I get the impression some of those machines were much more popular than others. For example, the DEC Rainbow is a notable example, but is it often mentioned because it sold many units, or just because it came from DEC, a company already well-known for other reasons?

Which were the most popular of the early MS-DOS computers apart from the IBM PC? To be definite, let's say 'early' means released before the end of 1985.

By 'popular' I mean, specifically, number of units sold worldwide. The ideal would be to have sources for sales figures, if those can be found.

Mark Williams
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rwallace
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  • Most popular asks or opinions. Similar the claim about the reason why they 'dies' out, as that as well is opinion - successful non IBM compatible MS DOS systems were introduced all the way into the 1990s. The question would great if more focused. – Raffzahn Jun 28 '20 at 19:44
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    @Raffzahn The reason why they died out is perhaps a matter of opinion, but that was just an observation on my part. For the question, I'm asking which ones sold the most units. That's a matter of objective fact. – rwallace Jun 28 '20 at 19:46
  • Cool, so why not removing opinionated statements and simply about most sold? – Raffzahn Jun 28 '20 at 19:51
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    Worldwide popularity, in the USA, or elsewhere? This varied a lot by regions of the world. – John Dallman Jun 28 '20 at 20:32
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    I’m voting to close this question because it’s a list question. – Stephen Kitt Jun 28 '20 at 20:46
  • The DEC Rainbow is often mentioned as an example of how DEC just didn't get it. – dave Jun 28 '20 at 20:51
  • @StephenKitt You're right, the answer I tried ended up as being almost entirely a list. I should try harder to withstand single sided questions. – Raffzahn Jun 28 '20 at 21:18
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    @Raffzahn Fair enough, removed opinionated statement, letting the question stand simply about most sold. Excellent answer, btw! – rwallace Jun 29 '20 at 00:03
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    I’m voting to close this question because it's a list question -- see Stephen's link. – Michael Graf Jul 03 '20 at 18:08

1 Answers1

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While it's hard to come by numbers, there are several non clone candidates that sold quite well:

  • Sirius 1/Victor 9000 1981-1984- Outsold the IBM-PC in Europe by far not at least due better hardware and a headstart of almost a year. It got screwed by company politics in the US ignoring the European success.
  • Sanyo MBC-550 1982-1986
  • Siemens PC-D 1982-1986
  • NEC PC98 family 1982-2004 - Last complete new model in 1992, more than 18 millions sold, the essential Japanese PC. It had it's own fellowship of compatible machines effectively making it the PC standard in far east. (*1)
  • TI Professional Computer and Portable PPC 1983-?
  • Tandy 2000 1983-1988 - Successful in the US, not much outside.
  • Olivetti M24 1983-1989 (also repackaged as AT&T 6300 and Xerox 6060) - Quite considerable sales in Europe. For example the defacto standard for everyone working in accounting and taxes in Germany during most of the 80s way into the 1990s.
  • TA Alphatronic P50/P60 1985-1990 - 80186 based office system.
  • Amstrad/Schneider PC1512 1986-1990 - Quite successful in the UK and Germany.
  • Fujitsu FM-Towns 1989-1997 - A Japanese household name.

and not at least

  • IBM's own PS/2 series.

Some machines with lesser, but still noteworthy sales:

There are many more that had some impact, but hard to judge - also while being somewhat Euro/US-centric, it leaves out many developments outside the UK and Germany.

If one really wants to go ahead and make up something like 'waves', this this would support three rough categories:

  1. Early systems predating or parallel to the introduction of the PC. If not cut due internal issues, most vanished in the mid 1980s
  2. x86/MS-DOS machines introduced after the IBM-PC offering considerable enhancements, if at all only in part compatible, most of them rather short lived.
  3. Business and home machines developed after the IBM-AT, often in some way compatible, but still different enough to need custom versions of most games/applications.

Bottom line: Several less than fully compatible machines/families enjoyed huge success, past the claimed 'early ones', some designed way after the PC-AT, which essentially defined the standard.

The holy grail of 100% compatibility was for most parts only present in the US. And even there some, like the Tandy 2000 could hold up. I'd still say it was mostly a sales argument for a few companies, carried by willing journalists.

*1 - Here a little indicatorhow popular the PC98 is/was in Japan: A new mini-PCI-E card, for Laptops, that plays the PC98 startup sound when booting.

Raffzahn
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    I used the Victor 9000 pretty extensively and liked it quite a bit. Great graphics (for the time) made it a great coding/development environment (i.e.,: a text editor on it looked great). Used it at Alsys SA on development team for an Ada compiler for some Bull machine (I forget which). – davidbak Jun 28 '20 at 23:03
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    We had a couple Victor 9000s at the office as well. The specific one in our office had AutoCad, a digitizer pad, and a plotter. The other thing it had was a "screen pen" (for lack of a better word). There was some "fabric" on the screen that combined with an attached pen, could be used essentially as a mouse. I wouldn't drag with it, it was a bit rough, but you could certainly use it to position cursors and corners and such. From old-computers.com: "There is also an optional light-pen, which is in fact a touch pen using resistive mesh on the CRT." This, too, was integrated with AutoCad. – Will Hartung Jun 28 '20 at 23:10
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    To be honest, the most interesting thing it was used for was an engineer was using the digitizer to collect points on scale drawings of aircraft from Janes to work on radar profiles. On screen in AutoCad, it was just a bunch of lines, but it was a great way to get the raw data. – Will Hartung Jun 28 '20 at 23:11
  • While the question inside the question text could be interpreted to include "anything", the title Which were the most popular early non-IBM, MS-DOS PCs? would logically exclude anything "IBM". The PCjr and the PS/2 series were not strict IBM-PC compatible machines but they were IBM. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Jun 29 '20 at 03:34
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    @manassehkatz-Moving2Codidact True. Then again, the question does state "The IBM PC [...], not all of which were compatible at the hardware level." so it's about the specific product, not the company (which otherwise would be rather senseless).. – Raffzahn Jun 29 '20 at 07:11
  • I think the problem is the inconsistency of the question title vs. content. There is another problem - while any IBM PC that ran PC-DOS could also run MS-DOS, arguably the real IBM machines normally ran PC-DOS, so while compatible with MS-DOS that wasn't really their "normal" use, at least in the early years. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Jun 29 '20 at 13:45
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    @manassehkatz-Moving2Codidact yeah, the whole topic is way more differentiate than it appears.Not at least due the broad use of the terms PC, IBM, DOS and compatible. – Raffzahn Jun 29 '20 at 14:52
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    I would exclude Olivetti M24 and Amstrad PC-1512 from your list as even if they had some unusual extensions, were sold and were PC compatible. The Olivetti had a regular CGA graphics but addes just a 640x400 monochrome on top of it. The Amstrad was delivered with DR-DOS and GEM but could run normal DOS and Windows without problem. – Patrick Schlüter Jun 29 '20 at 17:26
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    @PatrickSchlüter Just because it had some Video at the same address doesn't make them compatible. Either did need special drivers. First things that comes to mind with the Amstrad machines is an incompatible mouse interface and a joystick interface mapped onto keyboard buttons. With the Olivetti it starts with incompatible slots and even the CGA you mentioned was only partiality compatible, as only two of the 4 default modes did work like on an IBM CGA. Either machine did need specialised drivers to run GEM or Windows (and DOS). Which is true even for total hardware incompatible like the PC-D – Raffzahn Jun 29 '20 at 19:31
  • Maybe it's my Houston-bias, but I'm surprised that Compaq didn't make the list. They did an early clean-room BIOS and used it to make the first portable (not by today's standards) version of the original PC and XT. It was close to fully compatible, and also had some nice video upgrades that Compaq carried forward to their desktop line, which tended to aim a little higher than the corresponding IBM model in terms of performance. Compaq later released the first mainstream 386 PC and was instrumental in the EISA bus effort. – mschaef Jun 30 '20 at 11:35
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    @mschaef Well, that's exactly the reason why they are not on the list - Compaq machines quite compatible. The list is about non or limited compatible x86, isn't it? – Raffzahn Jun 30 '20 at 23:27
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    @Raffzahn I think saying the PC1512 wasn't PC-compatible because it had an "incompatible mouse interface" is a stretch. (Incompatible with what? The IBM PC and XT didn't have any mouse interface at all). It could boot PC-DOS and run the likes of Lotus 1-2-3 and Flight Simulator, which is a very different situation from the likes of the Sanyo MBC. – john_e Jul 01 '20 at 08:44
  • @john_e The compatible mouse interface at the time was either an Inbus or serial. The 1512's mouse was neither. The mentioned interfaces aren't exhaustive. The Amstrad Keyboard was as well incompatible (I assume you agree that a keyboard was part of the IBM-PC Standard) as it produced different scancodes - including some for mouse button clicks. Availability of programs isn't an indicator at all, as the PC-D shows. But discussions about level of compatibility are way beside the point, as it's simply about being fully compatible or not. The degree doesn't matter. – Raffzahn Jul 01 '20 at 09:25
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    @Raffzahn There's nothing stopping you plugging a serial mouse into the PC1512. Its keyboard produced extra scancodes for additional keys, joysticks and mouse buttons, but all the keys corresponding to the PC and XT produced the same scancodes. It certainly didn't need custom versions of most games / applications, which is one of the categories you list above. The basic architecture was compatible enough that it was still being used in 1990's PC3086, which has a Paradise VGA graphics chipset but the same keyboard and mouse protocols as the PC1512. – john_e Jul 01 '20 at 09:37
  • @john_e Say is it possible you had ne back then and had to defend it against 'evil comrades' :)) But serious, you say 'compatible enough' and 'most games' which are relative terms based on the fact that it's not 100% compatible. Right? Well, the two corner elements of the question are about selling well and not being 100% compatible. So i guess we both can agree that's a good fit for the 1512, reserving a top spot for it on the list.- On a side note, I didn't list criteria or made them, they come from the question answered, so you my want to argue with the OP on this. – Raffzahn Jul 01 '20 at 09:51
  • @Raffzahn No, I didn't have one in the 1980s, but I've written a website on the Amstrad XT range, so I know a lot about its hardware capabilities. By 'compatible enough' I meant that if the mouse or keyboard were causing significant compatibility problems with the software of the day, Amstrad had the opportunity to change them in later XTs. They didn't. – john_e Jul 01 '20 at 10:13
  • @john_e Sure, but it's a speculation that works both ways - maybe they kept it to stay compatible with existing software they had? Avoiding additional investment on that side? Hard to tell. But in any case, and for this list, it only matters that it was a successful machine and it was not 100% compatible. – Raffzahn Jul 01 '20 at 14:29
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    @Raffzahn: I still think you're reaching -- upthread you claimed that the PC1512 isn't 100% compatible because it needs proprietary drivers to run DOS or GEM, which isn't the case. If you run stock PCDOS and GEM on it, you may well end up with GEM in CGA mono mode and the mouse pointer controlled by the cursor keys -- but that's also what you'd get if you ran the same software on an IBM XT or "quite compatible" Compaq portable. – john_e Jul 02 '20 at 10:36
  • @john_e Sure it isn't the other way around? What you describe is exactly the less than 100% issue, as the Amstrad does not support all CGA modes - mind you, DOS isn't a program using all hardware. Similar for the mouse. Isn't GEM working in a fall back emulation mode the best proof that the 1512 isn't 100% compatible? I recognize how hard you try to talk it up, but words don't change hardware. No matter how much one would like it to happen. Doing so was a nice fan boy stance 30 years ago. It's 2020 and it's fine being objective when praising the old gear. – Raffzahn Jul 02 '20 at 10:58
  • Why was the "100% compatible" thing a holy grail in the US? Because home businesses wanted to run games on their computers too? Or to get the speed improvements of writing directly to the screen memory? – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jul 02 '20 at 13:47
  • @Raffzahn: I'm not being a fanboy, I'm simply trying to work out what you think makes the PC1512, which provides a superset of IBM XT functionality, not "100% compatible". Maybe it would help if you named a piece of software that ought to work on a "100% compatible" clone but doesn't work on a PC1512. (And which CGA modes do you think the PC1512 doesn't support but (say) the Compaq portable does?) – john_e Jul 02 '20 at 13:58
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    @ThorbjørnRavnAndersen It wasn't because of games (at least not mostly). IBM "owned" the market, because they were IBM. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". If you were a one-man shop, you could buy whatever you wanted. If you were the IT support (didn't call it that at the time) person for a larger business, the only safe bets were IBM or a "100% compatible" clone that could run anything sold for IBM. Screen memory addressing/access was a key feature to making it compatible, and definitely made a speed difference (which is why software did that) but not the only such feature. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Jul 02 '20 at 13:59
  • @john_e But you act quite like one by jumping the basic question about being compatible or not with fake arguments. Answer the simple question: is the hardware exactly like with a PC or not - CGA is a simple one, as the 1512 does not contain a full 6845, but only a partial emulation. – Raffzahn Jul 02 '20 at 16:09
  • @Raffzahn: I think I see where you're coming from now. Personally I think insisting on full 6845 emulation is rather restrictive, since even IBM made video cards that were designed to be driven by a CGA BIOS but didn't emulate all the functionality of a 6845. And I still think there's a difference in kind between a PC clone that can run stock PCDOS (PC1512, Toshiba 1100, Compaq Portable) and one that needs its own port of MSDOS (Apricot PC, Sanyo MBC)... – john_e Jul 02 '20 at 16:34