compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones. The term "IBM PC compatible" is now a historical description only, since IBM no longer sells personal computers. The industry jargon "PC" sometimes doesn't mean "personal computer" generally, but rather a computer running Microsoft's Windows operating system, in contrast to Apple's macOS, which usually gives the computer the designation of "Mac".
These "clones" duplicate almost exactly all the significant features of the IBM PC architecture. This was facilitated by IBM's choice of commodity hardware components and by various manufacturers' ability to reverse engineer the BIOS firmware using a "clean room design" technique. Columbia Data Products built the first clone of the IBM personal computer by a clean room implementation of its BIOS.Early IBM PC compatibles used the same computer bus as the original PC and AT models. The IBM AT compatible bus was later named the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus by manufacturers of compatible computers.
Descendants of the IBM PC compatibles comprise the majority of personal computers on the market presently, with the dominant operating system being Microsoft Windows, although interoperability with the bus structure and peripherals of the original PC architecture may be limited or non-existent. Some of these computers ran MS-DOS but had enough hardware differences that IBM compatible software could not be used; examples include slight differences in the memory map, serial ports or video hardware.
Only the Macintosh kept significant market share without having compatibility with the IBM PC.
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These "clones" duplicate almost exactly all the significant features of the IBM PC architecture. This was facilitated by IBM's choice of commodity hardware components and by various manufacturers' ability to reverse engineer the BIOS firmware using a "clean room design" technique. Columbia Data Products built the first clone of the IBM personal computer by a clean room implementation of its BIOS.Early IBM PC compatibles used the same computer bus as the original PC and AT models. The IBM AT compatible bus was later named the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus by manufacturers of compatible computers.
Descendants of the IBM PC compatibles comprise the majority of personal computers on the market presently, with the dominant operating system being Microsoft Windows, although interoperability with the bus structure and peripherals of the original PC architecture may be limited or non-existent. Some of these computers ran MS-DOS but had enough hardware differences that IBM compatible software could not be used; examples include slight differences in the memory map, serial ports or video hardware.
Only the Macintosh kept significant market share without having compatibility with the IBM PC.
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