[mrandish]

> To see IBM then tonk Digital and transform the whole industry with an IBM microcomputer must have set their heads spinning.

Indeed. Perhaps it's a mercy that DEC didn't know at the time that the thing that 'tonked' them was really an "almost didn't happen" skunk works sponsored directly by Thomas Watson over the objections of most of his staff. While there were probably a few wild-eyed true believers in the Boca Raton ranks, to IBM senior management the 5150 was much more a small experiment to learn about these emerging desktop systems and perhaps a tiny hedge against low-end encroachment than any belief the future of computing would be desktop micros.

It's ironic that the 5150 PC that took out the minis then escaped and turned on its creators, unleashing the margin-eating barbarian horde. I've always interpreted IBM's failed PS/2, OS/2 and micro-channel efforts as an attempt to recapture and tame the monster their little experiment had accidentally unleashed. The fascinating question is: if IBM senior management had really believed the PC would become huge, how would the 5150 have been different? And would that less OTS and more proprietary machine have launched the PC juggernaut at all?