[Gormo]

I don't think "nerdy" is the right term here. MCA was a deliberate attempt by IBM to reassert walled-garden control over the PC architecture. The fact that Compaq would have had to license it from them in the first place makes that clear.

Other vendors saw through this and instead established an industry consortium to define royalty-free standards for ISA and its successors, which surpassed MCA in technical capability soon enough.