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Hot Button: The PC at 20--Some Other Pioneers

Your article discussing "The PC at 20" [August] missed two pivotal points in the PC's (and Microsoft's) evolution.

The first was the development of a legal, readily available clone BIOS. In May 1984, I was the "virgin" author (I provided consulting services) of the Phoenix Software Associates PC BIOS. Without a well-designed, bug-free BIOS that was available at a reasonable cost, the clone industry might never have taken off.

The second was the development of the first real clone of an IBM chip set--made by Chips and Technologies and available in spring 1986 in sample quantities. Without this clone chip set, cloning might have been too costly for many manufacturers.

Ira J. Perlow, Waltham, Massachusetts

I can't believe that you omitted the Amiga, the first PC designed from the ground up for multimedia (32-bit preemptive multitasking OS in 1985, plug-and-play, and full color). IBM PCs and Macs were designed to be fancy typewriters that could do only one thing at a time--and adding multimedia to PCs has given us today's bloated operating systems.

Jim Patterson, Cleveland

Author's response: I meant no disrespect for the Amiga, which PC World once listed among the ten greatest PCs of all time. But "The PC at 20" was about the IBM PC/Wintel platform. As for multimedia, we noted that Creative Labs' SoundBlaster 16 popularized it for these machines.

Lincoln Spector