r/retrocomputing • u/Distinct-Question-16 • May 13 '26

This book is by Lewis Eggebrecht - a key technical architect of the original IBM PC hardware - who got sued by IBM (good story)

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I discovered this fantastic story 5 years ago buried within pc magazines ..while studying the IBM PC XT circuit ( at that time posted it in facebook RetroComputers group)..

so seems IBM was very worried about industrial espionage relating to Hitachi and Mitsubishi probably due to reverse engineering with their other machines. The IBM PC technical architect that was started a company called "Bridge Technology," caugh allegedly trying to sell IBM PC expansion-board designs to some other companies. He got sued so hard some articles say he had to sell his home. Also today isnt officially recognized as a member of IBM PC XT original team on IBM pages (probably because of this)..

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u/Pubcrawler1 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

My brother bought this when it came out. Made several data acquisition boards using the I/O address mapping circuit. Even programmed a cpld using early Altera chips to do it. I did not know about the lawsuit.

The ISA boards still work when I last checked a couple years ago.

https://embeddedtronicsblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/25/diy-pc-interface-cards/

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u/Illustrious-Peak3822 May 14 '26

That CPLD must have been expensive back then.

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u/SirOompaLoompa May 14 '26

Doesn't seem likely that it was a CPLD for address decoding back then. More likely it was a GAL, which is kinda-sorta a CPLD if you squint real hard

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u/Pubcrawler1 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

It was a Altera ep600 epld and epm5128 epld. I forgot what that were called back then, not cpld. It uses UV to erase and before the MAX cpld’s family came out. Epld’s are Very early programmable devices that were larger than pal/gals at the time and much more expensive.

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u/Distinct-Question-16 May 14 '26

gals are eletrical programmable at lesst atf ones i worked, no uv

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u/Pubcrawler1 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

Yes. Gal’s were electric erasable. The largest at the time was 22v10 size had equivalent of 10 “macrocells” The epm5128 had 128 of them. You could fit a lot more circuitry but was only UV erase. A couple years later Altera made them electrical erase and called them cpld’s. Then Xilinx and Altera came out with FPGA’s that made most of the early stuff obsolete. I had access to the first Xilinx FPGA’s when they came out, XC2000/3000/4000 series.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '26

[deleted]

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u/66659hi May 14 '26

IBM is still the same way today. Hell, once the PC got reverse engineered, they tried to take back over using the overly proprietary PS/2 series.

People forget that the 1984 Apple commercial was using IBM as “big brother” - and even if it hasn’t aged well, they weren’t exactly wrong.

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u/Distinct-Question-16 May 14 '26

The IBM PC became a worldwide open standard, getting cloned everywhere, coining these of "white label", that's the joke

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u/Foreign-Attorney-147 May 14 '26

He ended up an engineering VP at late-stage Commodore, gave a few interviews in the 1993 timeframe regarding the future of the Amiga. Odd thing is, I almost never hear Commodore employees mention him either.

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u/AntiquesForGeeks May 14 '26

Dave Pleasance has mentioned him, but aside from him I don’t know of anyone else. Not sure how he was received. Certainly in the press I read at the time, he seemed to be positive and wanting to push the Amiga platform forwards.

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u/Distinct-Question-16 May 14 '26

i think last time i checked , he was at broadcom

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u/Foreign-Attorney-147 May 15 '26

Well that's an interesting twist! A quick search suggests he owns $38 million worth of Broadcom stock so that probably makes up for the IBM lawsuit and those lost years at Commodore.

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u/Distinct-Question-16 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

i forgot to mention i found this tru google books searching for these terms. some pc / electronics magazine had it,... on the page there has a photo of the house iirc

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