> But, Roca Raton? Now there is a light in the world of
> knowledge in print. Boca Raton, must be like what the Athens
> of Florida, right?
Boca Raton is also the birthplace of the IBM PC.
The story goes that a) the engineers that wanted to do the project wanted as far away from Armonk and the mainframe boys as possible so the mainframe boys wouldn't fuck it up. and b) Corporate wanted the PC group as far away as possible so when the project failed they could say it happened someplace else.
At some point they folded the unit back into the main corporation, I think around the time of the blecherous PS/2 line and the proprietary MCA buss. That would certainly be consistent with the move back to mainline IBM. (I've got my original IBM PC/AT (second generation IBM PC -- based on the i286 rather than 8086) Techinical Reference Manual (1985) on the shelf here and it has an address of Boca Raton listed on the copyright page.)
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Joseph Noonan Houston, TX jfn1 at msc.com