A worryingly sensitive, defensive and jumpy state of mind at IBM is revealed by the company’s reaction to two stories in the Wall Street Journal: the company leaped to the defence of Entry Systems chief over the Journal’s suggestion that Lowe was passed over for promotion because of disappointing sales of the PS/2 line when Richard Gerstner was appointed head of IBM Personal Systems, a job for which Lowe appeared to be in line, writing a pained letter to the paper (we don’t know the content of the letter); more bizarre still is the case of the putative 80386SX based PS/2 model without Micro Channel – in that case, the European edition and early US editions of the Journal on Friday September 23 carried the story, but at IBM’s behest, the item was dropped from later US editions that day; however the Journal went back to its sources and went ahead and ran the story in all US editions the following Monday – accompanying it with IBM’s attempt at a denial, which is less than wholly convincing because it says that the company will never bring out a 32-bit machine without the Micro Channel because a 32-bit processor needs a 32 bit bus – but as the 386SX has only 16-bit input-output, is it a true 32-bit part?
