14 Firms to Back IBM Standard for PCs

In a new thrust in the ongoing battle over personal computer standards, 14 computer companies are expected to announce Wednesday that they will join forces to promote an International Business Machines design called Micro Channel.

Micro Channel is a pathway--known as a “bus”--that carries information from one point to another within a computer. It also allows computers to give instructions to peripheral devices such as disk drives and printers. A rival bus design, known as Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA), has the support of most of IBM’s major competitors in the personal computer business, including Compaq Computer.

The new Micro Channel Developers Assn. will include IBM, Intel, NCR Corp., Chips & Technologies and Ing C. Olivetti & Co., sources said. It will provide PC vendors with technical data about Micro Channel and otherwise promote its use as an industry standard.

“This group is trying to breathe some life into IBM,” said John McCarthy, a Forrester Group analyst. “They are afraid of losing out to EISA.”

EISA, created in September, 1988, was the brainchild of a group of computer makers known as the Gang of Nine. The group, led by Compaq, received a tremendous boost last October when Hewlett-Packard Co. unveiled the first personal computer based on EISA. Since then, several computer makers have adopted the EISA standard for 32-bit computers.

IBM’s Micro Channel, introduced as part of the PS/2 family of computers, is still in more computers than the EISA bus. But lack of the sets of chips needed to implement Micro Channel has made it more difficult for computer vendors to use the design, hindering its adoption as an industry standard.

Analysts said the presence of Intel and Chips & Technologies in the Micro Channel coalition could mean that the group will also unveil plans to develop chip sets for Micro Channel. Intel already makes a chip set for EISA.