> IBM is incompatible with fun

Maybe officially, but it's hard not to appreciate engineers getting away making the most idiotic, borderline surreal, technical decisions for multiple generations of a machine architecture. The PC must have been the most hated piece of hardware ever to be designed within IBM and the outlet of countless corporate-induced frustrations.

Most things that look crazy from the outside probably had very good reasons for existing. There's usual some weird technical quirk that made it work the way it does, and working around the problem (or doing it right) would have required a few thousand more gates or a couple more pins which would have been expensive.

Making something correct with no regard for cost is relatively easy. Making something that works at all but costs less than $5 in bulk can be a lot more difficult.

    I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
       So full was I of slumber at the moment
       In which I had abandoned the true way.

The Divine Comedy/Inferno/Canto I, by Dante Alighieri, Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

http://genius.com/Dante-alighieri-inferno-canto-1-annotated/

My point is, it's easy to get into this kind of weird design world, if you just do the quickest thing at every step, with no ability to think about how the big picture is going to look.

I'm sure nobody wanted to make a weird architecture, because they're harder to extend and harder to write software for, but if you always have the deadlines breathing down your neck, don't be surprised if you end up in a scary forest indeed.