Editing IBM Personal Computer (section)

==Clones==
{{main|Influence of the IBM PC on the personal computer market}}
Because the IBM PC was based on commodity hardware rather than unique IBM components, and because its operation was extensively documented by IBM, creating machines that were fully compatible with the PC offered few challenges other than the creation of a compatible BIOS ROM.

Simple duplication of the IBM PC BIOS was a direct violation of copyright law, but soon into the PC's life the BIOS was reverse-engineered by companies like [[Compaq]], [[Phoenix Technologies|Phoenix Software Associates]], [[American Megatrends]] and [[Award Software|Award]], who either built their own computers that could run the same software and use the same expansion hardware as the PC, or sold their BIOS code to other manufacturers who wished to build their own machines.

These machines became known as [[IBM PC compatible|IBM compatibles]] or "clones", and software was widely marketed as compatible with "IBM PC or 100% compatible". Shortly thereafter, clone manufacturers began to make improvements and extensions to the hardware, such as by using faster processors like the [[NEC V20]], which executed the same software as the 8088 at a higher speed up to 10&nbsp;MHz.

The clone market eventually became so large that it lost its associations with the original PC and became a set of [[de facto standard|''de facto'' standards]] established by various hardware manufacturers.