Proprietary hardware

Proprietary hardware is computer hardware

Historically, most early computer hardware was designed as proprietary until the 1980s, when PC changed this paradigm. Earlier, in the 1970s, many vendors tried to challenge monopoly in the mainframe computer market by reverse engineering and producing hardware components electrically compatible with expensive equipment and (usually) able to run the same software. Those vendors were nicknamed

See also

• Micro Channel architecture, a commonly cited historical example of proprietary hardware
• Vendor lock-in
• Hardware restrictions
• Proprietary device drivers
• Proprietary firmware
• Proprietary software