Intended as the replacement to the de facto Industry Standard Architecture IBM pioneered with the IBM PC, Micro Channel was met with backlash over IBM's exuberant licensing costs, and several computer companies, most influentially Compaq, formed a committee that developed the Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) in 1988.
While PS/2s also enjoyed modest success in those markets, Micro Channel was seldom licensed for official clones during its first years, leading to a perception of IBM among peripheral manufacturers as a domineering patent holder.
[2] The Micro Channel Developers Association was formed in October 1990 as a response to this perception and EISA's emergence.
Out of the over 800 companies developing Micro Channel products (at least those assigned numerical vendor IDs by IBM, to be read by the IBM's BIOS for MCA machines), only 14 comprised the Micro Channel Developers Association on its formation.
[6] Even after IBM discontinued Micro Channel and the PS/2 in July 1995,[7] the Micro Channel Developers Association still oversaw the development of hundreds of MCA cards and peripherals as late as May 1996, owing to its widespread use in IBM's line of RS/6000 servers and workstations.