To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 17:52:50 5
Subject: Re: Hi !
Message-ID: <20000717.180302.-238167.0.editor@juno.com>
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From: Bruce Morgen <editor AT juno DOT com>
Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com



On Mon, 17 Jul 2000 18:12:39 +0100 "Ben A L Jemmett"
<ben DOT jemmett AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk> writes:
> > Even CP/M  86, Kildall's alternative for the original IBM-PC, was
> > released *after* M$'s PC-DOS
> It was written at the same time, 

Yes, if you consider QDDOS 
and PC-DOS 1.0 to be the 
same animal.

> but was in testing for longer -> 
> fewer bugs.  

No doubt about that -- it 
was also extremely expensive, 
assuring buggy PC-DOS's 
predominance in the 
marketplace.  Remember, M$ 
bought QDDOS from Seattle 
Microcomputer and did some 
adaptation to the specifics 
of the IBM-PC hardware, so 
PC-DOS was much less of a 
porting job than CP/M 86.

> It was just a port of CP/M-80 though, so technically the 
> system was around for more than half a decade before MS-DOS.

That's a bit of a stretch 
in the context of this 
thread, since CP/M wasn't 
designed to be portable 
between CPU architectures 
the porting job was 
distinctly non-trivial 
compared to what M$ did to 
adapt it's purchased DOS 
to IBM's requirements.  
QDDOS (and therefore PC-DOS 
1.0) was essentially a poor 
clone of CP/M 2.2 ported 
over to the 8086/8088 
architecture, CP/M 86 was a 
much better clone that was 
priced *way* past what the 
emerging PC market would 
bear.  :-)

Thanks for your comments, 
Ben.

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