To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 18:25:30 5
Subject: Re: Hi !
Message-ID: <20000718.182532.-236977.22.editor@juno.com>
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From: Bruce Morgen <editor AT juno DOT com>
Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com



On Tue, 18 Jul 2000 10:56:21 -0700 Robert W Moss <domanspc AT juno DOT com>
writes:
> QDOS is mentioned at various places on the WEB when you look for 
> information about the origins of DOS.  Patterson wrote QDOS for his 
> computers because he thought DRInc was to slow in getting a 16-bit 
> OS to market and it was hurting sales of his own computers.  He 
> wrote it very quickly and purposely made it work like CP/M which was 
> the dominant OS at the time.  It was not a really good system and 
> was far from a complete clone  of CP/M. 

Yes, that's what I've heard 
too.

> After he sold it to MS he found 
> out about the IBM deal and sued them for irregularities in the sale. 
>  
> He sued for $67 Million and settled for $975 thousand.  Sound 
> familiar? 

Yup.  :-)

> I believe he actually worked for MS for a time before he sued them. 

That is definitely true.
> 
> The following sites have info on Gary Kildall and DRInc. and links 
> to other sites.  
> 
> http://www.forbes.com/forbes/97/0707/6001336a.htm
> 
> http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/ugradscholars/kildall.htm
> 
> http://www.digitalcentury.com/encyclo/update/kildall.html
> 
> http://www2.gol.com/users/joewein/gary.html 
> (wein was an original programmer for DR DOS/UK & Germany)
> 
> http://www2.gol.com/users/joewein/edc.html
> 
> http://www2.gol.com/users/joewein/drj.html
> 
> http://www2.gol.com/users/joewein/dri25.htm
> 
> http://www2.dri-reunion.com    (iffy?)
>      or (www)
> 
> http://www.ddj.com/articles/1997/9718/9718i/9718i.htm
> 
> I honestly thought that Gary Kildall had been involved with 
> manufacturing hardware, probably because I run into so 
> much Digital Research Inc hardware on the shelves at 
> Comp USA and Best Buy stores here in California.  They 
> may not even have any connection with the old DRInc. 
> 
> His first program was an operating system called PL/M 
> which he wrote for Intel for the 8008 processor.  

PL/M (Programming Language 
for Microcomputers) is a port 
of a language, it is not an 
operating system.  Some of 
CP/M -- EDIT.COM and PIP.COM, 
for example, was written in 
PL/M, but the original MDS 
BIOS and all versions of BDOS, 
and CCP were written in 8080 
assembler.

> He used  it to develop CP/M.  

See above.

> Intel bought PL/M but did not buy CP/M 
> because they were not interested in a (D)isk (O)perating 
> (S)ystem.
> 
[snip]

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