Seymour Metz wrote: >SCP was certainly inspired by CP/M, but m$ was not.
I don't think that's a fair characterization. Microsoft was *deeply* "inspired" by CP/M, per the historical record. In fact, Microsoft was a CP/M licensee and sold CP/M as part of the Microsoft SoftCard for Apple II computers. I'd say that qualifies as "inspired." The Microsoft SoftCard plugged into one of the slots in an Apple II (or successor, such as the popular Apple //e), and it contained a Zilog Z80 microprocessor to run CP/M plus some "glue" logic to wed the card (and operating system) to the Apple II underneath. According to Wikipedia, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen had the original idea to "port" CP/M to the Apple II. Tim Patterson at Seattle Computer Products (SCP) developed the original SoftCard prototype, and, later, Bill Gates and Don Burtis joined Tim Patterson in finishing the product. The SoftCard was Microsoft's top revenue source in 1980, and it became the #1 most popular CP/M platform. Radoslaw Skorupka wrote: >CP/M was very similar to any DOS version. The most >important (IMHO) exception was lack of directories. 86-DOS, MS-DOS, and PC-DOS did not have subdirectories either when initially released. It wasn't until Version 2.0 (March 8, 1983, along with the IBM PC/XT) that MS-DOS and PC-DOS got subdirectories, inspired by Microsoft's Xenix (UNIX) endeavors. CP/M 2.2 (released sometime in 1979) did not include subdirectories as such but did include 16 numbered user areas, i.e. a fixed number of pre-named subdirectories one level deep. This feature was a direct lift from MP/M. MS-DOS/PC-DOS Version 1.x didn't have any analogous feature. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM Z & LinuxONE, Multi-Geography E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
