On Tuesday 23 August 2005 12:11 pm, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
| Ernest N. Wilcox Jr. wrote:
| > In contrast, as I see it, the M$ business model is targeted at selling
| > copies of the software. More software versions released means more
| > copies sold. Reusing old inadequate code means less cost per copy and
| > more profit. There has historically been no effective business
| > competition for them, which has given them no additional reason to do
| > better work, so they have produced mediocre software, driven only by
| > their perception of customer wants. They started out with a hacked
| > version of (it has been too many years, I think it was C/PM - the OS
| > for the 8080 CPU and which came with the Comodore 64) which they sold
| > as DOS, then a hacked version of a hacked version of the GUI developed
| > by Xerox (which was stolen from Apple who stole it from Xerox BTW)
| > which is now sold as Windows. For all I know, until they moved
| > completely away from DOS to NT, there may have been original C/PM code
| > for the 8080 in there somewhere (and maybe still is). They have kept
| > any possible competition at bay with effective FUD campaigns and other
| > less savory means, the true details of which we may never know. So,
| > yes, I agree with you. There is something wrong with M$. I think it is
| > their business model, their ethics, and an apathetic customer base who
| > continue to throw good money after bad.
| >
| > I'll stop here now ... :)
|
| CP/M didn't come with the Comodore 64, though you could buy it, along
| with a Z-80 CPU cartrige. It did come with the Comodore 128.
Human memory is a fragile thing :). I had a 64, then a 128 around the same
time, so I confuse what went with what, but you are correct, the CP/M came
with the 128. As I recall, I had a lot of trouble understanding how it
worked, so I did not use it much for other than an attempt to learn.
As I recall, I related to the Commodore machines more as toys rather than
tools. It was not until I saw Word Perfect 5.1 open on an IBM clone in
glorious living color that I reacted with 'I just gotta know how they do
that!", and the rest is history :)
| It had 2
| CPUs in it. CP/M was used on nost 8080, 8085, and Z-80 based systems.
| (Especialy S-100 bus based systems.) There was also a large base of both
| comercial and free software for it. For a long time, DOS supported the
| same file access structure, and may of the same system calls as CP/M
| did. This is where the File Control Blocks (FCB) in DOS came from. It is
| a good thing for Microsoft that the software pattents and copyrights on
| software back then were not the way they are now, or they would have
| been shut down by DRI. (The company that "owned" CP/M.)
|
| One nice thing about CP/M was that you got most of the source code for
| the OS itself as part of the package. You usualy needed to do the
| equivelent of a kernel compile to make it work with your hardware. But
| with only 64K of RAM (or less) to play with, you could not aford to have
| extra drivers as part of the OS. (Picture running a word processor, the
| file you are editing, and the OS all in 64K of RAM! Not 64M, but 64K)
It still amazes me what was possible in so little RAM, and I wonder if the
fact that users got the sources with CP/M may have had any thing to do with
users wanting Open Source? Sorry, I always come back to that ...
|
| Mikkel
--
Ernie ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
ICQ 41060744
Registered Linux User 247790
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