[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
> Just to be factual here...
> Gates bought DOS from a person in Arizona who had developed an
> operating system called QDOS (which stood for quick and dirty
> operating system). It was written to counteract the large shell and
> many commands of the CP/M OS. Gates did indeed buy it for $50,000 and
> then made a ruthless licensing deal with IBM. Originally MS-DOS was
> NOT the IBM version. It was the oddball DOS than ran on most of the
> block I/O processers from companies like Wang and DEC.
> I liked joking about this more...
Not to put a point on it, Paul, but at the time the IBM PC came out
I was working at SofTech Microsystems in San Diego, CA - we provided
the UCSD P-System for the original IBM PC (Does anyone remember us?),
and were throughly conversant with the developing story of the OS for
the PC at that time. It wasn't Arizona, it was Seattle Computer Labs
in Seattle, Washington. They produced a line of S-100 bus CPU cards,
including 8088 and 8086 16 bit intel CPU's, and related support equip.
They got tired of waiting for CP/M-16, which was due out "Real Soon
Now" and cranked out QDOS as a simple clone for the 8086 boards. All
they were expecting was to sell a few systems. Gates was quite familiar
with it, and when was asked by IBM if he could provide an OS, in
addition to the BASIC he was on tap for, said yes, then bought QDOS,
buffed it a tiny bit, and thus was born the first version of PC-DOS.
best
rickf
--
Rick Forrister <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Definition: Honest Politician: Once bought, stays bought."
--Robert Heinlein
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