Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[David Brownlee]

On 17 July 2016 at 16:09, Liam Proven  wrote:
> In 1987 or so, the early Archimedes like the A305 and A310 came with
> ST-506 controllers and 20-40MB Conner drives. The expensive
> workstation-class models -- Dick mentions having an A500, but that was
> a series, not a model.

The A500 was the development prototype which pre-dated the A310
(originally with pre-multiply ARM1 CPUs). Only a 100 or so made. I
think they used pretty much the same Hitachi HD63463 as the (optional
podule for the) A300 series which I think was DMA capable.

> There was, later (1990), the A540:
>
> http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/A540.html
>
> This was the Unix R260, but shipping with RISC OS instead of RISC iX.
>
> The A540 came with a snazzy SCSI HD:
>
> http://www.apdl.org.uk/riscworld/volumes/volume9/issue2/blast20/index.htm

The A540/R260 was a completely different class of machine, with an
ARM3 and the ability to take multiple memory (each with memory
controller) cards.

> ... but then it was the thick end of three thousand quid.
>
> Back in '87, I suspect Dick had an A310 or something, with an ST-506
> drive & Arthur (i.e. RISC OS 1 -- an ARM port of the BBC Micro's MOS
> with a desktop written in BBC BASIC).
>
> So I suspect no DMA... but I don't know.

Think of it as an A310 with integrated disk controller, in a big metal
box with a lot more soldered wires internally :-p

Acorn kept them in internal service for white a while, including for
development versions of RISC OS 3 with the multitasking filer.

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Liam Proven]

On 16 July 2016 at 13:12, Peter Corlett  wrote:
>
> Isn't that mostly down to the difference between polled- and DMA-driven I/O?
> Not that IBM should be given any slack, given what a complete dog's breakfast
> ISA DMA is.
>
> Back in 1987, the Amiga had crap hard disk performance because while the
> controllers generally supported DMA, the disks still had to be formatted with
> that awful filesystem it inherited from Tripos. (This wasn't fixed until 
> 1988.)
>
> I wonder how the Atari ST fared back then. Probably reasonably well given its
> filesystem is a FAT derivative.

If it's a real question, I still know some RISC OS gurus, so I can
probably find out. But RISC OS was, technically, very primitive. I am
not 100% sure it even did DMA.

I recall around '96 or so, when busmastering DMA hard disk drivers for
Windows NT 4 on the Intel 82430FX "Triton" PCI chipset and its PIIX
EIDE controller appeared.

They existed for Win9x too but didn't make as much difference, because
the 9x kernel didn't have the internal multithreading to take
advantage of it. NT did.

The thing is, in a fast PC, they weren't massively quicker in terms of
raw transfer speed. What they did was massively reduce the CPU load of
intensive disk activity. Obviously you could only see this in
Performance Monitor once the machine was booted, but it was
interesting. With the ordinary default MS EIDE drivers, NT used Polled
I/O. Under heavy disk load, such as loading a large modular app, the
kernel CPU usage in PerfMon went very spiky. If the CPU was reasonably
quick -- which around then meant a P1 at 166MHz, or maybe a Pentium 1
MMX at 200MHz, then it didn't max out the CPU, but it was working
hard.

With the DMA drivers, intensive disk activity barely caused a trickle
of CPU activity. You could hardly see it.

The difference was so dramatic, you could hear it from the changing
noise of the movement of the disk heads. With PIO, it was staccato,
clicky; with DMA, it became bursts of buzzing and occasional silences
as the OS digested the new data it received and then requested more.

Of course, if you had some expensive SCSI disk system, this wasn't
anything new -- but then, with a decent SCSI host adaptor, such as an
expensive Adaptec AHA2940, you never heard it in PIO mode, so the
contrast wasn't there. It was harder to compare some cheap terrible
SCSI adaptor with a good one -- nobody sane would put a fast hard disk
on a cheapo ISA-bus AHA1510 meant for driving a scanner.

Whereas with Triton drivers and a good fast EIDE HD -- the de-facto
choice then was a Quantum Fireball 1.2GB -- you could install the OS,
get it working, then take the floppy with the Triton drivers, install
it and reboot. Presto, the machine booted faster and became
significantly more responsive. Big difference.

This is the most dramatic demo of DMA-driven hard disk access that
I've ever personally encountered.

In 1987 or so, the early Archimedes like the A305 and A310 came with
ST-506 controllers and 20-40MB Conner drives. The expensive
workstation-class models -- Dick mentions having an A500, but that was
a series, not a model.

There was, later (1990), the A540:

http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/A540.html

This was the Unix R260, but shipping with RISC OS instead of RISC iX.

The A540 came with a snazzy SCSI HD:

http://www.apdl.org.uk/riscworld/volumes/volume9/issue2/blast20/index.htm

... but then it was the thick end of three thousand quid.

Back in '87, I suspect Dick had an A310 or something, with an ST-506
drive & Arthur (i.e. RISC OS 1 -- an ARM port of the BBC Micro's MOS
with a desktop written in BBC BASIC).

So I suspect no DMA... but I don't know.

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Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Peter Corlett]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 08:10:24PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
[...]
> http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Mags/PCW/PCW_Aug87_Archimedes.pdf
> I vividly remember reading it as a 19YO student...

> "The hard disk in the A500 is most noticeable for its ferociously rapid
> access speed. It loads huge programs with a faint burping noise, in the time
> it takes to blink an eye. The reason for this speed is that the disk is run
> with no interleaving of sectors. On an IBM XT, for example, the disk rotates
> about six times between each read to give the puny CPU time to digest;
> Archimedes eliminates this dead time as the ARM processor can suck stuff off
> the disk as fast as it can rotate."

Isn't that mostly down to the difference between polled- and DMA-driven I/O?
Not that IBM should be given any slack, given what a complete dog's breakfast
ISA DMA is.

Back in 1987, the Amiga had crap hard disk performance because while the
controllers generally supported DMA, the disks still had to be formatted with
that awful filesystem it inherited from Tripos. (This wasn't fixed until 1988.)

I wonder how the Atari ST fared back then. Probably reasonably well given its
filesystem is a FAT derivative.

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[jim stephens]

On 7/15/2016 12:15 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:

On 07/15/2016 11:52 AM, Guy Sotomayor Jr wrote:



P.S. A full build for the board I work on (OS and creating the boot
image) for work takes < 1 hour.  The firmware I’m working on takes
just 2-3 seconds to build!  This is on a PC with a 3.2GHz Skylake i7
with SSDs.  ;-)

The problem is that while the PCs are getting faster, I'm slowing down.

One vivid memory I have of the S/360 F-level assembler is that while the
macro language was very rich, macros could take a very long time to
evaluate.  Some of the "system" macros were real doozies.

Hasp and I think Control program (??) on MVT were about a foot high.

The system programmers for our shop at University of Missouri, Rolla, 
360/50, MVT 19 thru 21 era had a hot plate, skillet, and they snacked on 
spam while waiting and working.  Made for a unique aroma to the computer 
center.



Of course, none of that compares to the card-only systems without mass
storage.

--Chuck

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Eric Smith]

On 14 July 2016 at 20:47, Chris Hanson  wrote:
> And interestingly, these days IBM is a huge user of Macs… which these days 
> use a derivative of the system architecture that IBM developed!

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 11:24 AM, Liam Proven  wrote:
> The PC CPU was from Intel, not IBM. Macs now use Intel CPUs.

Yes, the CPU architecture is from Intel. The hardware *system*
architecture is from the IBM PC. That's the main reason why you can
boot Windows on an x86 Mac. (And other PC operating systems.)

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Mouse]

>> NetBSD/vax, for example, has trouble self-hosting, and nobody knows
>> why, because it shows up only in native builds.
> Hmm, I wasn't aware of that.  I've only used it in the context of
> other platforms and variants.

I'm sure there are lots of  triples it works just
fine for.  I just don't know why  isn't one of
them.  As far as I know nobody else knows either.

>> Nobody knows [...].  (Or at least that's what I've gathered from
>> following port-vax@.)
> Aww.  That breaks my fantasy that the list was full of highly
> motivated VAX gods. :-)

:-)  Actually, I think it probably is - just ones short on round tuits.
I suspect that anyone with the necessary VAX/gcc/NetBSD chops to
diagnose this problem is also kickass at a number of other things,
things which (for example) pay significantly better.

>> If I were still following NetBSD I'd be taking a real VAX and trying
>> to figure out when things went south, doing all the builds native.
> It's too bad for the NetBSD team that you aren't.  [...]

Thank you for the compliment!  NetBSD apparently either disagrees or
decided something else had higher priority, though.  This way I have
more time for doing my own thing, though, so it's not entirely without
a silver lining.  (Admittedly, at the moment "my own thing" is less
computery, so perhaps it's not that much of a silver lining from your
perspective - I don't know how much we overlap except for classiccmp.)

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Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Swift Griggs]

On Fri, 15 Jul 2016, Mouse wrote:
> But it comes at a price.  NetBSD/vax, for example, has trouble 
> self-hosting, and nobody knows why, because it shows up only in native 
> builds.

Hmm, I wasn't aware of that. I've only used it in the context of other 
platforms and variants. 

> Nobody knows whether there's a subtle bug in the cross-compiler 
> generating a broken native compiler, or there's a subtle bug in the 
> compiler that shows up only in native VAX builds, or what. (Or at least 
> that's what I've gathered from following port-vax@.)

Aww. That breaks my fantasy that the list was full of highly motivated VAX 
gods. :-)

> If I were still following NetBSD I'd be taking a real VAX and trying to 
> figure out when things went south, doing all the builds native.

It's too bad for the NetBSD team that you aren't. You'd be a killer asset 
to any FOSS project, I'm sure. That goes 10x for one involving VAXes.

-Swift

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Mouse]

> Also, cross-compilers are so f'ing wonderful for targeting old or
> embedded systems, nowadays too.  NetBSD's ability to cross compile
> binaries for completely alien systems is just awesome.

But it comes at a price.  NetBSD/vax, for example, has trouble
self-hosting, and nobody knows why, because it shows up only in native
builds.  Nobody knows whether there's a subtle bug in the
cross-compiler generating a broken native compiler, or there's a subtle
bug in the compiler that shows up only in native VAX builds, or what.
(Or at least that's what I've gathered from following port-vax@.)

If I were still following NetBSD I'd be taking a real VAX and trying to
figure out when things went south, doing all the builds native.

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Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[geneb]

On Fri, 15 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:


On 15 July 2016 at 19:38, geneb  wrote:

Somewhere around here I've got an inventory of what was lost and it's a
horror show. :(



While it springs to mind -- the other things that were lost that I
wish had got open-sourced were Quarterdeck's QEMM, DesqView and
DesqView/X. Symantec lost the sources.

I don't believe that for a second.  I bet Some jackass manager decided it 
wasn't worth anything and binned it without telling anyone.



DR-DOS with DesqView/X would have been a very interesting FOSS OS. It
so nearly happened but it came just too late. A multitasking DOS with
built-in TCP/IP and X.11 would have been very handy.


Well interesting if nothing else. :)

g.

--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby.  Geeks collect hobbies.

ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Swift Griggs]

On Fri, 15 Jul 2016, Guy Sotomayor Jr wrote:
> P.S. A full build for the board I work on (OS and creating the boot 
> image) for work takes < 1 hour.  The firmware I?m working on takes just 
> 2-3 seconds to build!  This is on a PC with a 3.2GHz Skylake i7 with 
> SSDs.  ;-)

Also, cross-compilers are so f'ing wonderful for targeting old or embedded 
systems, nowadays too. NetBSD's ability to cross compile binaries for 
completely alien systems is just awesome.

-Swift

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Guy Sotomayor Jr]

> On Jul 15, 2016, at 11:30 AM, Chuck Guzis  wrote:
> 
> On 07/15/2016 11:10 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
> 
>> We don't appreciate how much faster modern PCs are than the old
>> ones, because modern PC OSes are so appallingly slow and bloated.
> 
> Reminds me of a conversation that I had with Greg Mansfield back in the
> mid-80s when he was working for Cray.   I was grousing about the time
> spent recompiling the BSD kernel on a VAX 11/750, even when streamlining
> the process through partial recompilation (i.e. compiling only those
> parts needing it).  Greg was working with, IIRC, UniCOS at the time and
> confided that on an X/MP he didn't bother with partial
> recompilation--there was no practical time savings realizable.
> 
> Flash back to 1975 when recompiling the STAR OS kernel on a dedicated
> STAR 1B took all night--assuming that the machine stayed up that long.
> 

When I first started working on the IBM S/23, a complete build took a week
(yes, 7 days…if we were lucky).  Debugging and fixing was mostly keeping
a notebook of patches to applied to the previous build.  “fixes” were first
developed by patch and then actual source changes were made.  We usually
spent a day just patching the “fixes” when a new build was released because
what we had to do in a patch vs the real change were often different.

Eventually someone wrote a cross build environment for the Series/1 and the
build went down to overnight (yea!).

You may ask “It was IBM why didn’t you use the S/370 mainframes?”.  It was
accounting.  We could “buy” equipment (Series/1 and the like) and it was a
capitol expense.  We were billed (at a ridiculous rate as I recall) for 
Mainframe
time out of the department expense budget.  The expense budget was very
closely monitored.  The capitol budget not so much.

Kids have it so much easier now.  ;-)

P.S. A full build for the board I work on (OS and creating the boot image) for
work takes < 1 hour.  The firmware I’m working on takes just 2-3 seconds to
build!  This is on a PC with a 3.2GHz Skylake i7 with SSDs.  ;-)

TTFN - Guy

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Chuck Guzis]

On 07/15/2016 11:10 AM, Liam Proven wrote:

> We don't appreciate how much faster modern PCs are than the old
> ones, because modern PC OSes are so appallingly slow and bloated.

Reminds me of a conversation that I had with Greg Mansfield back in the
mid-80s when he was working for Cray.   I was grousing about the time
spent recompiling the BSD kernel on a VAX 11/750, even when streamlining
the process through partial recompilation (i.e. compiling only those
parts needing it).  Greg was working with, IIRC, UniCOS at the time and
confided that on an X/MP he didn't bother with partial
recompilation--there was no practical time savings realizable.

Flash back to 1975 when recompiling the STAR OS kernel on a dedicated
STAR 1B took all night--assuming that the machine stayed up that long.

--Chuck

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Guy Sotomayor Jr]

> On Jul 15, 2016, at 10:39 AM, Swift Griggs  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 15 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
>> But in the now-gone PowerPC era, yes, Macs used a derivative of the IBM 
>> POWER RISC processor line. 
> 
> I always thought it was a shame that both IBM and Apple were so tight 
> around the pucker strings and never were more comfortable sharing their 
> OS's back and forth. I would have welcomed running AIX on more than a a 
> mere handful of the PPCs that could do it. I would have also liked to have 
> seen MacOS 9.x and 10.0-10.4 (or whatever the PPC span was) available for 
> some bits of IBM hardware, and especially the IBM IntelliStation line of 
> POWER5 systems such as the Power 285 (but also RS/6000s with 
> framebuffers).
> 
> @#$@#ing business-weasels got in the way.

Yep.  Damned them.  It’s a real pain having to figure out how to allocate
development resources within a budget.  That whole profit thing gets in
the way of all the cool stuff!

TTFN - Guy

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Liam Proven]

On 15 July 2016 at 19:38, geneb  wrote:
> Somewhere around here I've got an inventory of what was lost and it's a
> horror show. :(


While it springs to mind -- the other things that were lost that I
wish had got open-sourced were Quarterdeck's QEMM, DesqView and
DesqView/X. Symantec lost the sources.

DR-DOS with DesqView/X would have been a very interesting FOSS OS. It
so nearly happened but it came just too late. A multitasking DOS with
built-in TCP/IP and X.11 would have been very handy.

Later, DR-DOS even got VFAT-compatible Long Filename support. That
would have really helped DVX -- one of the problems with it that I
read about was the need to mangle X.11 font filenames in an
incompatible way, so that they'd fit into 8.3 characters.



-- 
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Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Liam Proven]

On 15 July 2016 at 19:39, Swift Griggs  wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
>> But in the now-gone PowerPC era, yes, Macs used a derivative of the IBM
>> POWER RISC processor line.
>
> I always thought it was a shame that both IBM and Apple were so tight
> around the pucker strings and never were more comfortable sharing their
> OS's back and forth. I would have welcomed running AIX on more than a a
> mere handful of the PPCs that could do it. I would have also liked to have
> seen MacOS 9.x and 10.0-10.4 (or whatever the PPC span was) available for
> some bits of IBM hardware, and especially the IBM IntelliStation line of
> POWER5 systems such as the Power 285 (but also RS/6000s with
> framebuffers).
>
> @#$@#ing business-weasels got in the way. Maybe if I was older and back in
> the day I could have organized a joint children of IBMers vs children of
> Apple bigwigs polo & tennis tournament at a shared country club, things
> would have been different.
>
> Of course then something like this might have happened:
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/10/tennis.france


Absolutely. Next did license out NextStep -- Sun licensed it and had
it working on Solaris, but never sold it. I don't recall if IBM did.

At least in that era, Apple and IBM missed a trick -- even if IBM was
the sole licensee, then OS X Server on IBM server kit would have
validated and legitimised OS X Server and might have given it a
chance.

There was also Novell's Portable Netware on POWER -- I even saw a demo
of it running. Never released or sold. :-(



-- 
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Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Liam Proven]

On 15 July 2016 at 19:38, geneb  wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
>
>> Caldera didn't inherit source code for *all* the old DR products, e.g.
>> many of the apps, but it looked at what it had got, and the bits that
>> couldn't realistically be sold commercially any more, it open-sourced:
>> DR-DOS and PC GEM, mainly.
>>
> Caldera didn't get the sources because much of it was lost when the archive
> in Monterey, CA flooded.  Somewhere around here I've got an inventory of
> what was lost and it's a horror show. :(

A... I would both like to see that, and not to see it, IYSWIM.

> All the GEM stuff that could be found was released - including ViewMAX.

Ahh yes. I remember the enhanced versions of that. If you recall, we
were both on the DeltaSoft FreeGEM list, gods, nearly 2 decades ago
now. (!)

>> Then it discovered that actually there was still interest in DR-DOS,
>> took it back in-house again and span off that division as Lineo.
>>
> ...before fully open-sourcing DR-DOS.  The kernel & command.com sources were
> released and then it was canceled.  I contacted them a number of years ago
> about getting the rest released and the weasel I talked to basically had a
> melt down over it.  You'd have though I was asking if it was ok if I
> slow-cooked one of his children.

I recall.

I have one copy of the source-code CD for DR-DOS. I should put up on
Bittorrent somewhere!

> I worked with Roger Gross in '96/'97 to get all this stuff released - it was
> bitterly disappointing when Caldera pulled the rug out from under the
> project.

:-(

> For grins I set up a build environment today on a virtual machine - an
> i7-4790K @ 4.0Ghz can build the whole distribution in 20 minutes.  It takes
> 2-3 minutes to build out the disk images. :)  In 1996 it took a 200Mhz
> Pentium 2 hours for the same task.

We don't appreciate how much faster modern PCs are than the old ones,
because modern PC OSes are so appallingly slow and bloated.

Running BeOS on a 200MHz Pentium 1 showed the potential of the
hardware like nothing else I've ever seen on x86.

It was as snappy and responsive as RISC OS was on the early
Archimedes. This is IMHO the definitive review of them, and it is well
worth a read:

http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Mags/PCW/PCW_Aug87_Archimedes.pdf

I vividly remember reading it as a 19YO student...

"The hard disk in the A500 is most noticeable for its ferociously
rapid access speed. It loads huge programs with a faint burping noise,
in the time it takes to blink an eye. The reason for this speed is
that the disk is run with no interleaving of sectors. On an IBM XT,
for example, the disk rotates about six times between each read to
give the puny CPU time to digest; Archimedes eliminates this dead time
as the ARM processor can suck stuff off the disk as fast as it can
rotate."

"It felt like the fastest computer I have ever used, by a considerable margin".

... and the amazement of being able to afford one a few years later.

It's by Dick Pountain who later became a colleague and friend.

Also see 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/01/acorn_archimedes_is_25_years_old/

As radical a computer as the Amiga, and far more influential -- it's
the origin of the ARM chip and that is _everywhere_ now.

But the OS, although not architecturally radical, was radical in other
ways: live window dragging! Universal real-time font antialiasing!

It felt like the fastest thing ever, as Dick said.

Well, the only OS that's felt like that since, for me, was BeOS.

I'd _love_ a modern BeOS on a modern multiprocessor PC. But nothing
like it exists any more, and Haiku is nothing like as snappy.

If I were a billionaire, I'd buy Access (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_(company) ), give the BeOS
sources to the Haiku guys and sponsor them to update it. All it really
needs today is a built-in hypervisor -- then you could run something
bloated like Linux in a VM to get a modern browser etc. while some
native ones were developed or ported.


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Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Swift Griggs]

On Fri, 15 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
> But in the now-gone PowerPC era, yes, Macs used a derivative of the IBM 
> POWER RISC processor line. 

I always thought it was a shame that both IBM and Apple were so tight 
around the pucker strings and never were more comfortable sharing their 
OS's back and forth. I would have welcomed running AIX on more than a a 
mere handful of the PPCs that could do it. I would have also liked to have 
seen MacOS 9.x and 10.0-10.4 (or whatever the PPC span was) available for 
some bits of IBM hardware, and especially the IBM IntelliStation line of 
POWER5 systems such as the Power 285 (but also RS/6000s with 
framebuffers).

@#$@#ing business-weasels got in the way. Maybe if I was older and back in 
the day I could have organized a joint children of IBMers vs children of 
Apple bigwigs polo & tennis tournament at a shared country club, things 
would have been different.

Of course then something like this might have happened:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/10/tennis.france

-Swift

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[geneb]

On Fri, 15 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:


Caldera didn't inherit source code for *all* the old DR products, e.g.
many of the apps, but it looked at what it had got, and the bits that
couldn't realistically be sold commercially any more, it open-sourced:
DR-DOS and PC GEM, mainly.

Caldera didn't get the sources because much of it was lost when the 
archive in Monterey, CA flooded.  Somewhere around here I've got an 
inventory of what was lost and it's a horror show. :(


All the GEM stuff that could be found was released - including ViewMAX.


Then it discovered that actually there was still interest in DR-DOS,
took it back in-house again and span off that division as Lineo.

...before fully open-sourcing DR-DOS.  The kernel & command.com sources 
were released and then it was canceled.  I contacted them a number of 
years ago about getting the rest released and the weasel I talked to 
basically had a melt down over it.  You'd have though I was asking if it 
was ok if I slow-cooked one of his children.


I worked with Roger Gross in '96/'97 to get all this stuff released - it 
was bitterly disappointing when Caldera pulled the rug out from under the 
project.


For grins I set up a build environment today on a virtual machine - an
i7-4790K @ 4.0Ghz can build the whole distribution in 20 minutes.  It 
takes 2-3 minutes to build out the disk images. :)  In 1996 it took a 
200Mhz Pentium 2 hours for the same task.


g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby.  Geeks collect hobbies.

ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Liam Proven]

On 14 July 2016 at 20:50, Chuck Guzis  wrote:
>
> Everyone seems to forget about the work-alikes, such as TPM for the
> Epson QX-80.

True. And there was Pro DOS for the SAM Coupé:
http://www.samcoupe-pro-dos.co.uk/

ZCN for the Amstrad NC series:
https://www.ncus.org.uk/fnov00.htm

And probably others.

> GEM for the Atari ST is essntially a clone of MS-DOS functionality for
> the 68K with a graphics enhancement tacked on.  Yet I've never heard any
> accusations that DRI "pirated" MS-DOS.

Not GEM as such -- it's the GUI layer. But ST GEM ran on a kernel
called GEMDOS, which was a sort of hybrid of CP/M-68K and DR-DOS: a
68000 kernel but with MS-DOS like API compatibility.

Written by DR and licensed from them by Atari.

So, a better comparison would be DR-DOS. I think nobody ever claimed
that DR stole MS-DOS source code, though. It was clean-room
reverse-engineered, and had some different internal data structures,
which manifested in a (very very few) compatibility problems.

However, the accusation is that MS -- or SCP -- did actually use CP/M
source code in creating QDOS.

It's not that QDOS' design was copied from CP/M, which it was --
that's already been admitted. It's that QDOS contained appropriated
CP/M source from DR.


-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) • +420 702 829 053 (ČR)

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Liam Proven]

On 14 July 2016 at 20:47, Chris Hanson  wrote:
> And interestingly, these days IBM is a huge user of Macs… which these days 
> use a derivative of the system architecture that IBM developed!


The PC CPU was from Intel, not IBM. Macs now use Intel CPUs.

But in the now-gone PowerPC era, yes, Macs used a derivative of the
IBM POWER RISC processor line.

So, no, not "these days", but from 1994-2006.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) • +420 702 829 053 (ČR)

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

CP/M rights later passed through to Corel and Caldera.


On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Swift Griggs wrote:

I have some foggy memory of Caldera using the "Digital Research" name, at
least internally and on some documents. However, it's been a long time and
the SCO-connected legacy left a terrible taste.
You know the history well, obviously, after reading your post. Do you


Not very.  Just current events during my time.
I was never an important participant.  But, I was there.


happen to know if the "Digital Research" you mention and the use of the
name by Caldera were related to the same original entity? IIRC, I could be
wrong but I even seem to remember downloading "DR-DOS" from Caldera before
FreeDOS was fully baked to get a hold of nice free-as-in-beer version of
DOS...


Yes.  Novell acquired the remains of DRI in 1991?
They sold DR-DOS as "Novell DOS"
Caldera was formed a few years later by some Novell people.

(The Caldera V Microsoft lawsuit was not about copyright; it was 
complaining about dirty dealings by Microsoft, such as putting unnecessary 
code into Windoze 3.1 to make it refuse to run under DR-DOS. There was a 
settlement in 2000? that was believed to be about $250M)


Caldera begat Lineo,

Lineo begat DRDOS, Inc.

DRDOS, Inc. is apparently for sale for $25K.
If you have any expectations of being sued by Microsoft for writing 
anything that resembles any of their stuff, it could be cheap legal 
insurance.   (Adam Osborne was too slow about buying Visicalc debris)
When a company folds, the IP rights may end up with multiple people, 
either in dispute, or simply non-exclusively owned by more then one. 
Hence, Novell could spin off CP/M, without giving up their joint ownership 
of IP rights as protection against Microsoft.




but it could just be the drugs.

Could be.

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote:

GEM for the Atari ST is essntially a clone of MS-DOS functionality for
the 68K with a graphics enhancement tacked on.  Yet I've never heard any
accusations that DRI "pirated" MS-DOS.


Ah, but what a funny lawsuit!!



A tempest in a teapot.
At least from where I sit,


To most people, assembly language and operating systems are "complex and 
mysterious"


Many don't grasp the concept of reverse engineering, and assume piracy.


I think that Paterson was well able to write work-alike code.

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Chuck Guzis]

I don't get the significance of any of this.

CP/M-80 is what, less than 16K of code (not counting the very few
utilities that come bundled with it)?  It's not rocket science and pales
in comparison with the mainframe and mini OSes that were around at the
time--and indeed, some of the more advanced OSes for microcomputers.

It's ridiculously simple to reverse-engineer (I know, I've done it),
given nothing more than the published documentation and a running system.

Everyone seems to forget about the work-alikes, such as TPM for the
Epson QX-80.

GEM for the Atari ST is essntially a clone of MS-DOS functionality for
the 68K with a graphics enhancement tacked on.  Yet I've never heard any
accusations that DRI "pirated" MS-DOS.

A tempest in a teapot.

At least from where I sit,
Chuck

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Chris Hanson]

On Jul 14, 2016, at 10:03 AM, Guy Sotomayor Jr  wrote:
> 
> IBM had looked at the PC market for a while.  It was actually TJ Watson Jr 
> that instructed that a “skunk” team
> be formed to see how quickly a PC with an IBM logo could be produced.  He was 
> afraid of Apple making
> inroads into IBM’s traditional markets and wanted to prevent that.  It was 
> never envisioned to be a huge market
> for these things…it was viewed only as a hobbyist thing that had the 
> potential to take away business from 
> IBM’s traditional machines.

And interestingly, these days IBM is a huge user of Macs… which these days use 
a derivative of the system architecture that IBM developed!

  -- Chris

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

Bill Gates went down the street to SCP, and negotiated a deal
to be able to sell licenses to Q-DOS/86-DOS/SB-86 to an unnamed client.


On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Rich Alderson wrote:

Not Bill Gates, Paul Allen, as detailed in his autobiography _Idea Man_.
Just for the record.


Thanks!
I appreciate corrections to get it right on such details.


Someday, perhaps there should be a detailed version of this part of the 
history.
(if only to answer some of the really absurd ridiculous ones, such as 
"Pirates Of The Valley" (Bill Gates cold-calling IBM to sell them on the 
idea of having an OS??, and then telling us that we should learn their 
version!))


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Rich Alderson]

From: Fred Cisin
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2016 9:47 AM

> On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Kip Koon wrote:

>> So I went on a reading spree and found out that CP/M was written by Gary
>> Kildall well before MS-DOS was supposedly by Bill Gates!  It's a long
>> history that I obviously don't need to go into here since there is so much
>> about it on the Internet.

> No, but you should learn it.
> LOTS more details are readily available about every portion of this 
> over-simplified shortened history.

  [snip]

> Bill Gates went down the street to SCP, and negotiated a deal 
> to be able to sell licenses to Q-DOS/86-DOS/SB-86 to an unnamed client.

Not Bill Gates, Paul Allen, as detailed in his autobiography _Idea Man_.

Just for the record.

Rich

Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

mailto:ri...@livingcomputermuseum.org

http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Fred Cisin wrote:
> CP/M rights later passed through to Corel and Caldera.

I have some foggy memory of Caldera using the "Digital Research" name, at 
least internally and on some documents. However, it's been a long time and 
the SCO-connected legacy left a terrible taste. 

You know the history well, obviously, after reading your post. Do you 
happen to know if the "Digital Research" you mention and the use of the 
name by Caldera were related to the same original entity? IIRC, I could be 
wrong but I even seem to remember downloading "DR-DOS" from Caldera before 
FreeDOS was fully baked to get a hold of nice free-as-in-beer version of 
DOS... but it could just be the drugs. 

-Swift

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

When IBM decided to take over the personal computer market, they didn't do 
their homework very well.
Intel convinced them to use the 8088, to have a gateway into 16 bit, instead of 
building a true 8 bit machine.
One of the IBM people had seen a "Microsoft Softcard" (a Z80 co-processor plus 
CP/M for Apple][).


On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Guy Sotomayor Jr wrote:
IBM chose the 8088 because the bus was close enough to the 8085 that the 
peripherals from the S/23 could be re-used with minor tweaks (in many 
cases just a re-layout).
They wanted something that would allow > 64KB of RAM without having to 
go through the pains of what was done on S/23 (it was an 8085 system 
that has 192KB of ROM and upto 128KB of RAM) and none of the 8-bit 
micros could do that.


It makes sense to me.  Hardware would be same as for an ordinary 8 bit 
machine, but lots more (1MB!!) memory map.
Since nobody could possibly need more than 10 times the current RAM, big 
chunks of space could be used for memory mapped I/O, such as both a text 
display AND an amazing 640x200 graphics display.


IBM had looked at the PC market for a while.  It was actually TJ Watson 
Jr that instructed that a “skunk” team be formed to see how quickly 
a PC with an IBM logo could be produced.  He was afraid of Apple making 
inroads into IBM’s traditional markets and wanted to prevent that. 
It was never envisioned to be a huge market for these things…it was 
viewed only as a hobbyist thing that had the potential to take away 
business from IBM’s traditional machines.


They assumed [correctly] that they could, with trivial ease, simply step 
in and dominate that "home computer" market.  Particularly useful if 
anybody was crazy enough to take in a home computer to work and use it 
for some minor office tasks.


I'm glad that Apple survived IBM's entry and presence in that market.

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Guy Sotomayor Jr]

> On Jul 14, 2016, at 9:46 AM, Fred Cisin  wrote:
> 
> 
> When IBM decided to take over the personal computer market, they didn't do 
> their homework very well.
> Intel convinced them to use the 8088, to have a gateway into 16 bit, instead 
> of building a true 8 bit machine.
> One of the IBM people had seen a "Microsoft Softcard" (a Z80 co-processor 
> plus CP/M for Apple][).
> 

IBM chose the 8088 because the bus was close enough to the 8085 that the 
peripherals from the S/23 could
be re-used with minor tweaks (in many cases just a re-layout).

They wanted something that would allow > 64KB of RAM without having to go 
through the pains of what was
done on S/23 (it was an 8085 system that has 192KB of ROM and upto 128KB of 
RAM) and none of the 8-bit
micros could do that.

IBM had looked at the PC market for a while.  It was actually TJ Watson Jr that 
instructed that a “skunk” team
be formed to see how quickly a PC with an IBM logo could be produced.  He was 
afraid of Apple making
inroads into IBM’s traditional markets and wanted to prevent that.  It was 
never envisioned to be a huge market
for these things…it was viewed only as a hobbyist thing that had the potential 
to take away business from 
IBM’s traditional machines.

TTFN - Guy

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Kip Koon wrote:

Hi Guys,
I have been suspicious of Microsoft pirating CP/M for decades!  Back in 
my twenties, I was reading about CP/M in the college library where I 
attended thinking, "Wow!  CP/M looks EXACTLY like MS-DOS!"  So I went on 
a reading spree and found out that CP/M was written by Gary Kildall well 
before MS-DOS was supposedly by Bill Gates!  It's a long history that I 
obviously don't need to go into here since there is so much about it on 
the Internet.


No, but you should learn it.
LOTS more details are readily available about every portion of this 
over-simplified shortened history.   The major aspects are undisputed, but 
there are opinions about minor details.  (such as various versions of the 
culture clash)   "Gary HAD TO blow off the IBM meeting, because there was 
a binder of documentation that had to be delivered to Bill Godbout, and 
it was not POSSIBLE to find ANYBODY else to carry it to Oakland 
(airport).  Why would he have to be there for IBM to apply for a license?"



OF COURSE MS-DOS looks exactly like CP/M!
THAT was the intent!  It would have been unusable as a placeholder if it 
didn't.

NO, Bill Gates did NOT write MS-DOS.


Gary Kildall wrote CP/M.
It was very well established as the defacto standard.
DRI "Digital Research Incorporated" (formerly "Intergalactic Digital 
Research") began working on CP/M-86, a version of CP/M for 8086 based 
machines.


Seattle Computer Products (SCP) was building an 8086 based machine.
Hardware was beginning to work, but CP/M-86 wasn't available yet.
Tim Paterson (of SCP) started working on system software.

At NCC ("National Computer Conference") 1979, SCP shared a booth with 
Microsoft and Lifeboat (big distributor for CP/M and Microsoft products).
Tim Paterson was intrigued by Microsoft Stand-Alone BASIC (BASIC with 
enough of an OS built in to support disk files - best known, although 
without the name, is RS Coco).


SCP started shipping some 8086 based CPUs with "Stand-Alone BASIC-86".
There was an assumption that CP/M would ultimately be the OS, but CP/M-86 
wasn't available yet.
Paterson started to write a "placeholder" - a crude substitute for an OS 
that could be used instead of the OS for testing and completing the 
hardware design.
He studied what CP/M did, and wrote a crude imitation of it as a 
placeholder.  Although he studied it in order to make his behave the same, 
he denies [moderately credibly] ever having access to the source code of 
CP/M, nor copying code directly, merely writing simple obvious code to 
behave exactly the same.

He called that temporary OS, "QDOS" ("Quick and Dirty Operating System")
http://www.patersontech.com/dos/softalk.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_DOS_operating_systems

Instead of CP/M's disk formats and directory structure, he made his like 
the file system of Stand-Alone-BASIC.


For marketing purposes, it was sold as "86-DOS".  Apparently "quick and 
dirty" didn't seem marketable!


When IBM decided to take over the personal computer market, they didn't do 
their homework very well.
Intel convinced them to use the 8088, to have a gateway into 16 bit, 
instead of building a true 8 bit machine.
One of the IBM people had seen a "Microsoft Softcard" (a Z80 
co-processor plus CP/M for Apple][).


IBM went to Microsoft for "BASIC and CP/M".

Microsoft sent them to DRI for CP/M.

There was an EXTREME culture clash between IBM and DRI, that included 
Gary blowing off the meeting, since IBM could simply fill out the forms 
"like any other customer" and leave them with Gary's wife.  IBM did not 
want to do business with "hippies".  (4 years ago, I visited the DRI house 
(801 Lighthouse,Pacific Grove), to see for myself the view from the 
upstairs window ("OMG, are those guys coming to the door, DEA?").


IBM went back to Microsoft, where Bill Gates made his people suit up, and 
IBM made the BASIC deal contingent on an OS.


Bill Gates went down the street to SCP, and negotiated a deal 
to be able to sell licenses to Q-DOS/86-DOS/SB-86 to an unnamed client.


Microsoft hired Paterson, renamed it MS-DOS, and licensed to IBM. 
Paterson worked to finish the OS, and start the next major revision.


Gary Kildall got tired of people telling him that he had made the biggest 
screwup in history.  Towards the end of his life, he was drinking heavily.



Since MS-DOS was an imitation of CP/M, rumors that it stole code from CP/M 
have always existed.   Some code WILL match - if you are doing the exact 
same thing, will you, in places, write the exact same code?  How much 
match does it take to assume copying, instead of similar coding?
Having explicitly decided to use identical data structures, what are the 
chances of coincidentally choosing the exact same algorithm for a given 
portion of a task?  If you both use DAA for printing a number in decimal, 
will that code match?


Periodically, there will be urban legends of hidden DRI copyright 
messages in MS-DOS, or 

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Evan Koblentz]

will Bob Zeidman's talk be video recorded?


Yes. We're also thinking about a live stream. TBD.



If so, where is the video repository for past VCF seminars?


Most of the talks from VCF East are here:
https://www.youtube.com/c/VintageComputerFederation501c3

We have the raw footage from past VCF West shows + we need to get it online.

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Sam O'nella]

I thought it had said CP/M code in DOS? Revisited..."  Sometimes I really think 
I'm dyslexic.  


> -Original Message-
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Evan Koblentz
> Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:45 PM
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> Subject: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...
> 
> Did MS-DOS use code copied from CP/M? 
> 

Get ready for mind blown moment. ... ;-) you were right both times! {Insert 
dramatic ground hog clip}

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Kip Koon]

Hi Eric,
Hum, I wonder where Gary got his ideas?  Didn't he use a DEC PDP-nn for his 
initial PL/M compiler to get the first CP/M built in the first place?  I'd like 
to find out more about TOPS-10, OS-8 and RT-11.  
Very interesting indeed!  

Kip Koon
computer...@sc.rr.com
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Kip_Koon


> -Original Message-
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
> Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2016 1:28 AM
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> Subject: Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...
> 
> On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 10:32 PM, Kip Koon <computer...@sc.rr.com> wrote:
> > Back in my twenties, I was reading about CP/M in the college library where 
> > I attended > thinking,  "Wow!  CP/M looks EXACTLY like
> MS-DOS!"
> 
> And if you'd read about DEC operating systems, you'd have thought that CP/M 
> looks like TOPS-10, OS-8, and RT-11, though not quite
> as "EXACTLY" as MS-DOS looks like CP/M.
> 
> "Bad artists copy, great artists steal." - Pablo Picasso

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Eric Smith]

On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 10:32 PM, Kip Koon  wrote:
> Back in my twenties, I was reading about CP/M in the college library where I 
> attended > thinking,  "Wow!  CP/M looks EXACTLY like MS-DOS!"

And if you'd read about DEC operating systems, you'd have thought that
CP/M looks like TOPS-10, OS-8, and RT-11, though not quite as
"EXACTLY" as MS-DOS looks like CP/M.

"Bad artists copy, great artists steal." - Pablo Picasso

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Kip Koon]

Hi Guys,
I have to laugh at myself.  I just realized that when I read the title of the 
email, I thought it had said CP/M code in DOS? Revisited..."  Sometimes I 
really think I'm dyslexic.  Maybe.  In love with computers, definitely.  I 
think I was born with food in one hand and computers in the other with Star 
Trek and Star Wars somewhere in the vicinity.  :)  Take care my friends.  

Kip Koon
computer...@sc.rr.com
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Kip_Koon



> -Original Message-
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Evan Koblentz
> Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:45 PM
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> Subject: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...
> 
> Did MS-DOS use code copied from CP/M? Forensic software engineer Bob
> Zeidman said "no" in 2012 but now he has new research to disclose at VCF
> West.
> 
> That's all I can say for now. :)

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Kip Koon]

Hi Guys,
I have been suspicious of Microsoft pirating CP/M for decades!  Back in my 
twenties, I was reading about CP/M in the college library where I attended 
thinking,  "Wow!  CP/M looks EXACTLY like MS-DOS!"  So I went on a reading 
spree and found out that CP/M was written by Gary Kildall well before MS-DOS 
was supposedly by Bill Gates!  It's a long history that I obviously don't need 
to go into here since there is so much about it on the Internet.
I think that was why Bill Gates was so adamant about forcing licensing of his 
software upon everyone though-out his ownership of Microsoft.  
Just because memory is so big now and so cheap compared to the '70s and '80s 
doesn't mean Microsoft should stop optimizing software.  A 3GB Installation DVD 
for an Operating System has got to be way too unoptimized!  I don't even want 
to get started on how many bugs there are in new releases of Microsoft's 
software.  
I believe that the family of Gary Kildall finally won that war if memory 
serves.  Microsoft ought to pay his family's linage royalties forever in my 
opinion.  I wonder how many people Microsoft stepped on to get where they are.  
I'd love to know the inside scoop on that one, but I'm sure that those in the 
know had to have been forced to sign nondisclosure agreements or be sued.  That 
seems to be Microsoft's MO.  
There was a movie about a very similar scenario called Antitrust released in 
2001 that was about a software giant's operating system called NURV if memory 
serves that starred Tim Robbins who was the owner/chairman of the company and 
Ryan Phillippe as a young software programmer.  Through-out the movie I kept 
wondering how much of this related to and was like Microsoft!   I immediately 
thought of Microsoft within the first few minutes of the movie once I began to 
realize what was going on!
Please forgive me.  I normally don't like to rant and rave online or in emails 
as I like to keep things positive since there is so much not right in this 
world, but this really struck a chord!  
I really wish I could attend VCF West, but unfortunately I have no access to 
the needed funds so I was wondering will Bob Zeidman's talk be video recorded?  
If so, where is the video repository for past VCF seminars?  If not, I hope 
someone will step up and do so.  In any event, I hope you all have fun at VCF 
West!  I will be thinking of you guys.  I think I was born and raised on the 
wrong side of the country.  I was born, raised and still live in SC, but 
sometimes I wished I had grown up on the west coast somewhere near Silicon 
Valley where all the surplus computer electronics was always appearing.  I have 
been known to work endless hours on end programming and building microprocessor 
based computers.  I used to dream about working with DEC PDP-8s and PDP-11s 
years ago in high school and college.  I poured over whatever computer related 
magazines I could find back then in the late '70s and early '80s.  If I had it 
all to do over again knowing what I know now, where would I have gone and what 
would I have done...  :)  Take care my friends.

Kip Koon
computer...@sc.rr.com
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Kip_Koon


> -Original Message-
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Evan Koblentz
> Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:45 PM
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> Subject: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...
> 
> Did MS-DOS use code copied from CP/M? Forensic software engineer Bob Zeidman 
> said "no" in 2012 but now he has new research to
> disclose at VCF West.
> 
> That's all I can say for now. :)

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2016, Evan Koblentz wrote:
Did MS-DOS use code copied from CP/M? Forensic software engineer Bob Zeidman 
said "no" in 2012 but now he has new research to disclose at VCF West.

That's all I can say for now. :)


THAT might be CP/M code in MS-DOS.

As to your subject line of "DOS code in CP/M", although a lot of the data 
structures, commands, and API are suspiciously similar ("we did that for 
software portability"), I doubt that any amount of studying of the code 
of CP/M will ever show that Gary Kildall copied anything from MS-DOS to 
write CP/M!   (although it is suspiciously similar to CMD.EXE in 
Windows)



There was never any question about MS-DOS being a copy of CP/M in how it 
looked and worked.  THAT was never disputed.  It started as a work-similar 
PLACEHOLDER for SCP to use while waiting for DRI to release CP/M-86. 
BUT, in those days, work-alike was NOT considered to be infringing. 
(AND, Gary Kildall was not a very litigious person)


In those days, before "look and smell", it was generally considered 
perfectly acceptable to make an identical looking and behaving program, so 
long as none of the actual CODE was copied.  Perfectly acceptable to have 
all menus the same, and to make a RAC-MAN program.   ("Puckman" was one of 
the pre-release names of "Pacman" (character resembles a hockey puck), but 
somebody realized how easy it would be to change a 'P' into an 'F' on the 
face of the arcade machine.)


Adam Osborne when he started Paperback Software was going to get rich 
selling identical looking and behaving duplicates of popular software.

LOTUS changed the interpretations of copyright law.
If Adam were to have been just a touch quicker about going out and buying 
any of the debris failed companies from VisiCalc (several of which had IP 
rights to VisiCalc), then he could have filed a counter-suit against LOTUS 
and fought them off.

and
When Novell bought the remains of DRI, all that they really wanted was IP 
rights to CP/M, in case Microsoft ever sued them over copyright.

and
If Delrina were to have cut a deal with Jefferson Airplane to buy the 
rights to the album cover of Thirty Seconds Over Winterland, Berkeley 
Systems would have lost their case ("stealing the idea of toasters with 
wings")   (Am I the only one who considered the Opus and Bill 
screensaver to have been a Fair-Use parody?)



and, . . .
just like the DOS code in CP/M, . . . 
"The simplistic style is partly explained by the fact that its editors, 
having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back 
of a packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few foot 
notes in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly torturous 
Galactic Copyright Laws. Its interesting to note that a later and wilier 
editor sent the book backwards in time, through a temporal warp, and then 
successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the 
same laws."