Talk:86-DOS

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When IBM approached Gary Kildall, author of CP/M, for a license, Kildall kept the IBM executives waiting for hours while he went flying in his airplane.

Is this correct? The version I heard was that he refused to answer the door to a band of IBM salesmen.

There are several versions of the story and none of them are likely to be true; the most common one (and the one repeated by Bill Gates) was that Kildall went flying. But Kildall never talked about it, which added to the rumor. We do know that Kildall didn't handle his own business deals, didn't like NDAs, and feared IBM's legal team.


Additionally, Microsoft was working on a multitasking version of DOS. Whether it was unpolished or viewed as too complicated for mortal users, it never flew off the ground, with Windows just on its heels. However, a few rogue copies made it into the wild, proving this wasn't a myth.

Someone needs to fill in the parts about the UCSD P-System. Also the parts how SCP was able to get the then current version of DOS for their computer products. They were still selling the S-100 8086 computer boards. SCP then got the smart idea of selling DOS for less then MS by shipping DOS and a bare 8088 CPU chip. MS beat them over the head with the contract to stop that practice and that was pretty much the end of SCP. I also believe that SCP was one of the first companies to come out with a dual function board for the IBM-PC. SCP had a memory/serial port board that took 64Kbit DIP chips and would 4 rows of 9 chips for a total of 256kBytes. (posted in article by 132.248.39.209)

In my opinion anything about the UCSD P-system belongs in its article or IBM-PC. But if someone can find details about the claims relating to SCP above, great. It's my understanding that there was no "contract" except during the period that the PC was in development. After that Microsoft owned the system outright. Gazpacho 02:21, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Digital Research considered suing Microsoft, since DOS replicated nearly all of the CP/M system calls, program structure, and user interface (not the filesystem), but decided against it. Digital Research realized that they would have to also sue IBM, and decided that they did not have the resources to sue a company of that size, and would not likely win.

Is this correct? I've read somewhere that IBM paid Digital Research $800,000 in order to prevent a trial about the fact that QDOS/MS-DOS is a mere CP/M clone. If I remember this correctly I've also read that IBM sold their PCs with either MS-DOS or CP/M thereafter as part of this agreement with Digital Research.

I am not sure about it, but it looks like there was a trial. [1]
Slashdot is a discussion forum, not a source for verifying history (unless they provide the appropriate references). Another view was offered in Gordon Eubanks Oral History recorded November 8, 2000 by ComputerWorld magazine (see p. 12). Eubanks worked with CP/M's Gary Kildall during it's development, and in 1981 sold his own company to Digital Research and joined them. According to Eubanks, Kildall was flying on the fateful day of the IBM meeting because he was delivering a software order to Northstar Computers. He also says that Kildall really had no interest in pursuing a 16-bit operating system at the time, though he did sign the non-disclosure agreement with IBM. --Blainster 18:30, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
I added in Freiberger and Swaine's account of the failure between IBM and DRI to make a deal, and cited their book. It seems authentic to me, not the least because they quote hard numbers for the proposed deal. -- Eliyahu S Talk 21:34, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CP/M photo

Representing a CP/M photo as QDOS may be an innocent attempt to provide a requested illustration but it is also deceptive. It perpetuates the misconception that QDOS is a clone of CP/M. For example, the CP/M directory display shows the PIP command, which QDOS/MSDOS never had. Lets try to provide the most accurate articles we can. --Blainster 11:43, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name

I can't help feeling that the name '86-DOS' ought to be in the article's introduction. I can't see how to work that into the text, though. --StuartBrady (Talk) 00:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

(The above comment pre-dates the move from "QDOS" to "86-DOS".) Gazpacho 00:10, 30 September 2007 (UTC)