🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3s4a89$5fu@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> peter@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (Peter da Silva) writes:
   In article <3s47oa$s9k@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>,
   Kyle Anthony York <noesis@ucscb.UCSC.EDU> wrote:
   >  (1) a cp/m licence sold for $400 PER MACHINE. tandy was putting out
   >      personal computers and needed a cheap/small DOS. TRSDOS used 5K.
   >      had cp/m been more reasonably priced, MSDOS probably would not have
   >      been born.

   True.

   >  (2) cp/m required 64K. the base TRSDOS machine was 32K of which 16K was ROM.

   False. I've run CP/M in 32K, with a 26K TPA, and if the Trash-80 ran CP/M it
   wouldn't have needed that 16K of ROM.

Actually, I believe CP/M ran in 16K. MP/M (the multitasking, multiuser
variant) required 48K.

I don't believe the price of CP/M had anything to do with PCDOS/MSDOS
being born. The 'folklore' folks will have it down pat, but I believe
it went something like this:

    Digital Research (company name) develops and sells CP/M, which is
	used on lots of the first home computers, from quite a variety
	of manufacturers. Some machines were even "luggable", and some
	later ones came with hard drive standard.

    One or two companies produce 8086/8088 computers, and want Digital
	Research to produce CP/M-86 to run on them. Digital Research
	starts doing so, but takes a *long* time to do it.

    In the meantime, one of the 8086/8088 makers hacks up CP/M to run
	on their new box. This isn't too hard since there was a translator
	which translated 8080 assembler sources into 8086 assembler.

    System ships with this hacked up OS. Digital Research still not done.

    Microsoft buys rights to hacked OS, and licenses it to IBM as PC-DOS
	for IBM's new IBM-PC.

    Somewhere around here Digital Research releases CP/M-86 (I have it
	at home)

    PC-DOS gets renamed as MSDOS, and then starts mutating.
--
Chris Gray	cg@myrias.ab.ca	      [C macros - a powerful way to make bugs!]
Myrias Computer Technologies Inc.   (403) 463-1337