BillW - -
You are correct that CPM-86 was from Digital Research ... and it was
a rewrite of CP/M 2.2.  The opsys that Gate bought from Seattle
Software was a translation of CP/M 2.2's 8080 code.  The source
for CP/M 2.2 and 3.0 was widely available (although illegal) in
1980-81.  There was a man in the S.F. area that sold a "CP/M 2.2
and 3.0 disassembler" for about $40.  If you ran it against a
Digital Research floppy it would produce a commented 8080 source
file for BDOS and CCP.  There were at least two companies selling
their own "CP/M compatible" operating systems that were exact
duplicates of the Digital Research code, but with some of the
modules in a different order.  I always wondered why Gary Kildahl
didn't go after them in court.

 - - - Nick - - -


William Chops Westfield wrote:
>
>     Bill Gates purchased CPM-86 from Seattle Software for $50K ... and
>     this became the original MS-DOS 1.0.  CPM-86 was just a port of
>     Gary Kildahl's CP/M 2.2 from the 8080 to the 8086.
>
> Um.  No.  At the time of MSDOS 1.0, you could purchase CPM/86 as a competing
> operating system for the PC (remember competing operating systems?  There
> used to be competing operating systems...)  The original MSDOS was more like
> CPM 2.2 than CPM86 was - I think the CPM people decided they wanted to
> "advance" while the msdos people just copied.  I don't know if microsoft
> subsequently purchased CPM/86 or not (sounds like "first meat" for the
> anti-trust case if so.)  Rumor has it that msdos was chosen over cpm86 for
> IBM's personal computer because the cpm people were "too busy" to talk to
> some IBM representitives without an appointment.  (um, wasn't CPM from
> "digital research" or somesuch, not Seattle software?  Maybe there were
> several "CPM86" variants.)  Note that at the time, microsoft was already
> a major supplier of BASIC implementations for several architectures.
>
> I'd describe Windows before W95 as an attempt to implement a window-based
> operating system that was NOT like apple's windows.  Unfortunately for
> microsoft, apple's windows were already based on a LOT of xerox parc
> research, and comparitively early windows was just a hack.
>
> Xwindows and sunOS and related I'm not as much acquainted with the
> development history of.  In a sense, they seem to me to be very different in
> that their primary purpose is to implement JUST windowing, while apple and
> uSoft windows serve as the primary user interface for everything.  At least,
> I use X-windows every day, and mostly I start up a bunch of unix shells, in
> which commands I issue sometimes open additional windows.
>
> BillW