You make the best case I have heard for going to WinXP. It is tough for me to believe that it can be as robust as VMS. John Ferrell 6241 Phillippi Rd Julian NC 27283 Phone: (336)685-9606 johnferrell@earthlink.net Dixie Competition Products NSRCA 479 AMA 4190 W8CCW "My Competition is Not My Enemy" ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Warren" To: Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 3:51 PM Subject: Re: [OT]: Why MS$ Is Hated > Bob Axtell wrote: > > > A small gang of programmers disassembled Digital Research's CPM, > > tinkered with it a little, then came up with IBM DOS 1.0. > > Um, no. Tim Paterson wrote an 8086 DOS called QDOS (for "Quick > and Dirty DOS"), distributed it briefly through the company he > worked for (Seattle Computer), then sold it to Microsoft and went > to work for them. While there, he modified it to meet IBM's > requirements for PC-DOS, and that's when it started to really > look like CP/M. > > The notion that Paterson disassembled CP/M and "tinkered with it > a little" to make QDOS is absurd; QDOS was written before the > first IBM PC was built, and CP/M-86 wasn't available (as I > recall) until after the PC-AT shipped. In my opinion, the > resemblance between PC-DOS and CP/M is really only due to a) > IBM's desire for PC-DOS to have a familiar interface, and b) the > fact that any OS that fit in 16K of RAM was probably going to > look a lot like every other 16K OS, anyway. > > > Now, in all fairness, once the lawsuit was enetered, MS$ finally > > began fixing the core, and Win2K and WinXP work pretty well. > > In all fairness, it wasn't the antitrust lawsuit that made Win2K > and WinXP so good; it's the fact that they're built on WinNT, > which was written by a team led by Dave Cutler, the architect of > DEC's VMS operating system. > > If you want to accuse Microsoft of inappropriately using someone > else's code, you could make a better case for it with WinNT than > with PC-DOS 1.0. Ever wonder why Windows NT supported the > obscure DEC Alpha microprocessor as well as the Intel x86? > Microsoft agreed to support the Alpha in return for DEC's > agreeing not to sue over the Windows NT source code, much of > which was, allegedly, a verbatim copy of DEC's VMS source. > > -Andy > > === Andrew Warren -- aiw@cypress.com > === Principal Design Engineer > === Cypress Semiconductor Corporation > === > === Opinions expressed above do not > === necessarily represent those of > === Cypress Semiconductor Corporation > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics > (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics