Adam Jenkins wrote:
>
> >Exactly, the Altair helped kick-off the hobbiest movement by being cheap.
> >The Mark-8 did this earlier, but it was so slow and buggy that it was
> >pretty much a non-starter. The Altair was an improvement, but it was also
> >pretty much a non-starter that fizzled after about 10,000 units. The
> >Altair was the grandfather of the S-100 bus and CP/M, both of which
> >fizzled and left only a minor mark on MS-DOS, which didn't fizzle.
>
> I think that to say that the S-100 Bus and CP/M "fizzled" is to seriously
> understate the value of both. :) I'm sure you don't mean to suggest that
> they were without value, but keep in mind that 6 years of dominance (which
> is probably the minimum that one would give to CP/M and the S100) is an
> incredibly long time in the fledging personal computer field. True, it
> doesn't stand up that well to 15+ years of Microsoft, but it was the
> dominate architecture on teh market.
Do recall that QDOS was a straightforward CP/M clone and that MS-DOS
to at least version 3.0 _documented_ the CP/M compatible system calls
in the OS they'd bought. CP/M didn't fizzle. When you use a DOS
interface under NT, the command switch character is that which MS-DOS
took from CP/M and Kildall took from DEC.
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram_at_cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
Bill Gates has this situation where the federal government wants him
convicted for attempting a monopoly. Has Bill considered responding
with a question as to why there's only one Justice Department?
Received on Fri Aug 14 1998 - 20:42:40 BST