Altair - A different perspective

From: Doug Yowza <yowza_at_yowza.com>
Date: Fri Aug 14 21:07:45 1998

On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Ward Donald Griffiths III wrote:

> 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.

I remember the CP/M compatible system calls, but I don't remember any
software that used them (perhaps early WordStar?). The thing that allowed
the PC to take off was software that consistently bypassed both DOS and
the BIOS. That's why every system after the PC had to be PC-compatible,
not just MS-DOS compatible, and certainly not CP/M compatible.

> 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.

To this day, I still suffer from the choice of '/' as a command switch,
'\' as a directory separator, and CR/LF as a line terminator. Luckily, ^Z
stopped being a problem when new DOS system calls were introduced (IIRC).

-- Doug
Received on Fri Aug 14 1998 - 21:07:45 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:30:44 BST