On Sat, 9 May 2009 22:51:37 -0500, "Ralph Mowery"
wrote:


"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
.. .

I beg to differ. Microsoft bashing seems to be the national sport in
computers. Yet, they're the most successful computah company in
history. In addition, they did it without any ties to proprietary
hardware. They must be doing something right.


Microsoft got so big the same way Walmart did. They put out a cheeper
product.

They weren't always the biggest and baddest company in town. The
software departments of the major big iron makers were much larger
than MS in both manpower and revenue for most of the 1980's. Any one
of them could have produced a consumer grade operating system and
usable apps at the time and wiped MS off the map. They didn't because
they didn't believe that there was money to be made in essentially
consumer retail (i.e. off the shelf) operating systems and apps. They
also didn't know how to do it. I still recall the DEC Rainbow, where
customers were expected to buy pre-formatted floppies from DEC at
outrageous prices.

MS may also be very economical for OEM PC operating systems and
desktop apps. However, I note that a superior and totally free
operating system, while quite popular, has not produced much of a dent
in Microsoft's OS dominance. MS is also not currently the cheapest
OS. Apple OS/X Leopard retails for $130 while Vista Ultimate is $219.
Digital Research had a much beter product when IBM produced the PC.
I think
they wanted about $ 150 for it and MS wanted $ 50 for their product. They
basically put DRI out of business and also some other companies that had
their ideas incorporated in to the MS product line.

Yep. In 1981, CP/M-86 was better than PC-DOS 1.0. I was there.
CP/M-86 sold for $150. PC-DOS 1.0 sold for $60. Most of the early
IBM PC 5150 adopters bought both. I vaguely recall paying about
$4,000 for mine. $100 difference wasn't going to make a huge
difference.

CP/M-86 did more, but was more difficult to use. PC-DOS (er... QDOS)
was crude and simple. At the time everyone was waiting for DRI to
clean up the OS or at least make it more user friendly, while PC-DOS
was treated as a temporary expedient so IBM could sell PC's that were
suppose to run mostly apps in BASIC. Also note that PC-DOS included
MSBASIC, while CP/M-86 would sorta run the older CP/M-80 apps. CBASIC
came later. The IBM PC 5150 came with cassette BASIC in ROM. However
BASIC in ROM was not easily accessible from CP/M-86. Within months of
introduction, there were literally hundreds of new and ported apps for
PC-DOS arriving at Computerland. Meanwhile CP/M-86 was still
struggling with porting CP/M-80 apps. I had customers running some
bookkeeping application on CP/M-86 well into the late 1980's. It was
a struggle under CP/M-86. When they finally purged the machines and
switched to PCDOS, things went more smoothly. For example, relinking
the CP/M-86 operating system to install a new device driver was not my
idea of fun. With PC-DOS, it was just adding a line in config.sys.

All this has something to do with ham radio antennas, but the
connection escapes me for the moment.






--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Yep. In 1981, CP/M-86 was better than PC-DOS 1.0. I was there.

I was there also. Some of the future CP/M-80 guys
worked for Intel while I was there. They tried to
get Intel to develop their ISIS-80 software
development system program into an open architecture.
Intel decided most of the money to be made was in the
hardware chips and that there was not much money to be
made in microcomputer operating systems and computer
boxes.

Those high-caliber software guys moved from Silicon Valley
to Digital Research over on the Pacific coast and the rest
is history. Intel could have been the behemoth supplying
the microcomputer chips, operating system, AND the
computer box.
--
73, Cecil, IEEE, OOTC, http://www.w5dxp.com

On Sun, 10 May 2009 19:25:13 -0500, Cecil Moore
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Yep. In 1981, CP/M-86 was better than PC-DOS 1.0. I was there.

I was there also. Some of the future CP/M-80 guys
worked for Intel while I was there. They tried to
get Intel to develop their ISIS-80 software
development system program into an open architecture.
Intel decided most of the money to be made was in the
hardware chips and that there was not much money to be
made in microcomputer operating systems and computer
boxes.

Not exactly. Gary Kildall and others wrote some simple games for the
4004 that ran on what later became a development system. They tried
to get Robert Noyce to sell it. Nope. Noyce thought there was more
money in digital watches which Intel never produced. At the time
(1971) nobody had the slightest idea of what to do with a general
purpose microprocessor. Even the dynamic RAM business was almost an
accident when Intel discovered they couldn't sell micros without the
necessary glue chips and memory. In it first few year, Intel didn't
have the slightest idea what they were going to manufacture.

Somewhat later, he tried to hang some storage onto an MCS-4 chipset
demo board with limited success in adapting his PL/M operating system.
That morphed into CP/M in order to distinguish it from the Intel
effort. There's probably something on the topic in the book "Fire in
the Valley". Worth reading methinks:
http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Valley-Making-Personal-Computer/dp/0071358927
Ouch. It seems to have become a collectors item. I think I paid $10
for my paperback edition. (Someone stole my hardback edition). At
least the used copies are affordable.

Those high-caliber software guys moved from Silicon Valley
to Digital Research over on the Pacific coast and the rest
is history. Intel could have been the behemoth supplying
the microcomputer chips, operating system, AND the
computer box.

Yep. I'm not sure they could have handled the rapid growth in too
many areas. At the time, Intel's gross was growing about 40% per
year, which is about at the limit of which they could fund growth with
revenue and loans. To diversify into adjacent areas would have
certainly been opportunistic, but would have drawn resources better
spent on cranking out chips. Diversification through acquisition is
safer. Craig Barrett tried unsuccessfully to diversify the company,
while Paul Otellini sold off divisions and diversions. Intel does
well with its core business, but not much elsewhere. Remember the
Santa Clara bubble memory division (with the giant plastic bubble in
place of a picture window in conference room)? That's where the term
"economic bubble" may have originated.

It's interesting to note that the general purpose operating systems
that were *NOT* tied to a hardware platform have survived far longer
than those attached to a manufacturers hardware. Apple OS/X is an
exception in that it's 75% portable (Mach) Unix, and about 25%
proprietary Apple. It would not have survived in it's original MacOS
form. Well, OS/X is a somewhat portable operating system:
http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook

All this has something to do with antennas, although the connection
currently escapes me.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558