James G. Sack (jim) wrote:
Paul G. Allen wrote:
James E. Henderson wrote:
Even before DOS, Micro-Soft had a BASIC interpreter they developed
from a public domain research project into proprietary software using
"borrowed" time on a mainframe system. Their BASIC ran under the CP/M
operating system developed by Digital Research, a company Micro-Soft
soon destroyed.
The story goes that Bill Gates stole BASIC from someone in a university
he attended. So, apparently, M$ didn't event write any of their versions
of BASIC.
Well, that sounds different from what recall -- that the initial basic
was in fact the product of a decent programming effort on the part of
our friend Bill (and maybe Paul). Don't know about possible
incorporation or conversion of other people's code afterwards.
They had quite a decent macro-assembler and a reasonable c-compiler for
the CPM environment. Then came the PC, and the world changed.
I believe they essentially replaced their own 808x C-compiler with a
competitor they bought out - what was their name. again?
Wish I could find the link I once had showing the history of M$ products.
How about:
http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm
which is consistent with what I remember.
No. What I'm thinking of is a site that had a table of all M$ products
throughout the years. It chowed the product, the year the product was
released, the origins of the product, and whether the original product
was purchased, licensed, or otherwise acquired. It showed that M$ never
invented anything, they only somehow acquired all the
technology/products/standards they offer.
PGA
--
Paul G. Allen, BSIT/SE
Owner, Sr. Engineer
Random Logic Consulting Services
www.randomlogic.com
--
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