At the risk of veering off topic, you can still build your own CP/M based system relatively easily! I've built a few of these recently, and it was a lot of fun http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/w/page/4200908/FrontPage .
Back to the topic of the spinner, thank you, I can't wait to hook mine up! On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 2:10 AM, threeneurons <threeneur...@yahoo.com>wrote: > On Dec 28, 10:01 pm, Dennis <daddyvan2...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > Ok you got me. Should know but what is CP/M? > > > > Its an old computer operating system, sold by a company named Digital > Research. Around 1980, when IBM was trying to get into the "personal > computer" market, most of those computers ran on CP/M. What about > Apple? Yes, as a single company, they had the largest market share, > and ran their own proprietary OS. Still they only accounted for about > 20% of the market. There were dozens of companies that made small > computers at that time. Most were built using S100 form factor boards, > and used the OS CP/M. Digital Research owned the OS market. IBM > approached them to provide CP/M for the PC they intended to make. > Digital Research balked. Bill Gates was going to lose big, since he > was going to sell his programming languages to IBM. To keep the deal > afloat, he bought a small OS, from a local developer, and presented to > IBM as PC-DOS. He also structured the deal, to allow him to sell same > OS, to potential clone makers, as MS-DOS. When the IBM PC became a > hit, and clone makers turned out product faster than IBM anticipated, > Bill Gates and Microsoft were on the road to top of the computer > world. Digital Research and CP/M became a forgotten footnote. > > Only now is the Microsoft/Intel software/hardware grip on the > computing world beginning to loosen. The growing markets are new > products like smartphones and tablets. These devices use ARM > processors, instead of Intel product, and most use Android as the OS. > Intel and Microsoft aren't going to die, but the computing market is > growing in new areas, that they don't control. In time, if they may > become irrelevant, but its up to them, and its still years, if not a > decade or two away. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "neonixie-l" group. > To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
