Ah yes. I remember it now. Great write. I was unaware of all the rangling going on with Bill Gates at the time but it seemed as though everyone had their own software and hardware to get out there.
Back to spinners. Can't wait to get mine. I've got a nixie clock just begging for some added attractions. ________________________________ From: threeneurons <threeneur...@yahoo.com> To: neonixie-l <neonixie-l@googlegroups.com> Sent: Wednesday, December 28, 2011 11:10 PM Subject: [neonixie-l] Re: FS: Shameless Plug Time - Dekatron Spinner Kits 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.