Ernest N. Wilcox Jr. wrote: > > In contrast, as I see it, the M$ business model is targeted at selling > copies of the software. More software versions released means more copies > sold. Reusing old inadequate code means less cost per copy and more profit. > There has historically been no effective business competition for them, > which has given them no additional reason to do better work, so they have > produced mediocre software, driven only by their perception of customer > wants. They started out with a hacked version of (it has been too many > years, I think it was C/PM - the OS for the 8080 CPU and which came with > the Comodore 64) which they sold as DOS, then a hacked version of a hacked > version of the GUI developed by Xerox (which was stolen from Apple who > stole it from Xerox BTW) which is now sold as Windows. For all I know, > until they moved completely away from DOS to NT, there may have been > original C/PM code for the 8080 in there somewhere (and maybe still is). > They have kept any possible competition at bay with effective FUD campaigns > and other less savory means, the true details of which we may never know. > So, yes, I agree with you. There is something wrong with M$. I think it is > their business model, their ethics, and an apathetic customer base who > continue to throw good money after bad. > > I'll stop here now ... :) > CP/M didn't come with the Comodore 64, though you could buy it, along with a Z-80 CPU cartrige. It did come with the Comodore 128. It had 2 CPUs in it. CP/M was used on nost 8080, 8085, and Z-80 based systems. (Especialy S-100 bus based systems.) There was also a large base of both comercial and free software for it. For a long time, DOS supported the same file access structure, and may of the same system calls as CP/M did. This is where the File Control Blocks (FCB) in DOS came from. It is a good thing for Microsoft that the software pattents and copyrights on software back then were not the way they are now, or they would have been shut down by DRI. (The company that "owned" CP/M.)
One nice thing about CP/M was that you got most of the source code for the OS itself as part of the package. You usualy needed to do the equivelent of a kernel compile to make it work with your hardware. But with only 64K of RAM (or less) to play with, you could not aford to have extra drivers as part of the OS. (Picture running a word processor, the file you are editing, and the OS all in 64K of RAM! Not 64M, but 64K) Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
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