Re: OT: Microsoft's MS-DOS is 30 years old

[Adrian Montagnani]

actually the genesis of MS-DOS is a little more convoluted ...

Tim Paterson
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tim PatersonBornJune 1, 1956Occupationcomputer
programmer
, software designer
WebsitePaterson
Technology 

*Tim Paterson* (born 1956) is an
American
 computer programmer ,
best known as the original author of
MS-DOS,
the most widely used personal computer operating
system in
the 1980s.

Paterson was educated in the Seattle Public Schools, graduating from
Ingraham High School in 1974. He attended the University of
Washington,
working as a repair technician  for
The Retail Computer Store in the Green Lake area of Seattle,
Washington,
and graduated *magna cum laude
* with a degree in Computer Science in June 1978. He went to work for Seattle
Computer Products  as
a designer and engineer. He designed a schematic of Microsoft's Z-80
SoftCard  which had a Z80 CPU
and ran the CP/M  operating system on an
Apple II.

A month later, Intel released the
8086 CPU,
and Paterson went to work designing an
S-100 8086
board, which went to market in November 1979. The only commercial software
that existed for the board was a standalone version of Microsoft
BASIC.
The standard CP/M operating system at the time was not available for this
CPU and without a true operating system, sales were slow. Paterson began
work on QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) in April 1980 to fill that
void, copying the
APIs
of
CP/M from sources including the published CP/M manual so that it would be
highly compatible. QDOS was soon renamed as
86-DOS.
Version 0.10 was complete by July 1980. By version 1.14 86-DOS had grown to
4,000 lines of assembly
code.[1] In
December 1980Microsoft  secured the
rights to market 86-DOS to other hardware manufacturers.

While acknowledging that he made 86-DOS compatible with CP/M, Paterson has
maintained that the 86-DOS program was his original work and has denied
allegations that he referred to CP/M's code while writing
it.[2] When
a book appeared in 2004 claiming that 86-DOS was an unoriginal "rip-off" of
CP/M,[3]  Paterson
sued the authors and publishers for
defamation
.[4] 
[5]
The
judge found that Paterson failed to 'provide any evidence regarding “serious
doubts” about the accuracy of the Gary
Kildall chapter.
Instead, a careful review of the Lefer notes ... provides a research picture
tellingly close to the substance of the final chapter' and the case was
dismissed on the basis that the book's claims wereconstitutionally
protected
opinions
and not provably
false.[6]

Paterson left SCP in April 1981 and worked for Microsoft from May 1981 to
April 1982. After a brief second stint with SCP, Paterson started his own
company, Falcon
Technology,
which was bought by Microsoft in 1986. Paterson did a second stint with
Microsoft from 1986–1988 and a third stint from 1990-1998. During his third
stint at Microsoft, he worked on Visual
Basic
.

After leaving Microsoft a third time, Paterson founded another software
development company, Paterson
Technology,
and also made several appearances on the Comedy
Central
 television  program
*Battlebots
*. Paterson also races rally cars in the SCCA
 Pro 
Rally

OT: Microsoft's MS-DOS is 30 years old

[Angus Scott-Fleming]

Well, two days ago.  

= Included Stuff Follows =
Microsoft's MS-DOS is 30 today o reghardware
  Kudos to QDOS
  By Tony Smith 
  27th July 2011 06:00 GMT

MS-DOS is 30 years old today. Well, kind of. On 27 July 1981, Microsoft 
gave the name MS-DOS to the disk operating system it acquired on that day 
from Seattle Computer Products (SCP), a hardware company owned and run by 
a fellow called Rod Brock.

= Included Stuff Ends =
More here with links:
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/07/27/ms_dos_turns_30/

Makes me feel OLD.

Angus


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