25 Oct
2017
25 Oct
'17
11:55 a.m.
From: Noel Chiappa
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 11:12 AM
> From: Kip Koon
> Back in the day when Bill Gates and company 1st
started out ... a B/W photo
> of a young Bill Gates bending over the operator at what looked like a very
> small computer. Maybe it was just a terminal. I don't remember. I understand
> they did software development on a DEC PDP of some sort.
The very earliest version of their BASIC was done on
PDP-10's running TOPS-10
- first the one at Harvard, and then some commercial time-sharing system in
the Boston area.
Noel, do have a reference for "some commercial time-sharing system in the
Boston area"? From Paul Allen's autobiography, the Harvard system was followed
immediately by their move to Albuquerque, where they leased time on the local
school board's PDP-10, and that's what my friends who worked for Micro-soft
back then have told me, as well.
Rich
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computers: Museum + Labs
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134
mailto:RichA at LivingComputers.org
http://www.LivingComputers.org/