The Origins of DOS

On Fri, 27 Oct 2006, Jim Isbell, W5JAI wrote: TRS-DOS, Apple-DOS, and CP/M were the three biggest players in MICROcomputers before MS-DOS came along. TRS-DOS was written, apparently as a "work for hire" by Randy Cook for Tandy. Randy loved to add new features, and was NOT into finishing anything. TRS-DOS 2.0 (the first one released) was far from complete. Randy Cook "finished" TRS-DOS 2.1 in a big hurry. Apparat (among others) documented and fixed hundreds of bugs in TRS-DOS 2.1. Then they released it, first as APR-DOS, and then NewDos. Initially, they claimed that it was an all new product. Then, when Randy's lawyer demonstrated that there was a hidden full screen copyright message with "Randy Cook" credited, they then sold it as a "patch" product, "requiring" that users already own a copy of TRS-DOS. But, since there was no enforcement of that requirement, they had to pull the product. They rewrote a non-infringing version called NEWDOS-80. Radio Shack got fed up with Randy's additions of more features than he finished, and took over the product. and dumped Randy. For 2.2, the "Randy Cook" hidden copyright message was patched to "Tandy Corp" Randy wrote a 3.0 release that he never finished. The distributor of that refused to pay him. Randy wrote a 4.0 release that he never finished. The distributor of that refused to pay him. Lobo drives NEEDED a patched and expanded version of TRS-DOS, because their expansion interface used a 179x chip, and couldn't do all of DAM patterns needed, and they wanted to expand to DS, 8" etc drives. They hired all of the talent that they could find, such as Roy Soltoff, to finish and document the product, to be called LDOS 5.0 The finished it! They spun off a subsidiary company, LSI (Logical Systems, Inc.) to market it. Eventually, RS decided that their Model 3 TRS-DOS 1.3 wasn't cutting it, so they licensed LDOS (as "TRS-DOS 6.0"). And Randy Cook started getting royalties! Although Tim Patterson was familiar with it, TRS-DOS was NOT a significant factor in the design of MS-DOS. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com