The fall of CP/M?

On Sat, 25 Aug 2012, Tom Uban wrote: "downfall"??!? The "downfall of CP/M was a culture clash. The port of CP/M to 8086/8088 wasn't complete when IBM decided to go with Microsoft, instead, DUE TO CULTURE CLASH with DRI. Microsoft then proceeded with an unauthorized port of CP/M to 8086/8088 (QDOS from SCP). Patterson, fortunately, had been fascinated by the linked-list allocation management (FAT) (V the list of blocks by the original CP/M) It continued on as MS-DOS (also PC-DOS) for many years. Gordon Letwin did a rewrite of a whole new version as OS/2. The bulk of users stayed with the original version. Cutler, et. al., combined that with other code, and replaced it with NT. The bulk of users stayed with the original version. MS-DOS got an add-on command processor (Windoze) DOS ex omnes est divisa in partes tres: BIOS (ROM + IBMBIO.COM/IO.SYS), BDOS (IBMDOS.COM/MSDOS.SYS), CCP (COMMAND.COM and/or WIN.COM) The add-on command processor got more integrated into the BDOS with Windoze95. NT was presented as "the next version" and users were told to switch. The bulk of users stayed with the original version (95/98). An update was released for 95/98 called ME ("Millenium Edition"); An update was released for NT called "Windows 2000"/"W2K"; W2K was presented as "the next version" and users were told to switch. The bulk of users stayed with the original version (95/98). An update was released for W2K, called "XP"; XP was presented as "the next version" and users were not given a choice; Both ME and W2K were discontinued, and the users "had to" "upgrade" to XP. Vista and Windoze7 are both minor upgrades to XP. What REAL changes are there? The college where I work was named "Vista College" (from mid 1970s until 2006). In 2006, when Vista came out, the college was renamed. Many of us fought for an extension of the old name, so that we could use that for marketing to bolster the sagging enrololments in our digital sweatshop intro classes (How to use Microsoft Office, etc.) - "Come learn Vista at Vista College"! "Windows 7 is more user-friendly than Vista. I don't like that." - Dr. Sheldon Cooper "downfall"? That's a life, so far, of almost 40 years! I maintain that all of the changes (except perhaps the "theft" of control) were evolutionary, not revolutionarey, no matter how many times marketing put "All NEW! and IMPROVED!" on the box. Note: version numbering and naming has been under control of Marketing. NOT just at Microsoft. TRS-DOS STARTED with 2.0 Apple-DOS STARTED with 3.2? Incrementing of minor version numbers happened when sales needed a minor boost; Incrementing of major version numbers happened when sales needed a major boost. Each of us has different views on what changes where "important". Are different disk formats "important"? 1.00 SSDD 8SPT "160K" 1.10/1.25 DSDD 8SPT "320K" 2.00 DSDD 9SPT "360K", & hard drives 2.11 (MS-DOS, NO PC-DOS) easier implementation of machine specific formats 3.00 "High density" "1.2M" 3.20 "720K" 3.30 "1.4M", & Hard drives >32M I think that IMPORTANT changes include: 2.00 MS-DOS/PC-DOS subdirectories, "Unix-style" file handling (arguably the big improvement of MS-DOS over CP/M) 2.11 MS-DOS (easier customization) 3.10 MS-DOS/PC-DOS Network Redirector (650M! "network" drives (CD-ROM)) 3.31 MS-DOS (easier customization), also FAT16 (>32M drives) Somebody else might think that the most important "change" was "Long Filenames", even though it was NOT implemented, merely a system of using up FPDEs to store long NICKNAMES, such that FILENA~1 filename could be linked to "Filname of file that contains the content and data of all of the important stuff", and getting "DISK FULL" messages on an almost empty disk because the root directory had been filled up with file nicknames, instead of files. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com