rogues galleries

On 27 Nov 2006 at 20:54, woodelf wrote: Lots of "chicken and egg" here. Before affordable floppy storage was available, there was little need for much in the way of operating systems; you loaded a program from audio cassette or (if you were rich), paper tape and ran it. Most folks got by with just a "monitor". When floppy systems got a little more affordable, then there was a definite need for operating systems. And there were quite a few-- consider all of the office word processing systems; they all had their own operating systems and they were all different (e.g., you couldn't read CPT diskettes on a Vydec). Some of this was the result of the old "operating system is a cost of the hardware" mindset. Univac didn't use CDC's operating system or its methodologies. So if you were developing a "serious" micro system (as opposed to hobbyist), you wrote your own OS and your own applications. The fact that you used the same CPU as someone else, was interesting, but not important. The range of peripheral interface differences was staggering--you weren't going to even try to run your Artec WP software on another 8080-based system. In my mind, that's why Gary Kildall earned his gold star--the realization that you could sell an operating system independent of the manufacturer's hardware--and toss in a few utilities, such as an assembler and an editor that made it useful. The next step--applications--with really (for the time) top-notch products such as WordStar served as impetus for manufacturers to simply license an OS and resell the applications. No one actually wanted to develop their own OS--it was expensive and then there was the matter of applications. At Durango, we developed the entire thing top-to-bottom, hardware, OS (CP/M wasn't quite real when we started) and applications. It was horribly expensive, but one couldn't simply deploy an empty box and tell customers to find their own software. Other manufacturers did likewise in the beginning. Eventually, we offered CP/M for the Durango just to give customers access to the generic x80 application base. I recall the VP of finance telling me that he couldn't believe how *cheap* it was to use someone else's software--and how that made the whole scheme suspect. After that, applications software just ballooned--and in particular, when VisiCalc (and its various clones) got deployed, every executive and not just their secretaries, had to have a computer of some sort. Spreadsheets were cool. Aside from some niche applications, the notion of developing a unique OS for your own hardware was pretty much dead. Many vertical market developers (which is where the real money was) had already discovered Gordon Eubank's BASIC-M and the follow-on CBASIC. There were CP/M "work alike" competitors, but the price point of CP/M, particularly with OEMs was just too hard to beat. Manufacturers who decided to use other non-x80 CPUs found themselves firmly mired in the old "build a box, write the software" mold. Apple is one such case and is really surprising in that it managed to survive and prosper. Cheers, Chuck