MS-DOS FAT file system ripped off? (from WHOM?)

I don't know anything about the EARLIEST history of the MS-DOS FAT, but the later stuff was fairly well documented. Who has enough first hand knowledge to check the accuracy? Microsoft produced some "Stand-Alone BASIC" systems. They had file IO, and used a a directory structure that was, in principle, similar to that of MS-DOS, although they subscribed to the seek center fallacy of putting the directory on a track approximately halfway towards the center. What prior operating systems used a linked list for allocation management? The best known of the "Stand-Alone BASIC"s is the Radio Shack Color Computer. I have dealt with disks from the "Stand-Alone Basic" from Coco, NEC (8001, 8801) and Okidata (used in Russia!) The "MS-DOS Encyclopedia" explicitly mentions NCR. I have never seen a disk from that. Does anyone know the model, or could that have been a misprint for NEC?? Supposedly, Tim Patterson found out about the MS Stand-Alone BASIC while they (Seattle Computer Products) were sharing a booth with MS at a show (West Coast Computer Faire?) He thought that the linked list for storage management was really neat. When he wrote Q-DOS (later MS-DOS, PC-DOS, and 86-DOS) as a placeholder while waiting for CP/M-86 to come out, he used the FAT. When MS bought Q-DOS, they were buying a system that was mostly a copy of CP/M, but with a directory structure that had been copied from earlier MS products. -- Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com 2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366 Berkeley, CA 94710-2219