28 Oct
2006
28 Oct
'06
9:30 a.m.
Subject: Re: The Origins of DOS
From: "Jim Isbell, W5JAI" <jim.isbell at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 10:27:19 -0500
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
TRS DOS market was prety big at the time. To begin with it was the
ONLY desktop computer available in the mass marked....almost two years
if memory serves me well. There were several "mini" computers around,
but nothing like the RS computer with 8k of memory and a tape system
for probgam loading/saving and BASIC.
From inside Tandy (at that time) te most common units
sold had 16k and
the L2 (12k) Basic with the 16k L1 basic using being a close
second.
Rare was the 4k with L2. As to 8k that was either a user hack or
one of a short lived flavor using halfgood 16k parts both of which
were far less common.
From experience and being active in computer world of
the time S100
was the workhorse systems as were early Apple][ with disk and RS had
volumes of (>200,000 first year of sales) of the basic 4kl1 systems.
That was the 1978 view. By 1980 Apple][ with disk, TRS80 with EI
and disk were by far very prevelent though S100 crates were still
being used widely. Apple and RS were dualing for the then infant
personal desktop computer market and had put a lot (n > 50,000 with
disks) of machines out there.
The market from what I'd seen went from near 0 (under 10,000 home
computers existed) in 1974(december) to somewhere over 1,000,000
(possibly far more) by December of 1979. Explosive growth!
Several things drove this. Lower cost of hardware that included some
mass storage(minifloppy). Availability of more user friendly packaged
systems(no soldering or kits). The availability of software applications
editors, high level languages, software development packages and of
course the killer apps of early desktop word processing [Electric
pencil, Wordstar] and spreadsheets [visicalc].
Allison
On 10/28/06, Chandra Bajpai <cbajpai at comcast.net> wrote:
How big was the TRS-80 Market to support all thoses DOSes?
I remember when NewDOS/80 and I just remember it being fast. Any idea who
wrote that?
-Chandra
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Fred Cisin
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2006 10:24 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: The Origins of DOS
On Fri, 27 Oct 2006, Warren Wolfe wrote:
--
Jim Isbell
"If you are not living on the edge, well then,
you are just taking up too much space." [TRS-DOS]
It was its own universe, Jim. The links and questionable parentage
of the original version of DOS are tied directly to CP/M, which was the
first O/S for personal computers that any significant number of
businesses embraced. And, Windows came out of the DOS world, and now
dominates as few products have dominated before. (Note: I am NOT
claiming this is a GOOD thing.)
From what I can tell, TRSDOS was not a rip-off of anyone's software,
and nobody bothered to rip it off, so it's pretty much out of the world
of O/S scandal.
There WERE several imitators of TRS-DOS (although still for TRS-80),
including NEWDOS, DOSPLUS, and the semi-legitimate offspring LDOS.
It actually was pretty decent, and had a few
ideas of
merit that didn't make it into the mainstream world for a while. It was
just totally tied to Radio Shack computing, and suffered a mortal wound
when IBM came out with their PC. No fault of its own.
Rasio Shack AVOIDED expanding TRS-DOS into other semi-related hardware
platforms.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com