The Origins of DOS - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

28 Oct 2006

...

Subject: RE: The Origins of DOS
   From: "Chandra Bajpai" <cbajpai at comcast.net>
   Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 11:10:20 -0400
     To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'"	<cctalk
at classiccmp.org>

How big was the TRS-80 Market to support all thoses DOSes? 
In the first year of sales the total was over 250,000 units.  I'd suspect
that by in year three (1981) there were at least 25-50,000 of those capable of 
supporting a disk and possibly more.

The big three of disk based systems were:

CP/M   (multiple platforms)
Apple  (appledos)
TRS-80 (TRSDOS, Newdos, LDOS)
NS* Horizon (s100) NS*DOS (also cp/m)

Not in any order. There wer others but volumes were generally far lower.

...
 I remember when NewDOS/80 and I just remember it being
fast.  Any idea who
wrote that? 
That was the Apparat version if memory serves.

Allison

...
 -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:
  [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 