Yes, there will always be discrepancies. I have to admit that many/most?/all? of my memories may be inaccurate or wrong. Some don't matter; some can be enough to ruin a good anecdote; some create a different story. I'm saddened that Jim Adkisson and Don Massaro of Shugart have changed their story and now deny that the size of the 5.25" disk was based on Dr. Wang pointing to a bar napkin. The "Bar Napkin Disk" was a GREAT anecdote; now ruined. http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102657925-… Whether Jobs saw the Apple1 after it was finished V had worked on it seems pretty big, but might not necessarily really be, since they HAD worked together on other projects around the same time. Whether Gary missed the meeting, or was late for it will matter to some people. To Gary, it might not have mattered much, but to the IBM people, EITHER is inexcusably disrespectful. Gary's wife was quite capable of handling everything that needed to be done (although the IBM suits likely didn't see it that way - women in authority was contrary to their culture at the time). A comment by Gary of let them wait in the living room like any other customer seems in character with Gary's personality, but would enrage certain IBM types. There was certainly significant culture clash. Whether it was solely Gary's casual and informal attitude to business relationships, or whether it was the IBM people SHOCKED by the casual and informal business behavior and attire and unable to consider doing business with such a "hippy" doesn't surprise me. I had dealings with similar culture clashes around that time. Maybe I'm just still pissed off about how my uncle, who was an IBM suit, used to be extremely obnoxiously unpleasant about my having a beard. Was I the ONLY programmer without a crew-cut and not wearing a suit and tie at all times? To me, the culture clash aspect makes it one of the greatest stories of the time. Was Gary not taking the meeting seriously enough to be there on time, and as a consequence, ending up being $80B behind Bill Gates, the stupidest mistake anybody has ever made? Or the bravest thing that anybody has ever done to stand up to them and put refusal to be subservient ahead of the money by deciding that the men It might be excusable if the film makers chose to downplay that, or even not mention it (which they didn't), but to replace it with a grossly untrue "historical lesson" reversing and incompatible with the truth is not excusable, and incompatible with the spirit of the story. Either way, changing it from IBM not wanting to deal with DR into Bill Gates cold calling IBM to tell them "what an operating system is" is totally invalidating, marginalizing, and misrepresenting a significant aspect of the microcomputer culture, and the people who made it. (AND is ridiculously insulting to the IBM culture to state that they didn't know what an operating system is!) The gratuitous fourth wall "Study this, because this is the way that it really happened" finally took it COMPLETELY out of the realm of "differing memories", "artistic license", and "improving the narrative" (all of which have a place) into gross misrepresentation. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com On Sun, 24 May 2020, Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk wrote:

On 2020-05-24 11:17 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: 1968 and probably before.[1] Most operating systems concepts[2] are much older than people think. --T [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_CP/CMS [2] e.g. ref: Per Brinch Hansen, Classic Operating Systems

On Sun, May 24, 2020, 11:04 AM Toby Thain via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: The topic for my talk next week. Unix had virtualization in 74. The second Unix port ran under OS/360's VM in 78. Warner --T

On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 2:01 PM Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote: Wollongong to the interdata 7/32 was April of 77. Went into production July 77. Bell Labs to the closely related interdata 8/32 was June of 77. Never went into production, but portability fixes plowed back into V7. Tom Lyons had his booting to a similar level around May of 77 ("end of his junior year"), though he wasn't hired by Amdahl unti the following summer and he reports having the full V6 up early in 1979. V7 up later in the year when they got it from AT&T. I kinda lump the two interdata ports together as 'the first' and I don't have good dates for when Tom Lyons booted beyond hello-world, or what the benchmark for 'first' should be. Warner --T

On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 13:20:41 -0600, Warner Losh wrote: What do you mean by "Unix had virtualization"? Come to think of it, what do you mean by "OS/360's VM"? Regards, Peter Coghlan

On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 15:18:34 -0600, Warner Losh wrote: Oh. I thought maybe you meant Unix was able to do virtualization. What's special about being able to run under a hypervisor? If the hypervisor does it's job right, whatever is running under it should not be aware that it is not running directly on hardware. CP/67 or something like that maybe? I don't think there was a VM/360 either. Regards, Peter Coghlan.

On 5/24/20 5:30 PM, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote: There was VM/370 in 1980. I worked under it from May to August. Hosted on a 4331 at Ft. Ben Harrison, IN. The launch of the Mainframe and COBOL facet of my career and life. bill

Early on there was CP/47 and CP/67 which ran on the 360/47 and 360/67 respectively. In these systems the end user operating system, CMS, would also IPL (load) on bare hardware. Modern CMS won't do this. It needs some CP services to run. I would disagree with Peter over the "same under the covers". VM/370 on early 370 Hardware was a pure software hypervisor. With 370 hardware the Hypervisor (CP) is able to hide the CPU's privileged or supervisor state from the machine in the VM. All attempts to read this state result in a Privileged Exception. CP runs all VM's in user mode. When a VM switches to supervisor state CP merely makes a note in a control block. The VM still runs in user mode, and CP has to simulate any privilege mode instructions it executes. As time progressed "Hardware Assists" were added so that the microcode performed some of the functions formally carried out in CP. When running a "real" OS such as MVS which spends a lot of time in supervisor state, this generates a lot of CPU overhead. The assists help by allowing a guest to execute some privileged instructions without involving CP and reducing any CPU overhead. However, from XA onwards this approach is not possible. In 370/XA mode the machine state can be read by non-privileged programs. IBM also provided a new microcode instruction Start Interpretive Execution (SIE) which allows CP to run Virtual Machines with much less overhead. Whilst I believe much of what SIE does evolved from the assists, to me it?s a fundamentally different way of running the machine. Virtualization is now delivered by the Microcode not the Hypervisor.. Dave

No, when they had VM/ESA in Stockport Council it was mostly for VM/ESA with CICS and CMS just for management and config. Before that in NERC it was all interactive workload. Yes, and of course whilst in some ways the whilst the change to SIE was a step change in the way CP delivers VMs in other ways it was a just one point on the evolution of VM. It started with the ECPS assists (I think Extended Control Program Services) which had more features added over time so the Hardware handled more tasks, but VM could cope if they were not present. Then as things switched from 24 bit to 31 bit hardware and XA and ESA architecture appeared CP had to have SIE to work, and the type of VM it could deliver depended on what SIE on the box could support. Over time SIE itself has evolved to offload more work from CP (or HCP as its now called) and the architecture has moved from 31 bit to 64 bit. On the other hand I expect some parts of CP will be traceable back to VM/370. For example the spool which allows virtual card decks and print files to be stored and manipulated is still similar. CP still has to manage control blocks for each VM that exists, its just that it uses SIE to execute them. It still manages a directory of users and passwords and controls who can logon. It has to keep a track of which real devices map to which virtual devices of each VM. Dave

On 05/24/2020 04:18 PM, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote: As far as I know, there was no VM/360. There WAS VM/370, which was out in the early 1970's, but on 370 mainframes, not 360s. Jon

On 5/24/20 10:04 AM, Toby Thain via cctalk wrote: Don't forget Peter Denning! --Chuck

On Sun, 24 May 2020, Tom Gardner via cctalk wrote: "better", yes. but still sadder I read it in one of the popular magaazines decades ago. "standard"??!? "I believe in standards. Everyone should have [a unique] one [of their own]." - George Morrow I have seen napkins that are about 5.25". I wanted to track down which bar, and get napkins from them. And/or get napkins commercially printed (and give them a supply) with the bar personalization on one side, and an outline picture of a 5.25" disk jacket and the story on the other. optional signatures of those involved, and provide to CHM to sell in the giftshop. I have to thank you for debunking a cherished legend. Myths and legends can be nice, even if they have to be disproven. Even nonexistent characters can be handy, such as Santa Claus and \newline -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

Quite true that Gary did not have the ruthless personality to compete. If the roles had been reversed, Gary would NOT have become a bill Gates. Yes, the final outcome was inevitable, although the one incident set the path. It is fairly commonly believed that MS-DOS would not have EXISTED without the DR/IBM incompatability. Would Microsoft have gotten into operating systems LATER? Eventually. Probably. But probably not for years. For instance Microsoft Xenix would probably not have happened if they hadn't already been doing MS-DOS. I maintain that IF IBM and DR had hit it off, that CP/M-86 would have been cheaper, and available at the time of the release of the PC, or at least VERY soon after. I have heard (unsubstantiated) that IBM did not give DR any units of hardware to develop on (they DID provide Microsoft with some hardware), so there was very little work on CP/M-86 for the PC until August 1981 when the PC was released to the public. It is not clear whether IBM marketing of CP/M-86 was agreed to before finalizing the PC-DOS decisions,or whether it was added on as an alternative LATER. UCSD P-System was ALSO added as an alternative. There are unconfirmed rumors that IBM had not intended to also provide CP/M-86, but that DR screamed until they agreed. The similarities in the operating systems were enough that DR could have had a legal case (even before current "look and feel" precedents), but Gary was not into legal battles, and being sold IN ADDITION was good enough for him. IBM had nothing to lose by offering other Operating Systems as alternatives. My recollection (not reliable) was that PC-DOS was originally $40, and then went up to $60 with version 1.10 or 2.00. (Is that right?) There are also conflicting stories about WHO set the price, and HOW; even a conspiracy theory that IBM chose the $240 price to hinder CP/M-86 competition. But, $240 was not grossly out of line in those days, so it very well could have been set by DR, in which case, THAT was a substantial mistake. At $40 for PC-DOS and $60 or even $80 for CP/M-86, there would have been a better chance to compete, but not at $240. Nevertheless, in August 1981, when the PC came out, PC-DOS was ready (due to IBM and Microsoft working with each other?), and CP/M-86 was announced as "coming soon". Of course CP/M-86 "coming soon" but not being ready YET, MUCH earlier, was why Tim Paterson had written 86-DOS/QDOS. It was largely intended as a place holder and temporary substitute to be able to work on the rest of the projects UNTIL CP/M-86 was completed and available. MANY people (not all) thought that CP/M-86 would still become the primary operating system, in spite of the price differential. BUT, "PC-DOS is so cheap, that I'll buy a copy of it to use and work on my programs, UNTIL CP/M-86 comes out and BECOMES the dominant one." I did. By the time that CP/M-86 finally did come out, there was an enormous installed base of PC-DOS. "Are you going to sell software to THEM?" I did. "or wait until CP/M-86 catches up?" Soon there was also an enormous installed base of PC-DOS software. As I mentioned before, porting to it was pretty easy. "I'll sell my program on PC-DOS. WHEN (and if) CP/M-86 catches up, THEN I'll sell it on that." Soon, it was too late for CP/M-86 to catch up. A plane is real handy for going to business meetings. And, is tax deductible because of that, even if it is primarily a recreational activity and hobby, and the "business meetings" consist of going to hang out with friends. It has been stated that the meeting in question was with Bill Godbout, whose business was housed in the north buildings of the Oakland Airport, along with Mike Quinn, etc. Godbout was a valid business contact (Compupro) as well as a personal friend, and Gary often flew up to visit him. At the time, there was a minor corruption of the story, that Gary had gone off to sail his boat. It has been reasonably established that it was a short flight to Oakland. I personally think that Gary's attitude was that the money (not clear AT THE TIME how much) was not important enough to let IBM push him around. He was a competnet businessman, but not ruthless. BTW, once Microsoft started work, IBM insisted on upgraded security and locks. For a while, it was referred to as "Project Commodore" as a red herring for any leaks. I only knew a few people at Microsoft; met Bill Gates a couple of times, but he would have no reason to remember me; and met Gary a couple of times, but he would have had no reason to remember me (other than as one of the many pre-PC jerks who tried to convince him to standardize 5.25 inch disk formats - his response: "The standard disk format for CP/M remains 8 inch Single Sided Single Density"). So, my opinions are speculation based on third hand perception of the elephant's tail. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com On Sun, 24 May 2020, Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk wrote:

On Sun, 24 May 2020, Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctalk wrote: I hadn't known that. Gordon Eubanks (CBASIC) and gary were pretty tight. I just looked up and found out that Gary was his thesis advisor in 1976, when he wrote CBASIC. It seems like it was inevitable that Gary would end up marketing it. I played with it a little in mid 1980s; my recollection was that it was expensive, and impressive, but not especially suited for any of my projects. I played briefly with Xenix on an XT (or MAYBE an AT) on a 15MB? drive partition. MS-DOS was a better match for that hardware. OS/2 (Gordon Letwin at Microsoft) was a substantial step up for MS-DOS. Once they added "Windows For Os/2"/"Presentation Manager", . . . BUT, then NT was not a direct transition from OS/2. And, around 1986? IBM started pushing OS/2 with PS/2 (had they bought OS/2 MS-DOS was based heavily on CP/M. Most university programming graduates were into unix. When Microsoft or Apple were recruiting, most of the best pickings were C programmers on unix. MS-DOS 2.00 was definitely moving towards unix, in terms of the sub directories, and file handle based API. I didn't know that there were plans for three levels, just that they were moving MS-DOS towards being unix-like. Keeping the CP/M style API kept most software compatible. FCBs made parsing filenames in the command line convenient! Well Gary and Gordon were close in 1976, so you could use any date in that 1976-1981 range. Yeah. some software was free, or almost, and some was very expensive. $240 for CP/M-86 was not out of line for the time, other than the fact that it was going head to head with an already established $40 (later $60?) product. A few years later, DR dropped the price of CP/M-86 down to $60. TOO LATE. I hadn't known that, but it fits with an IBM PHYSICAL SECURITY attitude. (and totally out of character for west coast software culture!) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On Mon, 2020-05-25 at 20:00 +0200, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: I hadn't thought about IBMCACHE.SYS in *years*. I wrote it in its entirety (there's even a patent that covers some of its operation). I was in an AdTech (Advanced Technology) group at the time and was looking at how to make disk operations faster in DOS at the time when I came up with the idea. There was a *huge* battle within IBM on if it should be released and in order to do so, it was fairly well hidden. There was a switch on config.sys statement for IBMCACHE.SYS to turn off the write-back cache (e.g. writes would always go straight to disk). As I recall, there was a 30 second timer for the writeback cache so that if a disk block was "dirty" for more than 30 seconds it would get flushed to disk. TTFN - Guy

On Mon, 2020-05-25 at 20:28 +0200, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: You're very welcome! I know that there were some bids that IBM marketing needed IBMCACHE.SYS to win (millions of dollars) and it was *still* a battle to get it released! Yea, not only did I have to write it, but I had to write a series of tests to run through billions of disk operations (and go validate the internal state of the cache) before it could even be considered for release. ;-) BTW, as a bit of copyright paranoia, if you do an ASCII dump of IBMCACHE.SYS, you'll see my 3 initials (GGS) (or it may have been IBM...it's been so long I can't remember). They are actually instructions! It was required at the time to have code embed a text string as actual instructions that get executed. It took me a bit of time to figure out (in x86 assembler) how to generate an appropriate string. The idea was that if someone "cloned" the program and just did a replacement of the string, it would stop working because the string was actually instructions. TTFN - Guy

On Mon, 2020-05-25 at 13:21 -0700, Ali wrote: No, it came on one of the diskettes supplied with PS/2 systems though it would work on any system. That is, it didn't do anything to detect that it was running on a PS/2 system. There was a lot of discussion to have the "core" of IBMCACHE actually in BIOS and a tiny .SYS file to allocate the memory above 1MB. Most interest in it faded when Microsoft started shipping smartdrv.sys which IMHO was not as good as IBMCACHE, but smartdrv.sys came with DOS. TTFN - Guy

On Mon, 2020-05-25 at 14:13 -0700, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: No, IBMCACHE was standalone. As I recall (I wish I'd kept a copy of the source), you could tell it how much (and starting address) of where it would use memory > 1MB (I think there was also a mode that allowed you to use it < 1MB as well). That was done to allow for co-existence with HIMEM.SYS. When the write back cache was enabled (it would always allow write- thru), in addition to intercepting INT 13 (and timer) it would also intercept INT 21 so that if you did a "close" it would immediately flush out the dirty buffers. One of the differences between between IBMCACHE and SMARTDRV as I recall (I really didn't spend too much time thinking about SMARTDRV) was that IBMCACHE was block based versus SMARTDRV being track based. It allowed for much better caching (from my own analysis when I was developing it). It also allowed for caching blocks that had bad sectors (which was one of the patents for IBMCACHE). When IBMCACHE did a write out of dirty blocks they were always in sorted order (the list of dirty blocks was kept in sorted order). I recall playing around with dual elevator algorithms (it knew where the last read/write was) so it could do the writes that required the fewest/shortest seeks. It turned out now to be a huge win (for DOS) versus the complexity, so I never released that. I even had a version that cached floppies (but would *never* enable the write-back cache for devices that it thought were removable). If it detected a disk change it would flush the cache for that drive. TTFN - Guy