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Lineo Frees CP/M
rbeattie writes: "The Register is reporting that the code for 'the first generic operating system for microcomputers' is now open source. It's interesting to see the final chapter for the code that could have been what was MS-DOS. The article includes the requisite background of CP/M from Gary Kildall's snubbing of IBM to its transformation into DR-DOS, later being sold to Novell then to Caldera who spun it off with Lineo who finally opened up the source in October." The original story is actually at NewsForge. Update: 11/27 22:13 GMT by T : Note, thanks to reader Greg Head, that DR-DOS source appears available only for money; the original headline implied that DR-DOS source was also now available at no charge.
I used MP/M - a multiuser/multitasking version of MPM on what i think was an Altaire?? in High School back in the mid-80's
To think where the lowly PC would be now...
Its often easy to blame the arrogance of Gary for blowing off IBM -- but to some extent it was one of those golden opportunities
kind of funny...the arrogance of someone who thought they could say no --vs-- the arrogance of someone who thought they could say yes
Who knew?
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
DOS was the last truly stable OS. In all the years I used it, it never crashed once. Although applications hanging was a different matter.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/5711/histor y.html
Now someone has to wrap up the newly-open-source CP/M stuff, combine it with a Z80/8080 emulator, and make a Debian package that runs CP/M software!
believe it or not, the actual MS inhouse source for MS-DOS 6.2 is floating around on a WarezSiteNearYou(tm). No idea how it got out, but it's out. It's interesting mainly for its comments and revision logs, and all the unfixed bugs they released it with (about 266, if grep ain't lying to me - they flag it with the string BUGBUG - and those are only the ones they know about!).
It's a 19mb (approx) tarball which blows up to 70mb. I got it as dos-6.0-src.tar.gz. About half of that bloat is the code for QBASIC and associated bits n bobs (edit, help) which are made with "COW" - Character Oriented Windows - hey, they tried for cool acronyms.
I've tried posting some of it here for the last 10 mins, but I can't beat the "Lameness filter - please use fewer 'junk' characters". If anyone wants to tell me how to get around it....
Meanwhile I'll leave you with a revision note from around 1983 or so:
REV 1.50
Some code for new 2.0 DOS, sort of HACKey. Not enough time to
do it right.
Where would the world be today if IBM had made a deal for CP/M?
I almost die laughing when someone tells me that MS had revolutionised computing and did it all on there own....then I ell them that if IBM had picked CP/M rather than MS-DOS, then no one would care who Bill Gates is today....infact, I bet MS would either be defunct or be an ISV making software for a 32 bit CP/M derivitive with a GUI..........hey!! that would be a cool project..put a GUI on CP/M!!!
anyway, I don't think Digital woul be in the place that MS is currently since Digital had there hands in a lot of diffrent hardware. so actualy, if MS-DOS was not shiped on PCs in the 80's perhaps the "they" would have been right, perhaps we would all be using Unix today!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Still wrong... and here's why.
That would be IBM's PL/1. You know, the people who brought you RS/600, OS/2 and AS/400. The slash thing is sort of a theme at IBM. It was also a convention at Digital, which is where Gary probably borrowed it from moreso than IBM. RSTS/11, RSX/11, etc. were all PDP-11 OSes. CP/M was greatly influenced by PDP OS design.
I had found several ways to do multitasking dos easily, and at least one of them was pmode.
First: OS/2 warp allowed you to use a text mode shell, which would be multitaskable and pmoded. That was a long time ago... The only one of these other than windows(which is a bitch about it) which will run Quake multitaksing.
Second: TSX411 allowed for multitasking in text mode and in some CGA modes, and it also allowed for VGA modes to run normally, but I haven't heard anything about it since the early 80s.
Third: Fallback Windows 3.1 with command.com set as the shell. Not my favourite solution...
Fourth: Linux with dosemu: I'd really rather not get into why this is a bad idea for day to day use, but it has something to do with never being able to run shell 0 apps and general instability in regular apps.
The reason for all this research is simple: At one time I learned about most of these(early 80s), windows sucked so badly nobody used it (whereas today, MS marketing(Bill Gates considers 1984 an instruction manual, not a novel) has convinced everybody to use it...), and multitasking under DOS was cool and innovative. Secondly, I'm a dos programmer right now (moving to linux with my next project to avoid Windows "He made a nice program -- lets clone it!" XP), and multitasking comes in handy, but the crashability of Windows is bad when I'm trying to make something work..
It's been a long time.
sigh. i remember running cpm because i needed to use a decent wordprocessor (Wordstar)for college. i picked up a cpm card from an obscure computer company in belluvue, wa (microsoft). it ran on my apple II. talk about convergence.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Before it came up with DOS, Microsoft sold a piece of hardware for the Apple ][ called the Microsoft SoftCard, which had a Z-80 processor and ran CP/M 80 (or the CP/M clone ZCPR--which was "open" long ago.)
Users plugged this card into an Apple ][ slot and booted into CP/M from a floppy disk. It was (is?) useful for running WordStar and dBase II, which were not ported to Apple's disk operating system, but you could not run both at once.
The next step ought to be for the Regents of the University of California to open up the UCSD Pascal operating system source used in Apple Pascal. The source has value for students even if it has been superseded by other operating systems now.
Then all three of the original 8088 operating systems for the IBM PC would be open--FreeDOS, UCSD Pascal, and CP/M 86.
which, for some reason, wants '$' as the end-of-string terminator
Right. The point of Gary Kildall's griping was that Kildall knew the reason, and Bill Gates didn't. This, to Kildall, proved that MS-DOS had a shady heritage, possibly involving re-assembling (to 8086 object code) a disassembled CP/M (8080 object code).
There may have been some merit in Kildall's claims, given that he sued MSFT, and settled out-of-court.