Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!crdgw1!uunet!comp.vuw.ac.nz!actrix!fnet!Jeremy_Harding
From: Jeremy_Harding@f170.n771.z3.fidonet.org (Jeremy Harding)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Who the hell wrote CP/M?
Message-ID: <9104061042.AA71762@f170.n771.z3.fidonet.org>
Date: 5 Apr 91 02:11:08 GMT
Reply-To: Jeremy_Harding@f101.n770.z3.fidonet.org (Jeremy Harding)
Lines: 22
Comment-To: Van_Cleef_Henry_H@f101.n770.z3.fidonet.org (Van Cleef Henry H)

FSC-Control: EID:f699 16857164
I speak with authority. I have used TOPS-10 for 8 years as a systems 
programmer, and CP/M for 5-6 years. I have used RSX11M for 5 years, and have 
seen RT-11 in use as well.  CP/M looks like an early offshoot of TOPS-10 (
TOPS-20 was quite quite different), however the resemblance to RT-11 is also 
quite close: DEC was aiming for a compatible interface even then.  The idea 
that every command was a program was certainly more akain to RSX11M than to 
TOPS-10 or RT-11 (TOPS and I think RT-11 both had a command table, and the 
RUN command was used to start an arbitary program), however this was a 
sensible idea on a smaller machine (it was avoided under TOPS-10 to speed up 
command interpretation). TOPS-10 provided a virtual address space mostly 
devoid of operating system routines which looked very like a small computer: 
we used to joke that a DECsystem-10 was a 100 RT-11 systems in a concrete 
mixer.  I say that CP/M was an early offshoot of TOPS because the more 
developed TOPS system provided 'ersatz devices' and PATH concepts more akin 
to MS-DOS.


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