Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site peora.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!houxm!hjuxa!petsd!peora!jer From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) Newsgroups: net.arch Subject: Re: What if IBM...(more 8086 v. 68k) Message-ID: <1881@peora.UUCP> Date: Mon, 30-Dec-85 08:47:13 EST Article-I.D.: peora.1881 Posted: Mon Dec 30 08:47:13 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 31-Dec-85 03:43:03 EST References: <12200023@orstcs.UUCP> Organization: CONCURRENT Computer SDC, Orlando, Fl. Lines: 43 > 1) IBM wanted CP/M-86. When Microsoft informed them that DRI was respnsible > for CP/M, IBM went and talked to DRI. DRI refused to give them exclusive > rights to name and marketing, along the lines which PC-DOS now has. IBM > went back to MicroSoft and said "Write us an OS that can use CP/M calls and > looks like CP/M-86." Voila, MS-DOS is born. Note that the CP/M "Call 5" > convention is *still* supported in MS/PC-DOS. This is not what has been published as the history of MS-DOS. MS-DOS started out as an OS called "QDOS", which was written by someone at a small computer company in Seattle, according to an article in Byte about 2 years ago by the original author of the OS. QDOS stood for "quick and dirty OS", and he wrote it to work like CP/M because he knew a lot about CP/M already, and it's always faster to write a "quick and dirty" something if you don't have to design it from scratch. Microsoft apparently then bought the product from him, and, after the first release, started modifying the system calls to be compatible with Xenix. (This was a difficult exercise in upward compatibility in itself, though they seem to have done a good job of it.) I don't believe IBM has exclusive rights to name and marketing, since Microsoft OEMs MS-DOS to other manufacturers besides IBM... maybe DRI wouldn't give IBM the rights to call their OS something else (PC-DOS)? > 2) 8080 code is fairly easy to migrate to 8086, *if you have source*. ... > Thus, 8086 Wordstar is *still* a somewhat larger and slightly stupider > product than 8080 WordStar. This is true. If you doubt it, go get your original-version WordStar manual and look in the back under "Customizing WordStar". It has part of the WordStar source in there. You'll find that all the mnemonics, etc. are 8080 mnemonics, but the code generated is 8086 code! Apparently WordStar was ported by taking the 8080 code and assembling it with an assembler that took 8080 mnemonics and syntax and generated 8086 code. [Count this as another comment that should have been in net.os.] ------ WordStar is a trademark of Micropro International. Xenix and MS-DOS are trademarks of Microsoft. -- UUCP: Ofc: jer@peora.UUCP Home: jer@jerpc.CCC.UUCP CCC DNS: peora, pesnta US Mail: MS 795; CONCURRENT Computer Corp. SDC; (A Perkin-Elmer Company) 2486 Sand Lake Road, Orlando, FL 32809-7642