Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucsd!nosc!tetra!budden From: budden@tetra.NOSC.MIL (Rex A. Buddenberg) Newsgroups: comp.os.cpm Subject: Re: CP/M C Compilers Message-ID: <708@tetra.NOSC.MIL> Date: 24 Oct 88 01:17:47 GMT References: <8810201631.AA23751@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <593609239.Ralph.Hyre@IUS3.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU> Reply-To: budden@tetra.nosc.mil.UUCP (Rex A. Buddenberg) Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego Lines: 26 Not so, Ralph. Borland started out as Turbo-Pascal for CPM machines -- a product looking for a company. Since Philippe Kahn, at the time an illegal alien, couldn't get anyone else to market T-P, he formed Borland and started selling. Migration to MS_DOS (and CPM-86) happened later. This dates back to '83 or so (I have a Turbo-Pascal compiler with a 4 digit serial number to prove it), before MS-DOS was a real market force. Turbo-C didn't get to market until 85 or 86. Indeed, Philippe, in a Dr Dobbs interview described C 'not as a language, but as a disease' and indicated that they were getting into C rather reluctantly. By this time, MS-DOS had pretty well taken over, so its rather doubtful that a CPM Turbo-C copmpiler exists. Incidentally, Modula-2 from Borland did go the way you suspicion. Since M-2 was a natural extension for a house already selling Pascal compilers, the CPM version did indeed grow. But not an MS-DOS version. Because, probably, the market had moved on, Borland declined to sell it themselves, but licensed it to Echelon. My guess is the decision might have been different if they had an MS-DOS M2 compiler so they could support both OS's. Sigh. Rex Buddenberg (disclaimer: no connection to Borland, only reciting folklore)