General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsReleased on this day, August 12, 1981: the IBM PC
I'm sure I wouldn't have to look too long to find some 5" floppy discs.
IBM Personal Computer
IBM Personal Computer with IBM CGA monitor (model 5153), IBM PC keyboard, IBM 5152 printer and paper stand. (1988)
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150 and was introduced on August 12, 1981. It was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Philip Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida.
The generic term "personal computer" ( "PC" ) was in use years before 1981, applied as early as 1972 to the Xerox PARC's Alto, but the the term "PC" came to mean more specifically a desktop microcomputer compatible with IBM's Personal Computer branded products. The machine was based on open architecture, and third-party suppliers sprang up to provide peripheral devices, expansion cards, and software. IBM had a substantial influence on the personal computer market in standardizing a platform for personal computers, and "IBM compatible" became an important criterion for sales growth. Only the Apple Macintosh family kept a significant share of the microcomputer market after the 1980s without compatibility to the IBM personal computer.
angstlessk
(11,862 posts)one that contained the programs... word program, not sure of other programs..been awhile.
The other floppy was what you wrote/calculated.
hunter
(38,264 posts)The 8" floppies predated the IBM PC.
I still have an external 8" drive that I had connected to a PC and did some minor business transferring data from 8" floppies to 5" floppies.
Nobody has asked me to do that for many, many years.
angstlessk
(11,862 posts)It looked similar.
uponit7771
(90,225 posts)SharonAnn
(13,767 posts)"American computer programmer Timothy Paterson, a developer for Seattle Computer Products, wrote the original operating system for the Intel Corporations 8086 microprocessor in 1980, initially calling it QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), which was soon renamed 86-DOS. A year later, fledgling company Microsoft purchased exclusive rights to sell the system, renamed MS-DOS, to IBM for their newly developed IBM-PC. IBM-compatible versions were marketed as PC-DOS. "
https://www.britannica.com/technology/MS-DOS
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,039 posts)From the Caldera Statement of Facts:
http://www.maxframe.com/DR/Info/fullstory/factstat.html#erlyday
6. Microsoft's initial focus was on programming languages, which required an underlying, compatible operating system. Microsoft chose the emerging standard, CP/M. The Making of Microsoft at 52. Gates visited Kildall in November 1977, and obtained a license for $50,000 cash. Gates at 120, 138.
7. In July 1980, IBM contacted Microsoft about IBM's undisclosed plans for a personal computer, and asked Microsoft to design compatible 16-bit versions of its most popular products: BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal and the BASIC compiler. Gates at 151-154. But IBM still needed an operating system. DRI was already planning a 16-bit version of CP/M, called CP/M-86. Microsoft had obtained a preliminary version, but had no right to sub-license. Id. at 154. Gates told IBM to contact Kildall. Exhibit 4 at 15 (History of the Microcomputer Revolution). IBM and DRI were unable to agree on terms for a CP/M license. Exhibit 330 (Kildall 11/13/92 letter).
8. Microsoft moved quickly to "design" an operating system for IBM. Tim Paterson, an engineer at a small Seattle-based OEM named Seattle Computer Products, had already designed in April 1980 his own 16-bit CP/M "clone," i.e., it mirrored CP/M's function calls. He dubbed it QDOS -- Quick and Dirty Operating System. Gates at 157. On January 6, 1981, Microsoft licensed QDOS (subsequently dubbed "86-DOS" for $25,000 -- while obtaining a right to sub-license, and without disclosure of IBM's interest. Exhibit 6 (License Agreement). Just prior to launch of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft decided to buy the product outright. On July 27, 1981, Microsoft paid an additional $50,000 to Seattle Computer. Exhibit 7. Microsoft had its DOS, without any original work of its own, for a total price of $75,000.
9. Microsoft gave IBM a royalty-free license, but retained ownership rights to this DOS, which it planned to license to the clone OEM vendors sure to follow the IBM standard. See Exhibit 29. When the IBM PC launched in August 1981, two identical operating systems emerged: IBM offered PC-DOS 1.0 to its customers; Microsoft offered MS-DOS 1.0 to all other OEMs and their customers. Exhibit 12 at MSC00566789, -873) (Paterson interview transcripts); Exhibit 8 (Softalk for the IBM Personal Computer, March 1983, "Tim Paterson: The Roots of DOS" .
10. Years later, Kildall's obituary summed up these events succinctly:
Unable to agree to a deal, IBM turned to another small company, Microsoft, for what turned out initially to be a copycat product. Kildall was livid. He said: "Here we were, in good faith, in negotiations with IBM and they came in with a complete rip-off."
http://www.maxframe.com/DR/Info/fullstory/factstat.html#clonem
11. The links from CP/M to QDOS to MS-DOS 1.0 are well-recognized. See Ivie Report at 34-36. Kildall noted that DOS "mirrored the 'de-facto industry standard' CP/M interface." Exhibit 330 (Kildall letter). The technical treatise Undocumented DOS provides a brief overview, and points to other works mapping the extensive similarities between CP/M and MS-DOS:
There is no question about MS-DOS's large-scale borrowing from CP/M. As Tim Paterson would write somewhat later in "An Inside Look at MS-DOS" (Byte, June 1983), "The primary design requirement of MS-DOS was CP/M-80 translation compatibility."
. . .
So MS-DOS began life as an enhanced clone of CP/M.
Exhibit 401 at 181-182 (A. Schulman, et al., Undocumented DOS) (citing Dr. Dobb's Journal, "CP/M vs. MS-DOS: A Technical Comparison" .
See also Ivie Report at 34-36.
12. Microsoft's own programmers have readily acknowledged what was done. Only two people at Microsoft worked on MS-DOS 1.0. Reynolds Depo. at 8. One of them, Chris Peters, later testified when Seattle Computer Products sued Microsoft concerning the purchase of QDOS:
Again, from the programmer's point of view, MS-DOS 1.0 was primarily a clone of CP/M.
http://www.maxframe.com/DR/Info/fullstory/factstat.html
Zorro
(15,691 posts)That's quite a revealing transcript.
hunter
(38,264 posts)Its so-called "operating system," PCDOS (aka MSDOS), was worse.
IBM and Microsoft set back human technological progress by at least a decade with this turkey.
The only good thing about the machine was an accident: it was easy to clone and many clones were cheap. But that brought its own pitfalls.
All modern computers, from cell phones to desktops to servers, can trace their origins back to humble RISC processors and Unix, even modern x86 computers running Microsoft Windows or macOS. The PC didn't belong to that family tree.
Today's x86 processors are essentially emulating their 8080, 80286, 80386, 80486, and Pentium PC ancestors as needed. Their internal architecture isn't at all similar.
The most common computer architecture today is ARM, a RISC architecture originally designed as an upgrade to the humble 6502 processor used in the Apple II, Acorn, Atari 800, and Commodore 64 home computers, and many video gaming systems.
The most common operating systems, including Android and macOS are based on Linux or BSD, both Unix derivatives. Windows ME was the last MSDOS based operating system. Subsequent Microsoft operating systems have been built from the ground up by computer scientists and software engineers very familiar with Unix and other modern operating systems.