lgriffin@xxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> Thanks for the info. What you mention is essentially what I was told
> by members of the Sysops association I belonged too and what I have since
> read. The extent of my programing was modifying insert files for Modem 7 and
> IMP. In regards to the CP/M plagiarism, Digital Research was very tight with
> CP/M. They did not care to have any copies made that were not paid for. That
> is also one of the reason that IBM had difficulties dealing with them. Seattle
> Software had a valid license for CP/M and that is what Microsoft bought and
> sold to IBM. I was a CP/M diehard, probably something to do with my
> intelligence level or not having better sense to read the writing on the wall.
Gary Kildall's attitude toward both protecting CP/M's source code and
doing business was rather strange. Although DR refused to release even
snippets of BDOS code to assist developers, they didn't pursue copiers
with their lawyers. About the same time that Seattle Computer Products
(not Seattle Software, but still Tim Patterson) released their 8086 OS
for sale their were others selling CP/M 2.2 clones. I bought one that
that included the source code for about $50 ... and it was an EXACT copy
of DR's CP/M with the exception that the subroutines in both CCP and
BDOS were reordered. If you returned them to DR's sequence it compiled
identically to DR's CP/M. I don't recall the name of the company that
did this, but I think (maybe) that they called it MP/C. There were others
that advertised similar clones in Byte, etc.
As far as the 8086 OS that was sold by Seattle Computer Products, I only
disassembled their BDOS since I used my own CCP. Some of the subroutines
were original code, but many/most were straight translations from 8080
to 8086 code with *no* changes. Tim Patterson wrote an article in the
June 1983 issue of Byte that explained the transition from CP/M to MS-DOS.
Fot those of you with the interest and a library that puts their old
magazines on mico-fiche, here are some interesting articles that I
still have in my files:
"The Creation of CP/M" by Suzanne Rodriguez in Interface Age May 1980.
"CP/M Primer" by John Stewart in Kilobaud Magazine April 1978.
"CP/M: An 8080 Disk Operating System" by Alan R. Miller in Interface
Age July 1978.
Sometimes I wish for "the good old days" of CP/M and S-100 where I had
full control over everything that happened in my box, but in looking
through my scant file of articles I see adverts for things like this:
S-100 Dynamic RAM, 64KB for only $595.
Vista Mini-Floppy (5") System with S-100 controller card for only $695
Televideo 912B Terminal for only $769.
Electric Pencil at $150 was a terrific deal!
There, that's the end on a rather long winded [OT] post,
-Nick T.
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|