
History of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/07/ibm-pc-history-part-2/
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WalterBright
> Paterson freely admits that he pulled out his CP/M reference manual and
> duplicated each of its API calls one by one. On the other other hand, and
> while it may not have reflected much originality or creative thinking, what
> he did was pretty clearly legal even by the standards of today.

And CP/M itself's command line interface closely matched that of DEC's earlier
minicomputer operating system.

~~~
rebootthesystem
Ancient history few people know. AutoCAD started life as a CP/M application.
When you bought ACAD you had to buy an 8087 math co-processor card as well as
a 512K RAM drive card.

I ran ACAD for many years on such a system using a DEC VT-100 terminal, an
early magnetic tablet with a wired puck having a coil for pickup and a large
CRT-based graphics monitor. Memory restrictions were such that you had to do
things like unload modules from memory before plotting and write clever code
in Lisp to use less memory while drafting. Cool stuff.

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johansch
Related: I've been impressed by the quality of PCem recently:

[https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/](https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/)

(Windows, Linux. Runs well on Mac via Wine.)

It emulates lots of specific pieces of historic PC hardware. Not cycle-
accurate, but it's good enough to get roughly the correct speed for the CPU,
graphics card you pick, etc.

~~~
gattilorenz
There's also PCE (I hate these names, honestly): [http://www.hampa.ch/pce/pce-
ibmpc.html](http://www.hampa.ch/pce/pce-ibmpc.html)

It even offers a download with Microsoft Xenix 8086, and even one with PC/IX,
which is actually the Unix you could get from IBM itself.

Now, if anyone can provide a disk image with UCSD Pascal (one of the operating
systems originally available for the IBM PC), that'd be super cool.

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rb808
I've always wondered why IBM chose Microsoft to create the OS - what someone
told me just recently was that Bill's mother was [worked with the Chairman of]
the IBM board which no doubt helped him get the contract.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates)

edited: I've corrected this, she wasn't on the board but worked with Chairman.

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msla
Just adding to the theme of "Bill Gates was a privileged, privileged man":

[https://worldhistoryproject.org/1976/2/bill-gates-writes-
ope...](https://worldhistoryproject.org/1976/2/bill-gates-writes-open-letter-
to-hobbyists)

> Microsoft's software development [for Altair BASIC] was done on a DEC PDP-10
> mainframe computer system. Paul Allen had developed a program that could
> completely simulate a new microprocessor system. This allowed them to write
> and debug software before the new computer hardware was complete. They were
> charged by the hour and by the amount of resources used (storage, printing,
> etc.) The 6800 BASIC was complete before the Altair 680B was finished.[21]
> This was the $40,000 of computer time [mentioned in the "Open Letter To
> Hobbyists"].

[snip]

> The [PDP-10] computer system was funded by the Department of Defense through
> its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The computer was delivered in
> the middle of the night in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War protests.
> Harvard officials were not pleased that Gates and Allen (who was not a
> student) had used the PDP-10 to develop a commercial product. They
> determined that this military computer was not covered by any Harvard
> policy. The PDP-10 was controlled by Professor Thomas Cheatham who felt that
> students could use the machine for personal use. Harvard placed restrictions
> on the computer's use and Gates had to use a commercial time share computer
> until MITS provided access to a PDP-10 in Albuquerque.

Was it wrong, legally or morally, to use a DoD-funded computer to develop a
commercial product? Dunno, but the point is, Gates had access to it because he
went to Harvard, and the software he developed on it got him into the position
where IBM noticed him and his company.

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m_mueller
Isn't this how things always go? Technology often trickles down from military
until someone makes it accessible for others. In this case it was Apple,
Microsoft and to some degree IBM. Bill Gates seems to be a master at grabbing
the opportunities given to him. I don't see a fault in that, as opposed to
later business practices.

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Razengan
For anyone interested in the era of other “retro” computers and companies in
the 1980s, Kim Justice’s documentaries on YouTube are pretty good.

~~~
StudyAnimal
Kim Justice is good but game oriented. For people interested in the machines
of the era including more business oriented machines, check out Tezza's
channel:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/tezzaNZ](https://www.youtube.com/user/tezzaNZ)

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sna1l
I'm reading Andy Grove's book, "Only the Paranoid Survive" and he discusses
the decline of IBM and rise of Intel.

Remains surprisingly relevant even though it was written over a decade ago,
and an interesting view of PC history.

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scierama
It's surreal reading the phrase, "History of the IBM PC".

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digi_owl
Well with the intro of UEFI, the last remanins of the original IBM PC, the
BIOS, have been relegated to an emulated mode.

~~~
nsxwolf
The motherboard form factors are still closely related. ATX is an extended
version of the IBM AT standard.

