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They developed something called M-DOS or MIDAS in 1979, but by that time CP/M was already established, so they decided against releasing it.
by whobre 5mo ago
They developed something called M-DOS or MIDAS in 1979, but by that time CP/M was already established, so they decided against releasing it.
- lproven 5mo agoThis was news to me, so I went digging. « M-DOS During 1977 and 1978, Microsoft adapted both BASIC and Microsoft FORTRAN for an increasingly popular 8-bit operating system called CP/M. At the end of 1978, Gates and Allen moved Microsoft from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington. The company continued to concentrate on programming languages, producing versions of BASIC for the 6502 and the TI9900. During this same period, Marc McDonald also worked on developing an 8- bit operating system called M-DOS (usually pronounced "Midas" or "My DOS"). Although it never became a real part of the Microsoft product line, M-DOS was a true multitasking operating system modeled after the DEC TOPS-10 operating system. M-DOS provided good performance and, with a more flexible FAT than that built into BASIC, had a better file-handling structure than the up-and-coming CP/M operating system. At about 30 KB, however, M-DOS was unfortunately too big for an 8-bit environment and so ended up being relegated to the back room. As Allen describes it, "Trying to do a large, full-blown operating system on the 8080 was a lot of work, and it took a lot of memory. The 8080 addresses only 64 K, so with the success of CP/M, we finally concluded that it was best not to press on with that." » https://www.pcjs.org/documents/books/mspl13/msdos/encyclopedia/section1/ https://www.pcjs.org/documents/books/mspl13/msdos/encycloped...
- somat 5mo agoI was always curious on why their original product, BASIC, did not evolve into a full operating system. Looking at it with the sensibility of a unix affectionado. basic is sort of analogous to the unix shell, a unified interactive user interface and scripting language. This would appear to be a far superior interface than the relatively crippled CP/M inspired DOS command interpreter. My best guess, memory, on those early microcomputers that consideration trumped any user interface ergonomics and DOS(cough CP/M) used less memory than the BASIC interpreter.
- whobre 5mo agoThere was a rumor of MS and DRI having a non-aggression pact before 1981: https://nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com/p/gary-kildall-bill-gates-and-the-gentlemans https://nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com/p/gary-kildall-bill-g...