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Who were the creators of these retro systems?

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punchy71

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Hello,
I was wondering if the forum members could help me compile a list of the principle designers/engineers/creators/inventors of each of the following retro systems:

MS-DOS - I think it was Bill Gates on this one, at least that's my understanding.
Commodore Amiga
Commodore 64
Apple II - I already know it was Steve Wozniak on this system. My understanding is that he gets 98+% of the credit.
Tandy TRS-80 model I and III
GNU/Linux - I already know it was chiefly Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds on this one. I know that Torvalds assumes 99% plus of the credit but in reality it was Stallman and his team of volunteers that did most of the work.
OS2
Atari ST
Atari 400/800
MS-Windows - I think it was Bill Gates on this one
Unix
Apple Mac - I know that Steve Jobs tends to get all of the credit but I looked at a book recently that spreads the credit around a bit more even handedly. I may have to borrow it again and write down all the engineers,designers and creative individuals names that "helped" him yet never get any credit. The book was called "Revolution in the valley: the insanely great story of how the Mac was made".
Commodore 128
CP/M
Texas Instruments TI-99/4 and TI-99/4a
Tandy CoCo RSDOS
Tandy CoCo OS9
Tandy CoCo 1, 2 and 3
Tandy TRS-80 model II and 12
Tandy model 100
Apple II GS
Atari XE series
Atari XL series
Atari XEGS
IBM early series machines up to about mid 1990's say
BASIC programming language

Thank you
 
MS-DOS: Bill Gates had very little impact on the design only working on a couple of the demonstration BASIC games. Bill Gates wrote the checks to SCP to pick up QDOS and cashed from IBM and others. Tim Paterson was responsible for creating the 8086 OS inspired heavily by CP/M with file system derived from MS Disk Basic. A host of other people modified and fixed QDOS as it turned into the PC/MS-DOS everyone knows.

MAC: look at folklore.org to see how many people were responsible

That is the problem with a lot of popular history. Often credit is assigned only to the person who was CEO while the work was done by dozens of people.

Most of these systems have webpages that explain the development and list the major people.
 
WOZ does rightly deserves credit for a brilliant electronic hardware design, however giving WOZ 98% of the credit does a great disservice to the others.

Like most other complex products, the end result was the product of a team effort, all of which were essential for it's success.

As an example, the first factory prototype PCBs didn't work. Rod Holt, not WOZ, debugged and fixed the design. Rod also designed the power supply. Somewhere, I have read that Rod also designed the Apple II bus, which had a major impact on the success and longevity of the architecture. Randy Wigginton ported Apple 1 BASIC to the new design. Allen Baum developed the Apple II monitor software. Howard Canin did an initial manual PCB layout, which was revised and done over digitally prior to production, by whom, I'm not sure. Jerry Manock designed the enclosure. I am sure that there were contributions by others, as well.


regards,
Mike Willegal
 
Stallman had f*ck all to do with Linux. It was started by Linus Torvalds and contributed to by many. The whole "GNU/Linux" is Stallman having a hissy fit because Linux distros use most if not all the GNU user space tools.

As to the others, let me get you started. http://bfy.tw/AeG

g.
 
punchy71 said:
Hello,
I was wondering if the forum members could help me compile a list of the principle designers/engineers/creators/inventors of each of the following retro systems:

MS-DOS - I think it was Bill Gates on this one, at least that's my understanding.
Commodore Amiga
Commodore 64
Apple II - I already know it was Steve Wozniak on this system. My understanding is that he gets 98+% of the credit.
Tandy TRS-80 model I and III
GNU/Linux - I already know it was chiefly Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds on this one. I know that Torvalds assumes 99% plus of the credit but in reality it was Stallman and his team of volunteers that did most of the work.
OS2
Atari ST
Atari 400/800
MS-Windows - I think it was Bill Gates on this one
Unix
Apple Mac - I know that Steve Jobs tends to get all of the credit but I looked at a book recently that spreads the credit around a bit more even handedly. I may have to borrow it again and write down all the engineers,designers and creative individuals names that "helped" him yet never get any credit. The book was called "Revolution in the valley: the insanely great story of how the Mac was made".
Commodore 128
CP/M
Texas Instruments TI-99/4 and TI-99/4a
Tandy CoCo RSDOS
Tandy CoCo OS9
Tandy CoCo 1, 2 and 3
Tandy TRS-80 model II and 12
Tandy model 100
Apple II GS
Atari XE series
Atari XL series
Atari XEGS
IBM early series machines up to about mid 1990's say
BASIC programming language

Thank you
Click to expand...

Did you even try to Google for the facts? Yikes....

If you had, then you'd know:
- Gates * bought * DOS
- Commodore stuff is widely documented
- Gates was an executive, not an engineer, when Windows came around (which was copied from Apple, which was copied from Xerox)
- Unix .... really .... www.google.com .... yeesh
- Mac, CP/M .... GOOGLE !!!!!
- BASIC .... G - O - O - G - L - E

#$%^$%^$%^$^$
 
JDallas said:
And Xerox sued Apple and got a huge block of Apple stock in the settlement.
Click to expand...

That's a new one. Xerox was an investor in apple for 1 million dollars and let Jobs and crew into their research lab. The might have been lawsuits were about stealing headcount from that facility, which jobs did do.

Microsoft eventually got a license to copy Mac OS GUI elements as part of the AppleSoft basic license renewal. This license is why Apple lost its lawsuit against Microsoft over windows.
 
Microsoft became an investor when Jobs returned to Apple. Ballmer sold the Apple stock. He was very anti-apple. This new guy running the show there is very open to things, heck my Microsoft Band works awesome on iOS and so does office since he took over. Ballmer was blocking the release of a decent office for iOS. This recent attitude change of Microsoft has changed my entire opinion of the company and I'm using Microsoft products again on my Apple Hardsware :)
 
punchy71 said:
Hello,
I was wondering if the forum members could help me compile a list of the principle designers/engineers/creators/inventors of each of the following retro systems:
...Tandy TRS-80 model I and III
Click to expand...

You should read 'Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution' to get info on the Model I. It's available on Amazon; search for it and read it; I have read this one, and it is a good read, at least in my opinion.

More than one person deserves credit for all of the TRS-80's, but the engineer in charge of the Model I was Steven Leininger (see http://www.trs-80.com/wordpress/interview-with-steven-w-leininger/ for the transcript of an interview with him). You should look in the Model III service manual and see if the drawings have any names on them; those are the responsible parties.

At least one of the Model 4 line was primarily designed by a Jerry Ballard. At least I have an e-mail from him in February of 1999 that says this:
Hello,
My name is Jerry Ballard. I was reading your news group message in
comp.sys.tandy about you modification to the Model 4. I am very interested
in the modification you got to work.
I am the Electrical Engineer that designed the Model 4, 4D and 4P. I
worked for Tandy for 15 years in the computer design group and the Model 4
was my first design....
Click to expand...
.

He went on about some personal things, including a couple of men we both knew, David Dalager and Frank Durda, and giving me his e-mail address. Last year, when I tried that address, it bounced. The modification referenced is a 320K modification for the Model 4 that allowed using a bank of 41256's in place of the second bank of 4164's, and included a 256-cycle refresh counter for the high bit of the refresh address. This mod was very similar to the one published in the October 1987 issue of 80-Micro, a copy of which I have in front of me right now.
...
Unix
Click to expand...

Ken Thompson wrote the first Unix, on a PDP-7. My current boss was at Bell Labs in this era, and knew him.

...
Tandy CoCo RSDOS
Tandy CoCo OS9
Tandy CoCo 1, 2 and 3
Click to expand...

Search Amazon for 'CoCo: The Colorful History of Tandy's Underdog Computer' by Boisy G Pitre for this history. I haven't read this one yet.
Tandy TRS-80 model II and 12
Tandy model 100
Click to expand...

My guess is that you'd find the engineers and their managers named on the service manual schematics for these. The Model II schematics are in the Model II Technical Reference Manual, available at several archives, and the Model 12 schematics are part of the Tandy 6000 Service Manual, which is also available at several archive sites, including bitsavers.org. I think I remember seeing a Model 100 service manual, too, but I haven't checked to be sure.

For the rest of your list, it should be rather easy to use a combination of wikipedia and google to find these answers, especially the origin of BASIC. Modem7 probably has docs on the conception of the IBM PC, but since that is not my specific area of vintage interest I haven't looked.
 
That lawsuit was in 1990, I guess that's why I didn't follow it. I'm all about early apple, and cut out of their history usually around 1985
 
krebizfan said:
...Xerox did file suit but the suit was dismissed quickly...
Click to expand...

They settled out of court as is generally the case. I ran across the information about 3 years ago when I was tracking who actually owned the vintage computers today via chains of acquisitions.
 
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