Most important landmarks in computing history

[carlsson]

I haven't put much effort into this, but tonight a musical thought struck into my head: C-H-A-R-L-ES B-A-B-B-A-G-E

You need to know the German scale, which uses H for B and B for Bb. Es would be equivalent to Eb. I decided R means the whole note to the right on a piano, and L to the left.

Here is what could be the opening of my masterpiece, if I ever write it:

http://www.anders.sfks.se/mp3/babbage.mp3 (715 kB)

 

[mbbrutman]

Sorry about the interruption .. this is back in General Off-topic, and I'm whacking a few of the 'What happened here?' posts to cut down on the clutter.

 

[CP/M User]

carlsson wrote:

> One of my aspirations is to be a symphonic hobby
> composer, i.e. I am totally self-trained when it
> comes to composing music and I'm only doing it on
> irregular basis.

> I've thought that some day I should try to compose a
> suite of "serious" music, i.e. for symphonic
> orchestra or band. I know the instruments quite well
> when it comes to useful range and a little about
> technical difficulties. But to make a suite, I'm
> thinking that I need a theme to get inspired by.

> Now, I don't know if any modern composer has already
> written works inspired by computing history, but no
> matter what, this was one idea that came to my mind
> last week. I could probably think both about
> computers, the conditions and environment around when
> it was made and much more.

> Typically I think a suite should be about 3-5
> movements (parts). Of course I should not take on a
> larger task than I could finish, but given those
> conditions, exactly what do you think should be
> covered? My thinking is something like this:

> 1. Babbage (Difference engine, analytic engine, Ada
> Lovelace etc)
> 2. ENIAC (or maybe that German computer that predated
> it?)
> 3. Cray (and/or PDP, something around the age of VLSI
> technology?)
> 4. Today? (IBM Blue Gene, advanced video games?)

> Is there any important landmarks I have overlooked?
> Maybe something more about video gaming, like Pong /
> Atari 2600 / C64 / SNES etc?

Something to do with Spacewar! would be good (in the Video
Games mould). How 'bout the Abacus - one of the best
calculators of it's time!

Why's this thread being moved to General Off Topic?

CP/M User.

 

[DOS-Master]

ibm pc was a major event in the hstory of the pc

 

[alexkerhead]

I am going to have to say the IBM 5150 with DOS 1.0 was the number one recent computing landmark. It marks to end of cp/m, basic, etc as the most popular OS's and compatibilities, and began uniting software makers to use a single platform. When IBM released the 5150 with DOS, the decline of cp/m, basic, etc. was accelerated to almost ridiculous levels. It also marked the end of inconformity. It also marks the climb of the microsoft empire as a software overlord.

 

[nige the hippy]

just a thought, i don't know if the colossus has been mentioned, but it's way of decoding the enigma codes was by modifying the original code with a (paper) tape loop then offsetting it by one character, and running it again. Certain amount of minimalist music inspiration there i think.

Nig

 

[CP/M User]

alexkerhead wrote:

> I am going to have to say the IBM 5150 with DOS 1.0
> was the number one recent computing landmark. It
> marks to end of cp/m, basic, etc as the most popular
> OS's and compatibilities, and began uniting software
> makers to use a single platform. When IBM released
> the 5150 with DOS, the decline of cp/m, basic, etc.
> was accelerated to almost ridiculous levels. It also
> marked the end of inconformity. It also marks the
> climb of the microsoft empire as a software overlord.

I disagree & I think this is an absolute joke to the whole
computing industry that this should be seen as a landmark. Of
all things it was a rip-off of an OS (CP/M) and was marketed
in such a way that is was guaranteed to take over from where
CP/M started!

CP/M User.

 

[alexkerhead]

alexkerhead wrote:

> I am going to have to say the IBM 5150 with DOS 1.0
> was the number one recent computing landmark. It
> marks to end of cp/m, basic, etc as the most popular
> OS's and compatibilities, and began uniting software
> makers to use a single platform. When IBM released
> the 5150 with DOS, the decline of cp/m, basic, etc.
> was accelerated to almost ridiculous levels. It also
> marked the end of inconformity. It also marks the
> climb of the microsoft empire as a software overlord.

I disagree & I think this is an absolute joke to the whole
computing industry that this should be seen as a landmark. Of
all things it was a rip-off of an OS (CP/M) and was marketed
in such a way that is was guaranteed to take over from where
CP/M started!

CP/M User.

ha: I was wondering when you were going to say that.
A landmark doesn't have to be positive Sir, it can be negative and affect something with equal force, although be it negative forces in your opinion.
I see it as, if Microsoft hadn't done what they did so many times, we would still have 12 different operating systems floating around. Microsoft's marketing technique helped unit hardware manufacturers. So, even if someone who uses CP/M doesn't like what MS did, there is still that fact that most people don't care to learn 12 different computing languages. Thanks to microsoft we have DOS, which is very very easy to use compared to CP/M for the basic user and we have windows, an excellent graphical interface OS. Xerox may have invented it, and Apple may have first distributed it, but microsoft marketed it and improved it, making microsoft the good guy here. I personally would dread learning anything else besides dos or windows as a main OS. I am right though, microsoft obliterated the OS wars, now even window's biggest competitor is running windows..lol
See what lack of initiative got apple? They are now begging for microsoft's table scraps. Microsoft's iniative, although be it a wrong initiative, did help unit hardware manufacturers.
Ya gotta lay off teh haterade.

 

[CP/M User]

alexkerhead wrote:

> A landmark doesn't have to be positive Sir, it can be
> negative and affect something with equal force,
> although be it negative forces in your opinion.

Sure - we can all become turn into some kind of Media figure
now & celebrate - or simply sit around blind to what is really
going on & simply destroy the world a little bit more - while
humans celebrate it. Sounds clear as mud to me!

> I see it as, if Microsoft hadn't done what they did
> so many times, we would still have 12 different
> operating systems floating around. Microsoft's
> marketing technique helped unit hardware
> manufacturers. So, even if someone who uses CP/M
> doesn't like what MS did, there is still that fact
> that most people don't care to learn 12 different
> computing languages. Thanks to microsoft we have DOS,
> which is very very easy to use compared to CP/M for
> the basic user and we have windows, an excellent
> graphical interface OS. Xerox may have invented it,
> and Apple may have first distributed it, but
> microsoft marketed it and improved it, making
> microsoft the good guy here. I personally would dread
> learning anything else besides dos or windows as a
> main OS. I am right though, microsoft obliterated the
> OS wars, now even window's biggest competitor is
> running windows..lol

Well, this simply proves what I just said, a clear
understanding of how someone can be so obvious to the issue
that they don't even see the whole picture (sure who would
around here), but CP/M can easily be something which can just
as easily be used as DOS - don't you think CP/M ever advanced
either - or had a GUI for it? It's all work towards
Microsoft's favour simply because it's won those important
trials & simply paid a small fee for some known incident
involving them many years ago - surely at a time when
discovery would have closed them down.

I simply don't see it as a good thing & where this will end -
gawd only knows.

CP/M User.

 

[carlsson]

For that matter, IBM may have been the ones who really created the landmark, by issuing a personal computer. Sure, there were similar computers prior to IBM PC, but I've read many companies and people disregarded personal computing as an expensive hobby up to when even IBM entered the stage.

Then whether you ran some DOS version, CP/M, Unix or whatever was available at that time would be secondary. IBM was also into the OS/2 project with Microsoft, which later took off separate ways.

Landmarks in computing doesn't have to be strictly technical innovations. It is just as important to make products user friendly and have a clever way of marketing, creating a desire. In my point of view, the World Wide Web is one of the most significant landmarks in computing over the last 20 years, because it does something else than just increasing technical specs.

But back to the original topic, the biggest issue is to find some way to illustrate (in music, pictures, dance or whatever) whatever message you want to convey. Once one has an idea, I believe it should be expressed even if it doesn't cover the theoretically top 5 moments.

 

[alexkerhead]

alexkerhead wrote:

> A landmark doesn't have to be positive Sir, it can be
> negative and affect something with equal force,
> although be it negative forces in your opinion.

Sure - we can all become turn into some kind of Media figure
now & celebrate - or simply sit around blind to what is really
going on & simply destroy the world a little bit more - while
humans celebrate it. Sounds clear as mud to me!

> I see it as, if Microsoft hadn't done what they did
> so many times, we would still have 12 different
> operating systems floating around. Microsoft's
> marketing technique helped unit hardware
> manufacturers. So, even if someone who uses CP/M
> doesn't like what MS did, there is still that fact
> that most people don't care to learn 12 different
> computing languages. Thanks to microsoft we have DOS,
> which is very very easy to use compared to CP/M for
> the basic user and we have windows, an excellent
> graphical interface OS. Xerox may have invented it,
> and Apple may have first distributed it, but
> microsoft marketed it and improved it, making
> microsoft the good guy here. I personally would dread
> learning anything else besides dos or windows as a
> main OS. I am right though, microsoft obliterated the
> OS wars, now even window's biggest competitor is
> running windows..lol

Well, this simply proves what I just said, a clear
understanding of how someone can be so obvious to the issue
that they don't even see the whole picture (sure who would
around here), but CP/M can easily be something which can just
as easily be used as DOS - don't you think CP/M ever advanced
either - or had a GUI for it? It's all work towards
Microsoft's favour simply because it's won those important
trials & simply paid a small fee for some known incident
involving them many years ago - surely at a time when
discovery would have closed them down.

I simply don't see it as a good thing & where this will end -
gawd only knows.

CP/M User.

Sure, CP/M may have had potential, but nobody ever took the initiative, I mean ever took the initiative, to make it so.
I believe you don't see the entire picture, blinded by a fondness of CP/M, you refuse to understand that only initiative gets something going. If henry ford hadn't developed a mass production auto factory, would ford be a large car company? NO
So, I still stick to my conclusion that IBM's 5150 is the most important landmark in recent computing history. CP/M is just a blot of ink on the history in comparison, so cp/m isn't even any kind of landmark.
Let me put it this way, right now, hardly anyone knows GEM exists right? What if I rewrote the base code to be compatible with lots of windows/unix software, and sold it for $10 a copy. Well, it would then become pretty popular to the custom computer community. So, I took GEM's base code, so what, they never did anything good with it, but I did, I deserve something for that. Maybe I was wrong for not building all the way up, but GEM shouldn't have wasted 20 years doing nothing for it's software. If CP/M is so great, why did nobody ever take the initiative to improve upon it? That is basically what Bill Gates did, he made a peice of crap OS into something usable with dos and windows. You see the potential, I see the facts. Since CP/M is the bomb, why not develope a gui for it yourself? It will never become popular again if you just do nothing.

 

[carlsson]

Sure, CP/M may have had potential, but nobody ever took the initiative, I mean ever took the initiative, to make it so.

I'm quite sure if Digital Research had got the honour to deliver an operating system to the absolutely outstanding - smashing - IBM PC, they would've put some efforts to improve it with a bit more user friendlyness, a newer version built for expandability and as the years passed, graphical shells like GEM. It would still need to be binary compatible with older software to start with.

Now, they lost out (for whatever reason according to the urban legend) and at best became an alternative distributer of an OS rather than the main one. Speaking in terms of profits, it surely made a difference how much they could spend on further development.

If the QDOS had not been very functional or Bill Gates had not known the people working with it, he could not have offered a system to IBM to start with. Microsoft would've lived anyway, in terms of Basic interpreters and other compilers, perhaps even productivity software like Word, but they would had a bit harder to get a market share.

 

[mbbrutman]

The IBM PC is significant, but for much different reasons.

There were lots of personal computers before the IBM PC. Tandy had a line. Apple was well established already. I can't even beging to start naming the multitudes of 8080, 6800 and Z80 machines, many of which are highly sought after today.

The PC is significant because IBM decided the market was worth getting into. They took pre-existing parts and made a very polished entry into the field. Note that IBM put very little into the machine:

• They chose an existing microprocessor from Intel
• They bought their operating system
• The BASIC interpreter came from Microsoft
• Almost everything except for the BIOS code was sourced elsewhere.

Why? Because IBM was risk averse in this new market. If it flopped, they could walk away with very few sunk costs.

As far as CP/M goes, it was IBM's first choice. I'm not sure how much of the urban legend is true, but apparently Gary Kildall did not meet with IBM to license CP/M to them. Seeing the oportunity, Bill Gates repackaged a very clone of CP/M from Seattle Computer works and licensed it to IBM. That became DOS 1.0. Only in DOS 2.0 did DOS start to pick up more of the Unix features that it has today.

CP/M was very significant, and DOS borrowed from it alot. (And later it borrowed even more from Unix.) CP/M ran on many different machines and architectures, and had some design features to make it easily portable on those machines and architectures. (Sound familiar?) At the time, if it was to be considered a machine for business use, it pretty much had to run CP/M. (The Apple series was a notable exeption - it had enough sales such that CP/M capability was not a must.)

That is basically what Bill Gates did, he made a peice of crap OS into something usable with dos and windows.

As noted above, Bill Gates didn't start with CP/M. If he had, the world would be much different. He did start with a buggy OS, but it wasn't CP/M as you imply.

 

[alexkerhead]

Of
all things it was a rip-off of an OS (CP/M)

and

Bill Gates repackaged a very clone of CP/M from Seattle Computer works and licensed it to IBM. That became DOS 1.0. Only in DOS 2.0 did DOS start to pick up more of the Unix features that it has today.

Then

As noted above, Bill Gates didn't start with CP/M. If he had, the world would be much different. He did start with a buggy OS, but it wasn't CP/M as you imply.

Huh?
You got me confused.
That appears extremely hypocritical. I never implied windows was a rip off of cp/m, I claim that dos was a improved rip off of cp/m.

 

[mbbrutman]

I missed the word 'poor', but those of us who remember it would have subconciously filled it in.

Like we said, Bill Gates did not start with CP/M. He started with very poor clone of it which he obtained from Seattle Computer and repackaged as DOS for IBM.

So DOS is actually an improved version of a ripoff of CP/M, not an improved ripoff of CP/M. There is a difference.

Please explain your use of the word hypocritical? Did somebody say to do one thing, then do something else?

 

[carlsson]

A clone is not the same as the real thing, i.e. it is possible that the QDOS mimicked CP/M to a great deal, but maybe not as comprehensive as the real CP/M. But no matter what, an operating system is an almost transparent part of a computer system to most people, both back then and still today. Those using personal computers around 1980 depended on which applications you could use, not the command system unless you were a technician or programmer. Same thing today, if the operating system works without flaws, few people will reflect whether it is a new or old version of Windows, some Linux, OSX or any custom developed system for a special appliance. We who hang here will certainly care, both back then and now, which operating system we're using, but I'm sure we belong to the minority 1/4th or even less of people who really put a value to it.

 

[CP/M User]

To me, DOS & CP/M are two seperate Operating Systems - prompt
wise it's the same, until you dig down you discover that CP/M
uses User areas - as opposed to Directories in DOS 2.x & up
(DOS 1.x didn't even have this). Programs themselves which
came with CP/M work differently from simular programs found in
DOS simply on the command line - options wise, which can
really set apart differences between DOS & CP/M.

On an IBM DOS & CP/M-86 v1.x were competing with each other in
the beginning - CP/M-86 v1.0 was being sold through IBM & IBM
were continuing to sell 1.0 when DR released V1.1. However
v1.0 was being sold for a lot more than what DOS was. Unlike
the hacked 8bit version of CP/M - CP/M-86 on an IBM is
different in which programs aren't known as COM files - they
have CMD files instead - which from what I can tell exceed the
64k limit found in DOS COM files & CP/M-80 COM files.

So to me I just don't see the connection - an improvement of
CP/M would show compatability with CP/M - which DOS doesn't
really do.

 

[Terry Yager]

I don't think we have a clear enough picture as to how Quick&Dirty came about. Was it based on reverse-engineering CP/M-80, or did SCP just write a whole new 16-bit OS based on the known (well-documented) functionality of CP/M?

--T

 

[Terry Yager]

<snip>

So to me I just don't see the connection - an improvement of
CP/M would show compatability with CP/M - which DOS doesn't
really do.

Most, if not 'all' CP/M-80 software can be easily converted to 16-bit with the software tools DR shipped with CP/M-86.

--T

 

[alexkerhead]

I missed the word 'poor', but those of us who remember it would have subconciously filled it in.

Like we said, Bill Gates did not start with CP/M. He started with very poor clone of it which he obtained from Seattle Computer and repackaged as DOS for IBM.

So DOS is actually an improved version of a ripoff of CP/M, not an improved ripoff of CP/M. There is a difference.

Please explain your use of the word hypocritical? Did somebody say to do one thing, then do something else?

I see what you are saying now, Bill Gates based DOS off of something quite like DOS, but not like CP/M, but the ideas came from CP/M. Did I get that right?
I meant the statement seemed hypocritical after the previous statement, I should have used a more appropriate word like contradictory instead, but I was very tired..lol No offense was intended.

Edit:

So to me I just don't see the connection - an improvement of
CP/M would show compatability with CP/M - which DOS doesn't
really do.

You may have took my statement too literally. I meant he improved on the basic principles(ease of use and such), as opposed to the actual OS....I gotta get more sleep.