Suit may revise chapter on tech history: Origins of MS-DOS

Seattle Post-Intelligencer ^ | March 4, 2005 | Todd Bishop

[HAL9000]

In spite of some superficial similarities to its ancestor CP/M-80, MS-DOS version 1.0 contained a number of improvements over CP/M including:

CP/M-86 also contained a number of improvements over CP/M-80 - and was technologically superior to PC-DOS 1.0. But it was a little more expensive.

[E=MC²]

Yes, I think so. Sort of like a big circle...MS-DOS built on CP/M and when CP/M-86 languished, Digital Research built DR-DOS on MS-DOS.

[HAL9000]

It's ironic that the quality of Microsoft's CP/M-80 software was superior to anything they've produced since then.

[Tribune7]

IIRC, there was a documentary on PBS about 10 years ago (Triumph of the Nerds?) in which MS officers were basically saying the MS-DOS was a rip off of CP/M (and the flying story was true)

[hoosierham]

Now if you had said you were using an ASR-33 TTY I might believe you!

The paper companies gotta love you!

[Mind-numbed Robot]

But I still think Microsoft has always been best at "acquiring" code from outside sources and manipulating the market.

Amen. They would always insist "you show me yours" but would never reveal their own. Magically, a few months later they would come out with a product amazingly like yours.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Yes, I may be a bit archaic, but it works for me. And I get to read it on paper, not some darn TV screen!

Whatever turns you on. I am sure you feel a great sense of satisfaction in your handiwork but the cost of paper has probably exceeded the cost of a new computer and look at, oops you can't do that, all the other things you could have done, like data bases and spread sheets, etc. How does HD TV come in on that Selectric. Oops, again. I guess you have to feed the paper.

Despite that, I too am impressed with your handiwork.

[Enlightiator]

I could almost picture someone actually doing that - but Delphi is long gone - isn't it?

Ok, you're on to me...was a post for comedic effect only. This thread got me to thinking, just maybe somewhere out there, there just might be a stubborn geeky old guy still using a typewriter to access the internet....I need to work that into a short story...

As far as Delphi goes, which I really was on many years ago (the only true part in my comedic post), sadly I believe you are right: Delphi's Internet service, the first nationwide Internet service available to the public, closed its telnet access on April 30, 2001.

[HAL9000]

I was a Delphi customer too. The alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater newsgroup was my favorite feature there.

[hoosierham]

There were people who interfaced certain electric typewriters as input devices because they felt comfortable with the keyboard ,etc.

Thr amateur TTY (teletype) enthusiasts of the 1960s included some very artistic persons who made many easily recognizable pictures using the tty printouts. Pictures were best viewed a moderate distance causing the printout to mimic halftone pictures. Using doublestrike printing and other techniques they got more out of the system than the designers ever planned,just as others did with the early home computers.

Some pictures might take 15 minutes to print so it would slow websurfing somewhat.....

[Gondring]

Looking back at an old thread, but I wanted to follow-up with a story about how the bored undergrad attendants at the computer labs at Penn State realized the high-speed printer's print head made different sounds for different characters as it made a line of them like XXXXXXXXXXX or ggggggggggg, and likely different tones from different text (I can't recall). They wrote up a program to play songs (using up boxes and boxes of paper).