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The Computer History Museum has released part of the memoir of Gary Kildall. Kildall founded Digital Research, Inc., co-hosted The Computer Chronicles on television and wrote CP/M, the first operating system for personal computers. The extract from his memoir Computer Connections can be downloaded after agreeing to a lengthy EULA (Javascript required). It was provided by Kildall's family, who wrote
We have chosen to release only the first portion of his memoir. Unfortunately Gary's passion for life also manifested in a struggle with alcoholism, and we feel that the unpublished preface and later chapters do not reflect his true self.
In related news, a presentation comparing the source code of MS-DOS to that of CP/M will be given at the museum, in Mountain View, California, on Saturday during the Vintage Computer Festival.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Friday August 05 2016, @04:24AM
It was by far the best version of DOS. The later versions even bundled Quarterdeck's best stuff.
MS sued them, and got beaten horribly. Wound up having to give DR RO access to their source archives for about a decade to make sure they could solve compatibility problems to settle the suit they started, iirc.
It's a shame his heirs are so out of touch with his legacy.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Friday August 05 2016, @09:31AM
+1 to DR-DOS kicking ass and taking names.
Digital/Novell were looking to make it a real operating system vs. a small shell over hardware (which MS-DOS essentially is) by including protected memory management and preemptive task switching. It was essentially trying to do what OS/2 tried to do without breaking backwards compatibility. Microsoft strongarmed DR-DOS out of the market (the AARD code was targeted against it), and effectively killed it by shipping Windows 95.
Had Digital's GEM interface gotten more traction compared to Windows, there would be a decent chance DR-DOS would still be kicking today. GEM never reached feature parity with Windows 3.x, and although they were working on implementing multitasking and such, it never saw the light of day.
Still always moving
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @05:14PM
DR-DOS is still being maintained! [drdos.org] v7.1 was released in 2011. Unfortunately, GPL woes killed v8.0 & v8.1
I still use DR-DOS for a legacy robotics project, and also to teach kids robotics and low level programming. Linux is a pain in the fucking ass if all you want to do is just GET and PUT to ports in a loop. Writing kernel drivers and rebuilding the fucking kernel each modification is prohibitively expensive for entry level kiddos. I'd much rather do without an OS and load code my own static bootloader rather that install the unstable clusterfucks called "*nix" just for simple embedded / robotics projects (if I can't use DR-DOS or FreeDos for some reason). Kids can understand "your compiled ASM code gets loaded here, and the PC does exactly and only what you tell it" rather than "Well, we ask the OS to do this, and when it gets around to it that might happen -- or not, depending on the latest batch of bugs mention in the mailing list (or not)". DR-DOS gets out of your way and lets you get right down to the metal, unlike modern OSs.
Why use old PCs and DOS to teach robotics when newfangled "low priced" SOCs exist? Because any old PCs with a parallel port = powerful robot brain that you can hook simple switches and circuits to directly and program them out of the box, no addon "Arduino shield" required, and old PCs are free, the local electronics recycle place sets them aside for me. Plus, when the kids let the magic blue smoke out of the thing, I've got piles of free boards that they can rebuild on -- so they don't have to be on pins and needles when wiring up stuff on a breadboard like they do with SOC platforms. Want to power your stepper from the 12v rail? SURE! Go ahead, figure out which one it is and solder wires right to the mobo if you want. If you screw up, or it doesn't work out, no worries, have another board!
Now I'm starting to get boxes donated that don't have parallel ports. They're basically useless because serial is such a shit to work with for beginners: Newbies shouldn't have to run data through a modem (RS232) and decode a binary stream just to make blinken-lights. You can get a single circuit from a serial port by using the DTR (data transmission ready) pin as a data output. Indeed, certain drivers for LIRC [Linux Infrared Control] are actually programmed to use a resistor and LED soldered between a serial port's DTR pin and ground. My own IR projects use DR-DOS though because LIRC is a PITA to maintain, the docs suck, and it doesn't work with just any old kernel build. Meanwhile, my two decade old assembly program for controlling the TV / VCR / DVD / Sound System / Projector with DR-DOS still works with no issues or recompilation on the most recent DR-DOS (and FreeDOS) installs.
Thanks to the (much derided) backwards compatibility of x86 you can still install DR-DOS on just about any new x86 or x86-64 machine (so long as that toxic "secure boot" crap can be disabled). Your 512 byte boot sector (last 2 bytes being 55h, AAh) still gets placed at 07C0h in memory and executed by BIOS in 16bit mode, and that's all a DOS needs to get going. Programs that are very small (like most beginner stuff) can just be compiled without any libs and written to the first sector of a drive. You'd be amazed how much faster a boot it is than waiting for a "modern" OS to load. As their projects get bigger I have kids install DR-DOS and compile / load the program with that. By the time they've made something fun they also understand how operating systems work (and are thus frustrated as hell with the batshit designs of every new OS they encounter, heh).
There's something about being able to develop and modify on the actual robot you're building that "just clicks" with kids. Otherwise, when teaching on "modern" OSs, my best answer to the inevitable question, "But why do I have to rebuild the kernel just to X?" is "This is one of many proofs that Satan exists: The devil is in the details."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @06:59PM
If your free pc's don't have parallel ports, they probably still have the ISA bus -- so buy a cheap board to plug in. Here's one of many, www.bonanza.com/listings/Achieve-Parallel-printer-port-8-bit-isa-db25-vintage/378657869
Or -- maybe those motherboards have parallel port pins, just not connected to a socket??
Separate old story -- In the early 80s, someone gave my brother an S-100 bus box with Z-80 processor board. It was originally bought for project that was going to connect a bunch of dumb terminals and when that project fell through it was surplussed. It came with 8 RS232 serial ports (2 S-100 boards, 4 ports each). He wanted some parallel IO to control something and used most of the 8 DTR lines! Worked fine.