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posted by n1 on Friday August 05 2016, @03:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the troubled-genius dept.

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 Unfortunately Gary's passion for life also manifested in a struggle with alcoholism, and we feel that the unpublished preface and later chapters do not reflect his true self.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.

additional coverage:


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  • (Score: 2) by martyb on Friday August 05 2016, @04:36PM

    by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 05 2016, @04:36PM (#384523) Journal

    Nice to meet someone else who had worked on an IMSAI 8080!

    I was working at a lab which made various diagnostic tests. Accounting software, among other things, was running on CP/M [www.gaby.de] on their IMSAI 8080 [wikipedia.org]. I remember the first time I read through the documentation thinking that it looked familiar... I had previous experience using a DEC PDP-8 [wikipedia.org] and then a PDP-11 [wikipedia.org] — remember PIP (peripheral interchange program)? The IMSAI had 8-inch floppy disks with a write-enable tab, IIRC. And then it appeared in the movie "War Games"... fun times, indeed.

    Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

    --
    Wit is intellect, dancing.
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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday August 06 2016, @06:54AM

    by anubi (2828) on Saturday August 06 2016, @06:54AM (#384711) Journal

    The last thing I had bought for my IMSAI was a pair of CALCOMP100 8 inch drives, and an FD1771 controller. That was when I was finally giving into commercial software ( aka CP/M ). No sooner than I finally had that beast functional, the company I worked for at the time got one of the first IBM PC's.

    Back then, they actually put the source code of the software, AND the schematic diagram of the machine in the technical manual!

    I felt like I knew everything about my machine. If it broke, I could always go get my oscilloscope and find the hung line or chip that did not do what it was supposed to do.

    These new machines.... well I feel I am in a tiny neighborhood I know reasonably well in a huge city. Move me a couple of miles over and I am lost.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]