The DOS story

                                   

                    Disk Operating System

The definition for Disk Operating System? It is a name given to an operating system.

Questions is what did we have before Operating Systems came and what is main function.

 

The thing is computers were using binary numbers 10 or machine language to get instructions. Thing is machine language was difficult and there was an interface needed between humans and the computer. A simpler one that is.

 

So who invented 1^st Operating System?

Early Mainframes did not have operating systems. If you are wondering what a mainframe is? Mainframes are computers with high capabilities.  They are designed to process 1 trillion transactions per second!  IBM was connected with early mainframes.

The 1^st Operating System was GM-NAA I/O, developed by GM in 1956. But we are interested in Personal computers. (PC).

Personal computers (PC)

The first PC came out in 1975 as kits. Then 1977, lots of OS came.

• Apple II
• TRS-80 by RadioShack. I thought these guys were famous for just calculators.
• PET by Commodore
• CP/Mby Digital Research.

 

 

So we are interested in CP/M. It stands for Control Program/Montor was developed by Gray Kidall of Digital Research in 1974.

 

Seattle Computer Products or SCP was a company who started making their own Operation System.

Tim Paterson a programmer with SCP was building CP/M” like Operating system from Scratch in assembly from 8086 platform.

They called it QDOS or “Quick and Dirty Disk Operating System” or they named it philosophically (in our opinion).  This was similar to Gary’s CP/M.

QDOS became functional by July 1980 and was later renamed to 86-DOS.

Take a break here

The guys who started it all was IBM.  We learn from this story is important. It is not just building great technology but Information is the key.

Tech companies could learn much from this story.

Bill Gates was known for Programming Languages in the market.

He knew three languages by the time he finished Harvard:

• Basic
• Fortran
• LISP

Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft in 1975. Their revenue in 1976 was 16,000 US$ and by 1978 make a revenue of 1 Million Dollars.

The Year 1977, Apple II was introduced and PC market was worth 2 billion Dollars.

IBM sees this as, now it is time to get into PC business.

IBM a big company then had a PC assembled. They originally into make main frames.

By 1980 IBM saw PC industry as not just something of a hobby but real business.

At that time neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates were not that big names except guys who were experts with technical things and programming.

Except Steve, since Apple was well known then. IBM had made the PC but thing was, they needed software to run it.

In 1980 Bill Gates is asked by IBM to make them an Operating system. Well thing is Bill Gates at time was not making any operating system or was he interested.

Forwards IBM to Digital Research

Bill Gates referred to his friend’s company Digital Research who was making Operating Systems.

His name was Gary Kildall.

Gary had built first universal operating system by 1971 and marketed by 1972 by name of CP/M.

His company was making a revenue of 5.4 Million Dollars per Year. At that time Gary was much richer than Bill Gates.

Bill Gates call his friend Gary and says:

“Gary, I’ve got some people coming around to visit, treat them right, they’re important guys.”

Bill could not go into the details because, he had signed an NDA Agreement with IBM.

The NDA agreement with Bill Gates was like this:

“IBM is allowed to take any and all information and do whatever they want with it, and the other party must keep everything a secret; you cannot even disclose that you met with IBM.”

 

  The meeting with IBM and Digital Research

In 1980 total revenue of IBM was 3.65 Billion US$.

Gary went of flying with jet since he did not take Bill Gates call seriously. Programmers are sometimes eccentric!

IBM businessman with black suits come to Digital Research and Gary is not there.

The IBM guys wanted Gary’s wife to sign a NDA document (Non-Disclosure Agreement).

She refuses and IBM’s MIB goes back, angry at Gary.

This was missing the deal of the century!

The lesson we learn here are:

• Do not be proud.
• Give respect where it is due, even if other person is perceived much less than you.

Gary did not it was IBM who was coming to visit and thought was one of the tech companies.

But nevertheless the IT world needs to pay respects to the pioneer of Operating Systems.

Microsoft’s first meeting with IBM team.

 

Part 2

The man from IBM team was Jack Sams, the head of Microsoft team.

Jack calls Bill Gates on July 21, 1980 :” Don’t get too excited, and don’t think anything big is about to happen,”

The two persons in Microsoft with business Education were Bill Gates and Steve Balmer.

Bill Gates came out personally to meet Sams and his two companions from IBM. At that time Gates was 24 years old but looked much younger. (Sam had thought Gates was the office boy, as his physique was of a 12 year old.)

Jack Sams and his team were impressed with what they saw and decided gave NDA for Bill Gates to sign.

At that time PC used two processor:

• MOS 6502 or
• Zilog Z80

William Lowe was the given go ahead for the IBM PC. He is known as “father of the PC”. The code name given for the IBM PC project was Project Chess.

 

Microsoft had introduced its first hardware: Z80 Soft Card. This card enabled users to choose from either:

• MOS 6502 CPU
• Z 80 CPU.

Apple had at that time Apple II which was running MOS 6502 CPU.

The Operating System CP/M ran only on Z 80 CPU.

Thereby Apple was missing business applications running on CP/M.

On Other hand using Microsoft’s Z80 Soft card would enable users to get benefit of both.

• Educational programs, Games, Graphics  of Apple
• Business applications of CP/M

Now Soft Card was shipped with CP/M, Sam thought Microsoft owned CP/M.

Gates explained CP/M was owned by Digital research. It was owned by Gary Kildall.

There was an unwritten understanding between Gary Kildall and Bill Gates. Gates would stay out of operating systems and Kildall would stay out of languages.

 

As discussed briefly earlier in Part 1, Gates directs Sams to Kildall for CP/M.

Z80 ran on CP/M Operating System, so Sams need more than license from Digital Research.

 

The Personality of both Technocrats

Bill Gates and team represented a professional talented team who would work real hard in achieving in providing good service. Not all that Bill gates presented himself humbly’’ in presence of Sams and IBM Team.

In contrast Gary Kildall who was an exceptionally good programmer who was happy to work with IBM but not to be presented as someone who is bowing down ‘.

It might be understandable since revenue of DR was 4.5 Million Dollars(US$) per year compared to Microsoft’s 1 Million + Dollars per year. Pride played a major part.

George Eubanks, the Vice President of Digital would later on go to say

The differences between Bill and Gary were just striking. Bill saw an opportunity, he would drive, he’d commit, he  ‘d probably over commit, no problem. Gary was like, “I don’t care, I ‘m Digital Research. You deal with me, and you deal with me on my terms.”

 

 

 

Microsoft’s second meeting with IBM

 

Finally IBM executives meet Gary but damage was done as:

• Gary was not at home when IBM team came first time.
• They waited long and finally Gary’s wife Dorothy (in charge of business side) finally signed the NDA. The NDA stated that Digital research cannot say IBM executives came to visit them or share any information of the meeting with anyone.
• DR wanted royalty whilst IBM wanted buy whole operating system.
• CP/M was already selling 8 bit CP/M OS.  A 16 bit OS could not be developed in the time frame wanted by IBM.

In words of Jack Sams (IBM):

“IBM just couldn’t get Kildall to agree to spend the money to develop a 16-bit version of CP/M in the tight schedule IBM required.”

 

Gary wanted to sell the operating system CP/M on royalty basis but IBM wanted to buy whole thing.

So IBM team walks, certainly not pleased.

Sams comes back to Microsoft and as things did not go smoothly with Digital Research.

Bill Gates did not want to give Gary a second chance.

Bill asks Sam’s  :

“Do you want to buy it [IBM] or do you want me [Microsoft] to buy it?”

 

IBM discussed operating system with Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Kay Nishi. The man most enthusiastic in getting Microsoft in the Operating System business was Kay Nishi, because Bill Gates was not interested in going to the OS business.

Paul Allen knew someone called Tim Patterson of Seattle Computer (SCP).

“There’s a local company here in CL called CL Computer Products by a guy named Tim Patterson and he had done an operating system a very rudimentary operating system that was kind of like CPM.”- Paul Allen.

Tim Patterson, who originally was working as technician for a customer of SCP.

The customer was Retail Computer Store and Rod Brock, owner of SCP frequently visited the store.

Tim was at that time student of University of Washington.

According to Tim:

“I got to know Rod Brock of Seattle Computer when he came into the store periodically. We were selling his boards. Eventually he asked me to consult for Seattle Computer.”

Come to think of it many people wanting to study in the United States do not consider this university.

There must be something special about this university allowing students to ultimately develop their talents and creativity.

—Tech Know Simply.

University of Washington has given alumni such as:

• Bruce Lee
• Gary Kildall, inventor of CP/M. A variant was MS DOS by Tim Patterson.
• Tim Patterson

‘’’ Rod Brock hired me in June 1978, at fifty dollars a day, to make the board work. I left the retail computer store at that time.”

 

Tim Patterson after graduating joins Seattle Computer Products. (SCP).

At this time all pcs were using 8 bit processor. Tim convinced his boss at SCP Rod to develop a computer system for the new chip.

The SCP 8086” computer” needed:

• An Operating System to run it.

 

 

They were already using Microsoft BASIC Language as this only available software.

The only company providing an Operating System was Gary’s company, (Digital Research).

The thing was it worked with a 8080/85 processor with a 8 bit Operating System. They were working on a 16 bit Operating System. Tim had to wait until the 16 bit OS was ready by CP/M.

The 16 bit OS –CP/M was not ready by April, 1980.

Tim decides to make his own version of CP/M and called it QDOS, Quick and Dirty Operating System. Well the name suited, since Tim did copy the API calls of CP/M.

In summer of 1980, the name QDOs was dropped and changed to 86-DOS.

SCP were getting ready to sell 86-DOS and even gave out advertisements.

Microsoft’s agreement with SCP

Paul Allen calls SCP owner Rod and negotiates a licensing agreement of:

• Flat fee of 10,000 US$
• 15,000 US$ per company Microsoft licensed the OS to.
• SCP would grant non-exclusive license rights to Microsoft.
• SCP could not ask about customers to whom Microsoft was selling QDOS to.

Microsoft had right to sell and license the software. They paid 25,000 US$ for their 1^st customer for SCP. That was the last time to SCP was getting paid for customer of their OS.

This was Dec-1980.

In May 1981 –Tim leaves SCP and works for Microsoft.

July 1981- Microsoft buys whole of QDOS from SCP with a price of 50,000 US$.

86-DOS gets renamed to MS DOS.

Personal thoughts -TKS

 

I remember using GW-BASIC, (1988) then I did know belonged to Microsoft.

But heard about of Microsoft, was playing MS Simulator game on a DOS IBM PC AT (clone).

 

For a person wanting a career in Computer Science he/she should read books on:

• Steve Jobs biography
• Bill Gates   biography
• Apple Story
• Dos Story

Before deciding where to enroll in.

The IBM deal with Microsoft-A gross miscalculations on part of IBM.

Nov/Dec-1980

The miscalculations were on reading the clauses by IBM team.

IBM would pay Microsoft as follows:

• 45,000.00 US$   for the Operating System.
• 310,000.00 US$ for Programming languages.
• 75,000.00   US$ testing and consultation.

An agreement was signed with IBM and Microsoft but Bill Gates left a clause.

This clause is very important for the business development manager in a software company. No wonder I used to hear software development is 20% of the whole process.

The clause was Microsoft would provide IBM an operating system, named PC DOS.

Gates agreed to sell Operating System to IBM for much lower 50,000 US$ but it was non-exclusive royalty deal.

• This meant Microsoft could sell the OS to anybody they wanted.
• Every time IBM sells a PC with copy of QDOS in it, Microsoft would be paid royalty.

 

The IBM team failed to overlook above statement. Maybe they got overwhelmed that Gates treated IBM team with “Chai and Biscuits” whilst Digital Research did not even give them their due respect’ and had to wait 3 hours! (Author’s opinion).

Sams assumed the operating system came with the programming language and IBM owned the Operating System called PC DOS.

August 1981-Microsft licenses MS DOS to IBM as “PC DOS”.

The IBM PC 5150 PC was released on 12^th August 1981.

Gary was upset when he heard about it and IBM sensed legal infringement’ offering a solution.

IBM would provide both OS with the IBM PC and let the users decide. The thing was MS DOS was priced 40US$ and CP/M was priced at 240 US$.

This event secured the winner OF the PC business and next coming rich IT businessman.

IBM sold about 200,000 PC every month in the second year, generating 1 Billion US$ in revenue in 1^st year.

What Happened to Gary Kildall?

Well stay tuned for post of Gary, original inventor of PC operating System.

 

 

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Author: The Tech Kid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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