CP/M died because... flying!

denverpilot

denverpilot

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Video is fairly dumb (misses a bunch of much better OSes) but at number 9, the story goes that the guy who needed to pitch CP/M to IBM, missed the meeting because he wanted to take his wife flying...

And we got Microsoft DOS instead.


There’s a link to the podcast embedded where supposedly a friend of the guy says so.

Dang pilots. LOL.
 
CP/M was my favorite OS.

All function calls could be documented on an ordinary 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper.
 
I still have a copy or two of CP/M. And a computer to run it.
 
This was a myth. IBM came to meet with Digital Research, but since they hadn't indicated why, Gary Kildall left his wife to deal with them while he flew his plane to deliver software to another company. However, his absence wasn't the end of the negotiations between the two companies with and Gary did join the meeting on his return. Rumors had it that things fell apart over a non-disclosure agreement IBM wanted, but that is not known for certain.

So the silly video above gets even the lore wrong.
 
Every couple of years I get tempted to either buy or, more likely, build myself a CP/M machine. On alternating years I start looking for PDP-11 hardware to build a RSTS-E system. Not a simulator, but an honest to goodness PDP, like the one that got me addicted to playing Adventure and snowballed into what has become a 40-plus year career.

Then I realize tat I have neither the time, nor the space, nor the patience to do any such thing, and even if I did it would be one more thing my wife and kids will have to get rid of when I croak. I used to shake my head in bafflement when the old geezers told me they didn't even want to see a computer once they stopped work at whatever ungodly hour we were able to finish up. Now I'm one of those geezers, and I get it.

People sometimes say, "Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life". I think it's more often, "Do what you love, and pretty soon even that will just be another gigantic pain in the ass that you hope you never have to do again."

:) </grump>
 
Holy crap, and I thought *I* was a dinosaur!
 
I’ve always thought MS-DOS was bought/stolen from Seattle Computer by Gates & Co. CP/M as written would have needed significant updating to run on the pseudo 16 bit 8088 anyway.
 
TRS-DOS Radio Shack Model 3 double disc drive 1983.
Had friends who wrote my accounting software for the farm. Had a shareware called "Twin"
For spreadsheet work Fun times .
Made book keeping fun and bankers happy with the printouts.
 
denverpilot said:
Can still buy those.
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They’re not cheap, surprisingly they still use the old printer cables:
6ed4e95a12478a023abb23bd2bfe0536.jpg
 
FormerHangie said:
Whippersnappers, all of you. I started out with punch cards.
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Hollerith, you say? Me, too. I used paper tape at my first computer job - at Beech. Walter had passed, but his widow still owned and ran the company.
 
Crashnburn said:
Hollerith, you say? Me, too. I used paper tape at my first computer job - at Beech. Walter had passed, but his widow still owned and ran the company.
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I started on a 33 ASR and paper tape, went to punch cards, then 8" floppies, 5, 3, and on to where we are today. Seems I might have used some old HP thing that used magnetic cards, too long ago to remember details.

There was one class in college that involved IBM tape, but that, too, is long gone.
 
FormerHangie said:
Whippersnappers, all of you. I started out with punch cards.
Click to expand...

Pffft! So did I... I remember using a marker to diagonally mark the cards....in case they were dropped.
Before that I also remember having to manually key in the boot program to get the computer going (PDP 8 I think)....
So get off my lawn!
 
punch cards? bah, jumpers and switches.

(>-{
 
GaryM said:
Slide rule
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This this thread is already on a tangent, I'll tell my slide rule story.

Back around 1983 or so, I was working for the U.S.Army Ballistic Research Laboratory. We had lots of older scientists and even some of the early computer guys (one of my machine rooms had been the site of the original ENIAC computer). Anyhow, my boss's secretary decided she would take an introduction to computer science course at the local community college and was studying the first chapter of the book for an exam. It was on the history of computing. She's reading "Napier's bones are a sliderule-like device." I look at her and ask, "You have no idea what a slide rule is, do you?" She didn't.

So, while I had some at home, I figure somebody in this building full of scientists still has one hiding in a back drawer somewhere. I canvas the building and while everybody will admit to owning one at home, nobody still had one in their office. No problem, I figure. As a joke, we had one of these six-foot long classroom ones sitting in our computer room as a backup to the processor. I drag the thing up to this girl's office and show her how it gets used (explaining that most weren't quite this large).

I never had to use a slide rule in anger (other than the E6). By the time I started doing those calculations, we had the electronic calculators, starting with those big Wang things with the nixie tubes but quickly progressing to pocket calculators. We had a plaque in the ENIAC machine room comparing its processing power to that of the then-current HP65 calculator.

It has been my job at two places I have worked to get rid of the card processing equipment. THere's still a program drum from a 029 sitting on my desk (next to my WWII German Type 25 bomb fuse (watched Danger UXB a few too many times I guess). I've also got a "card gauge" around somewhere and a "card file" (a sort of hacksaw thing for cutting jammed cards out of equipment.
 
flyingron said:
It has been my job at two places I have worked to get rid of the card processing equipment. THere's still a program drum from a 029 sitting on my desk (next to my WWII German Type 25 bomb fuse (watched Danger UXB a few too many times I guess). I've also got a "card gauge" around somewhere and a "card file" (a sort of hacksaw thing for cutting jammed cards out of equipment.
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I managed to avoid most of the PCM (punched card machines) work back when I was working as a field service engineer. The 029 was mostly gone, other than the Army -- but PCM repair was a separate MOS, thank goodness. I did work on 129s some, as well as the I-forget-what-model 96 column equivalent that the S/3 shops used. I did an awful lot of work on reader/punches attached to mainframes, though. The 2540 was one hell of a machine.

I have a core array from a 2821 control unit hanging on the wall - a whopping 1600 bits of hand-strung storage intended to store the print train image for a 1403 printer. Good times.
 
The DAY I graduated in engineering............was the day HP announced the HP-35, which changed the world.
 
asicer said:
I always find it fascinating that computer-related threads always seem to devolve into everyone competing to be the oldest geezer.
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So much better than what we see so much of now.

"Johnny is so interested in computers, he'll probably work in IT when he grows up!"

Translation:

"Johnny spends every waking moment glued to my old cell phone playing video games and watching Minecraft videos on YouTube, and even though he has not the slightest concept of how any of this stuff works we're hopeful that someone will pay him to be a professional video gamer some day".

Besides, it's the same with aviation threads, isn't it?
 
asicer said:
I always find it fascinating that computer-related threads always seem to devolve into everyone competing to be the oldest geezer.
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Think about it. It's great to lose that competition.

(or should I say "loose"?)
 
asicer said:
I always find it fascinating that computer-related threads always seem to devolve into everyone competing to be the oldest geezer.
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That seems to be a POA anomaly.

It’s really clear the vast majority here aren’t doing anything modern in IT other than a small handful.

And half of those are just managers and nowhere even close to hands-on. LOL. :)

I figured it out when I asked about modern laptop tech a while back and got responses that ten year old machines (or newer MacBooks with ten year old guts) were doing fine. Haha.

(Which doesn’t surprise me for most users really...)

Rich’s thread on video editing boxes and maybe the FS2020 threads have come the closest to modern around here in years. :)
 
There are those who are actually up to speed on a lot of things, just can't really discuss any of it. What I did in my previous lives is open for discussion. Plus, it was a hell of a lot more interesting.
 
DaleB said:
There are those who are actually up to speed on a lot of things, just can't really discuss any of it. What I did in my previous lives is open for discussion. Plus, it was a hell of a lot more interesting.
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A few. Yup. Same problem here. LOL. Industry wide problem really.

The first rule of Fight Club...

Unfortunately the amount of proactive training and teaching of how to avoid the problems up front at the code creation stage, is dinky compared to the number of people making a fortune off of pretending they’re stopping things after they’ve already occurred...

Lots of young highly interested developers who’d love an (expensive) in-depth course on writing secure code. Way out of the price range for the vast majority of businesses and individuals. Not to mention the number of lawyers involved once anybody wants to share source code outside of most entities to a third-party... to analyze it for real.

A certain gov agency may or may not be beating the crap out of some of my servers today. :) Nice folks. Be interesting to see what they figure out if anything... :)

Just another Monday... have 50 plus servers to drop some new monitoring and response software on this week. The current stuff false alarms nicely for a price tag annually more than multiple cars. Ha. Signal to noise ratio is pretty awful but at least it’s consistent in its mediocrity! :)
 
denverpilot said:
A certain gov agency may or may not be beating the crap out of some of my servers today. :) Nice folks. Be interesting to see what they figure out if anything... :)
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Were they wearing white hats or black? :)
 
I'm fortunate to be old enough/young enough and with dad's background to have witnessed some interesting changes in computing.

When I was 4yo, dad taught me wire board programming on an IBM 402 accounting machine.

Don't remember anything about it, but I was told that I caught on like a 4yo would.

When I was 15 yo, I got into CP/M, and dad left IBM to start a family-owned computer biz. We had a great time. Other exposures included 3Com multiuser DOS for NorthStar computers, Novell Netware, SCO Unix/Xenix, etc.etc.etc. I still consider a 9-pin RS-232 connector to be the "new one".

It's been a fun trip so far. However, I do see innovation slowing down, and it's becoming lately disappointing.
 
I started with computers in 1969. IBM System 360/67 running the WATFOR compiler for Fortran. Senior in high school. Later on we shifted to the WATFIV compiler. Either punch cards at the computer center on the WSU campus or CRBE (Conversational Remote Batch Entry system) using the teletype in the basement of the high school, or other places on campus. When CRBE was shut down while I was in college I had the oldest file on it, a program I had written for the chemistry department at WSU. Good old PV-nRT.

I really liked the VMS operating system on the VAX 11/780 when I worked for Martin Marietta Denver Aerospace. Then Guardian on the various Tandem systems when I worked for them. Now I'm just one of many who are convinced that the government doesn't allow access to nuclear weapons to civilians because otherwise Redmond, WA (home of MS) would glow in the dark. :p
 
Martin Marietta
Ghery said:
I started with computers in 1969. IBM System 360/67 running the WATFOR compiler for Fortran. Senior in high school. Later on we shifted to the WATFIV compiler. Either punch cards at the computer center on the WSU campus or CRBE (Conversational Remote Batch Entry system) using the teletype in the basement of the high school, or other places on campus. When CRBE was shut down while I was in college I had the oldest file on it, a program I had written for the chemistry department at WSU. Good old PV-nRT.

I really liked the VMS operating system on the VAX 11/780 when I worked for Martin Marietta Denver Aerospace. Then Guardian on the various Tandem systems when I worked for them. Now I'm just one of many who are convinced that the government doesn't allow access to nuclear weapons to civilians because otherwise Redmond, WA (home of MS) would glow in the dark. :p
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Martin Marietta used tandem? Interesting.
 
Salty said:
Martin Marietta

Martin Marietta used tandem? Interesting.
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No, I left MMC (MMA?) for Tandem in October 1983. At MMC (MMA) I used a VAX 11/780 and a Cyber 176. Please don't get me started on how user hostile the NOS operating system on the Cyber 176 was, especially as administered by Martin Marietta Data Systems.

Why did Martin Marietta change their abbreviation from MMC to MMA? They claimed it was from Martin Marietta Corporation to Martin Marietta Aerospace. Those of us who worked there were sure that the real reason was that MMC also stood for Mickey Mouse Club. :p
 
Rgbeard said:
I'm
When I was 4yo, dad taught me wire board programming on an IBM 402 accounting machine.
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I learned this in high school and it was pretty obsolete then (class of 77).
 
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