what would computers be like if gary kildall's wife hadn't told ibm to fuck off

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > what would computers be like if gary kildall's wife hadn't told ibm to fuck off

That Robot: Sep 16, 2004; ask me anything about robots; Buglord

there is an urban legend that gary killdall almost got his CP/M operating system on the IBM PC, but his wife told them to screw while he was flying his plane

if CP/M had been the primary os for the IBM PC and QDOS (and thus MS-DOS) never needed to exist, what would have happened?

I know there would probably be no bill and melinda gates foundation and probably no windows

what else?

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 22:50

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:09

That Robot: Sep 16, 2004; ask me anything about robots; Buglord

Agile Vector posted:

close thread weve reached the best post

not yet

I want to hear some crazy theories

like big-rear end smartphones with small CRTs and attached mechanical keyboards and poo poo

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 00:02

That Robot: Sep 16, 2004; ask me anything about robots; Buglord

im back with more kildall

imagine a command line os with even more 70s poo poo

that should be enough kildall to last us awhile

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 03:34

That Robot: Sep 16, 2004; ask me anything about robots; Buglord

Seamonster posted:

Dunno but Kildall did get to live the last few years of his life a pretty wealthy dude albeit not billionaire status.

dude fell off a ladder and died

such an inglorious death for a p cool guy

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 20:56

That Robot: Sep 16, 2004; ask me anything about robots; Buglord

Dr. Honked posted:

did any of you cunts ever have to use c/pm for actual work? i did. it was really bad

I would like to hear details please; im genuinely interested

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 20:57

That Robot: Sep 16, 2004; ask me anything about robots; Buglord

Gazpacho posted:

I Like How he threw a ragefit because U Wash had gates give a keynote at an event where he was also invited. guy just couldn't stand not to be at the center of things

so that's what it was? i thought it was coz he couldn't think if anything else that would be groundbreaking

# ¿ Dec 5, 2016 00:22

That Robot: Sep 16, 2004; ask me anything about robots; Buglord

Gazpacho posted:

there was also the episode where he decided he was going to destroy BASIC (and thereby gates) by releasing his own version of Logo which, while useful for teaching and scribbling, has the teeny problem of not being useful for anything else. when BASIC didn't immediately fall over dead he drew some cosmic conclusion about how corrupt hte industry was

haha holy poo poo

so just gave up and then got drunk and hit his head on a barstool? :sad:

# ¿ Dec 5, 2016 00:53

That Robot: Sep 16, 2004; ask me anything about robots; Buglord

Gazpacho posted:

according to reviews of dr logo, it was a CPM program but shipped with its own custom CPM on the disk that was incompatible with any stock version of CPM and furthermore didn't support FAT

lol that's a bug gary

fix the bug gary

fix it fix it fix it

oh wait you're dead lmbo

eschaton posted:

Apple would have won the majority of the personal computer market with the Mac, duh

GEM would not be in the position that Windows is in today because Digital Research didn't get prerelease Lisa and Mac access like Microsoft was able to leverage when developing Windows

GEM also wouldn't be in the position that Windows is in today because Apple was actually successful in suing Digital Research over it (the only reason the suit against Microsoft failed was that they had contracts with MS that appeared to allow the cloning)

Microsoft would still own the office desktop with Office, but it would be Mac-only just like it was for the first few years, and Gates would still be a multibillionaire as a result

this is the cool and good alternate timeline answer that I wasn't expecting

very detailed look into what could have been, plus gem

very good work eschaton

eschaton posted:

it was just a clone of RT-11 or RSTS or RTE or one of the other small DEC operating systems

should've gone the Alpha Micro route and cloned TOPS-10 or TOPS-20

how long ago was that? do you think any ancient cp/m boxes are still used by one or two luddites/crazy folk?

# ¿ Dec 6, 2016 00:51

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:09

That Robot: Sep 16, 2004; ask me anything about robots; Buglord

eschaton posted:

oh, I'm sure there are some, probably even some that are business-critical

Alpha Micro was late 1970s, they originally used the WD-16 CPU but switched to 68000 as soon as they were available and had an OS written

they were basically "micro-minicomputers" for things like small offices to use via a bunch of terminals; their competition was Xenix as much as it was the smallest minis from the established minicomputer companies, Xenix won though

Digital Research had a couple of operating systems in that category too, they had CP/M-68K for people with single-user 68000 systems (I think Atari ST was originally going to run that instead of their own awful DOS) and variants of MP/M for everything for multi-user systems

awesome thank you for the detailed answer

was MP/M anything like unix or was it basically just multiuser DOS?

also the idea of Xenix is hilarious because both MS and SCO worked on it

# ¿ Dec 8, 2016 16:44

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > what would computers be like if gary kildall's wife hadn't told ibm to fuck off