History Of The Microcomputer Revolution
IBM had been watching the emerging PC marketplace. By 1980 the company
had made a couple feeble attempts at their own PC products. One was the
IBM 5100 computer which was a big desktop with a tiny screen, and the Datamaster
- another future failure. IBM also had entertained the notion of buying
the game company Atari and its early PC line.
IBM's chairman at the time decided to take a different approach, and gathered
a group of the company's renegade successful managers - wild ducks in IBM-speak
- to start a project code named the Manhattan project. Its mission was
to explore building a PC that the market really wanted, and to try to end
the embarrassment of the world's largest computer company being beaten
out by long haired kids and unknown tiny startup companies, and to build
it in a non-IBM company way. The IBM team approached Microsoft under pretense
of doing a market survey, requesting Microsoft to sign a non-disclosure
agreement which would enable IBM to disavow the meeting ever happened -
(Mission Impossible tactics) - and asked Bill Gates for his opinions on
what a PC should have and do. Gates had no problem with IBM's secrecy,
and had many opinions as to what a PC should be like.
His ideas included using the new Intel 8086 16 bit processor for better
performance, and desiring the computer to have better graphics and several
other features not found in the current generation of PC's. IBM soon returned
with the admission that they were interested in building their own PC and
were considering using many of Gates' ideas. They asked if Microsoft would
be able to write a special version of Basic for this PC project - they
wanted Basic to be in a ROM chip in the computer. Microsoft had already
written a version of Basic for Intel for their new 8086 processor, and
readily agreed. This new generation PC would need an operating system,
so naturally Gates told IBM to contact his friend Gary Kildall at Digital
Research - who had written CP/M. Digital Research already had plans to
develop a new operating system - CP/M for the 8086 - named CP/M 86.
Herein lies one of the most interesting stories of the microcomputer revolution.
There are many war stories about this incident - including how Kildall
deliberately kept IBM waiting while he flew his private plane - or how
he refused to sign IBM's non-disclosure agreement. Gary Kildall had his
own different story of exactly what happened here also - but the net result
was that IBM wrote him off as a potential partner and returned to Microsoft
still looking for an operating system. Wanting desperately to be part of
this new project, Microsoft committed to writing the operating system also
- although they had never written one before.
Fate smiled on Microsoft twice in these proceedings. First, IBM was somewhat
leery of dealing with what they considered a somewhat flakey tiny software
company, but it turns out that in addition to Microsoft's proven reputation
as a viable language vendor, Mary Gates - Bill's mom - had served on the
national board of United Way with one of the involved IBM senior executives
- providing the validating social reference that they were working with "Mary's Gates' boy Bill".
The second fateful event was even more interesting and involves yet another
Washington State connection in the microcomputer revolution.
Microsoft soon realized that they knew nothing about writing an operating
system and began to panic, but someone remembered talking to a Seattle
hardware hacker who had already built a prototype computer using the new
Intel 8086 and who had mentioned he was tired of waiting for Digital Research
- so he had gone ahead and written his own operating system for it.
Ironically, this individual - whose name was Tim Patterson - had previously
talked to Microsoft employees and had been very interested in the File
Allocation method that Microsoft Basic used. Patterson worked for a local
company named Seattle Computer Products and had indeed written his own
operating system for his prototype 8086-based computer which incorporated
a similar File Allocation system for disk management - and he had named
it QDOS - for quick and dirty operating system.
Next week on Raw Bytes we'll talk about what
many have called the deal of the century, and we'll learn about what impact
IBM's new PC had on the world.
For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney
Copyright © 1995 MTA Micro Technology Associates
Frank Delaney
928 E. Thurston Spokane, WA 99203 (509) 624-7286/7230
Raw Bytes Computer News - KPBX FM 91.1 National Public Radio
In computer news this week (April 27, 1995):
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Copyright © 1997-2006 William Thomas Sanderson.
Portions Copyright © 1995 MTA Micro Technology Associates
Frank Delaney
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