OT CGW Article

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Ruatha:
Didn't they but DOS from another programmer/company in the beginning, and then reprogram it, not starting from scratch though?
But windows 1.0 was their original product wasn't it? The code I mean, if it was their ideas is up for discussion, let's not get into that!

Yes. Microsoft had produced some programs before IBM came to them, but not an OS. Only some BASIC interpreters. They agreed to supply IBM with an alternative OS to the CP/M they expected to field as their main choice. But the guy that owned CP/M wouldn't deal with IBM for some reason. He blew them off and MS got to be the main OS supplier for the PC. The way they got their OS ready in time to meet IBM's deadlne was to buy out some guy who'd already programmed an OS for the 8086 that he called 'QDOS' for 'Quick and Dirty OS'... As I recall, MS stopped paying him royalties after Version 3.1 or 3.3 or something like that because they had completely re-coded it. But he still made quite a bit of money for his 'Quick and Dirty' programming way back in the late 1970s...

[ July 28, 2003, 01:29: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]