:
:
:
: >>DOS was originally QDOS, an OS written by someone other than Bill Gates.
: >>QDOS stood for Quick and Dirty Operating System. Mr. Gates soon adapted
: >>this OS into his own scheme and came up with DOS. DOS is today, what it
: >>was then... a quick and dirty OS, and does very well IMHO.
:
: >QDOS? I learn something new every day. I thought the basic design
: >was from CP/M (which came from RT-11).
:
: >I'll give Bill Gates credit for lots of stuff...but I really don't
: >like the design of DOS.
:
: The reference to QDOS is incorrect. There is a seperate company that
: made a DOS utility which holds a trademark on the name QDOS and I'm
: sure Bill Gates would have had his laywers pounce on them if he had
: previously used the name (and he would have been totally justified).
: If I remember corretly (and I don't have my books readliy available at
: the moment so if somebody else wants to jump in here and
: verify/correct this...) Gates started with a base product rooted in
: CP/M from Seattle Computer Products.
DOS, as Microsoft bought it, was originally created by Tim Patterson of
Seattle Computer Products, and it was originally called QDOS (Yes - for
"Quick and Dirty Operating System"). But it was renamed SCP-DOS, and then
86-DOS, before SCP sold it to Gates. People tend to remember QDOS because
it seems the most appropriate.
CP/M, on the other hand, a product of Gary Kildall's Digital Research, was
an 8-bit operating system for Intel 8080 and Zilog Z-80 based systems. It
was not ported to x86 until some time after DOS was released. But
QDOS/SCP-DOS/86-DOS (a 16-bit OS) was designed to be very much like CP/M
to simplify porting of CP/M applications to DOS.
Hope this clears some things up.
-Erik
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