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IBM and CP/M

dmemphis

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We all know the lore of the Gates vs Kildall vie for the PC OS.
The stories told leave one assuming that IBM had no prior contact with Digital Research before
approaching him for CP/M for the Chess project.
But this can't be true, can it, as CP/M was offered for the DisplayWriter.
The DisplayWriter was announced in 1980, I believe. Perhaps CP/M-86 was arranged
for it prior to that? Or did it come later?
If it was 1980-ish then IBM was very aware of DR and CP/M and should not have
required Gates to do the introduction.
Something wrong here with the "history"?
 
We all know the lore of the Gates vs Kildall vie for the PC OS.
The stories told leave one assuming that IBM had no prior contact with Digital Research before
approaching him for CP/M for the Chess project.
But this can't be true, can it, as CP/M was offered for the DisplayWriter.
The DisplayWriter was announced in 1980, I believe. Perhaps CP/M-86 was arranged
for it prior to that? Or did it come later?
If it was 1980-ish then IBM was very aware of DR and CP/M and should not have
required Gates to do the introduction.
Something wrong here with the "history"?

Not having "been in the room" I can only repeat the lore.

IBM went to Microsoft to do the ROM stuff - BIOS and basic and they went to DRI for the OS. DRI did not deliver the OS on time so they went back to M$.

Yes DRI was in from the start but did not deliver a working CP/M fast enough.


Randy
 
As a former IBMer working in Boca at the time, even if IBM did have prior dealings with DRI, the PC was a skunkworks project that did not leverage any deals that other IBM divisions had at the time.
 
That helps. thanks.
I can see then how Chess would have to approach the parties separately from any prior negotiations... separate NDAs etc.
 
If you look at a different Sept. 1982 issue of InfoWorld, you will see that the primary push behind Display Writer CP/M was a company called Veritas which had a dream of creating a store solely for Display Writer + CP/M-86. It was not a financial success.

CP/M-86 was released roughly 6 months after CP/M-86 for the PC which was released on April 26, 1986.

Edit: The CP/M-86 announcement talks about it being restricted to only 2 physical disk drives. Is that correct because I thought classic CP/M wasn't restricted like that?
 
Last edited:
Edit: The CP/M-86 announcement talks about it being restricted to only 2 physical disk drives. Is that correct because I thought classic CP/M wasn't restricted like that?

The 1986 date seems a bit late--I'll have to check on that.

But the 2 drive limit could have been with the supplied CBIOS, which may not have come with source.
 

I could believe that there were people at least at first within IBM agreeable to making the Displaywriter a personal computer CP/M system. The IBM Retail outlets their "Customer Centers" sold Displaywriters on the floor just before and long after the IBM PC came out. It was an almost PC and could have been made into a business computer if they wanted it that way. I remember IBM supported the Displaywriters in 1987, when I worked there...although at that time they were pretty much done. There were still a lot of support requests, Displaywriter training classes, etc.
 
If you look at a different Sept. 1982 issue of InfoWorld, you will see that the primary push behind Display Writer CP/M was a company called Veritas which had a dream of creating a store solely for Display Writer + CP/M-86. It was not a financial success.

I guess Veritas was one of many losers in the CP/M-DOS wars. They also had CP/M-86 running in the TRS-80 Model II/16 with their Dual Processor Option (DPO) board. But, that was also a failure. One reason being they could not get it working properly in the subsequent Model 12 and it's descendants.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3308843/TRS-80/Model16VeritasArticle.pdf
 
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