Date   : Thu, 30 Jul 1992 20:40:43 GMT
From   : taurus!hp850.mbari.org!hebo@lll-winken.llnl.gov (Bob Herlien)
Subject: Re: CP/M operating sys for intel machines?

In article <ERU.92Jul27171440@tnso04.tele.nokia.fi> eru@tnso04.tele.nokia.fi
(Erkki Ruohtula) writes:
>
>There was a system called CP/M-86, which in the beginning of PC:s
>looked like a viable competitor to MS-DOS, and was supplied with many

When the IBM PC first came out, CP/M-86 had, in theory, equal status with
PC-DOS.  It was licensed by IBM, and available on PC's as an IBM product.
However, Bill Gates managed to make a deal with IBM that resulted in the
retail price of DOS being about 1/4 of the retail price of CP/M-86.  As you
can imagine, very few copies of CP/M-86 were sold this way.  Digital Research
made an attempt to retail CP/M-86 through distribution channels at a competitive
price, but by then the market had decided that PC's were DOS machines.  The
rest is history.

>
>I presume CP/M-86 gradually evolved into the MS-DOS-compatible
>operating system DR-DOS that Digital Research sells these days

Well, yes and no.  In the beginning, there was CP/M.  CP/M begat CP/M-86
and MP/M.  MP/M and CP/M-86 begat MP/M-86.  MP/M-86 begat Concurrent CP/M-86.
Concurrent CP/M-86 begat Concurrent DOS.  All of this was done at the main
offices in Monterey.

Engineering of the Concurrent DOS product was then moved to the U.K. development
office outside London.  They enhanced this product for several years.
Eventually, they developed enough expertise in the internal workings of DOS
that they decided that they could successfully clone DOS.  This they did,
and called it DR-DOS.  It was not a deriviative of CDOS or CP/M-86, tho.

>successfully (I wonder whether DR-DOS can run any CP/M-86
>software?).

Concurrent CP/M-86 and some versions of Concurrent DOS could.  DR-DOS can't.

Bob Herlien
MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)
hebo@mbari.org
"Limit congressmen to two terms.  One in office.  One in jail."