>James,

>My recollection was that Seattle Computing had already done the initial port, which was what made their work have value. Gate & Ballmer had sent IBM to Gary Kildall of CP/M fame and apparently he was off flying his airplane and/or his wife insulted the fellows from IBM. They returned to Gates and seeing the opportunity promised to meet IBM's needs - afterwhich they found their answer at Seattle COmputing. Additionally, in later years Seattle COmputing sued MSFT for apparently not paying them - perhaps seeing an opportunity to make oodles of $$. They lost and from what I remember ended up with only the original 50,000.00. That has to hurt. <g> MSFT on the other hand made oodles since every license sold sent them $$.

Doug;

There was a show on PBS a few years ago about this topic. Somehow, I thought it was 8 bit CP/M, but I could be wrong. IBM heard about Microsoft because of the S-100 card, which had CP/M and Basic on board. IBM thought Microsoft owned CP/M and wanted an operating system for the IBM PC, then under development.

Two men were sent from IBM to talk to Bill Gates, and Gates told them Gary Kildall, owned CP/M. The two men from IBM went to Pacific Grove, California, to visit Gary Kildall, but when they knocked at the door, Gary’s wife refused to talk to them as she was advised by their attorney. The men returned to Microsoft and an offer was discussed using the work being done by Seattle Computing, for Microsoft. A contract for a fixed amount was signed, with no additional royalties. . Too bad for Microsoft they did not do it on a per copy basis.

What Seattle Computing had done was to take CP/M, with the user manual, and copy it line by line. Why Gary Kildall did not sue Seattle Computing, is a mystery to me. This was not “look and feel” stuff I am talking about.

I remember Gary Kildall and his wife were making $17 million a year from their kitchen table, suppling the needs of CP/M for the S-100. When the IBM PC was released, Gary Kildall, sold CP/M for the IBM PC at about three times more than the Microsoft supplied O/S for the PC. Guess who won the battle of sales?

By the way, Gary Kildall, wrote the original version of CP/M, while a consultant at Intel, for that company. Intel decided to not use CP/M, so Gary asked if he could own it and Intel agreed.

Something I feel about Bill Gates based upon this story (there are many more details), he is fair but he will not let an opportunity go by.

Microsoft also wrote the first version of IBM OS, which was written to IBM’s specifications, and not what Microsoft had envisioned. Microsoft then went off on its own to write Windows 286, 386 (how I loved those-you think DOS is bad?), 3.0, etc.

Was it January 1996 when IBM introduced OS 2, Red and Blue? A week later, IBM had a new President who stated: “IBM will give no support to the new OS 2”!


Tom