Bill Gates and the IBM Connection

Called 'conniving Bill-derberger.' The baby-faced smirky Gates fellow with those lying, self-righteous power-crazed eyes was 'set up' with Microsoft and was groomed in a eugenicist family for one thing: population control and financing the NWO. - Zen Gardner, Faces of Evil that Rule the World, Before It's News, December 9, 2010

The History of the MS-DOS Operating Systems, Microsoft

July 24, 1996

Mary Bellis - On August 12, 1981, IBM introduced its new revolution in a box, the "Personal Computer" complete with a brand new operating system from Microsoft and a 16-bit computer operating system called MS-DOS 1.0.

"I don't think it's that significant." - Tandy president John Roach on IBM's entry into the microcomputer field

In 1980, IBM first approached Bill Gates and Microsoft, to discuss the state of home computers and Microsoft products. Gates gave IBM a few ideas on what would make a great home computer, among them to have Basic written into the ROM chip. Microsoft had already produced several versions of Basic for different computer system beginning with the Altair, so Gates was more than happy to write a version for IBM.

As for an operating system (OS) for the new computers, since Microsoft had never written an operating system before, Gates had suggested that IBM investigate an OS called CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers), written by Gary Kildall of Digital Research. Kindall had his Ph.D. in computers and had written the most successful operating system of the time, selling over 600,000 copies of CP/M, his OS set the standard at that time.

IBM tried to contact Kildall for a meeting, executives met with Mrs. Kildall who refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement. IBM soon returned to Bill Gates and gave Microsoft the contract to write the new operating system, one that would eventually wipe Kildall's CP/M out of common use.

The "Microsoft Disk Operating System" or MS-DOS was based on QDOS, the "Quick and Dirty Operating System" written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products, for their prototype Intel 8086 based computer.

QDOS was based on Gary Kildall's CP/M, Paterson had bought a CP/M manual and used it as the basis to write his operating system in six weeks, QDOS was different enough from CP/M to be considered legal.

Microsoft bought the rights to QDOS for $50,000, keeping the IBM deal a secret from Seattle Computer Products.

Gates then talked IBM into letting Microsoft retain the rights, to market MS DOS separate from the IBM PC project, Gates proceeded to make a fortune from the licensing of MS-DOS.

In 1981, Tim Paterson quit Seattle Computer Products and found employment at Microsoft.

Short History of MS-DOS

Leven Antov - Development of MSDOS/PCDOS began in October 1980, when IBM began searching the market for an operating system for the yet-to-be-introduced IBM PC.

IBM had originally intended to use Digital Research's (actually, they had the somewhat pretentious name of "Intergalactic Digital Research" at the time) CP/M was then the industry standard operating system - you either ran a BASIC with disk functions, someone's proprietary OS, or CP/M.

Folklore reports various stories about the rift between DRI and IBM. The most popular story claims Gary Kildall or DRI snubbed the IBM executives by flying his airplane when the meeting was scheduled. Another story claims Kildall didn't want to release the source for CP/M to IBM, which would be odd, since they released it to other companies. One noted industry pundit claims Kildall's wife killed the deal by insisting on various contract changes. I suspect the deal was killed by the good ol' boy network. It's hard to imagine a couple of junior IBM executives giving up when ordered to a task as simple as licensing an operating system from a vendor. It wouldn't look good on their performance reports. It would be interesting to hear IBM's story...

IBM then talked to a small company called Microsoft. Microsoft was a language vendor. Bill Gates and Paul Allen had written Microsoft BASIC and were selling it on punched tape or disk to early PC hobbyists, which was probably a step up from the company's original name and goal - they were Traf-O-Data before, making car counters for highway departments.

Microsoft had no 8086 real operating system to sell, but quickly made a deal to license Seattle Computer Products' 86-DOS operating system, which had been written by Tim Paterson earlier in 1980 for use on that company's line of 8086, S100 bus micros. 86-DOS (also called QDOS, for Quick and Dirty Operating System) had been written as more or less a 16-bit version of CP/M, since Digital Research was showing no hurry in introducing CP/M-86. Paterson's DOS 1.0 was approximately 4000 lines of assembler source.

This code was quickly polished up and presented to IBM for evaluation. IBM found itself left with Microsoft's offering of "Microsoft Disk Operating System 1.0". An agreement was reached between the two, and IBM agreed to accept 86-DOS as the main operating system for their new PC. Microsoft purchased all rights to 86-DOS in July 1981, and "IBM Personal Computer DOS 1.0" was ready for the introduction of the IBM PC in October 1981. IBM subjected the operating system to an extensive quality-assurance program, reportedly found well over 300 bugs, and decided to rewrite the programs. This is why PC-DOS is copyrighted by both IBM and Microsoft.

It is sometimes amusing to reflect on the fact that the IBM PC was not originally intended to run MS-DOS. The target operating system at the end of the development was for a (not yet in existence) 8086 version of CP/M. On the other hand, when DOS was originally written the IBM PC did not yet exist!

Although PC-DOS was bundled with the computer, Digital Research's CP/M-86 would probably have been the main operating system for the PC except for two things - Digital Research wanted $495 for CP/M-86 (considering PC-DOS was essentially free) and many software developers found it easier to port existing CP/M software to DOS than to the new version of CP/M.

The IBM PC shipped without an operating system. IBM didn't start bundling DOS until the second generation AT/339 came out. You could order one of three operating systems for your PC, assuming you popped for the optional disk drive and 64k RAM upgrade (base models had 16k and a cassette player port). These operating systems were IBM Personal Computer DOS 1.0, a version of the UCSD p-System, which was an integrated Pascal operating system something like the souped-up BASIC operating systems used by the Commodore 64 and others, or Digital Research's CP/M-86, which was officially an option although you couldn't buy it until later. Since IBM's $39.95 DOS was far cheaper than anyone else's alternative, darned near everyone bought DOS.

Microsoft Press' "MSDOS Encyclopedia" shows a reproduction of a late DOS 1.25 OEM brochure. Microsoft was touting future enhancements to 1.25 including Xenix-compatible pipes, process forks, and multitasking, as well as "graphics and cursor positioning, kanji support, multi-user and hard disk support, and networking." Microsoft certainly thought big, but, alas, the forks, multitasking, and multiuser support never came about, at least in US versions of DOS. Oddly, the flyer claims:

"MS-DOS has no practical limit on disk size. MS-DOS uses 4-byte XENIX OS compatible pointers for file and disk capacity up to 4 gigabytes."

Umm... yeah. One sort of gets the idea nobody at Microsoft had a hard disk larger than 32 megabytes...