Bill Gates and the CP/M Conspiracy??????
BF
A friend claims that a recent PBS show on computer "geeks" exposes a
"plot" in which Mr.Gates purportedly "stole" Concurrent CP/M from his
very best friend and turned it into what became "Windows" As a result
of the purported "betrayal" this one time best friend killed himself.
ERGO Gates has blood on his hands.
Does anyone have any hard facts on this topic?
I can't find any, and it sounds like just another levelof Microsoft
bashing to me.
Thanks!
BF
BikrBabe
B...@juno.com (BF) wrote:
Saw the show.
Supposedly, Gates got the contract to provide an operating system for
the original IBM PC, except that he didn't have one. So he copied CPM
and renamed it DOS. Don't remember the part about the friend
committing suicide.
Also, according to the show, Gates visited somebody's R&D facility
which had developed a graphic operating system that was remarkably
similar to Windows, Stole it too.
Gates is also credited with the idea of selling software, which prior
to DOS, was freely exchanged.
HTH.... Karen
Karen
Send e-mail to bikr...@mcs.net
Paul H. Henry
In article <331ad1c4...@news.mcs.net>, bikr...@aol.com (BikrBabe) wrote:
] B...@juno.com (BF) wrote:
]
] >A friend claims that a recent PBS show on computer "geeks" exposes a
] >"plot" in which Mr.Gates purportedly "stole" Concurrent CP/M from his
] >very best friend and turned it into what became "Windows" As a result
] >of the purported "betrayal" this one time best friend killed himself.
] >ERGO Gates has blood on his hands.
[...]
] Saw the show.
]
] Supposedly, Gates got the contract to provide an operating system for
] the original IBM PC, except that he didn't have one. So he copied CPM
] and renamed it DOS. Don't remember the part about the friend
] committing suicide.
What actually happened was that he bought an OS called QDOS from an outfit
called Seattle Computing. QDOS stood for "Quick'n'Dirty Operating System,"
and was written to tide Seattle Computing over until they got around to
writing a *real* OS. Gates rewrote QDOS into MS-DOS 1.0, and the rest is
history (as is Seattle Computing). I also hadn't heard the suicide part,
but it wouldn't surprise me.
--
=============================================================================
_ (phe...@halcyon.com) || Federal funds spent since last October to
|_) || gild Newt Gingrich's office ceiling, gold
| aul H. Henry - Seattle, Wash.|| excluded: $40,400 (Harper's Index, 3/97)
========== My Home Page Is Back! http://www.halcyon.com/phenry/ ==========
Perry Farmer
-> Kildall also pioneered in the development of a GUI (Grapical User
-> Interface) for the PC. Called GEM (Graphical Environment Manager), it
-> was demoed at the November 1983 COMDEX and shipped in the spring of
-> 1984. GEM presented the user with a screen virtually identical to that
-> of the Macintosh. Apple threatened to sue DRI. DRI responded by making
-> some cosmetic changes to GEM. DRI did not recognize the potential of a
-> GUI interface and did not put any marketing effort behind it. DRI
-> eventually withdrew GEM from the retail market. It continued to market
-> GEM to software developers as a front end for their graphics products.
-> The most well-known product to use the GEM GUI was "Ventura Publisher"
-> from XEROX.
In the case of GEM, I believe it was developed by two companies, one of
which was Digital Research under contract. Apple did not go with
Digital's version, however others did including IBM and the Atari ST,
which continued to use the same look and feel as what is used on the
Mac.
While Apple did sue to have Digital Research change the look and
feel of the IBM version, they did leave the Atari version basically
untouched.
I always wondered however how any of this could have come about (lawsuit
of look and feel) since the original GUI was developed under government
contract.
Perry
Seth & Ted Rosenberg
BikrBabe wrote:
>
> B...@juno.com (BF) wrote:
>
> >A friend claims that a recent PBS show on computer "geeks" exposes a
> >"plot" in which Mr.Gates purportedly "stole" Concurrent CP/M from his
> >very best friend and turned it into what became "Windows" As a result
> >of the purported "betrayal" this one time best friend killed himself.
> >ERGO Gates has blood on his hands.
> >
> >
> >I can't find any, and it sounds like just another levelof Microsoft
> >bashing to me.
> >
> >Thanks!
> >BF
> >
>
> Supposedly, Gates got the contract to provide an operating system for
> the original IBM PC, except that he didn't have one. So he copied CPM
> and renamed it DOS. Don't remember the part about the friend
> committing suicide.
>
> which had developed a graphic operating system that was remarkably
> similar to Windows, Stole it too.
>
> Gates is also credited with the idea of selling software, which prior
> to DOS, was freely exchanged.
>
> HTH.... Karen
> Karen
>
> Send e-mail to bikr...@mcs.net
"A little bit of learning is a dangerous thing"
Gates did not "steal cp/m" from Digital Research he BOUGHT QDOS from
Seattle Computing - after he made a fortune on it and it's progeny, they
wanted more money (I have NO idea if they were due it legally or
morally) they lost the suit and then had a fire and went out of
business. Digital, who supposedly failed to meet with IBM and forced
them to go to Gates, was later bought by Novel.
As for GUI's, Icons and windows and mice (oh my) are generally
attributed to Xerox although Gem was an interesting little GUI and
Quarterdeck holds patents which purport to cover most, if not all,
windowing. Microsoft has a license from Xerox!! and got it before it
came out with Windows.
Ted
--
Seth Aaron Rosenberg Theodore M. Rosenberg
Webmaster
Baltimore Polytechnic Institute
Http://www.tc.net/~poly
Seth_Ro...@acm.org TedRos...@ibm.net
Matt Ackeret
In article <331ad1c4...@news.mcs.net>, BikrBabe <bikr...@aol.com> wrote:
>Gates is also credited with the idea of selling software, which prior
>to DOS, was freely exchanged.
Uhh, yeah, right.
You think there was no commercial software before 1981? I don't have any
here with me at work, but I think I have a disk or two of Apple II software
at home with copyright dates before that.
Presumably others can give counterexamples before me from Apple IIs or other
8 bit computers before the IBM PC.
We're also not even thinking about mainframes in this discussion because I
don't personally know of examples, yet I suspect there was a lot of commercial
software before then.
--
mat...@apple.com
Tim Robinson
In article <331ad1c4...@news.mcs.net>, bikr...@aol.com (BikrBabe) wrote:
>Gates is also credited with the idea of selling software, which prior
>to DOS, was freely exchanged.
Whooowee! Where did that one come from? Lemme guess... either you or the
people who created the program you saw are under age 25. Lemme introduce you
to my crate of computer memorabilia I have either been given or bought over
the years. Included in the pile is a voice-recognition program for the Apple
][ I bought on a lark back around 1979. It came on a cassette tape... oh, and
didn't work very well. Pre-MSDOS days, you could buy chess programs at
Computerland for the Pet that played a pretty good game, billing/accounting
programs for the TRS-80 at your local Radio Shack (crappy as I recall). I sat
in on a presentation of a signal sampling and analysis program for the Apple
][ and naively I asked for a copy. "Buzz off, kid... ya gotta buy this" or
words to that effect was the response.
Billy Boy has been credited with too much already... don't credit him with
the idea of selling software for micros.
| Tim Robinson | Lonely Web page. Please visit. |
| timt...@ionet.net | http://www.ionet.net/~timtroyr |
| "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by |
| men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." L. Brandeis |
Sorry about the bogus e-mail address. I get too much e-mail spam.
Just use the one in the sig. Brewers, check out
http://www.ionet.net/~timtroyr/beer
Cary Kittrell
In article <5fgag7$q...@ionews.ionet.net> bogus@@see.sig.for.for.reply (Tim Robinson) writes:
<In article <331ad1c4...@news.mcs.net>, bikr...@aol.com (BikrBabe) wrote:
<>Gates is also credited with the idea of selling software, which prior
<>to DOS, was freely exchanged.
<
[...]
Well, I think there's a nugget in there. I seem to recall reading (Steven
Levy's _Hackers_?) that much earlier than DOS, in the days of fanatic
homebrew computer geeks -- when the only was to have a personal computer
was to build your own -- Gates wrote a simple BASIC interpreter. These
were days of of comraderie and free swapping of hardware and software,
and Gates interpreter was promptly copied and dissemenated. Gates
was appalled and threatened to sue (can you say "harbinger"?).
Anyone having read the story more recently, feel free to correct any
required percentage of this anecdote. And if you're reading this,
Big Bill, please please PLEASE don't throw me in the UNIX patch.
--
cary kittrell The Truth is out there.
steward observatory mirror lab But the X-files are more fun.
university of arizona
Greg Goss
bikr...@aol.com (BikrBabe) wrote:
>B...@juno.com (BF) wrote:
>
>>A friend claims that a recent PBS show on computer "geeks" exposes a
>>"plot" in which Mr.Gates purportedly "stole" Concurrent CP/M from his
>>very best friend and turned it into what became "Windows" As a result
>>of the purported "betrayal" this one time best friend killed himself.
>>ERGO Gates has blood on his hands.
>>
>>Does anyone have any hard facts on this topic?
>>
>>I can't find any, and it sounds like just another levelof Microsoft
>>bashing to me.
>>
>>Thanks!
>>BF
>>
>Saw the show.
>
>Supposedly, Gates got the contract to provide an operating system for
>the original IBM PC, except that he didn't have one. So he copied CPM
>and renamed it DOS. Don't remember the part about the friend
>committing suicide.
The version of this story as I heard it...
Gates talked IBM into using the 8088 chip for their new computer
instead of the 8085 or Z80 like everyone else was using. Gates has
never been able to get his software to fit into current memory sizes
and needed the immense space of the 1-meg memory capacity.
IBM complained that the new chip had no operating system available and
asked Microsoft to come up with one. Gates said "We don't do
operating systems. Talk to these guys" and pointed them at the CP/M
people to buy the "real soon now" CP/M 86 (not concurrent). IBM
lawyers approached Digital Research, but the same non-disclosure
agreement with essentially infinite liability possibilities that Gates
was routinely ignoring scared off Kildall. Without signing the
nondisclosure contract, Kildall never realized that the company he'd
turned down was IBM until later.
Without CP/M, IBM came back to Gates for an alternative. In a complex
multilayered buy that I always go into too many details on, Gates
bought SB-86 (also known as Lifeboat DOS, Seattle Dos, or QDOS (the
latter short for quick and dirty operating system)) for $50,000.
Nobody but Gates knew that IBM was getting into the game until much
later.
>Also, according to the show, Gates visited somebody's R&D facility
>which had developed a graphic operating system that was remarkably
>similar to Windows, Stole it too.
Gates considered Windows a stopgap measure until the real OS got
going. He is on record as telling us that we'll all be using OS/2
some day, back in the days when that was an IBM Microsoft
collaboration.
>Gates is also credited with the idea of selling software, which prior
>to DOS, was freely exchanged.
Just ask a DOS/VS licensee.
----------------------------------
Please, no mail from AT&T or Powernet accounts.
Greg Goss
phe...@halcyon.com (Paul H. Henry) wrote:
>What actually happened was that he bought an OS called QDOS from an outfit
>called Seattle Computing. QDOS stood for "Quick'n'Dirty Operating System,"
>and was written to tide Seattle Computing over until they got around to
>writing a *real* OS. Gates rewrote QDOS into MS-DOS 1.0, and the rest is
>history (as is Seattle Computing). I also hadn't heard the suicide part,
>but it wouldn't surprise me.
I think that the author of QDOS (also known as SB-86 and Lifeboat DOS)
was Tim Patterson. I read an interview with him a decade later, so
the suicide seems to be legend.
Perry Farmer
-> The version of this story as I heard it...
-> Gates talked IBM into using the 8088 chip for their new computer
-> instead of the 8085 or Z80 like everyone else was using. Gates has
-> never been able to get his software to fit into current memory sizes
-> and needed the immense space of the 1-meg memory capacity.
Essentially two of the 8085s.
Perry
Dave Wilton
BikrBabe wrote:
>
> B...@juno.com (BF) wrote:
>
> >A friend claims that a recent PBS show on computer "geeks" exposes a
> >"plot" in which Mr.Gates purportedly "stole" Concurrent CP/M from his
> >very best friend and turned it into what became "Windows" As a result
> >of the purported "betrayal" this one time best friend killed himself.
> >ERGO Gates has blood on his hands.
> Supposedly, Gates got the contract to provide an operating system for
> the original IBM PC, except that he didn't have one. So he copied CPM
> and renamed it DOS. Don't remember the part about the friend
> committing suicide.
IBM wanted CPM for its operating system and wanted Gates/Microsoft to
supply BASIC and FORTRAN languages for the PC. IBM initially contacted
Gates to do both tasks, but Gates told them that Microsoft did not
have an operating system and referred them to the CPM folks. These
folks screwed up the meeting with the IBM execs and gave every
indication that they did not want to do business with Big Blue. IBM
returned to Gates, and not being one to miss an opportunity he
agreed to develop DOS, which is eerily similar to CPM.
I know nothing about suicide. As far as I know, the CPM developers
are all alive and well.
> Also, according to the show, Gates visited somebody's R&D facility
> which had developed a graphic operating system that was remarkably
> similar to Windows, Stole it too.
No, that was Steve Jobs, who visited Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.
PARC developed lots of neat computer stuff, but to Xerox's everlasting
shame and damage to the corporate bottom line, never brought any of it
to the market.
> Gates is also credited with the idea of selling software, which prior
> to DOS, was freely exchanged.
Not quite accurate. Gates was one of the first to enforce software
licensing with legal action. He was not the first to sell software or
to issue licenses.
--
Dave Wilton
dwi...@sprynet.com
http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/dwilton/homepage.htm
sj...@aol.com
In article <331D8C...@sprynet.com>,
Dave Wilton <dwi...@sprynet.com> writes:
>
>No, that was Steve Jobs, who visited Xerox's Palo
Alto Research Center. PARC developed lots of neat
computer stuff, but to Xerox's everlasting shame and
damage to the corporate bottom line, never brought
any of it to the market.<
No, I actually saw a whole bunch of Xerox proto-PCs
in use at MIT's Sloan School in the early 90s. Each
was equipped with a mouse, a point and click desktop,
an integrated graphics/text editing software package,
and internet email capability. At least ten years after
Macs had arrived on the scene, the MIT information
technologies faculty was using the Xerox models for
all the departmental and administrative work, in
preference to Macs and the Windows for IBM proto-
types that the powers-that-be were always leaving
around on indefinite loan.
Regards from Deborah
http://members.aol.com/SJF37/homepage-sjf37-index.html
http://members.aol.com/SJF37/index.html
http://members.aol.com/SJF37/web-page-links-index.html
Jim Ward
Greg Goss (or...@mindlink.bc.ca) wrote:
: >B...@juno.com (BF) wrote:
: >
: >>A friend claims that a recent PBS show on computer "geeks" exposes a
: >>"plot" in which Mr.Gates purportedly "stole" Concurrent CP/M from his
: >>very best friend and turned it into what became "Windows" As a result
: >>of the purported "betrayal" this one time best friend killed himself.
: >>ERGO Gates has blood on his hands.
According to Balzac: "Behind every great fortune lies a crime."
Seth & Ted Rosenberg
PRIOR TO GATES SOFTWARE WAS FREELY EXCHANGED!!!
Mainframe software was leased for very high prices. AND, you often had
to take what the hardware vendor wanted you to use. For example IBM
COBOL for the 360 was mathematically crippled, so you needed FORTRAN
also if you wanted to do any math to speak of.
At one point DEC sold licenses for it's operating system which were
non-transferable. You bought the OS, and if you sold the computer and
bought a new one, BOTH you and the people who bought your computer had
to buy new licenses.
We won't even MENTION DeCastro.
Greg Goss
mat...@area.com (Matt Ackeret) wrote:
>In article <331ad1c4...@news.mcs.net>, BikrBabe <bikr...@aol.com> wrote:
>>Gates is also credited with the idea of selling software, which prior
>>to DOS, was freely exchanged.
>
>Uhh, yeah, right.
>
>You think there was no commercial software before 1981? I don't have any
>here with me at work, but I think I have a disk or two of Apple II software
>at home with copyright dates before that.
Are you talking about Apple ][ or the Apple ][+? The "+" version had
Microsoft software built in.
Microsoft was selling software long before the two Steves. Long
before home floppy disks, too. I am sure that other people in this
newsgroup will tell you that they own Microsoft software on paper tape
ribbons. But perhaps paper tape ribbons were before your time?
>Presumably others can give counterexamples before me from Apple IIs or other
>8 bit computers before the IBM PC.
Perhaps "other" might include the Altair?
>We're also not even thinking about mainframes in this discussion because I
>don't personally know of examples, yet I suspect there was a lot of commercial
>software before then.
Yeah. I mentioned the mainframe stuff to disprove his point. He may
be right that BASIC-80 was the first commercial product for the home
computers, though.
Greg Goss
bogus@@see.sig.for.for.reply (Tim Robinson) wrote:
>In article <331ad1c4...@news.mcs.net>, bikr...@aol.com (BikrBabe) wrote:
>>Gates is also credited with the idea of selling software, which prior
>>to DOS, was freely exchanged.
>
>Whooowee! Where did that one come from? Lemme guess... either you or the
>people who created the program you saw are under age 25. Lemme introduce you
>to my crate of computer memorabilia I have either been given or bought over
>the years. Included in the pile is a voice-recognition program for the Apple
>][ I bought on a lark back around 1979. It came on a cassette tape... oh, and
>didn't work very well.
Whooowee! Lemme guess... either you or the people you learned from
are under age thirty. I wasn't a computer owner at the time, but I
was typing on store demo Microsoft software (built into a PET 2000) in
1977
The original Microsoft commercial software predates the Apple ][ (The
big model of the apple ][, the "+" version had Microsoft software
built in) and the other "consumer-ready" computers like the Trash-80
and the PET 2000 all had Microsoft software built in.
The guy you were replying to was wrong, but he was talking about an
era *LONG* before what you are talking about.
Pre-MSDOS days, you could buy chess programs at
>Computerland for the Pet that played a pretty good game, billing/accounting
>programs for the TRS-80 at your local Radio Shack (crappy as I recall). I sat
>in on a presentation of a signal sampling and analysis program for the Apple
>][ and naively I asked for a copy. "Buzz off, kid... ya gotta buy this" or
>words to that effect was the response.
>
>Billy Boy has been credited with too much already... don't credit him with
>the idea of selling software for micros.
>
>
>| Tim Robinson | Lonely Web page. Please visit. |
>| timt...@ionet.net | http://www.ionet.net/~timtroyr |
>| "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by |
>| men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." L. Brandeis |
>
>Sorry about the bogus e-mail address. I get too much e-mail spam.
>Just use the one in the sig. Brewers, check out
>http://www.ionet.net/~timtroyr/beer
----------------------------------
Jim Balter
Seth & Ted Rosenberg wrote:
>
> Dave Wilton wrote:
> >
> > BikrBabe wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Gates is also credited with the idea of selling software, which prior
> > > to DOS, was freely exchanged.
> >
> > licensing with legal action. He was not the first to sell software or
> > to issue licenses.
> >
> > --
> > Dave Wilton
> > dwi...@sprynet.com
> > http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/dwilton/homepage.htm
>
> PRIOR TO GATES SOFTWARE WAS FREELY EXCHANGED!!!
People have been buying software since I can remember. In 1965
the college bought add on packages from IBM. In 1972 I was buying
medical packages from independent vendors for USC Medical Center.
Later, universities bought UNIX tapes from Bell Labs for $300. In 1977
Peter Weiner at Rand Corporation made the first commercial purchase of
UNIX for $20,000.
Bill Gates' success is not based upon *originality*.
--
<J Q B>
Jim Balter
Greg Goss wrote:
> >Presumably others can give counterexamples before me from Apple IIs or other
> >8 bit computers before the IBM PC.
>
> Perhaps "other" might include the Altair?
Think PDP-8 and PDP-11. Intel was rather late on the scene.
--
<J Q B>
Steven Carmean
I have a paper transcript of the show. It's called "Revenge of the nerds".
It's
about the rise of the personal computer industry. It is definitely NOT
slanted
anti-Microsoft. It came out very quickly after Win95 was released, back
when
everyone expected it to be stable, and everything. (Ha!! There's a broken
promise. I'm ready to sell my PC and buy a damn mack if it doesn't stop
freezing.)
If YOUR computer is more stable than mine, surf over to www.pbs.org, and
look
for info on the PBS series "Revenge of the Nerds". You will find you can
download a transcript of the series. Incredibly interesting.
To put it simply: It wasn't technically stolen, but it almost was. Bill
Gates
bought an Operating system called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System.
I love
it.) QDOS was "adapted" from CP/M, an OS made by Gary Kildall.
Kildall IS dead now, but I don't know what killed him.
steve
On Sun, 2 Mar 1997, BF wrote:
> A friend claims that a recent PBS show on computer "geeks" exposes a
> "plot" in which Mr.Gates purportedly "stole" Concurrent CP/M from his
> very best friend and turned it into what became "Windows" As a result
> of the purported "betrayal" this one time best friend killed himself.
> ERGO Gates has blood on his hands.
>
Seth & Ted Rosenberg
machine in the mid 60's, it was a knock off of a Burroughs payroll
system - I think the Bendix G15D was 8 bit - 1961, and I am sure that DG
had an 8 bit system at some time.
I also had one of the first real PC's, the forgotten IBM 5100, heaven
knows how many bits it had - you had a switch which toggled either the
BASIC or APL environment, and a three inch screen which displayed either
the left or right half of a virtual 6" screen!
As for Intel, it was very much around. Intel chips were used in lots of
things. The 8088 was chosen by IBM because there were already so many
of them being made. It went into Traffic light controllers
> --
> <J Q B>
Greg Goss
Dave Wilton <dwi...@sprynet.com> wrote:
>
>IBM wanted CPM for its operating system and wanted Gates/Microsoft to
>supply BASIC and FORTRAN languages for the PC. IBM initially contacted
>Gates to do both tasks, but Gates told them that Microsoft did not
>have an operating system and referred them to the CPM folks. These
>folks screwed up the meeting with the IBM execs and gave every
>indication that they did not want to do business with Big Blue.
Well, the lawyers holding out the infinite liability nondisclosure
contract never *SAID* that they were from IBM. Sign this contract
first and THEN we'll tell you who we are...
> IBM
>returned to Gates, and not being one to miss an opportunity he
>agreed to develop DOS, which is eerily similar to CPM.
I've never programmed for the micros at any kind of detailed level,
but I'm told that MS-DOS is *CLOSER* to 8-bit CP/M-80 than 16 bit
CP/M-86 was.
>
>I know nothing about suicide. As far as I know, the CPM developers
>are all alive and well.
I think that the original rumour is referring to Tim Patterson, the
author of SB-86 (aka QDOS, Lifeboat DOS, and MS-Dos 1.x). Gates got
the rights to MS-Dos for $50,000 in a really nifty quick-shuffle that,
however, seems to have failed to drive Patterson to suicide.
Greg Goss
Seth & Ted Rosenberg <tedros...@ibm.net> wrote:
>I also had one of the first real PC's, the forgotten IBM 5100, heaven
>knows how many bits it had - you had a switch which toggled either the
>BASIC or APL environment, and a three inch screen which displayed either
>the left or right half of a virtual 6" screen!
I still have one stuffed into a storage locker while I move. The
computer works, though the floppy drive cabinet and printer had to be
discarded when the guy I was storing them at had to move. (the floppy
drives came in the form of a small desk, and the printer was bigger
than many TV's)
The screen shows left,right, or all of the screen. Pointless though
because it didn't change the lettering size -- just put spaces between
the 32 characters. I left it on the 64-char setting.
9 bit processor. Parity ran right into the processor as just another
data line. IBM has always been pretty big on measuring parity on
memory reads. Most other micro builders tend to prefer to get 11%
more memory than to make sure it's correct.
Mine didn't have the APL option. Came with the 'world communications
option", which I never got to work. I think it was intended to be a
300-baud modem.
Seth & Ted Rosenberg
only had a DC600A tape drive for storage. The 8" floppy was yet to
come, and the "removable disk" systems were five times the size of an
entire 5100 system.
Ted
Greg Goss
or...@mindlink.bc.ca (Greg Goss) wrote:
>Seth & Ted Rosenberg <tedros...@ibm.net> wrote:
>
>>I also had one of the first real PC's, the forgotten IBM 5100, heaven
>>knows how many bits it had - you had a switch which toggled either the
>>BASIC or APL environment, and a three inch screen which displayed either
>>the left or right half of a virtual 6" screen!
>
>I still have one stuffed into a storage locker while I move. The
>computer works, though the floppy drive cabinet and printer had to be
>discarded when the guy I was storing them at had to move. (the floppy
>drives came in the form of a small desk, and the printer was bigger
>than many TV's)
Mine is a 5110 after all. Oops. Still a weird machine. For
comparison, the original PC, which most nerd historians would tell you
was IBM's first personal computer was model 5150. Not a descendant,
though. Seth/Ted's machine sounds very close to mine, though the disk
option was apparently not available at first.
-------------------------------------------------
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