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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 02/03/2010 The
Washington State Connection to the PC
Revolution Microsoft’s
Bill Gates and Paul Allen are universally known, but exactly what their role
was in the pc revolution is usually unknown. Many people today think
Microsoft created the world’s first pc, or that they wrote the first PC
programming language, BASIC. Both these
stories are false. The first pc named the Altair was introduced in January,
1975, in kit form by a company named MITS in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. The BASIC programming language was created by Dartmouth college of
New Hampshire, in 1964. What
Gates and Allen did was take the public domain
version of BASIC and get it to run on the Altair. Both boys had gone to one of the few
private schools in America – Lakeside school in Seattle – which
had access to a computer. They became so involved with computers that they
spent most of their time working on early DEC computers at a time sharing
company in Seattle’s University district, for free computer time
– debugging programs. This was absolute heaven to them, and they came
in contact with many interesting and talented people. One was a
programmer named Gary Kildall. Gary had a degree in computer science from UW,
and after serving in the Navy he started his own company, Intergalactic
Digital Research. Gary wrote an operating system for microcomputers in 1973 -
which he called CP/M. So when
the pc industry started in 1975 Microsoft became known as the PC language
company, and Digital Research became known as the PC operating system
company. Most
people don’t know that this 1st generation of pc’s
lasted 6 years – from 1975 until 1981, when IBM introduced their IBM
PC, which represented new generation of pc’s. Microsoft
was involved with IBM in the planning and creation of this pc, and it was
presumed that
Digital Research would write the new operating system. But IBM
and Gary Kildall clashed, and at the last moment IBM told Microsoft to write
the operating system, about which Microsoft knew nothing. Someone
at Microsoft remembered talking to a Seattle hardware hacker who had already
built a prototype computer using the new Intel 8086 processor which IBM was
going to use. Tim
Patterson had previously talked to Microsoft employees and was interested in
the File Allocation method that Microsoft Basic used. Patterson had written
his own operating system which incorporated a similar system for disk
management - and he had named it QDOS - for quick and dirty operating system. Patterson
worked for a local company named Seattle Computer Products and Microsoft
bought Seattle Computer Products "QDOS" which then became the first
IBM PC operating system. .Without
the contribution of these Washington individuals and companies, the PC
revolution might have never happened. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2010 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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