QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) was the working title for 86-DOS, an operating system developed and marketed by Seattle Computer Products for its Intel 8086-based computer kit. QDOS had a command structure and application programming interface that imitated that of Digital Research's CP/M operating system, which made it easy to port programs from the latter. The system was purchased by Microsoft and developed further as PC-DOS and MS-DOS. The term software company could be applied to; a) a company that produces software or b) a company that distributes software from a third party or c) a company that provides services for software. ... A software developer is a programmer who is concerned with one or more facets of the software development process, a somewhat broader scope of computer programming. ... Seattle Computer Products (SCP) is a Seattle, Washington computer hardware company. ... Tim Paterson Tim Paterson (born 1956) is an American computer programmer, best known as the original author of the popular MS-DOS operating system. ... disk operating system (specifically) and disk operating system (generically), most often abbreviated as DOS, refer to operating system software used in most computers for the management of storage devices and the information on them (e. ... The text below is generated by a template, which has been proposed for deletion. ... The user interface is the part of a system exposed to users. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Command prompt. ... A software license is a legal agreement which may take the form of a proprietary or gratuitous license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software. ... Quick-and-dirty is a term used in reference to anything that is a kluge. ... This article is about the term working title. ... Seattle Computer Products (SCP) is a Seattle, Washington computer hardware company. ... It has been suggested that Microprocessor 8086 be merged into this article or section. ... A application programming interface (API) is the interface that a computer system, library or application provides in order to allow requests for services to be made of it by other computer programs, and/or to allow data to be exchanged between them. ... Digital Research, Inc. ... CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. ... In computer science, porting is the adaptation of a piece of software so that it will function in a different computing environment to that for which it was originally written. ... Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ... IBM PC-DOS was one of the three major operating systems that dominated the personal computer market from about 1985 to 1995. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ...

Origins

QDOS was created because sales of the Seattle Computer Products (SCP) 8086 computer kit, demonstrated in June 1979 and shipped in November, were languishing due to the absence of an operating system. The only software which SCP could sell with the board was the stand-alone Microsoft BASIC-86, which Microsoft had developed on a prototype of SCP's hardware. SCP wanted to offer the 8086 version of CP/M that Digital Research had announced, but its release date was uncertain. This was not the first time DRI had lagged behind hardware developments; two years earlier it had been slow to adapt CP/M for new floppy disk formats and hard disks. In April 1980 SCP assigned 22-year-old Tim Paterson to develop QDOS as a substitute for CP/M-86. For the Smashing Pumpkins song, see 1979 (song). ... Microsoft BASIC is the foundation product of the Microsoft company. ... Tim Paterson Tim Paterson (born 1956) is an American computer programmer, best known as the original author of the popular MS-DOS operating system. ...

Paterson designed QDOS with the same internal API and most of the user commands of CP/M. He did not clone CP/M's file system, but used the FAT filesystem supported by some versions of Microsoft BASIC. He chose not to cache file system information in memory for speed but to update it on the disk with each operation. Although slower, this approach avoided the need to force an update to a disk before removing it. Paterson also introduced a more English-like set of commands, such as the "COPY" utility in place of the more general but less intuitive PIP. A application programming interface (API) is the interface that a computer system, library or application provides in order to allow requests for services to be made of it by other computer programs, and/or to allow data to be exchanged between them. ... File Allocation Table (FAT) is a patented file system developed by Microsoft for MS-DOS and is the primary file system for consumer versions of Microsoft Windows up to and including Windows Me. ... Microsoft BASIC is the foundation product of the Microsoft company. ... This article is about the computer term. ... The Peripheral Interchange Program (PIP), on the Digital Equipment Corporations computers was a utility to transfer data files. ...

IBM interest

In late 1980, IBM was developing what would become the original IBM Personal Computer. CP/M was by far the most popular operating system in use at the time, and IBM felt it needed CP/M in order to compete. IBM's representatives visited Digital Research and discussed licensing with DRI's licensing representative, Dorothy McEwen Kildall, who hesitated to sign IBM's non-disclosure agreement. Although the NDA was later accepted, DRI would not accept IBM's proposal of $250,000 in exchange for as many copies as IBM could sell, insisting on the usual royalty-based plan.^[1] In later discussions between IBM and Bill Gates, Gates mentioned the existence of QDOS and IBM representative Jack Sams asked him to get a license for it. Big Blue redirects here. ... IBM PC (IBM 5150) with keyboard and green screen monochrome monitor (IBM 5151), running MS-DOS 5. ... A royalty is a sum paid to the creator of performance art for the use of that art. ... For other persons named Bill Gates, see Bill Gates (disambiguation). ...

Creation of PC-DOS

Microsoft purchased a nonexclusive license for 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products in December 1980 for $25,000. In May 1981, it hired Tim Paterson to port QDOS to the IBM-PC, which used the slower and less expensive Intel 8088 processor and had its own specific family of peripherals. IBM watched the developments daily, submitted over 300 change requests before accepting the product and wrote the user manual for it. An Intel 8088 microprocessor The Intel 8088 is an Intel microprocessor based on the 8086, with 16-bit registers and an 8-bit external data bus. ...

In July 1981, a month before the PC's release, Microsoft purchased all rights to 86-DOS from SCP for $50,000. It met IBM's main criteria: It looked like CP/M, and it was easy to adapt existing 8-bit CP/M programs to run under it, notably thanks to QDOS's TRANS command which would translate source files from 8080 to 8086 machine instructions. Microsoft licensed QDOS to IBM, and it became PC-DOS 1.0. This license also permitted Microsoft to sell DOS to other companies, which it did. The deal was spectacularly successful, and SCP later claimed in court that Microsoft had concealed its relationship with IBM in order to purchase the operating system cheaply (even though Microsoft was still under a nondisclosure agreement and the PC's degree of success was not widely foreseen). SCP ultimately received a 1 million dollar settlement payment. 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... IBM PC-DOS was one of the three major operating systems that dominated the personal computer market from about 1985 to 1995. ...

Intellectual property dispute

When DRI founder Gary Kildall examined PC-DOS and found that it duplicated CP/M's programming interface, he wanted to sue IBM, which at the time claimed that PC-DOS was its own product. However, Digital Research's attorney did not believe that the relevant law was clear enough to sue (he now says that he would have sued under current laws). Nonetheless, Kildall confronted IBM and convinced them to offer CP/M-86 with the PC in exchange for a release of liability. Gary Arlen Kildall (May 19, 1942 – July 11, 1994) was an early American microcomputer entrepreneur who created the CP/M operating system and founded Digital Research, Inc. ...

Controversy has continued to surround the similarity between the two systems. Perhaps the most sensational claim comes from Jerry Pournelle, who claims that Kildall personally demonstrated to him that DOS contained CP/M code by entering a command in DOS that displayed Kildall's name;^[2] as of 2006 Pournelle has not revealed the command and nobody has come forward to corroborate his story. A 2004 book about Kildall says that he used such an encrypted message to demonstrate that other manufacturers had copied CP/M, but does not say that he found the message in DOS;^[3] instead Kildall's memoir (a source for the book) pointed to the well-known interface similarity. Paterson insists that the QDOS software was his original work, and has denied referring to or otherwise using CP/M code while writing it.^[4] After the 2004 book appeared, he sued the authors and publishers for defamation.^[5] Jerry Pournelle at the 2006 Stanford Singularity Summit Jerry Pournelle, (born August 7, 1933) is an American essayist, journalist and science fiction author who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte. ... 2006 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... In English and American law, and systems based on them, libel and slander are two forms of defamation (or defamation of character), which is the tort or delict of making a false statement of fact that injures someones reputation. ...

By 1982, when IBM asked Microsoft to release a version of DOS that was compatible with a hard disk, PC-DOS 2.0 was an almost complete rewrite of DOS, so by March 1983, very little of QDOS remained. The most enduring element of QDOS was its primitive line editor, EDLIN, which remained the only editor supplied with Microsoft versions of DOS until the June 1991 release of MS-DOS 5.0, which included a graphical editor (known as edit) based on QBasic. 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Typical hard drives of the mid-1990s. ... 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The EDLIN line editor was the only text editor provided with MS-DOS before version 5. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... The MS-DOS edit interface (version 1. ... The opening screen of QBasic 1. ...

QDOS versions

• QDOS v0.1, August 1980
• 86-DOS v0.3, December 1980
• 86-DOS v1.0, April 1981

References

1. ^ Freiberger, Paul; Michael Swaine [1984] (2000). Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, 2nd edition, New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 332-333. ISBN 0-07-135892-7. 
2. ^ this WEEK in TECH The TWiT Netcast Network. 2006-10-16. Podcast accessed on 2006-11-28
3. ^ Evans, Harold; Gail Buckland, and David Lefer (2004). They Made America. Little, Brown and Co. ISBN 0-316-27766-5. 
4. ^ Paterson, Tim (1994-10-03). "The Origins of DOS". Microprocessor Report. Retrieved on 2006-11-28.
5. ^ Associated Press. "Programmer sues author over role in Microsoft history", USA Today, 2005-02-03. Retrieved on 2006-11-28.

2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... November 28 is the 332nd day (333rd on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... November 28 is the 332nd day (333rd on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... November 28 is the 332nd day (333rd on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...

External links

• Tim Paterson's brief history of QDOS/86-DOS
• 86-DOS documentation from Paterson Technology