Gary Kildall - The Man That Should Have Been Bill Gates - Part II STEREO RE-EDIT

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  • Опубліковано 24 гру 2024

КОМЕНТАРІ • 129

  • @ikestoddard2458
    @ikestoddard2458 Рік тому +12

    I was an engineer in the aerospace industry watching the embryonic personal computer business evolve. You are relating the Gary Kildall context as I remember it, including the multitasking aspect. The treachery embedded here enraged me. To this day, I have refused to have an IBM or Intel product in my house.

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому +2

      That must have been tough to do, with the near monopoly Intel had on the computing industry from the mid 90s through until apple went to M1/ARM recently !

    • @bombtwenty3867
      @bombtwenty3867 Рік тому

      There was no treachery. The E/ite control the big corporations and they want their businesses at the top, not for a genuine little man makes it big story to happen. Kildall had no chance and he must've understood the game. He offered IBM an extraordinary good deal. $10 on an IBM PC was nothing for a superior product and I don't imagine gates' offer was much better. And the fuss they made about him not wanting to sell the rights was not a problem with Gates. Gates fronts a corporation that's really controlled by the E/ite. It was never going to be anybody else.

  • @RedJay
    @RedJay Рік тому +4

    Incredible work and appreciate you showing both sides accounts. Want to note this is a life lesson for important meetings, never offer a partial group meeting when working Company to Company.

  • @knoxduder
    @knoxduder Рік тому +10

    The first one was the best Gary Kildale video to date on UA-cam! This, I’m sure, will be equally as good!

    • @MrRmeadows
      @MrRmeadows Рік тому

      This is a good video. I saw it like a week ago. This is a reupload. I wonder what changed and why.,

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому +3

      It was re uploaded because some complained about the sound so I fixed up the little issues and re uploaded

  • @dalrob9969
    @dalrob9969 Рік тому +3

    Excellent job. I owned all of the said in this documentary, including Pdp8, Pet, Apple, Imsi, Altar, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Cannon PC, Dr Dos, Q-Dos, Compact PCM, SWTC Kit, Osborne, and I hard wired my own c4004, c8008. C8080, 8086, 8085, Z80. Love this. LIVED and loved Dr Doss from Digital Research, Monterey, the most. Thank you.

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому

      Glad that your enjoyed the series!

  • @sujitkumarsingh3200
    @sujitkumarsingh3200 Рік тому +1

    Thanks for creating this series on the topic.

  • @edgarwalk5637
    @edgarwalk5637 Рік тому +10

    I've had a love hate relationship with MS since 1994. While I know the basic story, it's good to see the history as spoken by the people involved. That IBM salesman was hilarious!

  • @cpcnw
    @cpcnw 11 місяців тому +1

    A lie gets half way round the world whilst the truth is still putting its boots on!

  • @user-qf6yt3id3w
    @user-qf6yt3id3w Рік тому +6

    I'm not convinced DR or IBM could do a deal on this. IBM wanted a flat fee but DR was concerned about cannibalizing their existing customers. DR wanted to sell them MP/M which wasn't ready not 8086 CP/M which was what they wanted and was nearly ready. If you're IBM you'd be concerned about cannibalizing your existing mainframe and timesharing customers.
    And QDOS is a clean API clone as far as I can tell. At least Paterson claims he did a clean room reverse engineering of the API. Also it runs on a different CPU, and has a different calling convention (int 21h vs RST or JMP 5). It also has a different filesystem QDOS uses FAT which was invented for MS's Standalone Disk Basic and CPM had its own file system. The API is based on what you'd need to get a 8080 CP/M program to run after you'd put it through SCP's TRANS86.
    And, ironically, even though QDOS was designed to be device independent like CP/M the market settled on clones which are are completely binary compatible. E.g. you have a video display with a fixed layout at a fixed address (e.g. VGA 13h at segment A000h), UARTs have fixed register interfaces at fixed addresses (an 8250 compatible at 3f8h or 2f8h) and so on. Most MSDOS programs don't just use the Bios, they bypass it and write direct to the hardware.

    • @maskddingo1779
      @maskddingo1779 Рік тому

      Excellent comment! It really is the case that CP/M was specifically made to be able to adapt itself to the loose-to-no standards environment that existed in those early s100 personal computers. It was more about adapting to differnt architecture for connecting all the peripherals and how to talk to them... The CPU was the same, but where things were in the address space, and how to talk to each were the parts that needed abstraction. When IBM took over.. and the "IBM clone" became the dominate standard architecture, the need for the os to abstract away the addressing of everything faded. Of course, even these systems can be expanded custom, but the fact that there is always that expected architecture that needs to be emulated is an interesting move of the line of abstraction from the software and more toward the hardware.

    • @user-qf6yt3id3w
      @user-qf6yt3id3w Рік тому

      @@maskddingo1779 Incidentally when CP/M reads sectors from disk it takes four Bios calls - SELDSK, SETTRK, SETSEC, SETDMA to select the disk, set the track, set the sector and set the DMA buffer address. In QDOS it's much more efficient because you have one call to the block device driver in IO.SYS. Paterson said he was pleased with this optimization. And on an IBM PC compatible that one call to the block device driver turns into one call to int 13h.
      Also before the IBM PC clone market took off because you could buy compatible legal Bioses from companies like Phoenix there were some non PC compatible MS DOS machines. So they had their own firmware and hardware standards and a version of MSDOS with a custom IO.SYS.

    • @yutakago1736
      @yutakago1736 Рік тому +2

      You are right about this. I have read 2 books about this incident. DR is not going to accept a flat fee and Gary don't like the pushy attitude of the IBM executives. Beside this, the DR-DOS is also not yet ready for release and most likely the DR-DOS will not be ready to meet IBM schedule for the release of IBM PC. The IBM executives went back to Bill Gates and Bill Gates see an opportunity. Although Bill Gates don't have any Operating system on hand, he knew that Tim Paterson have already developed a DOS for 8086. Tim Paterson are frustrated by the delay of DR-DOS release and decided to create DOS himself. Bill Gates bought DOS from Tim Paterson and rebrand it as MS-DOS. When IBM PC become successful with MS-DOS, Gary did offer the DR-DOS to IBM again. IBM didn't pre-install the DR-DOS and just offer DR-DOS as alternative to MS-DOS.

  • @craigtiano3455
    @craigtiano3455 Рік тому +6

    To be clear, int 21h was on the x86 architecture. For the 8 bit 8080/Z80 version, the call to the BIOS was made by loading registers with particular values related to what you wanted to do (i/o, etc...) and then doing a jump to memory location 0005. When cloned into the x86 architecture, the same registers and values were used, but instead of jumping to a particular memory location, you did an interrupt 21h.

  • @0netom
    @0netom Рік тому +1

    Fantastic documentary!
    All 3 episodes.

  • @Commodore128Mode3
    @Commodore128Mode3 Рік тому +5

    Just a friendly correction: At 28:39-28:42 you state that the prompt a CP/M user would see upon startup would be an A followed by a colon, or "A:". This is not the case. CP/M has always by default had the drive letter followed by the greater-than symbol, or "A>", which would be the drive letter followed by ">". Some CP/M variations would be the drive letter followed by the user number such as "A0>" which is drive, user# then ">". Another variation is 0A> (User#, drive#, then ">") but NEVER "A:". Even in your at 28:42 it shows QDOS (see the "Seattle Computer Products copyright message, not Digital Research's) as having the "A:" prompt, not CP/M.

    • @MattKasdorf
      @MattKasdorf Рік тому

      I noticed that too. Big screw up there.

  • @DevilbyMoonlight
    @DevilbyMoonlight Рік тому +6

    IBM wouldn't license an OS from Digital Research but licenced an OS Microsoft? doesn't that seem odd?

    • @MorganSullivan
      @MorganSullivan Рік тому +6

      Mom was on the board... It was handed to him..

    • @AshNonokPlays
      @AshNonokPlays Рік тому +2

      IBM didn't want the licensing agreement of Digital Research, which was DRI will have $10 royalty with each IBM PC sold. That is what IBM is trying to avoid, DRI on the mean while thought that the licensing agreement proposed by IBM would open up complaints with other OEMs that sign the royalty licensing agreement with DRI.

    • @ImpetuouslyInsane
      @ImpetuouslyInsane Рік тому +5

      @@AshNonokPlays But they didn't do it with MS. That's the problem here. Stolen code, nepotism, and all around slanted business dealings. Gates wasn't a brilliant businessman; he was given this like AshNonokPlays said.

  • @richfiles
    @richfiles Рік тому

    Are closed captions broken for anyone else? Timing seems way off in places.

  • @jordancobb509
    @jordancobb509 Рік тому

    What exactly does the paragraph at 15:31 mean? Looks like it's missing words or something.

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому

      Basically, John Opel (IBM chief at the time) was also on the same board as Bill Gates' wife at another organisation. It is rumoured that Mrs Gates sr went to John Opel and put in a word for her son and this was also a contributing factor to this "three man band" company getting a shot with IBM in 1980

  • @BrandonNedwek
    @BrandonNedwek Рік тому

    Why does your "video clips used in this series" not include the extensive sections of "triumph of the nerds" that are used throughout?

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому

      Note that I credit the clips as soon as they are shown.

  • @rolleiblad
    @rolleiblad Рік тому +1

    1:16 and numerous other places throughout the video - it's Rolander, not Rollander.

  • @vinhluu2154
    @vinhluu2154 Рік тому +1

    $240 CP/M vs $40 MS-DOS - Why not change the CP/M pricing to be more competitive? 34:48

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому +3

      IBM set the price, not DRI

    • @vinhluu2154
      @vinhluu2154 Рік тому

      @@AlsGeekLab Okay, thanks! I guess IBM either really wanted to get their money back or they didn't want people to buy CP/M.

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому +1

      @@vinhluu2154 yeah I think they had it in for DRI.

    • @vinhluu2154
      @vinhluu2154 Рік тому

      @@AlsGeekLab IBM had no obligation to price it competitively but I would have at least asked them to renegotiate. Maybe DRI did but got nowhere. It just seems outrageously priced to make business sense.

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому +1

      @@vinhluu2154 because DRI had threatened IBM with a lawsuit, as Tom Rollander says, IBM came back with a counter offer - they would allow the sale of cp/m after all, on the condition that they could no longer sue IBM. This was contractually binding. DRI agreed to this, but they never thought to ask what price IBM would sell at, nor when they would release it. IBM ended up releasing it 6 months after the PC, plus $200 more than MS-DOS. DRI wanted it price competitive with DOS.

  • @freedom_aint_free
    @freedom_aint_free Рік тому +3

    I remeber using CP/M in 8 bits for the Zilog Z80 in the late 80's and was the first time that I've used a more advanced language than the then standard BASIC: It was Pascal and it blew my mind ! (At least until I discovered C in the mid 90's !)

  • @jimdavis6833
    @jimdavis6833 Рік тому +2

    The close captioning isn't even close to what those in the video are actually saying. WTF?

  • @herberttlbd
    @herberttlbd Рік тому +3

    I'm a fan of Gary Kildall but this leaves a lot out. You do provide a text-over noting that CP/M-86 was still in development when the 5150 was released but didn't mention in this video, or the previous one, that DRI announced it would ship in early '79. The reason Tim Paterson wrote QDOS was because SCP thought DRI was dragging their feet and, when SCP shipped it in '80, so did the rest of the CP/M community. MS and IBM were most definitely responsible for burning the path forward for DRI but DRI had already started the fire behind themselves.

  • @nyccollin
    @nyccollin Рік тому +1

    Been waiting for this!! Great job, Al!

  • @neanda
    @neanda 5 місяців тому +1

    i hope this video gets more views, it's a more believable and welll investigated version of the story. I understand why Pirates of SV and Triumph of the nerds made a shorter and more dramtic version, so it's great to have a more technical version out there.
    and I agree, Kildall was a decade ahead of his time, and was in a different situation and so made different choices at the time

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  5 місяців тому

      Thanks for your kind words! Please share on your socials! Plus thumbs up and all that usual UA-cam stuff, the algorithm is fed from all that stuff and the it not an ALgorithm unfortunately!

  • @James_Bowie
    @James_Bowie Рік тому +11

    Kildall was saddled with two major shortcomings: (1) his ex wife as a business partner, and (2) his own lack of the ability to see the main chance -- the latter being Gates' strong suit.

    • @ImpetuouslyInsane
      @ImpetuouslyInsane Рік тому

      3 shortcomings if you consider Gates' mother bullshitting him into a deal. Yeah, nepotism at its finest. Gary didn't have his mother running blocker, he had, you know, _talent._

  • @mikeryan2802
    @mikeryan2802 10 місяців тому +1

    Thanks for this outstanding documentary.

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  10 місяців тому

      So glad you enjoyed it!

  • @2sc458
    @2sc458 Рік тому +1

    Brings back memories. I remember Popular Electronics and bought Linear Op Amps (RC4136 I believe) from Godbout Electronics, from the ads in the back of the magazine.

  • @carsyoungtimerfreak1149
    @carsyoungtimerfreak1149 Рік тому +1

    I was around and in the IT industry when IBM PC was introduced. And I know this story as you told it. Fact is Gates is a brilliant business guy and went on to became rather rich and who remembers Kildall? Such is life... The techies never win!

  • @dalrob9969
    @dalrob9969 Рік тому +1

    And one more thing, When Compact of Houston wrote their DOS, it worked right , I knew them from the PIE shop. Their local hangout. Love you guys. Pip is now called Python , just in case you didn't know, and a bit more powerful of a linker across platform's. 😊 😂

  • @scottlarson1548
    @scottlarson1548 Рік тому

    Why didn't they simply reduce the price of CPM-86 to make it competitive to PC-DOS?

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому +3

      As mentioned, IBM resold CP/M, it was out of the hands of DRI. IBM set the price, not DRI.

    • @scottlarson1548
      @scottlarson1548 Рік тому

      @@AlsGeekLab DRI wasn't allowed to sell their own product?

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому +2

      When you bought an IBM PC, you had the choice of buying MS-DOS, uP system or CP/M directly from IBM. Just like today, if you buy a PC, it comes with Windows. 99.8% of the market doesn't then wipe windows off it and go out and buy another operating system. There were no alternatives other than buying from IBM until the clones started like Compaq in 1983 or so. And they didn't really take off until 85-86. So you were forced to go IBM at the start, and that 3-6 year period was enough for Microsoft to take the stranglehold and own the market. Only a few brands such as Siemens persevered with CPM-86 (as Tom Rollander states).

  • @cheesecoole
    @cheesecoole Рік тому

    If IBM was not willing to pay royalties to Digital Research how come they ended up paying royalties to Microsoft? Am I missing something?

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому

      They didn't pay royalties to Microsoft. Bill Gates even says so in the video

  • @TechRyze
    @TechRyze 6 місяців тому

    Making a CPM-a-like / QDOS for x86 isn't like stealing a car at all.
    It's like Tesla not releasing the Cybertruck in the UK with a RHD version, so someone builds themselves one, based directly on the Cybertruck.
    As soon as they sell it, the lawyers move in. The question is whether the law was up to speed with software plagiarism, and whether anything was patented by DR.

    • @skullleader-hw9hi
      @skullleader-hw9hi 4 дні тому

      Kidal worked on DEC. All those commands com from DEC. It is understandable because this is the third time IBM tried to enter the PC computer market. Read BYTE magazine from the 80's CPM on the PC would loose data when writing. This changed over time however it shows the API were all not copied,.

  • @NullStaticVoid
    @NullStaticVoid Рік тому

    interesting stuff.
    BTW it's a trivial matter to normalize the volume of the video clips to be all be the same average level.
    The volume level on this is all over the place. It goes from whisper to pissing off the neighbors ever couple of minutes or so.

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому +1

      Unfortunately not for me. I'm deaf in one ear and I can't hear the issues. Also can't see them in the vu Meters, I set normalisation on the video in the editor, so it obviously didn't do its job, but the waveforms look fine to me, and the people that QA'd it said it was fine.

  • @bb1111116
    @bb1111116 Рік тому +1

    IBM was the 800 pound gorilla in computing. In terms of PCs, whoever was able to partner with IBM was going to dominate personal computing OS marketshare in the near term.

    • @AlsGeekLab
      @AlsGeekLab  Рік тому +1

      Most people didn't see that back in 1980 though. Including Kildall

    • @bb1111116
      @bb1111116 Рік тому

      @@AlsGeekLab; Bill Gates did. And that’s crucial in this entire story.
      There were people I knew at the time who knew about the potential importance of IBM with PCs including a computer programmer I worked with as well as the department of an engineer I knew who worked on data base projects for the US Navy at the time.

  • @cpcnw
    @cpcnw 11 місяців тому +2

    I think the only thing DR could of done, which would of been a massive gamble, would be to do what Netscape did i.e. Open Source CP/M and provide services. That said if we all could see into the future we would never make any mistakes.

  • @Meshamu
    @Meshamu Рік тому

    Thank you very much.

  • @BryonLape
    @BryonLape Рік тому

    The world that might have been if DOS wasn't still saddling the PC market.

    • @looneyburgmusic
      @looneyburgmusic Рік тому

      DOS has been dead and buried for years now.
      Time to join the 21st Century

  • @ericjohnson6105
    @ericjohnson6105 Рік тому

    "Ideas from different places" sounds very suspicious there.

  • @BryonLape
    @BryonLape Рік тому +2

    Dorothy and Gary's billion dollar mistake.

  • @merlepatterson
    @merlepatterson Рік тому +8

    Once a snake, always a snake. - Ode to Bill Gates

    • @dalrob9969
      @dalrob9969 Рік тому

      Yep.

    • @looneyburgmusic
      @looneyburgmusic Рік тому +2

      Bill Gates did what any BUSINESSMAN would have done.
      Kildall, on the other hand, was not a businessman, but a computer programmer.
      It's called "CAPITALISM", look it up sometime

    • @merlepatterson
      @merlepatterson Рік тому +1

      @@looneyburgmusic It's always amazing to watch someone attempt to see where they're going when they have their lips firmly and permanently attached to a wealthy mans behind.

    • @looneyburgmusic
      @looneyburgmusic Рік тому +1

      ​@@merlepatterson Hardly kissing anyone's ass, just telling it like it is - Gates was a businessman, Kildall was not. When it came to business Gates was always ruthless, while Gary was always focused on the technology

    • @merlepatterson
      @merlepatterson Рік тому +1

      @@looneyburgmusic You apparently haven't read up on patent law. Kildall may not have been a businessman, but he surely had the patent for what was obviously his intellectual property. Just because one declares themselves a "Businessman" doesn't mean they are exempt from ethics and law or just because they "got away with it".

  • @hotlineoperator
    @hotlineoperator Рік тому

    I had heard earlier that Gary was flying and didn't come to the IBM meeting, so IBM left and they went to Microsoft and made a deal. Here came a lot of supplementary information, which, however, has now been filtered from the afterthoughts.

  • @looneyburgmusic
    @looneyburgmusic Рік тому

    The so-called "look and feel" claim that has been used so many times should never be allowed - it's much like Ford claiming only they can make cars with 4 wheels because they did it "first".
    Sometimes certain ways of doing things just make sense, and work best, and those sorts of ideas should not be "owned" by anyone
    edit: Reportedly, (and this part is never mentioned for some reason), it was Kildall himself who set the $240 cost for CP/M, not IBM....

  • @35mmMovieTrailersScans
    @35mmMovieTrailersScans Рік тому

    Just one comment about this video, as it is something we see often on UA-cam: Sections that are repeated-... I'm not a toddler watching teletubbies.. I don't need to see twice the same guy saying the same stuff... please stop this.

  • @MaudWinston-t8n
    @MaudWinston-t8n 3 місяці тому

    Anderson Joseph Walker Brenda Thompson Deborah

  • @Dreadwinner
    @Dreadwinner Рік тому +1

    🫶

  • @pmlbeirao
    @pmlbeirao Рік тому +1

    Gary Kildall wasn't Bill Gates and could never have been like Bill Gates. Those two had very different personalities and visions for the software industry. Stop flogging a dead horse.

  • @613fredp
    @613fredp Рік тому +1

    A Karen ruined her husbands fortune

  • @faenethlorhalien
    @faenethlorhalien Рік тому

    Too bad the guy was a bit of a contentious guy.

    • @looneyburgmusic
      @looneyburgmusic Рік тому +2

      Gary was a programmer, not a businessman. And the 80's were when computers in general went from being the domain of programmers to being the domain of businessmen.