On Monday 18 October 2004 06:23 pm, Paul M Foster wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 17, 2004 at 08:04:51PM -0400, Ken Elliott wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > I won't post the entire message, but here's the key point.
> >
> > "IBM made the choice easy. Even though they offered both, it was clear
> > they were really behind DOS and not at all behind CP/M-86."
>
> Of course, this begs the question of why IBM pushed PC-DOS over CP/M-86.
> Better licensing terms with Microsoft? Or purely the difficulty in
> porting from CP/M to PC-DOS versus the ease of porting from CP/M to
> CP/M-86, which might keep Xerox or others out of the market?
>
> I used CP/M-80 on an Epson QX-10, and did some Turbo Pascal programming
> on it. I drooled over the DEC Rainbow, but never had much interest in
> the IBM-PC.
>
> Paul
With me it was the Osborne's. Unfortunately the stupid CFO made the decision
to announce that they would be releasing the next hardware (model III) before
it had been paid for. Which stopped the sales on model II, which was
financing the development of model III. With creditors nabbing at the doors
they then went into chapter 11 to reorganize. (50M in assets and 55M in
debt.)
Their PR was so good that when the community heard about it, we raised over 1M
between us, to try to help.
IBM now had the perfect opportunity to step up with an even better box and
knock out the fledgling Osborne (if not already out of business), which had
opened the door to use a PC for business use.
Adam Osborne was going around telling people for a long time to build a
computer with dual drives and software. Aimed at small business. Nobody
listened. So he decided to do it himself.
He got VisiCalc developed and had it, together with both dBase and Wordstar,
delivered with each computer. At only the cost of a few dollars to the user
it was a steal. He basically gave away shares on the sales to pay for the
s/w.
The model I was a great success, and model II was a big improvement. With III
coming out there was a big buzz - but, alas we never saw it.
--Steve Szmidt
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