G T Smith wrote:
James Knott wrote:
G T Smith wrote:
I think, if you check the history, that Windows was included with DOS, when Microsoft told the vendors that if they wanted DOS, they had to include Windows. Soon almost every new computer came with Windows, with other OSs locked out.
Nope (at least not in the UK) IBM were the first big intel based PC manufacturer and accidentally shot themselves in one foot by effectively destroying the market for the AIX based RS 6000 series, and by providing a relatively open hardware standard they shot themselves in the other foot by opening the door for IBM clones (which eventually dominated the market). ...
???? When the IBM PC came out in 1981, it was available with PC-DOS (slightly modified version of MS-DOS), CP/M-86 and supposedly p-code IIRC. DOS was cheaper. What does this thread have to do with the RS-6000? The early PC's had no where near the performance of the RS-6000 line. One reason for the open design was using off the shelf parts, to get the system out fast. Another reason was they were still smarting from an anti trust decision.
Before this intel PC manufacturers such as North Star,Apricot, Sirius, Brain etc were quite modest in size (and their names are probably long forgotten) Even though they ran variants of DOS, CP/M or p-code their machines had major compatibility issues with each other.
I was not referring to other than IBM PC & clones. By the time Windows rolled out, many alternative computers were gone or on the way out.
DOS and Windows were originally two distinct products. Windows 1, Windows 2 and Windows 3.0 were GUIs that you optionally purchased that ran on top of MSDOS,PCDOS or whatever, much like the way that X can run on top of a shell (CP/M IIRC never had such a GUI front end). They competed against stuff like GEM (Windows was not the only GUI at time). For some reason X was not ported to DOS. M$ had options in a Unix like PC OS (Xenix I think), but it never made any real impact, (at time most small systems people regarded *nix as obscure and obtuse and would not touch it with a bargepole).
Yes, I remember those days well, including Windows on DOS, including all versions up ME. Windows 95, 98 and ME were built on DOS, but came as one package, compared to installing Windows on DOS, up to v3.11. GEM, like Windows, ran on top of DOS. It wasl also produced by the same company as CP/M, Digital Research. XENIX was a version of SCO Unix, which was ported to the x86.
Windows 3.0 was the first really popular intel PC based GUI, and swept all before it (as Apple were doing in the Motorola world). Windows 2 was usable and 1 IIRC was rubbish. DOS based IBM based machines had been around for some time before Windows 3.0 was launched alongside OS/2 with IBMs second generation of PCs. OS/2 failed, Windows 3 succeeded, M$ abandoned (or was thrown off) the OS/2 ship and the rest is history. (I still remember the scramble to port DOS based apps to Windows 3.0, as not even M$ expected the level of success that this would have).
MS used IBM's money, intended for OS/2 development, to develop Windows. So, MS was secretly moving away, until IBM development from them. I assume you also remember that MS had apps already to go, when Windows came, whereas other companies, who made the mistake of believing MS were developing OS/2 and DOS apps. Back in the early 90s, when OS/2 came out, it was very difficult to buy a computer without Windows. Also, you might want to read up on how Window would check to see if it was being run on DR-DOS (again from Digital Research) and if so, generate a bogus error message. You might also read up on how "DOS" was bought from Seattle Computers, where it was originally intended to be used for testing hardware, while waiting for CP/M-86 to be released. This is why the early versions of DOS were so similar to CP/M, as Gary Killdall pointed out in court. Bottom line, Microsoft used a lot of illegal or border line illegal tactics to force market share and continue doing so to this day (read up on how they corrupted ISO with their getting OOXML passed as an ISO standard).
M$ took the opportunity this offered relatively late, the two product lines were kind of integrated into Windows 95 a couple of years later which is really when the bundling took off.
I first used a PC after working with VAX/VMS on a VAX 11/780. It was a bit of a come down.
I first used a PC 30 years ago when 16K RAM machine was a *big* PC and 8in floppy drive was a small drive :-) .. In many ways the mainframe/mini experience when it came was a bit frustrating...
Sorry folks this has wondered way OT...
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