You don't hear about Gary or CP/M very often in modern IT circles. It's good to learn about this very interesting part of personal computing history :)
Its used to be a big topic in the 80's and 90's, but time and people's attention have move on and it seems now with the internet and having the entire world at peoples fingertips, they have the knowledge and attention span of a golden retriever that just saw a squirrel.
"One of the most important people in computing history" and *most* people, including myself, have never heard of him. Quite sad, really. Thanks for sharing.
Kildall is another example seen in other areas and industries. Being better, building the better mousetrap, does not guarantee the market will buy your product.
It bugs my mind that Gary actually predicted how OS should accociated with apps in the future, which is right now! Too bad he was just too innovative, and major market at the time was satisfied with bundled softwares, RIP Gary, time proves you are right. :(
In this year 2024, I continue to watch "The Computer Chronicles," which is a favorite show, I have enjoyed the way Gary Kildall hosted it. Perhaps I never met the [gentleman], I truly regret that Gary Kildall died. All the fine people are gone! Now I appreciate your channel as the best. I am also a fan of the microcomputer, as well as a keyboard specialist and an avid typist who uses one almost all the time.
Very interesting. My career started with CP/M and I was not really impressed with the first IBM PC. Years later I used PalmOS devices and finally WebOS. Similar to CP/M: very good, but the market went another way. Now you still see WebOS features from 10 years ago being 'sold' as something new.
LOL I learned how to operate and build my own home PC from watching this show in the 90s, it shocked my parents I knew how to build computers as kid, and when I got into college I was more knowledgeable about PCs than most professors.
I always knew that somewhere out there in the world, some guy named Gary was one of the most influential nerds of all time. Long live Gary, your nerdy name will live on.
Such great respect for his spirit of cooperation over competition. It's certainly wishful thinking, but it sure would be nice if everyone concentrated on being as helpful and sharing as Gary, instead of being cutthroat.
@Robert Slackware is a paid troll or just an evil guy. being a good guy doesn't make you crazy, if you are on the same side as god and believe the same things as god then aren't you wise? being evil and selfish and competitive and trying to be successful for personal gain is crazy because eternity in hell is a long time compared to your short moment here on earth, where you get to enjoy the materialistic gains of your selfish narcissistic pursuits. surely Gary has a nice spot in heaven and is looking down and he is horrified by what the earth has turned into. if you are behaving in a selfish and capitalist way then you are nothing more than an animal. humans have a higher purpose than just being another animal and to overcome your animal instincts you need to develop a sense of what truth is. all moral reason begins with: caring about other people is the most important thing in the world. there are two types of people in the world; selfish people and compassionate people. selfish people care more about themselves than they care about other people. while compassionate people care more about other people than they care about themselves. if you are selfish then you are a bad person and on the side of evil. if you are compassionate then you are a good person and on the side of good. equality, decentralization and direct democracy are the three keys to a better world and competition is immoral. Gary was clearly not competitive. he preferred cooperation and helping others, isn't that communism? he believed that the OS market was big and had room for many OSes, decentralization. he believed that OS creators should NOT also include software, decentralization. unlike bill crates who believed in monopoly of the OS market and of the software market, all under his centralized control. economic royalist, as fdr called his type. bill is also obviously hyper competitive having grown up a spoiled rich kid with all the advantages, which is how he was able to do microsoft in the first place. being rich kicks in all your animal instincts of being the dominant one in the pack and one of those animal instincts is to become hyper competitive. not only does being rich turn you evil but if you grow up rich you will be a psychopath. i could go on but clearly Gary was a great guy with a great moral compass and not a nut. he is of a rare breed and if only there were more people like him in the world, the world would be a better place. RIP brother
@@RobertLock1978 It's ironic that for the "Gary Kildall Special" episode, which concludes that Kildall should be remembered for all his accomplishments and contributions, rather than be remembered for just the IBM thing, that the corresponding youtube video's title is just about the IBM thing.
The licence costed much more with Garry sincehe was directly linked to Digital Research, while Microsoft was just a start up in need of few cash to grow up. The IBM MS deal was much more lucrative on the short term. Anyways IBM approved both licences, but PC equiped with CP/M were extremely expensive compared to the cheaper MS DOS flavour. MS won it lawfully.
I actually had an interview with Gary Kildall around 1984 or so. Digital Research was floundering and I had a background in UNIX. Sad to say he was not a believer. A little further up the coast the Santa Cruz Operation was eating his lunch. Then along came Linux.
Steve Jobs was a visionary personality. He was the Rock Star so to speak. The real genius behind products are seldom ever known. It's the front men that have a knack for motivating & advertising that get all the love. The Engineers & brainstorming behind the product are the unsung heroes of the technological era.
You mean Wozniak? Jobs was a good businessman and charismatic fellow but he wasn't a programmer worthy enough at all. Wozniak was the man behind Apple who is unfortunately not many people know.
+Bryon Lape it went the way we are used to. the one who sleeps on laurels never understood the passion. its amazing what worked for ms. vanity and lies. ill never be rich i assume
I loved DR DOS, it was far and above superior to MSDOS and the fact that it came with CDROM drivers as part of it made in invaluable. Its editor and other tools were far better than EDLIN and other "crap" that MSDOS used.
People seem to be selling CP/M as some superior option that lost because of business reasons when reality is that it was a mixture of reasons. Techincal and economic. CP/M and MS-DOS really were technologically comparable. CP/M had really ingenious ideas that would be used later like multi-user OS which DOS never did to my knowledge. But it was also a memory HOG in comparison to MS-DOS. The FAT16 system was pretty amazing for the time. It made it easier to use programs and floppys. Each OS had ups and downs when comparing them side by side. It also didn't hurt that MS-DOS was dirt cheap in relation to CP/M All in all, I think DRI never truly believed that their world of PCs would have been rocked so hard by IBM's entry, and even if it was, who else would they use? Some startup making BASIC interpreters and playing with Unix? DRI definitely felt IBM needed them more than they needed IBM. That's the funny thing about the industry, the small decisions will make or break you. and NO-ONE is immune. Ask anyone who worked for ATI, Commodore, and Weitek (or even Apple on the opposite side of the spectrum)
jeffwads Yup, because of the business choices of DRI. Unlike Microsoft, DRI refused on a volume licensing deal and re-branding and instead demanded royalties per copy. IBM passed the extra cost onto the consumer. My point was just that CP/M's failure was mostly business related from DRI's choices. The OS itself had very forward thinking ideas, but it wasn't some vastly superior option either. MS-DOS was comparable in features, used less resources, and was MUCH cheaper for everyone in production and market.
vortex222 Yes, sort of, IBM was a bit vindictive, but they had to pay DRI each machine they sold. They paid Microsoft only once or twice in lump sums with volume purchases. Hence the extra costs. You have to understand, back then, the PC industry was littered with bodies of dead companies for insignificant business reasons and choices.
+DOG . . . . According to this video, the reason for the diffrence in price was a marketing scam and that CP/M never wanted their product selling for such a high price. They wanted to co exist with MS, but MS wanted the market all to themselves. I tend to think they would be better off not having anything to do with IBM, they could have went with another hardware company, or bought out a small one and built it up.
This is the guy that postponed a critical meeting with IBM for his wife's birthday. After this move, Microsoft signed the deal with IBM and later became a huge corporation. Not much later, his wife left him and Gary lost his life to booze.
That's not how it happened - he had a prior commitment which he upheld and arrived at the meeting with IBM whilst it was in progress. DRI were not happy with the terms (or the NDI) presented by IBM. They were on a path to working it out (or so Gary thought) but IBM had already contacted Microsoft (from whom they were getting Basic plus other programs) and Microsoft purchased QDOS from SCI. QDOS was a rip-off of CP/M. Essentially Gary was backstabbed by IBM and Microsoft. Microsoft used QDOS and re-branded it as MS-DOS/PC-DOS but it was all based on Gary's CP/M and even had the same interrupt calls and underlying architecture. Gary/DRI threatened to sue IBM, who quickly made amends by agreeing to sell them (CP/M and DOS) side-by-side, but they backstabbed again by pricing DOS considerably cheaper and CP/M considerably inflated. The guy was a genius inventor, technician, engineer and computer scientist but was too trusting. IBM were (and still are) a ruthless corporation run by money men. Gates was a passing chancer and a grifter, who saw and opportunity and took it no matter the consequences.
Cool! I still have all my 8 inch floppies and CP/M books and manuals. Along with all my PDP4 and PDP8 stuff and lots more basic, DOS and FORTRAN and ...... Brings back lots of good memories.
The first real computer I had was a Kaypro II, bundled with CP/M. What a trip down memory lane!!! I can't remember how many times I had to put new disk drives in the thing. It ate them like popcorn.
Although not my first I did have a Kaypro 2 also.. Then uped it to a Kaypro 4 (DSDD 40 track) and finally to a Kaypro 8 (DSDD 80 track) However when the IBM came out I needed to swap to that. After a while and the 386 came out and boardss were cheaper I took my Kaypro and gutted it.. dropping in a 386 with 4mb mem, and a 420MB Connor HD. Also added a DC600 tape and floppy.. and still have a cavity for putting my floppy disks in. The Kaypro case was strong - I got it caught in a lift door once and the lift came off second best :)
Yes, the case on Kaypro was strong, almost like it was built for a battlefield environment. I get it out and fire it up every year or so to see if it's still working. I've had it for about 34.5 years now.
Here in England in the 1990s Amstrad founded by Lord Alan Sugar ,he of the apprentice fame, brought out personal computers at a competitive price using cp/m. The version that I have heard about DR and Microsoft was that Gary's wife had a legal mind and wanted many clauses in the contract whereas Microsoft wanted fewer also Gates brought Qdos for a song and rewrote it with help from his partner for IBM..
Well said, I'm a big fan of Open Source & can actually accomplish everything I need with free software where you pay for tech support instead of blindly dumping money into a program you "HOPE" you like. Having said that, I use Mac, Microsoft & Linux based Distributions, my hardware running linux is usually considered inferior hardware & will outperform the better hardware just because of the sloppy code & careless use of hardware resources on behalf of both Microsoft & Apple,
I wonder if Bill Gates ever looks back at his career and truly appreciates the fact that his empire was really born out of him taking advantage of Gary and DRI. Sure, MS had existed before the IBM PC and was fairly successful, but their products were always just “meh” and had it not been for the IBM deal, I’m not sure if MS would have ever come up with a real industry-changing product on their own. Hell, without Gary I imagine that MS probably would have eventually disappeared like so many of its contemporaries.
You forgot Microsoft wrote the basic language for Atari, the first of it's kind. Bill Gates was way ahead of his time, so he would have been very successful anyhow. He had programming ability and marketing genius, and the confidence to flunk out from Harvard, such people shouldn't be written off. We are dwarfs when compared to such giants and easy for dwarfs to minimize the role giants.
it was because of the adoption of 8086 cpu, for which the was no ready cp/m implementation. so IBM asked for a 8086 disk operating system. M$ accepted and reused an existing OS for x86 patched and adapted and renamed to MS-DOS. The big businness was the licencing per OS unit sold instead of paying all the OS only once
I understand what happened was that IBM actually offered an agreement with Gary Kildall. It was an opportunity of a lifetime, but he didn't take it. So Bill Gates and Paul Allan took the opportunity and the rest is history.
$240 for just the OS on your computer in the early 80's was shockingly expensive. Bill Gates created and sold the OS for the C64 for $50,000. Had he charged $240.00 for each copy of the OS, it would have totaled... (16 million C64s... Times $240 Equals ...$3.84 Billion dollars..). To keep things in perspective, the later runs of C64s, cost $5.00 to produce. With a dirt cheap price at the stores. (The 1541 floppy drives were significantly more to make), but overall a very inexpensive computer in the later days.) $240 per OS was just insane! The C128 came with CP/M. By then the price was great. The C128 also had : 100% C64 capability, (a full blown C64 system and OS). C128 System and OS. And a Full Blown CP/M System and OS. (Complete with a Z80 CPU). Possibly the only home computer to contain 3 separate Hardware/OS systems in one machine. Sluggo
Actually, the C128 did not come with CP/M, you had to send a check to DRI to obtain the copy of CP/M, but it was designed to support and work with CP/M hardware wise. I forget the dollar amount, though it was obviously not terribly high since I paid for it out of my allowance at the time just to experiment a bit with CP/M, but it was not actually included since you had to purchase the disks and manuals from DRI.
+Ethan Poole I did not even notice that when I bought my C128 in the Day, (I only used the C64 Mode). But it was a very cool 3 computers in one! Thanks for the Correction.
+DoNotTouchMyPepes The Point I was making was " $240.00 Was insane back then" The Original prices on most 8bits were roughly $200-400. Most of them dropped way down, (The C64 was on sale at Toys R US for as low as $25.00 at the end of its life). The vast majority of computers back then had the OS included and it only added a small amount of money to the machines. Yes if Commodore tried to add $240 just for the OS on every computer, they would have never sold. HOWEVER , If Bill had charged Commodore $1.00 for each machine using the Commodore Basic... He would have made $16,000,000.00 VS $50,000.00. All of the popular Home Computers back then came with a Fee OS. Yes DoNoTouchMyPepes, I agree with you %100.
In my point of view the c128 was a 4 computer in one case. The well known c64, the c128, cp/m+ AND geos! In fact, if the harddrive for c64/128 came earlier, I would never have buyed a PC, because I had ALL I needed on the c128. Gaming, GUI and 'professional' Software in cp/m (WordStar, Multiplan, dBaseII) I had all of them including mbasic and a c-compiler. It was the computer who fascinated me the most. Then came another big boost when the i80286 was availlable. Since then it's only a race for Speed.
Huh?!?!? JiffyDOS was the DOS on the 1541 disk drives for the C64, it was written by a Commodore programmer named Mark Fellows. Gates and Microsoft had NOTHING to do with it.
Yep. Jobs' main motivation was getting rich. Guys like Kildall and Ritchie were motivated by the love of the technology, and they (especially Ritchie) influenced today's technological landscape far more than anything Jobs did. Jobs didn't really even pafrticularly care about computing when he started Apple. Wozniak was the genius behind Apple. Jobs just got high all day, and eventually realized he could get rich off of Woz's brain. At least Bill Gates was a fucking programmer, and a good one.
If Gary Kildall had the equivalent of a Steve Jobs at his side like Wozniak had. DRI would have been the what Microsoft is today but way better, since Gary is way smarter than Bill Gates.
"Gary is way smarter than Bill Gates" True. He was also an honest guy, unlike Gates. He and Gary Allan did not even originate the BASIC for Intel CPUs. All he did was adapt PDP-8 BASIC to run on those chips. Not only that, but Gates' father was a top lawyer for IBM when the deal was signed.
Correct! Its like with Atari, Ted Dabney was the engineer, he created Computer Space, his Spot Motion circuit was the basis for Atari PONG. Nolan was the visionary and the marketer, he put Atari on the map.
I remember watching this show every week on PBS. Gary was in the field because it was much more passion over a business venture. He knew and understood the 'nuts and bolts' of the computer world. He rarely if ever talked about the financial gains of the innovation, but understood quite well how the guests were building these new innovations. And that is what made him the expert on the Computer Chronicles.
I hired Gary as a consultant to The Microcomputer Systems Group at Intel.His job was to develop an operating system for the 8008 And the Intellec 8....This became PL/M.....CP/M was an offshoot of PL/M
+aaronsdavis You mean the millions that rejected his sterilizers that he called 'vaccinations'? If you call it ethical to lie in order to do modern day Nazi style covert eugenics, I'd hate to see what you call unethical.
IBM didn't screw anyone over - they needed an OS, Gary wasn't responding in any fashion to even get the ball rolling with IBM, Bill Gates actually sent IBM to Gary because Microsoft didn't have any OS and he knew Gary had CP/M, IBM then came back to Gates and Gates said sure, he has something called DOS and he'll license it to IBM non-exclusively for $50,000 --- he took the money and bought QDOS from Seattle Computer Products and the rest is history. Gary screwed himself over by not jumping when he found out IBM just came to visit him and then he didn't research what MSDOS was going to sell for and just set his own price of $240 and priced himself out of the market. When he did find out what the price was, he should've dropped CP/M for $25 a copy instead and regained the market share.
No. IBM pushed AIX in before 1995 until 2000. We used it to not solve problems but to provided solutions. For PC…it was wild and I was not in it. These are personal computer people on the news blowing up. C64 was big. What happened to them. Sinclair? Amstrad? We did not fight in that market much. It was a wide field and I saw the departments fade away. I stayed on the manufacturing department and went into the AIX department. Then I saw Sun and the GNU. Unix was done by mid 2000’s. We really did not compete much except for PS/2. That was over by 1990. I stayed on servers and say many people leave because of the personal computer wars. Not good times and I don’t wish people see it.
if Gary K put effort into being good at business, he couldnt have continued to create the way he did, he would use his energy on business instead. thats why he was above the rest, because he created for the benefit of humanity and had the satisfaction that comes with it. The people we remember are the ones like Bill G that make all the money and the fame. but which contribution is greater. we all know that ideas are the source of advancement.
Digital Research's multitasking operating system was originally called Concurrent DOS and then later became DR-DOS which also had multitasking capabilities.
Gary was a great engineer, but a really bad businessman. He really should've brought in an MBA to run the company and to have gone out and been cut throat and gotten DRI positioned properly and then Gary could've just focused on designing ground breaking things. I really wish things had gone better for him, even with GEM - he should've owned the PC GUI market, but again made no cut throat effort to get GEM put onto every PC shipped. Ventura Publisher was the killer app for a GUI machine and GEM should've evolved into todays modern GUI. If it wasn't for his deal with Atari, GEM would'nt have survived at all, at least it had a very active and productive live on the 68000 platform as part of Atari's ST, TT and Falcon lines of computers.
Apple a creation of deluded cruel and greedy jobs. Microsoft not far off. These two companies shows how wrong the world is and all we care is money. Ppl who tried to make a difference fade away as a loosers. We ppl should rethink and perhaps change the way we see and think. Gary was a true genius!
Proof that honesty and business do not match ... a real shame, i like Gary Kildall's concept of an operating system. (I consider any embedded application bloatware, nothing more.)
It was more naivety than honesty, since he showed bill everything he needed. If he hadn't done that he still coulda been honest and done okay for himself. Plus selling an OS for $200+ when the competitor's isn't even $60 was a dumb move.
I love all those wide shots of DRI But you *BETTER* bet your ass that if all this technological innovation was happening today that certain officials would MAKE SURE that there were some blacks, asians, and Hispanics were in those pictures!!!
So basically he was a creative genius, a gentleman, a nice and kind man, and as a business man, a complete imbecile. He had his head in the clouds; figuratively, and totally clueless in business. Had he been focused on the business, instead of enjoying himself, and had a good business acumen, he would have been smart enough to put IBM on a short leash. And eviscerated the much hungrier Micro Soft. The program states that people don't know why IBM did that price gouging sal3 of Operating Systems, knowing full well what the outcome would have been. Let's stop the political correctness, and say the truth. IBM wanted to hurt Larry Kildall for refusing to sell to them, and winding up with egg in their face, when they realized Micro Soft would be putting IBM on a legal battle for copyright infringement, if it used Micro Soft software So IBM had to go back to Kildall. And also because Kildall did not humble himself to IBM. But treated them just as another job. Where Gates and Paul Allen bent the knee to IBM.
@kingcrimson234 I think you'll find that was definitely not true. Steve Jobs's main concern could well have been his ego. But money was not his main motivator.
antigen4 Initially it was not intended as a ripoff. It was 86-DOS, or QDOS whatever and used by Seattle Computer Products for testing some hardware they were producing. Microsoft bought 86-DOS from SCP, and Tim Paterson started working for Microsoft.
You don't hear about Gary or CP/M very often in modern IT circles. It's good to learn about this very interesting part of personal computing history :)
Its used to be a big topic in the 80's and 90's, but time and people's attention have move on and it seems now with the internet and having the entire world at peoples fingertips, they have the knowledge and attention span of a golden retriever that just saw a squirrel.
fyrestorme123, yes! Really interesting history!
I have nothing but respect for Gary, he seemed like a true gentleman. RIP
"One of the most important people in computing history" and *most* people, including myself, have never heard of him. Quite sad, really. Thanks for sharing.
Ah, the golden days of PBS. They just don't produce shows as great as this anymore.
Indeed, it's a pity that he's not remembered as others... May this "Computer Chronicles" video serve as a deserved tribute to him :D
Kildall is another example seen in other areas and industries. Being better, building the better mousetrap, does not guarantee the market will buy your product.
It bugs my mind that Gary actually predicted how OS should accociated with apps in the future, which is right now! Too bad he was just too innovative, and major market at the time was satisfied with bundled softwares, RIP Gary, time proves you are right. :(
In this year 2024, I continue to watch "The Computer Chronicles," which is a favorite show, I have enjoyed the way Gary Kildall hosted it. Perhaps I never met the [gentleman], I truly regret that Gary Kildall died. All the fine people are gone! Now I appreciate your channel as the best. I am also a fan of the microcomputer, as well as a keyboard specialist and an avid typist who uses one almost all the time.
" The brightest stars burn bright for the shortest time" RIP Gary
posting to get judith's name out of here with her stereotyping-affirming comment
@@ITI-xi5zx what?
O how it hurts when they cannot say "Goodbye." Their absence hurts the heart very much.
rip Gary Kildall // All respect to him / Thanks for sharing!
Computer chronicles greatest show on tv back then.
I remember this show, I would wake up early on the weekend to watch it :)
I realize this is a 9 year old comment lol but yeah, I would watch x-men on fox and my dad would join me for computer chronicles on pbs
Very interesting. My career started with CP/M and I was not really impressed with the first IBM PC. Years later I used PalmOS devices and finally WebOS. Similar to CP/M: very good, but the market went another way. Now you still see WebOS features from 10 years ago being 'sold' as something new.
LOL I learned how to operate and build my own home PC from watching this show in the 90s, it shocked my parents I knew how to build computers as kid, and when I got into college I was more knowledgeable about PCs than most professors.
I always knew that somewhere out there in the world, some guy named Gary was one of the most influential nerds of all time.
Long live Gary, your nerdy name will live on.
Such great respect for his spirit of cooperation over competition. It's certainly wishful thinking, but it sure would be nice if everyone concentrated on being as helpful and sharing as Gary, instead of being cutthroat.
"How IBM ended up using MS-DOS rather than CP/M" IS NOT the title of this episode. It's a tribute to one of the good guys in the world of computers.
I was going to make a comment on this too... I believe the correct title is "Gary Kildall Special"
@Robert Slackware is a paid troll or just an evil guy. being a good guy doesn't make you crazy, if you are on the same side as god and believe the same things as god then aren't you wise? being evil and selfish and competitive and trying to be successful for personal gain is crazy because eternity in hell is a long time compared to your short moment here on earth, where you get to enjoy the materialistic gains of your selfish narcissistic pursuits. surely Gary has a nice spot in heaven and is looking down and he is horrified by what the earth has turned into.
if you are behaving in a selfish and capitalist way then you are nothing more than an animal. humans have a higher purpose than just being another animal and to overcome your animal instincts you need to develop a sense of what truth is. all moral reason begins with: caring about other people is the most important thing in the world.
there are two types of people in the world; selfish people and compassionate people. selfish people care more about themselves than they care about other people. while compassionate people care more about other people than they care about themselves. if you are selfish then you are a bad person and on the side of evil. if you are compassionate then you are a good person and on the side of good.
equality, decentralization and direct democracy are the three keys to a better world and competition is immoral. Gary was clearly not competitive. he preferred cooperation and helping others, isn't that communism? he believed that the OS market was big and had room for many OSes, decentralization. he believed that OS creators should NOT also include software, decentralization. unlike bill crates who believed in monopoly of the OS market and of the software market, all under his centralized control. economic royalist, as fdr called his type. bill is also obviously hyper competitive having grown up a spoiled rich kid with all the advantages, which is how he was able to do microsoft in the first place. being rich kicks in all your animal instincts of being the dominant one in the pack and one of those animal instincts is to become hyper competitive. not only does being rich turn you evil but if you grow up rich you will be a psychopath. i could go on but clearly Gary was a great guy with a great moral compass and not a nut. he is of a rare breed and if only there were more people like him in the world, the world would be a better place. RIP brother
@@RobertLock1978 It's ironic that for the "Gary Kildall Special" episode, which concludes that Kildall should be remembered for all his accomplishments and contributions, rather than be remembered for just the IBM thing, that the corresponding youtube video's title is just about the IBM thing.
@@dizzyboy352 Nicely stated - sorry i missed your comment
@@BigSleepyOx Yeah for sure. And indeed he should be remembered for much more than just a fouled IBM deal.
Gary truly loved computing as I once did many years ago
The licence costed much more with Garry sincehe was directly linked to Digital Research, while Microsoft was just a start up in need of few cash to grow up. The IBM MS deal was much more lucrative on the short term. Anyways IBM approved both licences, but PC equiped with CP/M were extremely expensive compared to the cheaper MS DOS flavour. MS won it lawfully.
That is the difference between a college dropout and a Ph.D. Graduate...
Solutions Architect totally
😂
Dropout won. But Gary won our hearts.
I actually had an interview with Gary Kildall around 1984 or so. Digital Research was floundering and I had a background in UNIX. Sad to say he was not a believer. A little further up the coast the Santa Cruz Operation was eating his lunch. Then along came Linux.
Gary was a Beauty
Steve Jobs was a visionary personality. He was the Rock Star so to speak. The real genius behind products are seldom ever known. It's the front men that have a knack for motivating & advertising that get all the love. The Engineers & brainstorming behind the product are the unsung heroes of the technological era.
You mean Wozniak? Jobs was a good businessman and charismatic fellow but he wasn't a programmer worthy enough at all. Wozniak was the man behind Apple who is unfortunately not many people know.
Gary Kildall "was a genius and a gentleman, a rare combination."
DR's version of DOS was far superior to Microsoft's and I ran it for years.
What about now Bryon Lape, what system do you use
Joseph Hamner At work, currently Win 7, though I am transitioning to Ubuntu desktop. At home, Mac and Linux.
+Bryon Lape it went the way we are used to. the one who sleeps on laurels never understood the passion. its amazing what worked for ms. vanity and lies. ill never be rich i assume
Nice guys finish last.
I loved DR DOS, it was far and above superior to MSDOS and the fact that it came with CDROM drivers as part of it made in invaluable. Its editor and other tools were far better than EDLIN and other "crap" that MSDOS used.
Thanks for posting this, I love take a time machine back to see the tech word in a different time.
Thank you so much for sharing this.
People seem to be selling CP/M as some superior option that lost because of business reasons when reality is that it was a mixture of reasons. Techincal and economic. CP/M and MS-DOS really were technologically comparable. CP/M had really ingenious ideas that would be used later like multi-user OS which DOS never did to my knowledge. But it was also a memory HOG in comparison to MS-DOS. The FAT16 system was pretty amazing for the time. It made it easier to use programs and floppys. Each OS had ups and downs when comparing them side by side. It also didn't hurt that MS-DOS was dirt cheap in relation to CP/M
All in all, I think DRI never truly believed that their world of PCs would have been rocked so hard by IBM's entry, and even if it was, who else would they use? Some startup making BASIC interpreters and playing with Unix? DRI definitely felt IBM needed them more than they needed IBM. That's the funny thing about the industry, the small decisions will make or break you. and NO-ONE is immune. Ask anyone who worked for ATI, Commodore, and Weitek (or even Apple on the opposite side of the spectrum)
***** It failed because of the price tag in comparison with MS-DOS. Pretty simple really.
jeffwads
Yup, because of the business choices of DRI. Unlike Microsoft, DRI refused on a volume licensing deal and re-branding and instead demanded royalties per copy. IBM passed the extra cost onto the consumer. My point was just that CP/M's failure was mostly business related from DRI's choices. The OS itself had very forward thinking ideas, but it wasn't some vastly superior option either. MS-DOS was comparable in features, used less resources, and was MUCH cheaper for everyone in production and market.
vortex222
Yes, sort of, IBM was a bit vindictive, but they had to pay DRI each machine they sold. They paid Microsoft only once or twice in lump sums with volume purchases. Hence the extra costs. You have to understand, back then, the PC industry was littered with bodies of dead companies for insignificant business reasons and choices.
vortex222
To be honest, I think we'd all be on some alternate history's version of IBM's OS/2 right now, not Apple OS X
+DOG . . . . According to this video, the reason for the diffrence in price was a marketing scam and that CP/M never wanted their product selling for such a high price. They wanted to co exist with MS, but MS wanted the market all to themselves. I tend to think they would be better off not having anything to do with IBM, they could have went with another hardware company, or bought out a small one and built it up.
Read the book "Fire in the Valley", it describes how Gary Kildall was actually able to make that Tiny intel 4004 actually do stuff.
This is the guy that postponed a critical meeting with IBM for his wife's birthday. After this move, Microsoft signed the deal with IBM and later became a huge corporation. Not much later, his wife left him and Gary lost his life to booze.
I always thought that Gary blew off IBM because he wanted to fly his plane, that's what the common knowledge reason back in the early 80's.
That's not how it happened - he had a prior commitment which he upheld and arrived at the meeting with IBM whilst it was in progress. DRI were not happy with the terms (or the NDI) presented by IBM. They were on a path to working it out (or so Gary thought) but IBM had already contacted Microsoft (from whom they were getting Basic plus other programs) and Microsoft purchased QDOS from SCI. QDOS was a rip-off of CP/M.
Essentially Gary was backstabbed by IBM and Microsoft. Microsoft used QDOS and re-branded it as MS-DOS/PC-DOS but it was all based on Gary's CP/M and even had the same interrupt calls and underlying architecture. Gary/DRI threatened to sue IBM, who quickly made amends by agreeing to sell them (CP/M and DOS) side-by-side, but they backstabbed again by pricing DOS considerably cheaper and CP/M considerably inflated.
The guy was a genius inventor, technician, engineer and computer scientist but was too trusting. IBM were (and still are) a ruthless corporation run by money men. Gates was a passing chancer and a grifter, who saw and opportunity and took it no matter the consequences.
R.I.P. Gary Kildall
They included CP/M in the Commodore 128, which the marketed, then abandoned. It made use of the Z80 chip.
Commodity 128 was only sold for around 4 years, and still sold more units than all Apple II models combined over a 14 year period.
Cool! I still have all my 8 inch floppies and CP/M books and manuals. Along with all my PDP4 and PDP8 stuff and lots more basic, DOS and FORTRAN and ...... Brings back lots of good memories.
The first real computer I had was a Kaypro II, bundled with CP/M. What a trip down memory lane!!! I can't remember how many times I had to put new disk drives in the thing. It ate them like popcorn.
Although not my first I did have a Kaypro 2 also.. Then uped it to a Kaypro 4 (DSDD 40 track) and finally to a Kaypro 8 (DSDD 80 track)
However when the IBM came out I needed to swap to that. After a while and the 386 came out and boardss were cheaper I took my Kaypro and gutted it.. dropping in a 386 with 4mb mem, and a 420MB Connor HD. Also added a DC600 tape and floppy.. and still have a cavity for putting my floppy disks in.
The Kaypro case was strong - I got it caught in a lift door once and the lift came off second best :)
Yes, the case on Kaypro was strong, almost like it was built for a battlefield environment. I get it out and fire it up every year or so to see if it's still working. I've had it for about 34.5 years now.
CD-ROM in 1985? Where was I? I remember floppy discs back then.
I’ve seen cdroms operate on a ti-99/4a with a PEB and scsi card. That machine came out in the 70s
Here in England in the 1990s Amstrad founded by Lord Alan Sugar ,he of the apprentice fame, brought out personal computers at a competitive price using cp/m. The version that I have heard about DR and Microsoft was that Gary's wife had a legal mind and wanted many clauses in the contract whereas Microsoft wanted fewer also Gates brought Qdos for a song and rewrote it with help from his partner for IBM..
He bought it for $50,000 - hardly a song for a company working out a motel at the time.
I remember, all these products. I also, remember when DR DOS came out from Digital Research. I thought it was really slick. Much better than MS-DOS.
Well said, I'm a big fan of Open Source & can actually accomplish everything I need with free software where you pay for tech support instead of blindly dumping money into a program you "HOPE" you like. Having said that, I use Mac, Microsoft & Linux based Distributions, my hardware running linux is usually considered inferior hardware & will outperform the better hardware just because of the sloppy code & careless use of hardware resources on behalf of both Microsoft & Apple,
how i could barely hear the audio on this youtube video because whoever encoded it did not set the audio gain correctly :(
I wonder if Bill Gates ever looks back at his career and truly appreciates the fact that his empire was really born out of him taking advantage of Gary and DRI. Sure, MS had existed before the IBM PC and was fairly successful, but their products were always just “meh” and had it not been for the IBM deal, I’m not sure if MS would have ever come up with a real industry-changing product on their own. Hell, without Gary I imagine that MS probably would have eventually disappeared like so many of its contemporaries.
You forgot Microsoft wrote the basic language for Atari, the first of it's kind. Bill Gates was way ahead of his time, so he would have been very successful anyhow. He had programming ability and marketing genius, and the confidence to flunk out from Harvard, such people shouldn't be written off. We are dwarfs when compared to such giants and easy for dwarfs to minimize the role giants.
Agreed. Never heard of this guy till I started reading about QDOS. Genius.
it was because of the adoption of 8086 cpu, for which the was no ready cp/m implementation. so IBM asked for a 8086 disk operating system. M$ accepted and reused an existing OS for x86 patched and adapted and renamed to MS-DOS. The big businness was the licencing per OS unit sold instead of paying all the OS only once
Gary's name says it all he kildall including himself. I was a user of PL/M. It was a good language
I understand what happened was that IBM actually offered an agreement with Gary Kildall. It was an opportunity of a lifetime, but he didn't take it. So Bill Gates and Paul Allan took the opportunity and the rest is history.
$240 for just the OS on your computer in the early 80's was shockingly expensive. Bill Gates created and sold the OS for the C64 for $50,000. Had he charged $240.00 for each copy of the OS, it would have totaled... (16 million C64s... Times $240 Equals ...$3.84 Billion dollars..).
To keep things in perspective, the later runs of C64s, cost $5.00 to produce. With a dirt cheap price at the stores. (The 1541 floppy drives were significantly more to make), but overall a very inexpensive computer in the later days.)
$240 per OS was just insane!
The C128 came with CP/M. By then the price was great. The C128 also had : 100% C64 capability, (a full blown C64 system and OS). C128 System and OS. And a Full Blown CP/M System and OS. (Complete with a Z80 CPU). Possibly the only home computer to contain 3 separate Hardware/OS systems in one machine.
Sluggo
Actually, the C128 did not come with CP/M, you had to send a check to DRI to obtain the copy of CP/M, but it was designed to support and work with CP/M hardware wise. I forget the dollar amount, though it was obviously not terribly high since I paid for it out of my allowance at the time just to experiment a bit with CP/M, but it was not actually included since you had to purchase the disks and manuals from DRI.
+Ethan Poole I did not even notice that when I bought my C128 in the Day, (I only used the C64 Mode). But it was a very cool 3 computers in one! Thanks for the Correction.
+DoNotTouchMyPepes The Point I was making was " $240.00 Was insane back then" The Original prices on most 8bits were roughly $200-400. Most of them dropped way down, (The C64 was on sale at Toys R US for as low as $25.00 at the end of its life). The vast majority of computers back then had the OS included and it only added a small amount of money to the machines. Yes if Commodore tried to add $240 just for the OS on every computer, they would have never sold. HOWEVER , If Bill had charged Commodore $1.00 for each machine using the Commodore Basic... He would have made $16,000,000.00 VS $50,000.00. All of the popular Home Computers back then came with a Fee OS. Yes DoNoTouchMyPepes, I agree with you %100.
In my point of view the c128 was a 4 computer in one case.
The well known c64, the c128, cp/m+ AND geos!
In fact, if the harddrive for c64/128 came earlier, I would never have buyed a PC, because I had ALL I needed on the c128. Gaming, GUI and 'professional' Software in cp/m (WordStar, Multiplan, dBaseII) I had all of them including mbasic and a c-compiler.
It was the computer who fascinated me the most.
Then came another big boost when the i80286 was availlable. Since then it's only a race for Speed.
Huh?!?!? JiffyDOS was the DOS on the 1541 disk drives for the C64, it was written by a Commodore programmer named Mark Fellows. Gates and Microsoft had NOTHING to do with it.
Yep. Jobs' main motivation was getting rich. Guys like Kildall and Ritchie were motivated by the love of the technology, and they (especially Ritchie) influenced today's technological landscape far more than anything Jobs did.
Jobs didn't really even pafrticularly care about computing when he started Apple. Wozniak was the genius behind Apple. Jobs just got high all day, and eventually realized he could get rich off of Woz's brain.
At least Bill Gates was a fucking programmer, and a good one.
If Gary Kildall had the equivalent of a Steve Jobs at his side like Wozniak had. DRI would have been the what Microsoft is today but way better, since Gary is way smarter than Bill Gates.
"Gary is way smarter than Bill Gates"
True. He was also an honest guy, unlike Gates. He and Gary Allan did not even originate the BASIC for Intel CPUs. All he did was adapt PDP-8 BASIC to run on those chips. Not only that, but Gates' father was a top lawyer for IBM when the deal was signed.
VIDEOSUPERHIGHWAY Yeah, somehow I doubt it.
Correct! Its like with Atari, Ted Dabney was the engineer, he created Computer Space, his Spot Motion circuit was the basis for Atari PONG. Nolan was the visionary and the marketer, he put Atari on the map.
It's a pity that our society punishes sharing.
specially when there is money to be made
Heluva combover Mr. Chiefet is rocking there
If only he had been part of the illuminati, he would've gotten credit, instead of Satan's tutor, gates.
I remember watching this show every week on PBS. Gary was in the field because it was much more passion over a business venture. He knew and understood the 'nuts and bolts' of the computer world. He rarely if ever talked about the financial gains of the innovation, but understood quite well how the guests were building these new innovations. And that is what made him the expert on the Computer Chronicles.
Amazing 👏
I had one of the first Sperry Rands, which burst into flames...
Linus Torvalds was a lot like Gary.. same passion about programming microcomputers.
240p we meet yet again
back then crt tv's supported 480i
You can make a full screen and you'll interlace as much as you'd like far beyond the 480i.
He Is the real Pioneer of computer
IBM PC clients were cool back then too
They’re talking about ancient history but now this video is ancient history talking about ancient history. It’s like xhibitz took control.
Excellent bit of history
"Gary Kildall made a difference". Hear, hear.
I hired Gary as a consultant to The Microcomputer Systems Group at Intel.His job was to develop an operating system for the 8008 And the Intellec 8....This became PL/M.....CP/M was an offshoot of PL/M
Bill Gates has high ethics? Is he kidding?
+aaronsdavis You mean the millions that rejected his sterilizers that he called 'vaccinations'? If you call it ethical to lie in order to do modern day Nazi style covert eugenics, I'd hate to see what you call unethical.
the best joke in almost 30 years. :-D
Interesting. But it doesn't explain WHY IBM decided to screw him and Digital over.
IBM didn't screw anyone over - they needed an OS, Gary wasn't responding in any fashion to even get the ball rolling with IBM, Bill Gates actually sent IBM to Gary because Microsoft didn't have any OS and he knew Gary had CP/M, IBM then came back to Gates and Gates said sure, he has something called DOS and he'll license it to IBM non-exclusively for $50,000 --- he took the money and bought QDOS from Seattle Computer Products and the rest is history. Gary screwed himself over by not jumping when he found out IBM just came to visit him and then he didn't research what MSDOS was going to sell for and just set his own price of $240 and priced himself out of the market. When he did find out what the price was, he should've dropped CP/M for $25 a copy instead and regained the market share.
No. IBM pushed AIX in before 1995 until 2000. We used it to not solve problems but to provided solutions. For PC…it was wild and I was not in it. These are personal computer people on the news blowing up. C64 was big. What happened to them. Sinclair? Amstrad? We did not fight in that market much. It was a wide field and I saw the departments fade away. I stayed on the manufacturing department and went into the AIX department. Then I saw Sun and the GNU. Unix was done by mid 2000’s. We really did not compete much except for PS/2. That was over by 1990. I stayed on servers and say many people leave because of the personal computer wars. Not good times and I don’t wish people see it.
if Gary K put effort into being good at business, he couldnt have continued to create the way he did, he would use his energy on business instead. thats why he was above the rest, because he created for the benefit of humanity and had the satisfaction that comes with it. The people we remember are the ones like Bill G that make all the money and the fame. but which contribution is greater. we all know that ideas are the source of advancement.
Wow, very interesting.
His death has nothing to do with the youtube title.
Gary became a very heavy drinker and fell into depression, he actually died from a traumatic brain injury from being punched too hard in a bar fight.
@@westchestertechnologies6687 who punched him? Bill Gates or one of his mates?
Picture quality only 240p.
So basically Ibm killed digital research. who made the prices?
jobhotlistdotcom Gates got his ideas for Windows from Gary Kildall?
Sirs what is the name of the multitasking operating system for PCs?
Digital Research's multitasking operating system was originally called Concurrent DOS and then later became DR-DOS which also had multitasking capabilities.
@@galfert tks sir.
CP/M Windows? Doesn't have the same ring
can barely hear you
Bundan bi 20 sene sonra da şu anki teknolojiye böyle komik bakılacak gibi görünüyor.
Benim kodlama bilgim yok hocam, bu işleri hobi olarak yapıyorum. Farklı sektörde bir firmada çalışıyorum, özel desteğim maalesef yok.
Subtitles in Portuguese-BR?
Gary was a great engineer, but a really bad businessman. He really should've brought in an MBA to run the company and to have gone out and been cut throat and gotten DRI positioned properly and then Gary could've just focused on designing ground breaking things. I really wish things had gone better for him, even with GEM - he should've owned the PC GUI market, but again made no cut throat effort to get GEM put onto every PC shipped. Ventura Publisher was the killer app for a GUI machine and GEM should've evolved into todays modern GUI. If it wasn't for his deal with Atari, GEM would'nt have survived at all, at least it had a very active and productive live on the 68000 platform as part of Atari's ST, TT and Falcon lines of computers.
Ok, Bill Gates HAD no ethics unless you redefine the word ethical.
Ps Gates worked with apple for a time and borrowed or pinched the idea of WIMPs and used it in Windows 95.
Great history
I love it computer chorninks
Apple a creation of deluded cruel and greedy jobs. Microsoft not far off. These two companies shows how wrong the world is and all we care is money. Ppl who tried to make a difference fade away as a loosers. We ppl should rethink and perhaps change the way we see and think. Gary was a true genius!
Proof that honesty and business do not match ... a real shame, i like Gary Kildall's concept of an operating system. (I consider any embedded application bloatware, nothing more.)
Creepy slimmy gates
Ron Diamond 🤘
Answer: 18:59
Multitask?
so if bill gates never existed, we would have cp/m now?
"Lawyering with Integrity"
LOL
This whole show is about revolutionary ideas that never really took off.
1995? Perhaps is more good 1985? Or less?
I understand 1995 is year is done this film.
It was more naivety than honesty, since he showed bill everything he needed. If he hadn't done that he still coulda been honest and done okay for himself. Plus selling an OS for $200+ when the competitor's isn't even $60 was a dumb move.
It was IBM that did the pricing stuff
In america marketing, means more than Quality. Everything Micrsoft makes till this day is crap.
I love all those wide shots of DRI But you *BETTER* bet your ass that if all this technological innovation was happening today that certain officials would MAKE SURE that there were some blacks, asians, and Hispanics were in those pictures!!!
In 1985 IBM dit had the hardware, bud microsoft had the software.
I am talking about ms dos and,,,windows 1.0
Garry, why Garry, WHY
I liked GEOWORKS best.
fix your audio
Gary....a real winner and contributer.
Bill Gates..... putting his two cents in about covid-19 when he has no business doing so
So basically he was a creative genius, a gentleman, a nice and kind man, and as a business man, a complete imbecile. He had his head in the clouds; figuratively, and totally clueless in business. Had he been focused on the business, instead of enjoying himself, and had a good business acumen, he would have been smart enough to put IBM on a short leash. And eviscerated the much hungrier Micro Soft. The program states that people don't know why IBM did that price gouging sal3 of Operating Systems, knowing full well what the outcome would have been. Let's stop the political correctness, and say the truth. IBM wanted to hurt Larry Kildall for refusing to sell to them, and winding up with egg in their face, when they realized Micro Soft would be putting IBM on a legal battle for copyright infringement, if it used Micro Soft software So IBM had to go back to Kildall. And also because Kildall did not humble himself to IBM. But treated them just as another job. Where Gates and Paul Allen bent the knee to IBM.
@kingcrimson234 I think you'll find that was definitely not true. Steve Jobs's main concern could well have been his ego. But money was not his main motivator.
22:45 Oof tfw bill gates reveals his true face
if I'm not mistaken - DOS WAS a ripoff of CP/M anyway?? so the question is irrelevant except from a contractual perspective (?)
antigen4 Initially it was not intended as a ripoff. It was 86-DOS, or QDOS whatever and used by Seattle Computer Products for testing some hardware they were producing. Microsoft bought 86-DOS from SCP, and Tim Paterson started working for Microsoft.