C integral types [was Re: Semi-OT: Why Kids Can't use Computers] (fwd)

[William Park]

On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 06:06:38PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 05:12:14PM -0400, James Knott wrote:
> > A lot of people don't know that it was originally written as a
> > development system for a hardware manufacturer.  Seattle Computer
> > Products, a manufacture of S-100 bus hardware, created it for testing
> > new boards, while waiting for CP/M-86 to be released.  BG then bought
> > it, after he had already sold it to IBM.  It was originally called QDOS,
> > for Quick and Dirty Operating System.
> 
> Yeah, it's amazing we are stuck with the legacy of so many bad decisions.
> 
> IBM considered the m68k, but decided that the board would cost to much
> compared to the 8088 (even the 8086 requiring a 16bit bus was considered
> to cost too much).  Of course the Mac, Amiga and Atari ST all went
> on to use the m68k, as did the Sun 3, HP 7xx, Apollo, and NeXT among
> many others.  Amazing how a CPU that everyone used lost out to the one
> only one type of machine used.

Yeah, this is where "Beta" won (vs. VHS). :-)
-- 
William
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