On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 09:31 -0500, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: > Les wrote: > > Actually, Microsoft was a late comer to personal computers. I own > > (still) an Altair 8800B, and owned a > > Morrow Microdecision before that, both on CP/M. And prior to that I had > > systems that ran various other OS's > > that were a bit more limited, and one straight bootstrap system for > > which you had to furnish an OS of your favorite > > flavor. Microsoft did not create, or really enable personal computers, > > they just got the contract to write the OS for IBM, and were able to > > bootstrap that into the corporation you see today. > > > Microsoft's entry into the personal computer market was by supplying > a version of BASIC that for several operating systems. I can > remember loading it from tape, and later burning it to EPROM with a > small relocation program to move it into RAM at the address it > expected to run. (It was not relocatable...) ---- I have that tape still... Microsoft's version for Apple...called 'Floating Point Basic Language' for Apple ][ because my original Apple ][ had integer basic in ROM and Floating Point Basic had to be loaded from a cassette. I do sort of wonder if it has any value. and as for everyone going on about punch cards...perhaps in 20 more years, it will be considered ancient history but now, there are way too many of us still around that remember them to make them an interesting story. Craig
