offer - OS/2 for the PDP-11

[madodel]

Fred Cisin wrote:
>>> OS/2 was written at MICROS~1 by Gordon Letwin.
>>> LATER IBM took over rights.
>>> Did it have anything to do with Dave Cutler moving from DEC to MICROS~1 to
>>> combine OS/2 and some DEC stuff to create NT?
> 
> On Tue, 1 Jan 2008, madodel wrote:
>> http://www.os2voice.org/VNL/past_issues/VNL0797H/vnewsf.htm#WarpGuru for a
>> history of OS/2 written by someone who was there from the beginning.
> 
> Isn't it amazing how several people who were, in theory, working together,
> can come up with mutually incompatible versions of events that they all
> witnessed?
> 
> David Both's writeup is very interesting.
> I need to buy a copy of Both's book, "Inside OS/2"
> to shelve alongside  Gordon Letwin's "Inside OS/2".

David Both wrote the original documentation for the IBM PC on the first PC 
off the assembly line.  Everyone has their own agenda, but I would think 
that Letwin was far more invested in M4FT then Both was in IBM, though 
David was from a time when IBM employees were said to bleed blue.

> 
> I'm reminded of the old "Computer Memory" threads where the military
> people said that industry and education did not play a significant part in
> developing the internet; education says that industry and military were
> unimportant; industry claimed that education and military were incidental.
> 
> I agree with MOST of his gratuitous MICROS~1 bashing.
> 
> I'm fascinated at how somebody so incredibly ignorant about the
> competition could do such significant OS development.
> 
> "For you trivia buffs, the other OS delivered with the original PC was the
> UCSB P-System (University of Southern California at Berkely Pseudo code
> System). I will permit those who make a living from documenting the
> history of computers to describe that operating system elsewhere."
> 
> For the record, the p-system OS was UCSD University of California San
> Diego.
> University of Southern California was never involved.
> Berkeley is spelled Berkeley, NOT Berkely.
> There is no Berkeley, nor even a Berkely in Southern California.
> To those in Berkeley (my license plate frames attest that I am an aluminum
> (sic)), the whole world is Unix.  Heard of BSD?
> Unconfirmed anecdote: UCB bought exactly ONE copy of UCSD p-system, and
> Tom Callaway asked for his money back.
> Many will disagree with me, but I feel that a floppy based OS that can't
> handle non-contiguous files is the worst product ever marked as being an
> OS.
> 
> "Shortly after this split, Microsoft renamed OS/2 V3 to Windows NT."
> 
> MOST people do NOT consider NT to be a "renaming of OS/2".

No but I believe a lot of people assume that Microsoft took all the code 
they had been working on and used it as the base for the initial cut of NT. 
  The Cutler story is a nice diversion to pretend that it was written from 
scratch and was as bullet proof as VMS, but seriously considering the 
actual results I really doubt it.   Considering Microsoft's history of 
stealing just about everything they had ever done, why would you think 
otherwise in the case of NT?

> MICROS~1 does acknowledge a very substantial amount of OS/2 code used in
> creating NT.  But many people say that much of the remainder is code
> stolen from DEC!

There is just some OS/2 text mode support code in NT 3.51.  And certain 
errors result in OS/2 error messages which is a bit disconcerting when they 
popup.  I have no idea what may have been in the very early versions of 
Micosoft's 32bit windoze.

> Unconfirmed anecdote: When Cutler went to MICROS~1 and headed up the NT
> project, he wanted to move away from OS/2, and towards VMS code.  DEC
> desperately wanted an Alpha port of NT, so they signed a release on any
> incidental pieces of their code that might end up in NT.  Only later did
> they find out how much of it came from them.
> 
> "The owner of DR snubbed the IBM lawyers and went flying or golfing
> (depending upon whose story you hear) instead."
> 
> In spite of DRI's attempts to deny it, that story is very well confirmed.
> It was Oakland that he was flying to, and Gary was never much of a golfer.
> 
>> OS/2 text mode support, but was not based on OS/2.  I recall that NT had
>> support for x86, PPC, and Alpha CPUs, so it would not be hard to believe
>> that microsoft might have toyed with porting it to a DEC platform.
> "90+% portable C code"
> 
>> But I see no listing for NT for the PDP-11 on Wikipedia.
> A citation of Wikipedia [even when correct] adds little credence to any
> argument.

Fine with me, site a reference that lists a PDP-11 port of OS/2.

> 
>>> IFF you wanted GUI, then you ran "Windows for OS/2" on OS/2.
>>> That was later renamed "Presentation Manager" as part of the MICROS~1
>> OS/2 1.0 was text mode only.  OS/2 1.1 introduced the Presentation Manager
> 
> It WAS once named "Windows for OS/2"
> That was slightly before the time of "OS/2 for Windows".
> 
>> That name created a lot of confusion as many thought OS/2 ran under windows
>> rather then the other way around.
> 
> MICROS~1 doesn't seem to have EVER cared about confusion over their
> product names.

You mean like releasing the first version of NT as Windows NT 3.1 when 
there was never a 1.0 or 2.0 or even a 3.0 release?  Of course a name can't 
make up for it still being beta level code.  But then IBM did the same with 
its PPC release of OS/2 and the OS/2 1.0 release had some serious issues as 
well.

> 
> Unconfirmed rumor: there are rumors that MS put together a 68000 port of
> NT to run on Macintosh, but cut a deal with Apple to not release it.

There was some sort of deal between m$ft and Apple back then.  Not sure 
what the time frame for what you cite is, but back in 1995-1996 timeframe 
when Apple abandoned Taligent and WorkplaceOS, they also killed off 
development of Quicktime for OS/2 just before it was to be released, citing 
that they needed to save money, yet the project was entirely funded by IBM. 
  I seem to recall that m$ft made a large investment in AAPL at about the 
same time, but I might be off by a few years.

Mark


-- 

  From the eComStation Desktop of: Mark Dodel

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