Re: [TCLUG:17392] [OT] Some computing history?

[Luke Francl <fran0382@tc.umn.edu>]

On Tue, 9 May 2000, Mike Hicks wrote:

> Anyway I was mostly just curious about the multitasking and possible
> protected memory functions and when they got in there..   Was CP/M a
> multitasking OS way back when the PC was being developed?  From what
> I've read, it seems that stuff came up in the mid-1980's (probably as
> the 286 was gaining popularity).  It also sounds like the system was
> designed much more intelligently than DOS -- the kernel actually knew
> how to handle serial ports and apparently had a terminal subsystem that
> quite similar to the way Unix handles things.  Of course, it appears
> that CP/M had a head start of several years on (Q)DOS.  Incidentally,
> the version of QDOS that Microsoft bought was apparently named 0.10...

I don't know if I'd start proclaiming CP/M's superiority over DOS just
yet. I know very little about CP/M, but I *do* know that it had one place
to store ALL your files -- the root directory. There were no other
directories. So, with that in mind, how great could it really be?