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This episode covers the lifetime and story of Digital Research and its founder Gary Kildall. Join me in LGR Tech Tales, looking at stories of technological inspiration, failure, and everything in-between!
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32 comments
Ran CP/M on my Commodore 128, and used WordStar for business writing. There was a problem moving files on diskettes formatted on a CP/M machine to the PC DOS office machine. Figured it out somehow, and used this arrangement for over a year.
There is an interview with one of the IBM PC creators, where he mentions that the royalty DRI demanded, meant that CP/M would've been something like $300 per machine, where MS-DOS was $80. But nevertheless, Gary and DRI made some incredible projects far ahead of their time, that sadly never panned out.
Novell only ever cared about DR's operating systems and never did anything with all the other IPs, which is a real pity since DRI was nearly a decade ahead of Microsoft in terms of their product line.
Thanks for the depression, LGR
This shows that history could’ve gotten into a different direction.
A lot of people like to blame the young Bill Gates for what happened to Gary Kildall, but Bill Gates did recommend Kildall initially.
If anyone is to blame it would be IBM and how they implemented their contract. It is also that as smart as Gary Kildall was in programming, he was not a good businessman.
Gary is the real Bill Gates… Its a shame that things didnt go better for him. I think he would have used his money alot better than what Bill has with his so called philanthropy.
Well at least GEM ended up on the Atari ST.
I love these videos
CP/M was so simple to use. To this day, I've yet to see an OS as user friendly as CP/M.
RIP Gary Kildall
i think about the ascent of mt everest, how there are bodies of climbers left there. in a way, gary kildall is one of those bodies. throwing himself on the gears of machinery, if only to advance the collective will towards the summit of progress.
I know about Gary Kildall thanks to Youtube archiving every episode of the Computer Chronicles. The worst people getting credit and notoriety over actual innovators and good people like Kildall is a story that has played out again and again in Silicon Valley.
my god, this is so sad 😢
I Love Computers and Booze Too! Don't Play Fuck Around and Find out in a Biker Bar. Just a thought. RIP Gary I always wonders who was behind CP/M in the 80's. On my TRS-80 Model IIII.
The more you learn of Microsoft, the grimier you feel.
Dude, rewatching this video I realized you were the first person whose videos I constantly watched – a pioneer at competent, well made and enjoyable content on YouTube! The IEEE recognized Kildall's work with a Milestone recognition in 2014.
I have to wonder how "bitter" Gary was. Whenever he is brought up by people who worked with him, they paint him as an extremely helpful and friendly guy, it just doesn't seem like he really could have been consumed by bitterness. Perhaps that makes the story more dramatic, but I wonder how realistic it is.
Well, a good lesson: cancel birthday trip of your wife to make a hell of a negotiation, after all, you will divorce anyway.
the dude is making PC's for god now
Daaaaaaaamn
I think it's a fairy tale. if IBM really wants to license CPM they could do it anytime they want. a couple of 100 thousand dollars did not mean anything to IBM.
It's more likely, that they already favored MS. And pushed this legend forward.
The mistake Gary did was just, not behaving like the industry is usually doing. He should sue them, and then likely it will fall apart.
People don't understand, but Seattle wasn't just on the cutting edge of computer progress – but also aviation. Boeing had major investments in Seattle, and aviation wasn't just reserved for the ultra-rich; but there were many middle class options for getting into the skies in those halcyon days.
"Going flying with the wife on her birthday," may seem like a silly reason to postpone a multi-million dollar business deal – but back then, going flying was the epitome of "we're ok now, we have disposable income – we can enjoy life." It probably didn't occur to them that IBM, the megacorp dominating the globe, couldn't postpone a formal meeting by just one day.
But that's the thing, isn't it? IBM was so big that their thinking was "Why can't you postpone your birthday for just one day? Don't you know who we are?"
It's sad, really. The height of upper-middle class collided with the height of pan-market corporation, and the corpo's couldn't stomach the audacity of waiting just one day for some Seattle yokel to have a nice birthday with his wife. Instead, they turned to Bill Gates who had the great fortune of not having a wife with a birthday on the exact day they wished to strike a deal – many, many days after they initially made an offer for CP/M.
What bullshit politics. Maybe they perceived Bill as easier to do business with, but all the same – value the guy that wants just one day (ONE DAY) for him and his wife; that's the guy with his priorities straight.
Tom Rolander, working digital research engineer and personal friend of Gary Kildall at the Computer History Museum (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VREZ6Zx_usc&feature=emb_title), has a timetable in both, pdf and video of the whole story. I mean that he, better than anyone, tells what really happened. Greetings.
I have been watching a number of the Computing Chronicles episodes co-hosted by Gary Kildall that have been archived here on YouTube. Sad that he met with such a tragic end.
Very interesting. I also was not aware MS bought DOS and thought they had written it from scratch. How things could have been. Just like if Commodore had not mismanaged Amiga, and if Motorola was able/willing to remain competitive with 68k or if Atari could have remained relevant.
Dude, have you ever binge watched The Computer Chronicles? Love your stuff, bro.
I really do with Gary was the king of OSs, not Gates. Gates took all of that money and decided to "Cull the herd" that is the human race. It's like there were people that knew he was a nutjob even back then, and someone like Gary would have prevented that.
DOS stole code from CPM
INTERGALACTIC Digital Research = Well, he and his wife knew how to target their niche market ! All of S P A C E !
so the woman whose birthday plans he prioritized over what could've been a career-defining deal came around to divorce him. Oh my.
There's a painfully glaring omission here… Bill Gates' mom was on the Board of Directors of The United Way, along with the CEO of IBM at the time. That's how Bill Gates and Microsoft came to be on IBM's radar in the first place. Microsoft had an inside line through Gates' mom. DRI did not.
My first "IBM compatible" was running DR-DOS
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