1. Re: compiler?? step 4
bfurniss at ihug.co.nz wrote:
<SNIP>
HP had been rather dependent upon Microsoft for there O/S.
<SNIP>
Care to expand on this? It's got me confused 
As a bit of history if you look under the bonnet of DOS-1 it is rather
heavily based on CP/M. No surpise as Microsoft (small as it was back then)
wanted to be able to support existing CP/M applications.
When DOS-2 came out a second look under the bonnet revealed that new
features heavily based on ideas from UNIX and other OS'es had been added. A
hierarchical file system (i.e sub-directories), streams based IO, file
handles and pipes (e.g. "command | more).
So I'd be inclined to say that it is Microsoft who have picked up ideas from
UNIX for their OS. Don't forget that the first versions of Windows were
based on ideas that the Apple Macintosh had established before and that
these resulted from earlier research at Xerox Parc. The one that I find so
blatent is the Windows 95 "Start Menu" - I seem to remember this feature
being on Macintosh from around version 7.0 of MacOS... Draw your own
conclusions.
If your after an interesting read on all this kind of stuff take a look at:
http://www.rescript.fsnet.co.uk/junkyard/cmdline.txt
This is a rather excellent essay by Neal Stephenson - it is rather long so
if you pay for your internet connection time save it as a text file and read
it offline. I can't recall where I found this on the net (the above is a
copy on my home page) so if anyone knows more about Neal Stephenson please
drop me a line.
OK - I very much sense this thread going rapidly more off topic so I, for
one, will keep any future responses to the individuals concerned.
Regards,
Andy Cranston.
