Emotive text about DRI, Gary, ...
- From: Floppy Software <floppysoftware@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 07:21:25 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podshows/8881
DATE : Sun, 06 Feb 2005 21:35:05 GMT
Entered in Database : 2005-02-06 16:35:05
length : 4747264
Link to the Show / Show Notes
February 6, 2005 Yesterday markedthe end of an era which, for many of
us, began in the mid-1970's. I, along withmany of the fellow members
of my"Digital Research" family, attended a memorialservice for Dorothy
McEwen who died last week of brain cancer and, who alongwith Gary
Kildall, founded the company originally known as"IntergalacticDigital
Research" that changed how hundreds of millions of people live
andwork. Gary and Dorothystarted DRI in the garage out back of their
home on Bayview Avenue in PacificGrove, a quiet, coastal village who's
motto is"The Last Hometown". Over nearlytwo decades, DRI, starting
with the invention of the personal computer operatingsystem (and it's
one quantum leap idea, the BIOS) not only pioneered many of
thetechnologies we take for granted today it also grew to be the
largest employeron the Monterey Peninsula with, at it's height, over
600 employees. Gary was thequintessential software"folk hero". He
loved to code, he lived to code. Dorothy had the ultimate
complimentary skills and built a business around Gary'screations. I
started asmall company with my first wife, Nancy, in 1979 to build
Pascal compilers andin late 1981 we received an offer from Gary and
Dorothy to"join forces" and sowe were"acquired" and moved, along with
our amazingly capable assistant, PatieMcCracken, north to join DRI.
We were employees 61, 62 and 63. What we had noidea of was that we
would find an amazing family of people with whom we wouldshare what
turned out to be history. Those of us whostarting writing software in
the late 1960's and early 1970's always wanted tospend more and more
time with our computers than we could either afford or wereallowed.
Thirty years agocomputers came in one or more 6-foot tall equipment
racks, had to live inspecially air-conditioned rooms and, unless you
were very lucky, or very rich,had to be shared with others. The
overarchingmood of the time was"I wish I could have one all to
myself!" What Gary andDorothy did was to enable that revolution.
Gary's invention of the BIOS thatallowed a nearly infinite variety of
hardware implementations to run CP/M andDorothy's marketing acumen and
management skills that allowed them to grow abusiness based on a
product that cost $70 (retail) and $50,000 for an unlimitedOEM
license, enabled those of us who just couldn't wait, to build our
hardware,write a BIOS and, most importantly of all, share our work
with other people. To this daythere are still people running CP/M on
both real hardware and emulators. Whenyou fire up a DOS prompt on
your PC you still see the familiar C> prompt we allwere thrilled to
see when our first BIOS worked. Actually, it was an A> promptbecause
we had two 8-inch floppy disk drives (if we were lucky) called A and
Band C didn’t'come along until you got a hard disk. My personal"CP/M
Moment" came in February of 1977. I was a hardware hacker and
softwaredeveloper and had built a number of microcomputer systems and
was consideringbuilding a floppy disk controller for my IMSAI 8080 (#7
from the secondproduction run) which I had bought and built a year
earlier. At that time themagazine to read for digital circuit hackers
was called Electronic EngineeringTimes. When I saw a small classified
advertisement for a floppy disk operatingsystem, CP/M 1.0, for $70 I
hopefully sent off my check to PO BOX 579, PacificGrove, California, a
place, from my viewpoint in a snowy February in Iowa,seemed like a
million miles away. About a weeklater I got my two diskettes and 3
stapled together manuals and I wasoff-and-running. I think I must
have written nearly 50 CP/M BIOSimplementations between 1977 and 1983
and the day I saw my own home-built floppydisk controller bring up
that A> prompt it was indescribable. I am indebted toDorothy and Gary
for their vision and courage. But most importantly I amgrateful for
their spirit which continues to inspire me and the fellow membersof
the DRI family every single day.
.
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