Dr-DOS

This story appeared on Network World at
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2002/1216drdos.html

Start-up revives once-vaunted DR-DOS

By Deni Connor, Network World, 12/16/02

LINDON, UTAH – A start-up is looking to dust off and buff up DR-DOS, a largely dormant operating system that still attracts a hardcore following but is best-known for a colorful past that some see checkered with missed opportunity.

DeviceLogics, a company co-founded last month by Bryan Sparks, former CEO and founder of Linux vendors’ Lineo (now Embedix) and Caldera Systems (now SCO Group), has bought DR-DOS, which once competed against Microsoft’s MS-DOS.

DeviceLogics purchased DR-DOS from Lineo, where it underwent minor functional development during the past few years. The start-up will develop a compact operating system – for kiosks, automated teller machines, point-of-sale devices, handheld computers and desktop PCs running legacy DOS applications. Observers say the operating system, which is expected to ship in the first quarter of next year, could be more efficient and less expensive than Windows XP Embedded, Windows CE or Linux.
Interest level high

“There are still a lot of people running DR-DOS on single PCs,” says Troy Tribe, vice president of sales and marketing at DeviceLogics. “We are going to revise DR-DOS for the desktop, as well as provide a kiosk, embedded, point-of-sale and a handheld version. People are now having to do that work on their own.”

Digital Research developed DR-DOS, a 32-bit operating system, in 1987 as a fully compatible alternative to MS-DOS for 80286- and 80386-based PCs. It succeeded creator Gary Kildall’s Control Program for Microcomputers (CP/M). The most popular legend told is that Kildall, the CEO of Intergalactic Digital Research (later shortened to Digital Research), was piloting his plane the day IBM approached the company about licensing CP/M for its first microcomputer – instead, IBM signed Microsoft’s MS-DOS.

In 1991, Novell acquired Digital Research, DR-DOS and CP/M, with plans to compete against MS-DOS in the DOS market. When Novell CEO Ray Noorda failed to capitalize on the plan to take over the DOS market, Novell sold DR-DOS to Caldera in 1996. Caldera, which Sparks founded with Noorda’s assistance, then sued Microsoft for lost sales and unfair competition and settled out of court for an unspecified amount.
Simple development

Analysts say embedded DOS is important in that the development environment is simplified because the code is compact and the devices that use it often do not require a keyboard, mouse or more-complicated Windows-like display.

“It would probably be much smaller [than XP Embedded], take less machine resources, and because it is inherently simpler, some tasks would run faster,” says Dan Kuznetsky, research director at IDC. “DOS runs very well in a small system by today’s standards.”
Challenges ahead

However, Kuznetsky says getting an embedded operating system such as DR-DOS accepted would not be without challenges.

“It would not necessarily have the same security or development tools that are up to today’s standards; that would be a challenge,” he says.

DeviceLogics says it will introduce a software developer kit in the first half of next year.

Users within IT organizations have mixed opinions about using DOS.

“We do have DOS applications running on legacy dedicated hardware that’s sitting on real-time control systems, which simulate the hardware they are controlling,” says Peter DaSilva, consulting engineer at ABB, a power and automation technology company in Houston. “We don’t have any anticipation of upgrading them – ever.”

Others say having a command-line operating system available such as DOS is still the most direct way to troubleshoot a system.

“DOS is still the best way to run recovery programs, low-level disk utilities, removal of computer viruses, the flashing of the system BIOS and diagnostics,” says Jeff Johnson, an IT consultant in Boca Raton, Fla.

Johnson says that if DeviceLogics added features to DR-DOS that eliminated the need for commonly used utilities such as 4DOS and the Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager, while maintaining a small conventional memory footprint and compatibility, it would increase the chances of use by end users, PC hobbyists and developers.

DR-DOS will compete against a variety of other DOS implementations, including DataLight’s ROM-DOS, Paragon Software’s PTS DOS 2000 Pro and IBM’s PC DOS for Embedded Devices. In addition, an open source version of FreeDOS is available.

Click to see:
PROFILE: DEVICELOGICS
Location: Salt Lake City
Founded: November 2002
Product name: DR-DOS
Product type: Embedded operating system
Ship date: First quarter 2003
Founders: Bryan Sparks, CEO; Troy Tribe, vice president of sales and marketing; Bryce Burns, vice president of operations.
Funding: Self-funded
Fast fact: Sparks’ Caldera started the first of two antitrust trials against Microsoft.

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Father of DOS Still Having Fun at Microsoft

Father of DOS Still Having Fun at Microsoft
Programmer Says His Place in History Due to Timing, Necessity

by Doug Conner, Guest MicroNews Contributor
In the fabled history of the PC revolution and Microsoft’s place in it, the tale comes to a part that goes like this: It’s 1980, and the leviathan IBM calls on a rambunctious company near Seattle that IBM hopes can fill the software hole in its embryonic PC project. The young Microsoft can do it, but to close the deal, it needs a crucial element in the package: an operating system for a 16-bit machine. And it needs it fast.

Enter Tim Paterson, programmer at a small Tukwila hardware shop, Seattle Computer Products, and known by Paul Allen to have already written an operating system for a 16-bit processor. In the ragged informality of those days, the program is QDOS, for “Quick and Dirty Operating System.” Microsoft acquires the rights to QDOS, 86-DOS officially, and licenses a version to their secret client, IBM.

Tim Paterson, original author of DOS, is in the eighth year of his current stint at Microsoft. From there, Microsoft’s steep trajectory of success takes off, and the story of MS-DOS 1.0 and its descendants-eventually the most widely used computer program in the world-is well-known.

But the story of Tim Paterson, now in the eighth year of his current stint at Microsoft, is not as familiar. Surprising, given that he sometimes bears the heavy mantle “The Father of DOS.” It’s a quieter celebrity the amiable software design engineer carries around, and it’s a celebrity he’s comfortable with-when the stories are accurate.

He squirms, for instance, at the implication that he’s fixated on his authorship of DOS. He holds up a recent profile in Forbes, contrived as a first-person account. “I was 24 when I wrote DOS,” it begins. “It’s an accomplishment that probably can’t be repeated by anyone ever.”

“That really makes me sound egomaniacal,” he frets. And if there is anything the genial programmer from the Visual J++ group appears to not suffer from, it’s egomania.

Then there’s that title.

“I prefer ‘original author,’” he explains. “I don’t like the word ‘inventor’ because it implies a certain level of creativity that wasn’t really the case. Besides,” he laughs, “there’s enough people who think it’s nothing to be proud of. If I say ‘I invented DOS,’ they say, ‘Well, good for you, sucker.’”

The Mother of Invention…

He figures his place in history is due to timing. And necessity. Seattle Computer needed an operating system to sell with the new 8086 machines. Gary Kildall’s Digital Research had provided the standard operating system, called CP/M, for earlier chip generations, but was overdue with software for the new processor. Paterson, tired of waiting, went to work to build his own.

“To get to that first version took about two man-months,” Paterson recalls. “I worked on it about half the time over a four-month period,” although by the time the original MS DOS 1.0 shipped with IBM a year later, he calculates his time investment “was more like six man-months.”

Neither Paterson nor Seattle Computer knew who Microsoft’s customer was until he was hired here in 1981. “IBM,” he remembers thinking. “That’s weird. Big computer company. Hope they do well.” He reflects about this briefly. “I have no great ability to figure out where the future is going,” he says.

Eventually Microsoft invested a total of $75,000 for 86-DOS. Both Microsoft and Paterson have fended off legal and professional challenges involving DOS-Microsoft settled a contract dispute brought by Seattle Computer for $1 million in 1986. And Paterson has taken pains over the years to detail the originality of the 86-DOS program, despite a surface resemblance to CP/M.

Paterson passed in and out of Microsoft during the 80s, but returned for good in 1990. He has patents and industry awards to his professional credit (including the Stewart Alsop Hindsight Award in 1991, recognized along with Bill Gates).

But the prominent “First Place” trophies and clippings on the wall of his Building 2 office come from the world of off-road racing, in which he bangs a four-wheel drive Mazda around gravel back roads throughout the Northwest with his wife Penny riding shotgun. “I’m still having lots of fun,” he says. And the smile on his face confirms it.

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