86-DOS

One of my first jobs as a kid was working for a guy who owned a Seattle Computer Gazelle. He was still using that big 8086 pedestal for some things in his office around the time 80386 PCs were already out.

At one point, he mentioned of his Gazelle, "This might be the one DOS was written on." I never knew whether he meant that model or that exact unit. I understand he'd been very involved in the early microcomputer scene in the Pacific Northwest, and I wouldn't be surprised if he owned some unique piece of history from there.

https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=614&st=1

https://www.old-computers.com/museum/adverts/SeattleComp_Gaz...

https://www.old-computers.com/museum/adverts/SeattleComp_Gaz...

http://classiccmp.org/cini/gazelle.htm

I met Tim Patterson back in late '81 or early '82 I was working for Micropro (WordStar) at the time in San Rafael and they flew me up to Seattle. I guess we discussed porting WordStar to SCP-DOS but it's so long ago!

Oh poor Tim Paterson.

Later M$ hire him to port MS-DOS correctly to IBM PC.

But biggest loser is Gary Kildall and DR/DOS. This is discussed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall#IBM_dealings

>"Commands The following list of commands is supported by 86-DOS.[23]

Internal commands

CLEAR COPY DIR ERASE RENAME TYPE

External commands

ASM CHKDSK DEBUG EDLIN HEX2BIN MAKRDCPM RDCPM SYS TRANS

"

PDS: It's amazing just how spartan 86-DOS was, compared to the later (and more well-known) MS-DOS versions...

Also note the appearance of HEX2BIN, which is arguably (in some form, on some computer) the first command-line based "assembler".

Why does this link go to the non-existent #HEX2BIN section? No recent edit to explain it.