From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Nov 14 7:45: 9 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from smtp05.primenet.com (smtp05.primenet.com [206.165.6.135]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8522937B4F9 for ; Tue, 14 Nov 2000 07:45:04 -0800 (PST) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp05.primenet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id IAA00683; Tue, 14 Nov 2000 08:45:34 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr08.primenet.com(206.165.6.208) via SMTP by smtp05.primenet.com, id smtpdAAATTailb; Tue Nov 14 08:45:23 2000 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr08.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA19542; Tue, 14 Nov 2000 08:44:42 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <200011141544.IAA19542@usr08.primenet.com> Subject: Re: Microsoft Source (fwd) To: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 15:44:41 +0000 (GMT) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), cfuhrman@tfcci.com (Chris Fuhrman), chat@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <20001111191459.H4535@sydney.worldwide.lemis.com> from "Greg Lehey" at Nov 11, 2000 07:14:59 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > > Microsoft announced Xenix on 25 Aug 1980, the same year they > > signed a contract with IBM to provide compilers for the, at > > the time, unannounced IBM PC. > > XENIX came first. I'm sure the announcement was earlier; they had an > article in the August 1980 Byte. And my best guess is that the IBM > deal was done in September 1980. It was definitely done by November, > when I heard about it. See Bill Gate's "timeline for Microsoft" on his personal web site. > > Most of the original developement was done on Sun equipment, > > What equipment did Sun have in 1980? Did they even exist? I believe the equipment was SUN 1 and SUN 2 hardware. The one that Microsoft requested product on was a Sun 3 with QIC-11 tape drive, which was the commercial model. > > and Microsoft was actually running a large chunk of their language > > engineering on Xenix on Sun machines, as late as 1988 (I got a call > > from a Microsoft employee wanting to buy a copy of our > > communications software for Xenix running on Sun hardware; when I > > said "What?!?", he said "Oh, that's right, it's an internal product > > only". Originally, Xenix only ran on 68000 hardware. > > Do you have any evidence for this? Admittedly, there was 68000 > hardware at the time, but it was very early, and there's no obvious > reason why Microsoft (which was definitely in charge of XENIX) would > have bothered to port to an architecture they didn't plan to use, > especially since it was big-endian and 32 bit, whereas both the PDP-11 > and i86 were little-endian and 16 bit. I'd suspect that you're > extrapolating here. Also on Bill Gates personal web site, and in the "History" section of the SCO web site. As a friend of mine is fond of saying "It's all out there, you just have to know how to find it". 8-). Actually, I was offered a job in the compiler group at Microsoft in the late 80's; I probably should have taken it, I'd be, uh, "more retired" now... Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message