[Info-vax] RMS intro

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Sun, 31 Dec 2023 21:34 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), John Dallman wrote:

> On reflection, I think CP/M inherited using CR from a DEC OS, but I
> don't know which one: the original author of CP/M was familiar with
> multiple operating systems.

CP/M used CR/LF, which is why MS-DOS did the same, and Windows still does.

As I recall, Gary Kildall did his early cross-development of CP/M on a 
PDP-10 machine running TOPS-10.

Clearly, DEC OSes gave him the idea of device names, though he simplified 
them down to a single letter for his 8-bit OS, just for disks. But then 
you needed ways of accessing non-disk devices like serial lines, printers, 
etc; so either he or Microsoft introduced “reserved” file names for these. 
And that’s where you get “PRN”, “COM1” and all the rest.

Then when Microsoft tried to copy some Unix features in MS-DOS 2.x, like 
hierarchical pathnames, these interacted in rather unfortunate ways with 
the “reserved” file names. And that bit of sadness persists in Windows to 
this day. Along with those 8-bit-era single-letter drive names, for some 
reason.

Microsoft: “26 drive letters ought to be enough for anybody!”