[Info-vax] RMS intro

[Chris Townley]

On 31/12/2023 21:50, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> 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!”

Along with 64k...

-- 
Chris