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Re: OT: Paul Allen and Bill Gates

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Neil Rieck <n.rieck@sympatico.ca> writes:

> I've been reading Paul Allen's book "Idea Man: A Memoir by the
> Cofounder of Microsoft" for the past few days now and it contains lots
> of stuff I didn't know like:

> 1) Harvard student, Monte Davidoff, developed floating point math
> routines for the PDP-8 and was hired by Gates and Allen to add them to
> Altair BASIC.

The PDP-8/e running at Living Computer Museum was originally put together by a
gent who was recreating the system on which he learned to program in high
school.  When he was a sophomore and began programming on the system (running
TSS/8, inspired by Tops-10), there was a senior who was the de facto operator
by the name of Monte Davidoff.  Monte has confirmed the story to me.

> 2) Microsoft wrote the TRS-80 BASIC, AppleSoft BASIC, and Commodore
> BASIC. (I knew Steve Wozniak had written Integer BASIC for the Apple ]
> [ but never knew who wrote AppleSoft)

> 3) Their preferred development platform was a DEC PDP-10 running
> TOPS-10. This was true at Harvard all the way through the Albuquerque
> days (where they leased time from a school) until they moved to
> Washington where they bought a new DEC 2020 (DECSYSTEM-20)

We restored an 8800 to running condition so that Paul Allen could recreate the
feel of loading a paper tape of the original BASIC (recovered from his own
DECtapes by yours truly).  He compiled the 8080 simulator on our 2065, punched
the tape on an ASR-33, then loaded it into the 8800.  (This was the 8800 and
Teletype used in the Leslie Stahl interview, part of which was filmed at the
museum.)

> 4) Why they developed the Z80 Softcard and how it caused Apple ]
> [ sales to soar while bringing in additional software revenues to
> Digital Research (for CP/M) and Microsoft (for the various languages
> which already ran on the 8080).

http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org

-- 
Rich Alderson                                   news@alderson.users.panix.com
    the russet leaves of an autumn oak/inspire once again the failed poet/
    to take up his pen/and essay to place his meagre words upon the page...

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Re: OT: Paul Allen and Bill Gates Rich Jordan <jordan@ccs4vms.com> - 2011-04-27 10:23 -0700
  Re: OT: Paul Allen and Bill Gates Neil Rieck <n.rieck@sympatico.ca> - 2011-05-04 10:51 -0700
    Re: OT: Paul Allen and Bill Gates Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2011-05-07 21:16 -0400
      Re: OT: Paul Allen and Bill Gates Neil Rieck <n.rieck@sympatico.ca> - 2011-05-08 03:45 -0700
      Re: OT: Paul Allen and Bill Gates Neil Rieck <n.rieck@sympatico.ca> - 2011-05-10 04:23 -0700
        Re: OT: Paul Allen and Bill Gates Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2011-05-10 16:46 -0400
          Re: OT: Paul Allen and Bill Gates Ken Fairfield <ken.fairfield@gmail.com> - 2011-05-10 15:53 -0700
          Re: OT: Paul Allen and Bill Gates Neil Rieck <n.rieck@sympatico.ca> - 2011-05-11 03:40 -0700
            Re: OT: Paul Allen and Bill Gates Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2011-05-11 19:40 -0400

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