What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of?

Re:What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of? by marktangotango on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @04:44PM (#9109871)

The missing element here is: there were A LOT of small companies pushing microcomputer hardware and software products in the late 70's, Gates and Microsoft were pretty much indistinguishable from the field.

Anecdota: My Father used to subscribe to the Wall Street journal during this time, and him and I observed the whole thing play out. There no indication, none what so ever that Microsoft would win out the way they did. It was all really remarkable.

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Re:What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of? by WalterBright on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @07:33PM (#9110695)

I and a number of my friends thought DEC would dominate the business! After all, DEC had an enormous head start with the LSI-11, RT-11, mature compilers, etc. I had an H-11 computer.

If there ever was a computer company that squandered a golden opportunity, it was DEC.

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Re:What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of? by hyperpallium on Thursday February 26, 2015 @01:31AM (#9111394)

But weren't they the first to sell software for personal computers?

(of course, DOS was their big break)

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Re:What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of? by rjaco31 on Thursday February 26, 2015 @10:20AM (#9112920)

It's more sheer luck with their deal with IBM for doing an OS (which wasn't even their core business).

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