| Just for historical accuracy...
|
| Bill dropped out of school to co-author a Basic interpreter for the
| Altair system in... 1975 or thereabouts.
You have a better memory of all of that. I remember drooling
over the Altair, but wondering how much time it would take to
load a program with those front panel switches. I had a
TRS-80 level 1 and didn't get around to half what I'd planned
for it because of the time involved. This was something to do
as a kid if you weren't playing in a rock band in your garage or
smoking dope. I remember guys incorporating Teletypes for
IO before everything else coming around, and 8k memory
board kits in Byte magazine for $350. Also you had to learn
6 different kinds of basic to get the program in the magazine
to run in yours.
| His big break with IBM didn't occur until about 6 years later when he
| middle-manned DOS from its creator (who was paid a flat $50K) and then
| per-copy licensed it to IBM for which folly we have all been paying
| forever since.
Just think of all the GEEKS who didn't wind up on the streets because
people would hire them to work on computers instead of stomping their
glasses.
| Incidently, the aforementioned creator committed suicide a few years
| later.
Probably kicked himself to death.
| Abort, Retry, Fail,
| Marv WC6W
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