From: John K Clark (jonkc@att.net)
Date: Sun Nov 17 2002 - 08:52:28 MST
"Samantha Atkins" <samantha@objectent.com>
>The Altair iirc (it is a long time ago even for me) required hand
>entry of hex codes to get programs up, even to get up an assembler.
That was true in January of 1975 when the Altair came out but within about
a month Bill Gates and Paul Allen had written a Basic interpreter for it.
I think it's remarkable that they didn't have access to an Altair and had
never even seen one they just had the machine's specifications to work with
but when they flew to the factory in New Mexico to try it out the code ran
fine the very first time.
> Microsoft was not even incorporated in 1975.
Microsoft was officially incorporated in 1981 but software was sold under
the Microsoft brand name long before that.
>Remember CP/M?
Funny you should mention that, Microsoft made a popular expansion card for
the Apple 2, it had a Z-80 CPU and let you run CP/M on the Apple.
>Which languages did they invent?
The didn't invent the language but Microsoft wrote the Basic interpreter for
both the Altair and the Apple 2, in fact they wrote almost all the languages
that ran on the Apple 2. At the time Microsoft was best know as a Language
company not a operating system company.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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