Talk:Vector Graphic

Thanks for the edits! Wow, that looks a lot better! Andrew Lynch

Can someone "disambiguate" the "Vector Graphic" page from the "Vector graphic" page? The latter redirects to a wiki page on graphics but not the computer. Thanks!Lynchaj (talk) 17:11, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

misleading on the history of cp/m and dos

This paragraph is highly confusing: "In addition, the company had decided to use the CP/M operating system in the Vector 4, which they considered a superior operating system than MDOS; management recognized the nature of their gamble, as IBM would move the market in a different direction if it elected to use the DOS operating system for their competing product, the IBM 8080."

Ok, first of all, what is an "IBM 8080"? I cannot see a reference to that product? IBM PC was also known as 5150, and is already based on Intel 8088, and their only previous attempt is the IBM System/23 Datamaster, models 5322 (desktop) and 5324 (floor), based on the 8085, and a 5100/5110/5120 line portable/desktop line before that based on their own PALM processor (made of gate arrays & TTL ICs)? I have to presume we're just talking about the IBM PC here?

Lots of rather unrelated things were called 'DOS' before MS-DOS, all the way back to mainframes (eg DOS/360 for the IBM mainframes), and it simply had the generic sense of a disk operating system. On microcomputers, some of the things called DOS were CP/M variants even. Indeed, Micropolis Disk Operating System (MDOS) seems to be just one such CP/M variant, with CP/M compatibility and running on any 8080 compatible CPU, with the MZOS being a variant specifically taking advantage of the Z80. The way paragraph segues from MDOS to the notion of an IBM PC running 'DOS' risks suggesting a particular connection between those two, when there is none.

Secondly, re the "if it elected" bit, a hypothetical: I don't understand the timeline here, at what point of the development of this product would management be thus worried about an IBM PC ending up not using CP/M? Gates closed that contract promising to make an OS before he had anything of his own at all on hand. MS-DOS was then a port of QDOS, later named 86-DOS, brand new OS from Seattle Computer Products for their own new 8086 computer kit, made following the CP/M manual in record time.

So when could this have been happening, were they aware of 86-DOS in late 1980 or early 1981 and envisoned a scenario where IBM licenses that from say Seattle Computer Products rather than the obvious choice of CP/M, so sometime between september 1980 when SCP started selling it and aug 1981? By aug 1981 there would be no "if it elected" about it, as the IBM PC was out.

Maybe I'm off on some of this, but at the very least this is a very confusing narrative, timeline is unclear and it references no sources to check at all. 141.138.35.245 (talk) 15:54, 17 July 2024 (UTC)