[no subject]

	The IBM Personal Computer that eventually came to market
	in late 1981 came from a renegade independent business
	unit based in Boca Raton, Florida.  This wasn't IBM's
	first try at developing a microcomputer.  At least four
	other designs has been proposed to management in Armonk,
	including one earlier design from Boca.  The major
	difference between the project that eventually produced
	the IBM PC and these earlier efforts was that the group
	of men brought together in July 1980 by Entry Systems
	Division (ESD) lab director Bill Lowe were pledged to do
	their work in real time, not IBM time.  They had just
	one year to bring their product to market.
[ ... ]
	But Lowe and his crew, breaking the first of many rules,
	decided to buy everything.  They started by looking for
	software.  Since Lowe wanted to buy his software from an
	established vendor, CP/M looked like his only choice.
	CP/M came from Gary Kildall's Digital Research, only for
	some reason IBM didn't know that.  The usually infallable
	briefing book said that CP/M was a Microsoft product.  In
	probably his last gracious gesture toward a competitor,
	Bill Gates told the caller from IBM that a mistake had
	been made, and gave them Kildall's number in Pacific
	Grove.

	[ ... ] The whole plan depends on getting reliable
	suppliers, so Lowe sends his lieutenants out to Digital
	Research and Microsoft to find out what kind of people
	these are.  When the IBMers arrive in Pacific Grove,
	California, to talk with Gary Kildall at Digital
	Research, he wasn't there.  Despite his appointment with
	IBM, Gary had gone flying in his small plane.  Not a good
	first impression.

	With Gary out flying around, the people left at Digital
	Research didn't know what these IBM guys wanted to talk
	about, and the IBM guys wouldn't talk about anything
	until a nondisclosure agreement was signed.

	[ ... nondisclosure, the 1956 consent decree, etc. ... ]

	Jump back to Pacific Grove, where Digital Research didn't
	even have a nondisclosure agreement of its own.  Gary was
	still flying around somewhere over the Santa Cruz
	mountains, while Dorothy Kildall squinted at the IBM
	nondisclosure agreement, imagining her new house with its
	stable and hot tub going on the auction block following
	an IBM legal action.  She refused to sign, so the men
	from IBM left town, having never revealed the plans for
	the Acorn [IBM PC] but still needing an operating system.


[ ... Gary Kildall died from alien experiments ... ]

> > Many years after that. It happened in 1979, and Kildall
> > died in 1995. He died relatively young, at 52. From
> > complications following a fight in a bar.
> 
> Again, the first time I have heard that version.  I heard he fell down
> the stairs.  Any background?

	http://www.cadigital.com/kildall.htm

	"Gary Kildall died in July 1994 at the age of 52. The
	 computer media, with a few small exceptions, ignored
	 his passing. The Circumstances of his death are pretty
	 murky. One report attributed it to a fall from a
	 ladder, another an incident at a bar, and another to
	 a heart attack."

	http://www.kzin.com/pchist/drdoshst.htm

	"Gary Kildall died on July 11, 1994 at the age 52.
	 There are many conflicting stories as to how he died,
	 many say that he killed himself (or that was the
	 industry rumors). It seems some were trying to keep
	 the story quiet, and that has only given the story
	 credence. The story I believe is that he was shot in
	 a barroom altercation (that had no relevance to
	 anything else), and that everyone is keeping it quiet
	 due to some legal issues."

-- Terry

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