CP/M creator Gary Kildall's memoirs released as free download

"“Our father, Gary Kildall, was one of the founders of the personal computer industry, but you probably don’t know his name. Those who have heard of him may recall the myth that he ‘missed’ the opportunity to become Bill Gates by going flying instead of meeting with IBM. Unfortunately, this tall tale paints Gary as a ‘could-have-been,’ ignores his deep contributions, and overshadows his role as an inventor of key technologies that define how computer platforms run today.

"Gary viewed computers as learning tools rather than profit engines. His career choices reflect a different definition of success, where innovation means sharing ideas, letting passion drive your work and making source code available for others to build upon. His work ethic during the 1970s resembles that of the open-source community today.

"With this perspective, we offer a portion of our father’s unpublished memoirs so that you can read about his experiences and reflections on the early days of the computer industry, directly in his own voice."

Sounds really interesting. Thanks for making this available!

I wish Gary was one of the people that the average joe associated with "people who are known for doing computer things", instead of only people such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

His accomplishments cannot be overstated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall#Recognition

It's a scanned PDF linked on that page, but someone turned it into an epub if that's what you're looking for - https://gitlab.com/sigwait/computer_connections/-/releases

While I missed out on the CP/M train, I do remember GEM very well. I grew up in a printing company and spent a lot of time in the prepress parts of the company - around the layout and art folks.

There was one employee who brought his own desktop publishing setup. It was a souped up desktop PC and some other kit, but it had the latest MS-DOS, Windows 2.x, Windows 3.x, and GEM - plus a bunch of art and desktop publishing software (I believe Pagemaker).

It wasn't entirely clear at the time what the future was, so it was perfectly reasonable to have all this in one place. I remember at some point noting how similar GEM was to GEOS on my friend's Commodore 64, but how much snappier it felt and how much crisper it looked.

I remember Computer Chronicles being on the air at that time, but never connected the dots that what I was looking at on the computer had anything to do with the co-host. It was a bit dry of a show for a kid, but consistent with the day. But even then I remember Gary clearly being an expert, and I identified much more with him than with Stewart.

A few years later when my family finally bought a PC compatible the only offering for operating system and desktop environment came from Microsoft. They had simply annihilated everything else on the market. By then all the software I knew from the desktop publishing suite and my friends ran in either MS-DOS or Windows 3.1 -- or it ran on an entirely different system (C64, Macintosh, etc.). So we just sort of accepted it.

I remember at some point getting a modem, dialing into BBSs and coming across GEM on a warez board. I downloaded it, had some memories, then moved on. It never evolved the software ecosystem around it that Microsoft managed to create.

(2016)

I remember reading this when it was released. The "later chapters" are missing. No one is perfect, and compared to Gates, Kildall is folk hero. The world of computers has no shortage of morally bankrupt nutters, some of whom have fallen on absurd wealth that insulates them from ever being judged on their character. I don't think anyone interested in reading OS history is going to judge Kildall on his personal life. It might even be a cautionary tale against substance abuse. For me, it is too much of a tease to publish a few chapters and withhold the later ones.

Absolutely loved when I randomly caught an episode of Computer Chronicles back in the old time days.

DR-DOS and GEM, and Computer Chronicles on PBS. <3

The kids should not be removing some of their Dad's work. His struggles with alcoholism are well defined in the public and him describing his struggles could help another facing similar problems.

(2016) I found that I had already downloaded it a year ago but never read it.

Obviously this is awesome, however a bit tough to read as the quality/resolution of the text is pretty low. Wonder if someone could clean it up and provide the new file to the hoster? Anyway, will try to clean it up for myself/local copy...

EDIT, nevermind someone already did it. The epub looks great: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44603066#44605221

Let me give the now defunct Internet History Podcast a shout out. Episode 100 - The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates? The Gary Kildall Story

A story with intrigue that chronicles the why and how Microsoft ended up extracting the most value from the PC revolution instead of the hardware makers and of course, why that was DOS instead of CP/M.

I liked the oral history nature of this podcast, walking me through things that preceded me in technology, and then things that I lived through like the 90's internet.

https://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2016/03/the-man-who-c...

"Glenn came to my tool shed computer room in 1975, so we could "adapt" CP/M to the IMSAI hardware. What this means is that I would rewrite the parts of CP/M that manage things like diskette controllers and CRTs.

Well. come on, I'd already done this so many times that the tips of my fingers were wearing thin, so I designed a general interface, which I called the BIOS (BASIC I/O System) that a good programmer could change on the spot for their hardware. This little BIOS arrangement was the secret to the success of CP/M.

With the BIOS in place, a programmer could make CP/M work with their specialized hardware. With all those hobbyists out there, believe me, there was no shortage of specialized hardware. Glenn and I built a BIOS that afternoon and stuck CP/M on an IMSAI. He demo'd it to Ed Faber and the IMSAI engineers, and they loved it."

Writing a BIOS for a new machine in a single afternoon. Those were the days...

I read the first part back in 2016 when it was released (spoiler: it was worth it). Still waiting for the rest to come, but it seems that the Gary's Kildall memoirs project is not being pursued.

Part 1 was already online since forever. Part 2 however, never seen the light. I wonder if it was just undone or because of some content in there....

> You can download it here. https://www.computerhistory.org/_static/atchm/in-his-own-wor...

..which leads to a page, with this link at the bottom.

> Download the Kildall Manuscript [2.31MB] https://computerhistory.org/blog/computer-history-museum-lic...

I'm curious about the part they omitted. I wonder why? But of course, it's their business and I'm happy they shared this.

This is awesome.

(2016)

Akasdas1234