equipment corporation . digital research inc. dri type subsidiary industry software fate acquired by novell in 1991 founded 1974 in pacific grove california headquarters pacific grove california united states key people gary kildall founder and ceo ; dorothy mcewen products compilers operating systems graphical user interfaces website www.digitalresearch.biz digital research inc. a.k.a. dr or dri ; originally intergalactic digital research was the company created by dr. gary kildall to market and develop his cp m operating system and related products . it was the first large software company in the microcomputer world . 1 digital research was based in pacific grove california . the company s operating systems starting with cp m for 8080 z80 based microcomputers were the de facto standard of their era as ms dos and microsoft windows came later . dr s product suite included the original cp m and its various offshoots ; dr dos which was a ms dos compatible version of cp m and mp m the multi user cp m. the first 16 bit system was cp m 86 which was to be unsuccessful in competition with ms dos . there followed concurrent cp m a single user version of the multi tasking mp m 86 featuring virtual consoles from which applications could be launched to run concurrently . successive revisions of this system which gradually supported ms dos applications and the fat filesystem were labelled concurrent dos concurrent dos xm and concurrent dos 386 . in may 1983 digital announced that it would offer pc dos versions of all of its languages and utilities . 2 it remained influential with 45 million in 1983 sales making digital the fourth largest microcomputer software company . 3 admitting that it had lost the 8088 software market but hoped to succeed with the intel 80286 and motorola 68000 by 1984 the company formed a partnership with at & t corporation to develop software for unix system v and sell its own and third party products in retail stores . 4 jerry pournelle warned later that year however that many people of stature seem to have left or are leaving digital research . dr had better get its act together . 5 in 1985 soon after the introduction of the intel 80286 digital introduced a real time system initially called concurrent dos 286 and subsequently flexos . this exploited the greater memory addressing capability of the new cpu to provide a more flexible multi tasking environment . there was a small but powerful set of system apis each with a synchronous and an asynchronous variant . pipes were supported and all named resources could be aliased by setting environment variables . this system was to enjoy enduring favour in point of sale systems and was adopted by the ibm 4690 os . digital research was purchased by novell in 1991 primarily for novell to gain access to the operating system line . dr produced a selection of programming language compilers and interpreters for their os supported platforms including c pascal cobol forth pl i pl m cbasic basic and logo . they also produced a microcomputer version of the gks graphics standard related to naplps called gsx and later used this as the basis of their gem gui . less known are their application programs limited largely to the gsx based dr draw dr. halo for dos and a small suite of gui programs for gem . contents 1 cp m 86 and dos 2 see also 3 references 4 external links cp m 86 and dos edit at the time ibm personal computer was being developed dr s cp m was the dominant operating system of the day . ibm asked dr to supply a version of cp m written for the intel 8086 microprocessor as the standard operating system for the pc which would use the code compatible intel 8088 chip . citation needed microsoft seized this opportunity to supply an os in addition to other software e.g. basic for the new ibm pc . when the ibm pc arrived in late 1981 it came with pc dos which was developed from 86 dos which microsoft had acquired for this purpose . by mid 1982 it was marketed as ms dos for use in hardware compatible non ibm computers . this one decision resulted in microsoft becoming the leading name in computer software . this story is detailed from the point of view of microsoft and ibm in the pbs series triumph of the nerds 6 and from the point of view of gary kildall s friends and coworkers in the computer chronicles . 7 digital research developed cp m 86 as an alternative to ms dos and it was made available through ibm in early 1982 . dr later created an ms dos clone with advanced features called dr dos which pressured microsoft to further improve its own dos . the competition between ms dos and dr dos is one of the more controversial chapters of microcomputer history . microsoft offered the best licensing terms to any computer manufacturer that committed to selling ms dos with every system they shipped making it uneconomical for them to offer systems with another os since the manufacturer would still be required to pay a license fee to microsoft for that system . this practice led to a us department of justice investigation resulting in a decision in 1994 that barred microsoft from per processor licensing . 8 dri and later its successor caldera inc. accused microsoft of announcing vaporware versions of ms dos to suppress sales of dr dos . citation needed microsoft refused to support dr dos in windows . in one beta release of windows 3.1 microsoft included code that detected dr dos and displayed a warning message although this code was not enabled in the final version of windows 3.1 . it is said that other versions of windows deliberately crashed the system if dr dos was detected so as to give the impression that dr dos was unstable . these activities came to light when the discovery process of the subsequent lawsuit uncovered emails from senior microsoft executives that showed this time bomb plant was part of a concerted program to drive dri out of the pc operating systems business . citation needed dri s successor caldera raised these disputes in a 1996 lawsuit but the case was settled without a trial . as a condition of the settlement microsoft paid caldera 150 million 226 million in 2013 dollars 9 and caldera destroyed all documents it had produced in connection with the case . although a costly settlement to microsoft this eliminated the most damning evidence of microsoft s anti trust behaviors and allowed microsoft to control and dominate this sector of the marketplace with an iron fist and without concerns about any further serious competitor . citation needed see also edit multiuser dos federation references edit cole maggie may 25 1981 . gary kildall and the digital research success story . infoworld . palo alto ca popular computing . 3 10 52 53 . issn 0199 6649 . hughes george d. jr. july 1983 . the new view from digital research . pc magazine . p. 403 . retrieved 21 october 2013 . caruso denise 1984 04 02 . company strategies boomerang . infoworld . pp. 80 83 . retrieved 10 february 2015 . shea tom 1984 02 20 . new devlopments may decide battle over unix . infoworld . pp. 43 45 . retrieved 25 february 2016 . program editing breakthrough . byte advertisement . march 1983 . p. 326 . retrieved 19 march 2016 . triumph of the nerds pbs the computer chronicles elizabeth corcoran 1994 07 17 . microsoft settles case with justice . washington post . retrieved 2014 03 14 . federal reserve bank of minneapolis community development project . consumer price index estimate 1800 . federal reserve bank of minneapolis . retrieved november 10 2015 . external links edit digital research s history website joe wein s page on digital research intel ipds 100 using cp m video retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title digital research & oldid 737165975 categories digital researchdefunct computer companies based in californiadefunct software companies of the united statescompanies based in monterey county californiaamerican companies established in 1974computer companies established in 1974companies disestablished in 19911974 establishments in california1991 disestablishments in californiaatari stnovellhidden categories all articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from december 2014 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version in other projects wikimedia commons languages catal deutschespa olfran ais hrvatskiitaliano polskiportugu s suomisvenskat rk e edit links this page was last modified on 1 september 2016 at 03 48 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view