Xenix
Wednesday 30 November 2011 at 2:55 pm.
Xenix was the name adopted by Microsoft for their version of Unix around and prior to 1980 when Gates and Microsoft were producing commercial operating systems for Altos, Tandy and Santa Cruz Operations (SCO) when AT&T allowed licensing of the source code but not the Unix name.
Overcoming Bootstrapping
Microsoft first acheived commercial success with Microsoft Basic for the Altair computer, which till then required bootstrapping with a front panel of byte input switches still iconic in the minds of many familiar with the early revolution. Early versions of the Basic language ran in less than 4,096 bytes of Ram or Rom and when installed as a hardware booting system separated the computer from the tedious bootstrapping process.
MS-Dos
Many recall the first operating system for the IBM PC which included Basic. While the early Altair systems featured Basic as the operating system and primary language, MS-Dos created a foundation where the PC could be programmed with the built in firmware version of Basic or by loading programs native to the Intel 8080 chip.
Xenix
Xenix was offered for the 8080 in 1980 by Microsoft, the Unix variant had previously been widely used on DEC (Digital Equpment Corporation) minicomputers like the PDP-11 and with Intel's 16 bit microprocessor Xenix brought multi-process and multi-user capabilities to the minicomputer market to compete with CP/M from Digital Research.
MS-Dos
1981 brought the IBM PC and the MS-Dos operating system to the consumer market. The deal in which Microsoft got the lion's share of profits from the incredible explosion of the Intel Market for microprocessors saw Microsoft's revenues finally exceed $ one million.
SCO Xenix
Microsoft was an investor in SCO which took over the competing SCO Xenix, and eventually the SCO Unix brand names. With the advent of the 386 in 1985, the SCO Xenix become an especially robust server operating system, pushing Microsoft to eye the server market, dominated in the mid and late 1980's by Novell.
Microsoft Windows
1990 saw Microsoft selling more than a million copies of the Windows 3.0 operating system, bringing the mouse and a graphical desktop to the PC. Microsoft begins to eye rivals SCO and Novell for the server market while concentrating on their Windows offerings.
Windows 95 and 98
3.0 and 3.1 while incredibely succesfull are superceded by windows 95 and 98 in the mid and late 90's, with more networking offerings, but still not truly modern in the sense that by 2000 Windows XP contained the built in PPP and TCP/IP stacks with every copy, expecting either a dial up modem or a network card to be a part of the Windows environment. Microsoft also launches Windows 2000, an adequate file server platform for windows based networks.
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