Leap back into the past if you've got a spare 90 minutes or so and hear Bill Gates, then a big proponent of this "DOS" stuff, talk about.. wwell, where everything was then.
The links to the audio file are at at the University of Waterloo's page: as it says, the talk was given in 1989 but was "only recently digitised". Be nice to them - grab the MP3 torrent download (hmm, bet that phrase will attract a few search engine hits..) rather than the direct one (it's kinder to their servers).
Among the topics are
- The start and history of the microcomputer industry
- Microsoft BASIC and the Altair 880 computer
- The transition from 8-bit to 16-bit computers
- Microsoft's history with IBM
- 640k memory barrier and 16-bit architectures
- 32-bit 386 and 486 architectures
- RISC and multi-processor machines
- EGA graphics and WYSIWYG editors
- Decreasing cost of memory, harddisks and hardware in general
- The importance and future of the mouse
- Object-oriented programming
- MS-DOS and OS/2
- Multi-threaded and multi-application systems
- Synchronization in multi-threaded applications
- Diskette-based software
- UNIX standardization and POSIX
- History of the Macintosh and Microsoft' involvement
- Involvement of Xerox in graphical user interfaces
- Apple vs. Microsoft lawsuit regarding user interfaces
- OS/2 future as a replacement for MS-DOS
- Microsoft Office on Macintosh
- Thin/dumb clients
- Compact discs
- Multimedia applications
- Gates' current role at Microsoft
The sound quality isn't perfect, but think of it as a podcast from history.
We're pretty sure, by the way, that the "640k memory barrier and 16-bit architecture" section won't include the infamous "640K should be enough for anybody" quote, principally because Gates never said it - he was far, far too good a programmer (and he was - is? - one of the very, very best, particularly with assembler) to think anyone could every be satisfied with that much.
