Something interesting, and I’m not casting aspersions here, but it should be mentioned, with respect to my link above to the Tim Paterson Wiki page.

Although it’s widely known that he worked for SCP, and while there, created QDOS for S-100 based systems, it’s only mentioned in a couple of minor footnotes that he actually did work for Digital Research too - CP/M related stuffs. To find that info, you’ll need to rifle through some bio stuff on Gary himself. I might be able to dig up a reference or two if you can’t find one.

Now, I’ve never seen anywhere that Gary made any disparaging remarks about Tim Paterson, but he was all over Bill Gates wrt ‘stealing’ parts of his code, … Which is kinda Ironic, coz Paterson wrote the IBM PC-DOS 1.01 that was released, and those early MS-DOS versions, working at times both under contract to Microsoft as an employee of SCP and later, directly for Microsoft on DOS and other projects as well. I believe that as late as MS-DOS 3.xx that Microsoft was still compiling DOS on an S-100 system (I may be mistaken).

Anyway, I wanted to offer you a couple of my all-time fav quotes:

“Ask Bill why the string in [MS-DOS] function 9 is terminated by a dollar sign. Ask him, because he can’t answer. Only I know that.” - Dr. Gary Kildall.

That’s one of the disparaging remarks that I found Ironic - Bill Gates didn’t, AFAIK, write ANY DOS code himself in the first place - it was all Paterson. So who is Gary ultimately pointing the finger at?

And then there’s this:

“IBM wanted CP/M prompts. It made me throw up.” - Tim Paterson.

Now there’s a conundrum, lolz…

Tim has always maintained that the creation of DOS was a completely original and unique design of his own, choosing FAT was an important decision too on his part, but it does sill beg the question, “Why is F9 terminated by a dollar sign?”

I’ve received some really intuitive background info from Mike MacGirvin, @mikedev@fediversity.site , for which I am more than grateful for, his insight as to some of the reasoning wasn’t based in the least on the saga, but actual practices at the time, so it’s reasonable, informed supposition, but enlightening.

Regardless, We all know why Bill gates doesn’t know the answer, lolz… all (or at least most) of that kind of work was performed by other folks while he fiddled with his baby - BASIC.

Enjoy!

#tallship

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You’re the OP of a topic but it looks like you intended to respond to another topic or post - it takes a bit, but you’ll get the hang of it :)

The reason I’m responding though, is really to let you know that sourcing via eBay can be quite effective for older batteries/form factors. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t find what you’re looking for if you don’t at first see it. You can always set up an alert w/a couple of different search terms and sit back until you get an email notification telling you that one has been listed :)

I do that with a lot of older, retrotech equipment and accessories, and it works like a champ.

Also, in order to not let your emotions get the best of you (behavioral psychology is an interesting thing), if your item (the battery) isn’t listed as a *Buy Now item, then I would recommend you use a sniper - Auction Sniper and EZsniper are just a couple that I’ve used that worked quite well. In a nutshell, here’s how they secure the items that you want:

• First, you decide what YOU feel is the value of the item that is up for auction. This will be the highest amount you are willing to spend.
• You enter that amount into the sniper application along with the item number and submit it. The sniper will follow the auction for you and autobid whenever someone outbids you. Configuring the auction for the last few seconds is critical to success, as it removes the ability of an actual human to respond with a higher bid before the auction times out (the default is usually fine).
• Like Ron Popeil’s rotisserie oven - just “Set it and forget it”.
• When the auction has completed, the sniper will notify you as to whether you have won or lost the auction. At this point you can pay for the item and it will ship to you.
• HINT: Batteries are typically somewhat inexpensive in the first place. Let’s say you know it should go for $20 but no more than $30 - other people using snipers know this too so they might be apt to snag a deal at setting their max bid for $28 or so, But even if no one else is using a sniper and an adrenaline induced bidding war starts in the last ten minutes of the auction, and considering that your first bid won’t be entered until the final 3 seconds or so, setting a rather outrageous max bid of say, $50 will almost assuredly result in you winning the item, in this example, for $29.00 (a dollar higher than the other person using a sniper).

Easy Peasy

There are also some retro computing sites that list obscure items, but given the obscurity of them nowadays due to the gamification of search engines, they may be a little hard to find, but…

You’re already here at SDF, so your membership allows you access to dozens of resources like forums and such where you can ask around for these marketplaces where there’s a wealth of older retrocomputing technology for sale/trade.

I hope that helps!

#tallship

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Um… Are you referring to the most ubiquitous OS worldwide nowadays… Minix?