A Man Who Beat IBM
12 comments
·August 4, 2025saulpw
ryao
Licensing Compaq DOS back to Microsoft was a mistake. It gave Microsoft’s OS incumbency. The PC industry has been suffering from that decision ever since.
TMWNN
> It seems that every version of MS-DOS from v2.0 onward was actually developed by Compaq. I had no idea.
The article is wrong about when this occurred—Compaq DOS wouldn't have been in stores in 1982; 1983 is likely the correct year—but regardless, this is an astounding revelation.
BizarroLand
This is too funny. I got down voted to hell for talking about how Gates never really made anything and was a lucky conman who managed to make his cons a reality by the skin of his teeth, and here we have further proof of just that.
endgame
While we're wandering down memory lane, we should remember the Stacker/DoubleSpace ripoff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_law...
anyfoo
Very interesting. I'm curious what the os2museum.com can say -- if anything -- on this. A deeply technical perspective, as in knowing the actual bit-by-bit internals, can shed much more light.
os2museum.com was just recently able to trace how one particular DOS bug (more than two BIOS harddisk drives would make earlier DOS-versions hang at boot) was handled across different companies, and how and when exactly a fix made it into actual MS-DOS.
hackthemack
If you want to watch a documentary about the forming of Compaq and its rise, Silicon Cowboys is not bad.
Trailer is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wjJYqUkHd8
You can watch the documentary on Tubi https://tubitv.com/movies/559438/silicon-cowboys
hackthemack
As an aside, I worked on fixing computers way back when. Somewhere along the line (maybe late 80s, early 90s) Compaq started using these cheap aluminum screws to hold together the computer case and hard drive mounts and motherboard to the chassis. Those cheap screws would get stripped very easily. Many a day, I would curse Compaq. But then, later, it seemed like all the manufacturers turned to cheaper and cheaper quality parts.
cgio
I only ever had a laptop from Compaq, and it was the most robust and minimalist thing, like a solemn thinkpad, which is as impossible a statement as sincere. Then they got bought and I got one from their HP days that I returned straight away.
readthenotes1
I remember reading the quotes asking one of the founders why they left Texas Instruments and his reply was "the prospect of vast personal wealth".
My understanding is that they had pitched the IBM PC compatible machine to TI and had been rebuffed - TI had its own mostly compatible PC offering and the no one in charge was willing to admit it was a mistake.
It seems that every version of MS-DOS from v2.0 onward was actually developed by Compaq. I had no idea.
> That relationship had been established in late 1982. Back then, Gates had contacted Canion and asked, with some concern, if Compaq was trying to get into the operating system business. Surprised, Canion denied it. Gates told him that Microsoft was hearing worrying reports from the dealer network. People were buying copies of Compaq DOS, rather than Microsoft DOS, without buying a Compaq PC.
> Both men knew why: Microsoft DOS had never been a true copy of PC DOS, as Gates had admitted to Canion during the development of Compaq’s first machine. The differences had only increased over time, as Microsoft’s deal with IBM prohibited the same developers working on both versions. Compaq had made its own version of DOS since the beginning. With its singular focus on 100 percent compatibility, the result was a product that was more compatible with PC DOS than Microsoft’s own product.
> Word was spreading among computer buyers that Compaq DOS was better. Even people who owned other PC clones were choosing to buy that instead of Microsoft’s own public version. This could have created friction between Compaq and Microsoft. Instead, Canion did something extraordinary. Compaq withdrew Compaq DOS from sale unless it was specifically bundled with a Compaq computer. He then licensed Compaq DOS back to Microsoft.
> From Gates’s perspective, this was an incredible deal. He was able to halt all internal development on Microsoft DOS, saving time and money. From this point onward, every version of Microsoft DOS he sold was, in fact, Compaq DOS, with the digital equivalent of its serial numbers filed off. All Canion asked in return was that Microsoft never release the very latest version of DOS that Compaq provided it until after a few months’ delay. This was to make sure that Compaq always had a slight advantage in compatibility over its rivals.
> Canion even agreed to Gates’s request that they keep the entire arrangement secret, to avoid souring Microsoft’s relationships with the other clone companies. It would remain secret for almost 40 years.