The Peak and Collapse of Digital Research

On Thursday, August 21, 1980, Phil Nelson, a technical support representative at DRI’s headquarters in Pacific Grove, CA, answered a phone call. It was Bill Gates, asking about the status of the CP/M port to the Intel 8086 processor. Nelson replied that CP/M‑86 was scheduled for release by the end of the year. Gates then asked to speak with DRI president Gary Kildall; he explained there were some very important visitors in his office that he intended to send over.It was IBM, looking for a disk operating system for their upcoming IBM PC.Legacy of DRIDigital Research Incorporated (DRI) was one of the most innovative software companies of the late 1970s and early 1980s. CP/M was first implemented by the DRI founder Dr Gary Kildall in 1973/74 - before any commercial microcomputers even existed. The company’s next operating system MP/M, released in 1979, brought multi-tasking, multi-user support, and built-in networking to eight-bit machines - features that became common on personal…