Seattle Computer Products
| Industry | Microcomputer Hardware & Software |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Seattle, Washington |
|
Key people
|
Rodney Brock, Tim Paterson |
| Products | S-100 8086 motherboards, 86-DOS |
Seattle Computer Products (SCP) was a Seattle, Washington microcomputer hardware company which was one of the first manufacturers of computer systems based on the 16-bit Intel 8086 processor. SCP began shipping its first S-100 bus 8086 CPU boards to customers in November, 1979, about 21 months before IBM introduced its Personal Computer which was based on the slower 8088 and introduced the 8-bit ISA bus. SCP shipped an operating system for that hardware about a year before the release of the PC, which was modified by Microsoft for the PC and renamed IBM PC DOS. SCP was staffed partly by high-school students from nearby communities who soldered and assembled the computers. Some of them would later work for Microsoft.
Twenty-two-year-old Tim Paterson was hired in June 1978 by SCP's owner Rod Brock. At the time, SCP built memory boards for microcomputers, but after attending a local seminar on Intel's just-released 8086 in late summer 1978, Paterson convinced Brock that his company should design a CPU board for the new chip. Paterson had a prototype working by May 1979, and he took his "computer" over to Microsoft, who were working on an 8086 BASIC, which was working before the end of May.
When the board began shipping in November, standalone Microsoft BASIC was offered as an option, but no operating system was available for it.Digital Research, whose 8-bit CP/M operating system was the industry standard, was working on an 8086-compatible version called CP/M-86, but the delay in its release was costing SCP sales. In order to fill this void, Paterson wrote QDOS (for Quick and Dirty Operating System) over a four-month period starting in April 1980. QDOS 0.11 was finished in August 1980, and SCP began shipping it in September 1980. The operating system was renamed to 86-DOS in December 1980.
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