CP/M-86

CP/M-86 was a version of Digital Research's CP/M operating system, built by the company founded by Gary Kildall and led on this project with Kathryn Strutynski, for the Intel 8086 and 8088 processors used in early x86 based computers. Announced for a November 1979 release but repeatedly delayed, it first shipped in November 1981 for the IBM Displaywriter, with a version for the IBM PC following in spring 1982; it extended the earlier 8 bit CP/M-80 to 16 bit hardware while keeping similar system commands and a relocatable .CMD executable format. IBM initially preferred CP/M-86 for its new PC because of CP/M's large existing software library, but licensing negotiations between IBM and Digital Research broke down, and IBM launched the PC with MS-DOS as its primary system, offering CP/M-86 only as a costlier alternative; one contemporary survey found 96.3 percent of IBM PCs were ordered with DOS against 3.4 percent with CP/M-86. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/