[TMWNN]

> We made the transition from Heathkit HDOS to CP/M

A very unusual case of a company explicitly deprecating its own proprietary OS, and shifting to an external standard, on the same hardware. Tandy giving existing Model 16 customers Xenix and shipping it with new units is the only other case I can think of offhand.

What do you think of this 1983 ACM paper comparing HDOS and CP/M? <http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/360000/358070/p188-pechura.p...>

[badc0ffee]

Did IBM do this with OS/2 as well?

[TMWNN]

IBM did give up on marketing OS/2 by the late 1990s (and the PC division arguably did so around the time Windows 95 came out), but I am not aware of IBM explicitly telling new and existing customers that Windows is the way forward for existing systems.

A slightly different way of answering your question is that sometime after the PS/2's launch, IBM began explicitly noting that its software and peripherals were compatible with non-IBM computers. PC DOS 5.0 might have been the first. <https://np.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/1jleun5/ni...>