Pagetable.com has an interesting article on a Microsoft easter egg. “If you type ‘WAIT6502,1’ into a Commodore PET with BASIC V2 (1979), it will show the string ‘MICROSOFT!’ at the top left corner of the screen. Legend has it Bill Gates himself inserted this easter egg ‘after he had had an argument with Commodore founder Jack Tramiel’, ‘just in case Commodore ever tried to claim that the code wasn’t from Microsoft’. In this episode of Computer Archeology, we will not only examine this story, but also track down the history of Microsoft BASIC on various computers, and see see how Microsoft added a second easter egg to the TSR-80 Color Computer – because they had forgotten about the first one.”
Great article!
“after he had had an argument with Commodore founder Jack Tramiel”
I would have paid to be a fly on the wall and watch Tramiel perform a “Jack Attack” on Gates.
Edited 2008-10-07 13:04 UTC
Jack of “Business is War” vs
Bill “I got IBM in my hip pocket”
equals an awesome meeting!
I wish i could have seen it too.
Hah! The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer was my first computer. I bought it in the spring of 1981. What a fun little box that was! Now that I see the article, I do remember the CLS9 command that brought up the word MICROSOFT!
BBC BASIC had the error “Silly!” returned when you tried to renumber the lines in a daft way.
Couldn’t he of least put something that resulted in ***Microsoft Basic***, not Microsoftdor basic***?
I know space was tight, but for gawd sake man, at least try!
I was wondering the same thing, but then I realized that the message “Commodore Basic” header must have been added by Commodore AFTER Microsoft delivered the software, so we can assume Bill tested his code when it was only saying “Ready” on the top of the screen, which then would work fine.
That would explain why in later versions, Bill actually call a clear screen command before writing his easter egg.
And wow, I’ve just re-read my message, and I’m such a NERD.