Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 7th Oct 2008 09:40 UTC, submitted by Michael Steil
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."
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Member since:
2006-02-05
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.