Comments on: Gary Kildall’s death investigation

By: Dave Farquhar

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 16:08:33 +0000

In reply to Milan. The brain hemorrhage information came out much later in the Harold Evans book They Made America.

By: Jon K.

Jon K. — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:11:00 +0000

It reminds me quite a lot of Drew Magary’s brain hemorrhage and fall. Thankfully, he lived to tell the tale.

By: Gary Kildall’s Death Investigation – Bashar Subeh

Gary Kildall’s Death Investigation – Bashar Subeh — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 04:09:05 +0000

[…] Read Full ArticleView on Hacker News […]

By: Milan

Milan — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 14:04:07 +0000

“and the autopsy showed he suffered a brain hemorrhage”

“Los Angeles Times initially reported the autopsy failed to determine the cause of death.”

– which one is true?
– where did you find fact for first statement?

By: Dave Farquhar

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 26 May 2016 03:28:15 +0000

In reply to lrm.

Thanks for that explanation. All I’d ever heard was that he copied the command and syntax from DEC minicomputers. So to check out what you’d been told, I did a Google search on “peripheral interchange program” and sure enough, that was a command on PDP-6, PDP-8, PDP-10, and PDP-11, and that was what inspired Kildall.

Thanks again!

By: lrm

lrm — Wed, 25 May 2016 23:13:45 +0000

Always nice to be reminded of the early days. This post lead me back to a previous one “Was CP/M overrated?” in which you wonder about the origins of PIP as a name for copy. Perhaps I can help. I was first introduced to personal computers back in a982 when I was working at AT&T in an interactive videodisc group (right around the time of divestiture). I was hired as a Producer but all of us had Sony SMC-70 computers with dual floppy drives running CP/M with WordStar 3.x and dBase II. At some point I needed to some files to another disk and was introduced to PIP by one of the programmers. I asked why it was called PIP instead of something more logical like, say, copy. PIP I was told was a acronym for Peripheral Interchange Program. Whether it was true or whether the programmer was just blowing smoke I have no idea.