The European Development Centre (EDC)

From 1983 DR Europe had an OEM Support Group in Newbury which mostly ported DRI operating systems to OEM hardware. Later the group engineered operating systems, starting with "DOS Plus" for Philips/Austria.

In 1996 this group of engineers moved into the newly created European Development Centre of DRI in Hungerford, Berkshire in the South of England to continue operating systems development. This included CDOS 4.11, XM 5.1, 6.0, CDOS 386 1.0 and up, and finally DR DOS 3.41, 5.0, 6.0 and Novell DOS 7. We were English, Welsh, Scottish and one German. Later we also had people from Ireland, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Barbados and a few other interesting places.

When I moved back to Germany to telecommute from there (and occasionally visit), I was giving the following cartoon to remind me of all the great people I worked with.

When Novell closed down the EDC, some of these engineers moved on to Caldera (which handled the DR-DOS rights), others to Centennial.

John Constant was the project leader of the DR DOS team.
Anthony Hay wrote many of the utilities for DR DOS.

Jenny Shelton was the lone female amongst engineers,
a cat lover, fond of knitted jumpers and a smoker.

Richard Deane was our QA chief and resident gourmet.

John Constant liked bright red or pink ties and
would nervously click his fingers when he got busy.

My house in Germany really was right
next to an ancient castle.

Yes, while at DRI I never wore any ties.

The 386/25 was the fastest machine
on the market in early 1989.

John Linney says he was just trying to wind up Jenny.

Initially the Intel ICE was the only debugger for the 386.
It was slow, arcane and expensive, simply horrible.
It needed it's own PC just to run the user interface.
Ian Jack was our Scotsman and did many good things
for DR DOS and other products.

Steve Hook from Wales used to talk a lot about sheep...

Many thanks to John Linney who did the cartoon!

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