Microsoft Corp.'s first witness against antitrust sanctions sought by nine states admitted in court on Tuesday that he asked for a favor when Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates called seeking his testimony. Jerry Sanders, chief executive of computer chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. , also conceded he had not read the states' proposed sanctions, but that Gates had told him they were "crazy" and would fragment the Windows operating system. Howard Gutman, an attorney for the states, told U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that Sanders asked Microsoft to announce support for its chip technology, codenamed Hammer, ahead of a competing product just being developed at Intel Corp.
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