MS-DOS (pronounced /ˌɛmɛsˈdɒs/, em-es-dos; short for MicroSoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system An operating system is the software on a computer that manages the way different programs use its hardware, and regulates the ways that a user controls the computer. Operating systems are found on almost any device that contains a computer with multiple programs—from cellular phones and video game consoles to supercomputers and web servers. Some for x86 The term x86 refers to a family of instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086. The 8086 was launched in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's early 8-bit based microprocessors and also introduced segmentation to overcome the 16-bit addressing barrier of earlier chips. The term x86 derived from the fact that early successors to the-based personal computers A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator. This is in contrast to the batch processing or time-sharing models which allowed large expensive mainframe, which was purchased by Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is a public multinational corporation based in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800,. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is a shorthand term for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for personal computers during the 1980s up to mid 1990s. It was preceded by M-DOS (also called MIDAS), designed and copyrighted by Microsoft in 1979. MSDOS was written for the Intel 8086 The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel, which gave rise to the x86 architecture; development work on the 8086 design started in the spring of 1976 and the chip was introduced to the market in the summer of 1978. The Intel 8088, released in 1979, was a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allowing the use of family of microprocessors, particularly the IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981. It was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, and compatibles IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to legally reverse engineer the BIOS through clean room. It was gradually replaced on consumer desktop computers by operating systems offering a graphical user interface A graphical user interface (sometimes pronounced gooey) is a type of user interface item that allows people to interact with programs in more ways than typing such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment with images rather than text commands. A GUI (GUI), in particular by various generations of the Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal operating system. MS-DOS developed out of QDOS 86-DOS was an operating system developed and marketed by Seattle Computer Products for its Intel 8086-based computer kit. Initially known as QDOS the name was changed to 86-DOS once SCP started licensing the operating system (Quick and Dirty Operating System), also known as 86-DOS 86-DOS was an operating system developed and marketed by Seattle Computer Products for its Intel 8086-based computer kit. Initially known as QDOS the name was changed to 86-DOS once SCP started licensing the operating system.[1]

MS-DOS development originally started in 1981,[2] and was first released in 1982 as MS-DOS 1.0.[2] Several versions Originally MS-DOS was designed to be an operating system that could run on any 8086-family computer. It competed with other Operating Systems written for x86 based computers, such as CP/M-86 and UCSD Pascal. Each computer would have its own distinct hardware and its own version of MS-DOS, similar to the situation that existed for CP/M, and with MS- were released under different names for different hardware.[3] MS-DOS had eight major versions released before Microsoft stopped development in 2000. It was the key product in Microsoft's growth from a programming languages A programming language is an artificial language designed to express computations that can be performed by a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine, to express algorithms precisely, or as a mode of human communication company to a diverse software development firm, providing the company with essential revenue and marketing resources. It was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI.

Contents

History

Main article: DOS DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is a shorthand term for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition

MS-DOS was a renamed form of 86-DOS 86-DOS was an operating system developed and marketed by Seattle Computer Products for its Intel 8086-based computer kit. Initially known as QDOS the name was changed to 86-DOS once SCP started licensing the operating system — informally known as the Quick-and-dirty Operating System or Q-DOS [2] — owned by Seattle Computer Products Seattle Computer Products was a Seattle, Washington computer hardware company which was one of the first manufacturers of computer systems based on the Intel 8086 processor. It was staffed partly by high-school students from nearby communities who soldered and assembled the computers. Some of them would later work for Microsoft, written by Tim Paterson[2]. Microsoft needed an operating system for the then-new Intel 8086 The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel, which gave rise to the x86 architecture; development work on the 8086 design started in the spring of 1976 and the chip was introduced to the market in the summer of 1978. The Intel 8088, released in 1979, was a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allowing the use of but it had none available, so it licensed 86-DOS and released a version of it as MS-DOS 1.0[2]. Development started in 1981, and MS-DOS 1.0 was released with the IBM PC in 1982[2]. (86-DOS, in turn, was written as an interim replacement for the delayed CP/M-86, when Seattle Computer Products' needed an operating system to sell with their 8086 processor card for the S-100 bus, which at the time was a leading edge product.) Tim Paterson is considered the original author of DOS and he is called "The Father of DOS"[2][n 1].

Worried by possible legal problems, in June 1981 Microsoft made an offer to Rod Brock, the owner of Seattle Computer, to buy the rights for 86-DOS. An agreement to release all rights to the software was signed in June 1981. The total cost was $75,000.[3][n 2]

Originally MS-DOS was designed to be an operating system that could run on any 8086-family computer. Each computer would have its own distinct hardware and its own version of MS-DOS, similar to the situation that existed for CP/M CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations, and were migrated to 16-bit processors, and with MS-DOS emulating the same solution CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations, and were migrated to 16-bit processors as CP/M to adapt for different hardware platforms. To this end, MS-DOS was designed with a modular structure with internal device drivers, minimally for primary disk drives and the console, integrated with the kernel and loaded by the boot loader, and installable device drivers for other devices loaded and integrated at boot time. The OEM An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under the purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product would use a development kit provided by Microsoft to build a version of MS-DOS with their basic I/O drivers and a standard Microsoft kernel, which they would typically supply on disk to end users along with the hardware. Thus, there were many different versions of "MS-DOS" for different hardware, and there is a major distinction between an IBM-compatible (or ISA) machine and an MS-DOS [compatible] machine. Some machines, like the Tandy 2000, were MS-DOS compatible but not IBM-compatible, so they could only run software written exclusively for MS-DOS without dependence on the peripheral hardware of the IBM PC architecture.

This design would have worked well for compatibility, if application programs had only used MS-DOS services to perform device I/O, and indeed the same design philosophy is embodied in Windows NT (see Hardware Abstraction Layer A hardware abstraction layer is an abstraction layer, implemented in software, between the physical hardware of a computer and the software that runs on that computer. Its function is to hide differences in hardware from most of the operating system kernel, so that most of the kernel-mode code does not need to be changed to run on systems with). However, in MS-DOS's early days, the greater speed attainable by programs through direct control of hardware was of particular importance, especially for games, which often pushed the limits of their contemporary hardware. Very soon an IBM-compatible architecture became the goal, and before long all 8086-family computers closely emulated IBM's hardware, and only a single version of MS-DOS for a fixed hardware platform was needed for the market. This version is the version of MS-DOS that is discussed here, as the dozens of other OEM versions of "MS-DOS" were only relevant to the systems they were designed for, and in any case were very similar in function and capability to the same-numbered standard version for the IBM PC, with a few notable exceptions.

While MS-DOS appeared on PC clones IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to legally reverse engineer the BIOS through clean room, true IBM computers used PC DOS IBM PC DOS is a DOS system for the IBM Personal Computer and compatibles, manufactured and sold by IBM from the 1980s to the 2000s, a rebranded form of MS-DOS. Ironically, the dependence on IBM-compatible hardware caused major problems for the computer industry when the original design had to be changed. For example, the original design could support no more than 640 kilobytes The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission. One kilobyte is most often considered to be 1024 bytes of memory (the 640 kB barrier), because IBM's hardware design reserved the address space above this limit for peripheral devices and ROM. Manufacturers had to develop complicated schemes (EMS and XMS, and other minor proprietary ones) to access additional memory. This limitation would not have been a problem if the original idea of interfacing with hardware through MS-DOS had endured. (However, MS-DOS was also a real-mode operating system, and the Intel x86 architecture only supports up to 1 MB of memory address space in Real Mode, even on Pentium 4 and later x86 CPUs, so for simple access to megabytes of memory, MS-DOS would have had to be rewritten to run in 80286 or 80386 Protected Mode.) Also, Microsoft originally described MS-DOS as "an operating system for Intel 8086-based microcomputers", and the 8086 CPU (and its cousin the 8088) itself has only 1 MiB of total memory address space.

Versions

Main article: Comparison of x86 DOS operating systems Originally MS-DOS was designed to be an operating system that could run on any 8086-family computer. It competed with other Operating Systems written for x86 based computers, such as CP/M-86 and UCSD Pascal. Each computer would have its own distinct hardware and its own version of MS-DOS, similar to the situation that existed for CP/M, and with MS-

Microsoft licensed or released versions of MS-DOS under different names like SB-DOS or Z-DOS[3]. Competitors released DOS systems such as DR-DOS DR-DOS is a DOS-type operating system for IBM PC-compatible personal computers, originally developed by Gary Kildall's Digital Research and derived from Digital Research's Concurrent PC DOS 6.0, which was an advanced successor of CP/M-86 and PTS-DOS PTS-DOS is a disk operating system, a DOS clone, developed in Russia by PhysTechSoft that could also run DOS applications. The following versions of MS-DOS were released to the public:[4][5]

Competition

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The original MS-DOS advertisement in 1981.

On microcomputers based on the Intel 8086 The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel, which gave rise to the x86 architecture; development work on the 8086 design started in the spring of 1976 and the chip was introduced to the market in the summer of 1978. The Intel 8088, released in 1979, was a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allowing the use of and 8088 The Intel 8088 microprocessor was a variant of the Intel 8086 and was introduced on July 1, 1979. It had an 8-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and the one megabyte address range were unchanged, however. The original IBM PC was based on the 8088 processors, including the IBM PC and clones, the initial competition to the PC DOS/MS-DOS line came from Digital Research Digital Research, Inc. was the company created by Dr. Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related products. It was the first large software company in the microcomputer world. Digital Research should not be confused with Digital Equipment Corporation; the two were not affiliated. DR was based in Pacific Grove,, whose CP/M CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations, and were migrated to 16-bit processors operating system had inspired MS-DOS. In fact, there remains controversy as to whether Q-DOS was more or less plagiarised from early versions of CP/M code. Digital Research released CP/M-86 CP/M-86 was a version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The commands are those of CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format. It was later reworked to become MS-DOS compatible and renamed to DR-DOS a few months after MS-DOS, and it was offered as an alternative to MS-DOS and Microsoft's licensing requirements, but at a higher price. Executable programs In computing, an executable causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instructions," as opposed to a file that only contains data. Files that contain instructions for an interpreter or virtual machine may be considered executables, but are more specifically called scripts or bytecode. Executables are also called & for CP/M-86 and MS-DOS were not interchangeable with each other; much applications software was sold in both MS-DOS and CP/M-86 versions until MS-DOS became preponderant (later Digital Research operating systems could run both MS-DOS and CP/M-86 software). MS-DOS supported the simple .COM and the more advanced relocatable .EXE EXE is the common filename extension denoting an executable file in the DOS, OpenVMS, Microsoft Windows, Symbian, and OS/2 operating systems. Besides the executable program, many EXE files contain other components called resources, such as bitmaps and icons which the executable program may use for its graphical user interface executable file formats; CP/M-86 a relocatable format using the file extension A filename extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file applied to indicate the encoding convention of its contents .CMD In CP/M-86, CMD is the filename extension used by executable programs. It corresponds to COM in CP/M-80 and EXE in MS-DOS.

Most of the machines in the early days of MS-DOS had differing system architectures and there was a certain degree of incompatibility, and subsequently vendor lock-in. Users who began using MS-DOS with their machines were compelled to continue using the version customized for their hardware, or face trying to get all of their proprietary hardware and software to work with the new system.

In the business world the 808x-based machines that MS-DOS was tied to faced competition from the Unix Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna. Today's Unix systems are split into various branches, developed over time by AT&T as well as various commercial vendors and non-profit operating system which ran on many different hardware architectures. Microsoft itself sold a version of Unix for the PC called Xenix Xenix is a version of the Unix operating system, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually began distributing it as SCO UNIX (now known as SCO OpenServer).

In the emerging world of home users, a variety of other computers based on various other processors were in serious competition with the IBM PC: the Apple II The Apple II was one of the first highly successful mass produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and introduced in 1977. In terms of ease of use, features and expandability the Apple II was a major technological advancement over its predecessor, the Apple I, a limited, early Apple Macintosh The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface rather than a command-line interface, the Commodore 64 The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982. Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US $595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64 kilobytes of memory with sound and graphics and others did not use the 808x processor; many 808x machines of different architectures used custom versions of MS-DOS. At first all these machines were in competition. In time the IBM PC hardware configuration became dominant in the 808x market as software written to communicate directly with the PC hardware without using standard operating system calls ran much faster, but on true PC-compatibles only. Non-PC-compatible 808x machines were too small a market to have fast software written for them alone, and the market remained open only for IBM PCs and machines that closely imitated their architecture, all running either a single version of MS-DOS compatible only with PCs, or the equivalent IBM PC DOS. Most clones cost much less than IBM-branded machines of similar performance, and became widely used by home users, while IBM PCs had a large share of the business computer market.

Microsoft and IBM together began what was intended as the follow-on to MS/PC DOS, called OS/2 OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal computers. OS/2 is no longer. When OS/2 was released in 1987, Microsoft began an advertising campaign announcing that "DOS is Dead" and stating that version 4 was the last full release. OS/2 was designed for efficient multi-tasking — an IBM speciality derived from deep experience with mainframe operating systems — and offered a number of advanced features that had been designed together with similar look and feel In software design, look and feel is a term used in respect of a graphical user interface and comprises aspects of its design, including elements such as colors, shapes, layout, and typefaces , as well as the behavior of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxes, and menus (the "feel"). The term can also refer to aspects of an API, mostly; it was seen as the legitimate heir to the "kludgy" DOS platform.

MS-DOS had grown in spurts, with many significant features being taken or duplicated from Microsoft's other products and operating systems. MS-DOS also grew by incorporating, by direct licensing or feature duplicating, the functionality of tools and utilities developed by independent companies, such as Norton Utilities, PC Tools (Microsoft Anti-Virus), QEMM expanded memory manager, Stacker disk compression, and others.

During the period when Digital Research was competing in the operating system market some computers, like Amstrad PC-1512, were sold with floppy disks for two operating systems (only one of which could be used at a time), MS-DOS and CP/M-86 or a derivative of it. Digital Research produced DOS Plus DOS Plus is an operating system written by Digital Research, first released in 1985. It can be seen as an intermediate step between CP/M-86 and DR-DOS, which was compatible with MS-DOS 2.11, supported CP/M-86 programs, had additional features including multi-tasking, and could read and write disks in CP/M and MS-DOS format.

While OS/2 was under protracted development, Digital Research released the MS-DOS compatible DR-DOS DR-DOS is a DOS-type operating system for IBM PC-compatible personal computers, originally developed by Gary Kildall's Digital Research and derived from Digital Research's Concurrent PC DOS 6.0, which was an advanced successor of CP/M-86 5, which included features only available as third-party add-ons for MS-DOS (and still maintained considerable internal CP/M-86 compatibility). Unwilling to lose any portion of the market, Microsoft responded by announcing the "pending" release of MS-DOS 5.0 in May 1990. This effectively killed most DR-DOS sales until the actual release of MS-DOS 5.0 in June 1991. Digital Research brought out DR-DOS 6, which sold well until the "pre-announcement" of MS-DOS 6.0 again stifled the sales of DR-DOS.

Microsoft had been accused of carefully orchestrating leaks about future versions of MS-DOS in an attempt to create what in the industry is called FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) regarding DR-DOS. For example, in October 1990, shortly after the release of DR-DOS 5.0, and long before the eventual June 1991 release of MS-DOS 5.0, stories on feature enhancements in MS-DOS started to appear in InfoWorld and PC Week. Brad Silverberg, Vice President of Systems Software at Microsoft and General Manager of its Windows and MS-DOS Business Unit, wrote a forceful letter to PC Week (November 5, 1990), denying that Microsoft was engaged in FUD tactics ("to serve our customers better, we decided to be more forthcoming about version 5.0") and denying that Microsoft copied features from DR-DOS:

"The feature enhancements of MS-DOS version 5.0 were decided and development was begun long before we heard about DR-DOS 5.0. There will be some similar features. With 50 million MS-DOS users, it shouldn't be surprising that DRI has heard some of the same requests from customers that we have." – (Schulman et al. 1994). [6]

The pact between Microsoft and IBM to promote OS/2 began to fall apart in 1990 when Windows 3.0 Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, and was released on 22 May 1990. It became the first widely successful version of Windows and a rival to Apple Macintosh and the Commodore Amiga on the GUI front. It was followed by Windows 3.1 became a marketplace success. Much of Microsoft's further contributions to OS/2 also went in to creating a third GUI A graphical user interface (sometimes pronounced gooey) is a type of user interface item that allows people to interact with programs in more ways than typing such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment with images rather than text commands. A GUI replacement for DOS, Windows NT Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was originally designed to be a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement consumer versions of.

IBM, which had already been developing the next version of OS/2, carried on development of the platform without Microsoft and sold it as the alternative to DOS and Windows.

Legal issues

As a response to Digital Research Digital Research, Inc. was the company created by Dr. Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related products. It was the first large software company in the microcomputer world. Digital Research should not be confused with Digital Equipment Corporation; the two were not affiliated. DR was based in Pacific Grove,'s DR-DOS 6.0, which bundled SuperStor disk compression, Microsoft opened negotiations with Stac Electronics, vendor of the most popular DOS disk compression tool, Stacker. In the due diligence process, Stac engineers had shown Microsoft part of the Stacker source code. Stac was unwilling to meet Microsoft's terms for licensing Stacker and withdrew from the negotiations. Microsoft chose to license Vertisoft's DoubleDisk, using it as the core for its DoubleSpace disk compression[7].

MS-DOS 6.0 and 6.20 were released in 1993, both including the Microsoft DoubleSpace disk compression utility program. Stac successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement regarding the compression algorithm used in DoubleSpace. This resulted in the 1994 release of MS-DOS 6.21, which had disk-compression removed. Shortly afterwards came version 6.22, with a new version of the disk compression system, DriveSpace, which had a different compression algorithm to avoid the infringing code.

Prior to 1995, Microsoft licensed MS-DOS (and Windows) to computer manufacturers under three types of agreement: per-processor (a fee for each system the company sold), per-system (a fee for each system of a particular model), or per-copy (a fee for each copy of MS-DOS installed). The largest manufacturers used the per-processor arrangement, which had the lowest fee. This arrangement made it expensive for the large manufacturers to migrate to any other operating system, such as DR-DOS. In 1991, the U.S. government Federal Trade Commission began investigating Microsoft's licensing procedures, resulting in a 1994 settlement agreement limiting Microsoft to per-copy licensing. Digital Research did not gain by this settlement, and years later its successor in interest, Caldera, sued Microsoft for damages. This lawsuit was settled with a monetary payment of $150 million.

End of MS-DOS

MS-DOS lingers in Windows 7.

Today, MS-DOS is rarely used for desktop computing. Since the release of Windows 95, it was integrated as a full product used for bootstrapping and troubleshooting, and no longer released as a standalone product.

Windows XP contains a copy of the core MS-DOS 8 files from Windows Me, accessible only by formatting a floppy as an "MS-DOS startup disk". These core files are a stripped down bootstrap only, which does not include CD-ROM support. With Windows Vista the files on the startup disk are dated 18 April 2005 but are otherwise unchanged, including the string "MS-DOS Version 8 (C) Copyright 1981-1999 Microsoft Corp" inside COMMAND.COM.

However the only versions of DOS currently recognized as stand-alone OSs, and supported as such by the Microsoft Corporation are DOS 6.0 and 6.22, both of which remain available for download via their MSDN, volume license, and OEM license partner websites, for customers with valid login credentials.

Today, DOS is still used in embedded x86 systems due to its simple architecture, and minimal memory and processor requirements. The command line interpreter of NT-based versions of Windows, cmd.exe, maintains most of the same commands and some compatibility with DOS batch files.

Microsoft has introduced a new command-line called PowerShell. Powershell offers more functionality than MS-DOS.

The Windows command-line interface

All versions of Microsoft Windows have had an MS-DOS like command-line interface (CLI). Versions of Windows (up to 3.11) ran as a Graphical User Interface (GUI) running on top of MS-DOS. Windows 95, 98, and ME had an MS-DOS prompt which ran command.com, with added facilities for such features as long file names.

The true 32-bit versions of Windows, from Windows NT, are not based on MS-DOS but provide a command-line interface similar to MS-DOS's character-mode interface known as the console. This is provided by a native executable, cmd.exe. Many Windows console applications are incorrectly referred to as MS-DOS applications. However, in reality they are Windows applications, using Windows system calls, using the text console for input and output rather than a graphical interface. Both true MS-DOS programs and Windows console programs can be run from the command line in the same console window.

32-bit Windows can run MS-DOS programs through the use of the NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine), and the 16-bit command.com interpreter which is still included to maintain application compatibility with programs that require it.

All versions of Windows for x86-64 and Itanium architectures no longer include the NTVDM and can therefore no longer natively run MS-DOS or 16-bit Windows applications. There are alternatives in the form of Virtual machine emulators such as Microsoft's own Virtual PC, as well as VMware, DOSBox, and others.

Legacy compatibility

From 1983 onwards, various companies have worked on graphical user interfaces (GUIs) capable of running on PC hardware. With DOS being the dominant operating system several companies released alternate shells, e.g. Microsoft Word for DOS, XTree, and the Norton Shell. However, this required duplication of effort and did not provide much consistency in interface design (even between products from the same company).

Later, in 1985, Microsoft Windows was released as Microsoft's first attempt at providing a consistent user interface (for applications). The early versions of Windows ran on top of MS-DOS and its clones. At first Windows met with little success, but this was also true for most other companies' efforts as well, for example GEM. After version 3.0 (1990), Windows gained market acceptance.

Later versions (Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me) used the DOS boot process to launch itself into protected mode. Basic features related to the file system, such as long file names, were only available to DOS when running as a subsystem of Windows. Windows NT ran independently of DOS but included a DOS subsystem so applications could run in a virtual machine under the new OS. With the latest Windows releases, even dual-booting MS-DOS is problematic as DOS may not be able to read the basic file system.

Related systems

Single-user

Several similar products were produced by other companies. In the case of PC DOS and DR-DOS, it is common but incorrect to call these "clones". Given that Microsoft manufactured PC DOS for IBM, PC DOS and MS-DOS were (to continue the genetic analogy) "identical twins" that diverged only in adulthood and eventually became quite different products. Although DR-DOS is regarded as a clone of MS-DOS, the DR-DOS versions appeared months and years before Microsoft's products. (For example, MS-DOS 4, released in July 1988, was followed by DR-DOS 5 in May 1990. MS-DOS 5 came in April 1991, with DR-DOS 6 being released the following June. MS-DOS 6 did not arrive until April 1993, with Novell DOS 7, DR-DOS' successor, following the next month.[8]) What made the difference in the end was Microsoft's desire to make MS-DOS a better platform for running Windows. Both IBM (DOS 5.02) and DRI (DOS 6 update) had to release interim releases for new undocumented Windows functionality.

These products are collectively referred to as DOS. However, MS-DOS can be a generic reference to DOS on IBM-PC compatible computers.

See also

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Basic Computing Using Windows/Appendices/Dual Booting

Quotations

"IBM wanted CP/M prompts. It made me throw up." -- Tim Paterson [9]

Remarks

  1. ^ Notice that he is called the author of Dos and not the author of MS-DOS
  2. ^ $25,000 for the original licensing fee and $50,000 for the June 1981 agreement.

Notes

  1. ^ "A Short History of MS-DOS". http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Byte/History.html. Retrieved December 5, 2009.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Conner, Doug. "Father of DOS Still Having Fun at Microsoft". Micronews. http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Micronews/paterson04_10_98.htm. Retrieved December 5, 2009.
  3. ^ a b c Allan, Roy A. (2001). "Microsoft in the 1980's, part III 1980's — The IBM/Macintosh era". A history of the personal computer: the people and the technology. London, Ontario: Allan Pub.. p. 14. ISBN 0-9689108-0-7. http://www.retrocomputing.net/info/allan/. Retrieved December 5, 2009.
  4. ^ http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/msdosv.htm
  5. ^ http://pcmuseum.tripod.com/dos.htm
  6. ^ Schulman, Andrew (1994). Undocumented DOS: A Programmer's Guide to Reserved MS-DOS Functions and Data Structures (2nd ed.). Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-63287-X.
  7. ^ BYTE Magazine, How Safe is Disk Compression?, February, 1994.
  8. ^ Timeline 1980-1993
  9. ^ Hunter, David (1983). "The Roots of DOS". Softalk for the IBM Personal Computer. http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Softalk/Softalk.html. Retrieved 2007-06-14.

References

Microsoft. MS-DOS 6 Technical Reference

External links

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Architectures
General Monolithic kernel · Microkernel
Subtypes Exokernel · Nanokernel · Hybrid
Components Kernel space · Server · Loadable kernel module · Device driver · User space
Process management Process · Multiprogramming · Process control block · Interrupt · Modes: (Protected mode · Supervisor mode) · Computer multitasking · Scheduling · Context switch · Cooperative multitasking · Preemptive multitasking · CPU modes · Thread
Memory management Memory protection · Segmentation · Paging · Segmentation fault · General protection fault · Bus error
Examples UNIX · OpenSolaris · GNU · Linux · BSD · Windows · Mac OS X · AmigaOS · MorphOS · BeOS · IBM OS/2 · ReactOS · MS-DOS · more…
Miscellaneous concepts Boot loader · PXE · API · Virtual file system · Virtual tape library · Computer network · CLI · TUI · GUI · VUI · HAL

Categories: 1981 software | Discontinued Microsoft operating systems | DOS on IBM PC compatibles | Floppy disk-based operating systems

 

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'MS-DOS' News
Microsoft turns 35: Best, worst, most notable moments - ITBusiness.ca
news.google.com
Microsoft turns 35: Best, worst, most notable moments

ITBusiness.ca

The operating system would ultimately be called PC-DOS, a rebranding of Microsoft's MS-DOS . Microsoft didn't actually write MS-DOS ; instead it paid to have ...



and more »
Google News Search: MS-DOS,
Thu Apr 15 11:08:56 2010
'MS-DOS' Images
doslfn jpg
cn-dos.net
doslfn jpg
400px x 720px | 67.30kB

[source page]

Screenshot 4 MS DOS 7 10 with full FAT32 and Long File Names LFN support Screenshot 5 MS DOS 7 10 can see access Long File Names LFN on MP3 CDs

Yahoo Images Search: MS-DOS,
Tue Jul 27 23:44:52 2010
'MS-DOS' Blogs
FILEnetworks Blog: DOSBox 0.74 Released MS DOS Emulator Now With ...
filenetworks.blogspot.com
FILEnetworks Blog: DOSBox 0.74 Released MS DOS Emulator Now With ...

TEAM FILEnetworks

Wed, 12 May 2010 20:02:00 GM

This hugely popular . MS DOS. emulator lets you run most applications and games that require native . MS DOS. support on modern operating systems such as Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS and Linux. The latest build (v0.74 dated ...

Google Blogs Search: MS-DOS,
Mon Jun 14 04:11:29 2010
'MS-DOS' Answers
MS-Dos...........?
Q. Anyone know of any good websites for learning MS DOS code. If you can't find any decent sites on learning the basics of MS DOS code then can you think of any books that could help?
Asked by I almondy urine :) - Mon May 21 17:11:58 2007 - - 2 Answers - 0 Comments

A. here ya go
Answered by Brian D - Mon May 21 17:16:27 2007

Yahoo Answers Search: MS-DOS,
Sat Jul 3 17:21:30 2010
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