Last Updated on: 10th November 2023, 04:52 pm
Web site: github.com/microsoft/ms-dos
Origin: USA
Category: Desktop
Desktop environment: CLI
Architecture: x86
Based on: 86-DOS
Wikipedia: MS-DOS
Media: Install
The last version | Released: 8.0 | September 14, 2000
MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) – an operating system created by Microsoft on the basis of the QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) source code acquired by Seattle Computers. This is a version of the DOS operating system for the IBM PC.
The purpose of a personal computer operating system is to provide the user with basic control of the machine. A less obvious function is to furnish the user with a high-level, machine-independent interface for application programs, so that those programs can run on two dissimilar machines, despite the differences in their peripheral hardware. Having designed an 8086 microprocessor card for the S-100 bus and not finding an appropriate disk operating system on the market, Seattle Computer Products set about designing MS-DOS. Today MS-DOS is the most widely used disk operating system for personal computers based on Intel’s 8086 and 8088 microprocessors.
Although MS-DOS itself is a text-based environment, the role of a graphical overlay running on this system was to be fulfilled by DOS Shell and early versions of Microsoft Windows. More popular than Microsoft’s solutions, however, was Norton Commander – a DOS file manager written outside Microsoft, using the so-called. semigraphics of the DOS text environment. In addition, there were also other programs that were graphical overlays on the system, such as 1dir and XTree. Later versions of Windows (from 3.0 onwards in the 9x line of systems, ending with the Millennium Edition system) became more and more standalone operating systems, creating a separate, own development platform. However, all systems of this line started from DOS and were backwards compatible with it.
With the advent of Windows 95, Microsoft officially stopped development of MS-DOS as a standalone operating system, the last standalone version is 6.22. Versions 7, 7.1 and 8.0 of MS-DOS are the basis on which Windows 9x/Millennium was built, constituting their integral part and were not sold as a separate product.
The MS-DOSdir screenshot source: Wikipedia; author: Przemub; License: Public domain.