MS-DOS
Microsoft's discontinued operating system / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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MS-DOS (/ˌɛmˌɛsˈdɒs/ em-es-DOSS; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few operating systems attempting to be compatible with MS-DOS, are sometimes referred to as "DOS" (which is also the generic acronym for disk operating system). MS-DOS was the main operating system for IBM PC compatibles during the 1980s, from which point it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in various generations of the graphical Microsoft Windows operating system.
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 The command-line interface, showing that the current directory is the root of drive C | |
| Developer | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Written in | x86 assembly,[1] later versions also used C |
| OS family | DOS |
| Working state | Preserved pieces exist in 32-bit Windows |
| Source model | Closed source; open source for version 1.25 and 2.11 |
| Initial release | August 12, 1981; 42 years ago (1981-08-12)[2] |
| Final release | 8.0 (Windows Me) / September 14, 2000; 23 years ago (2000-09-14) |
| Repository | |
| Available in | English |
| Update method | Re-installation |
| Package manager | None |
| Platforms | x86 |
| Kernel type | Monolithic |
| Influenced by | TOPS-10 |
| Default user interface | Command-line (COMMAND.COM), text (DOS Shell) |
| License |
|
| Preceded by | 86-DOS |
| Succeeded by | Windows NT (since Windows XP) |
| Official website | Internet Archive MS-DOS overview |
| Support status | |
| MS-DOS versions 1x-7.0 unsupported as of December 31, 2001[4] MS-DOS versions 7.10 and 8.0 unsupported as of July 11, 2006. | |
IBM licensed and re-released it in 1981 as PC DOS 1.0 for use in its PCs. Although MS-DOS and PC DOS were initially developed in parallel by Microsoft and IBM, the two products diverged after twelve years, in 1993, with recognizable differences in compatibility, syntax, and capabilities.
Beginning in 1988 with DR-DOS, several competing products were released for the x86 platform,[5] and MS-DOS went through eight versions, until development ceased in 2000.[6] Initially, MS-DOS was targeted at Intel 8086 processors running on computer hardware using floppy disks to store and access not only the operating system, but application software and user data as well. Progressive version releases delivered support for other mass storage media in ever greater sizes and formats, along with added feature support for newer processors and rapidly evolving computer architectures. Ultimately, it was the key product in Microsoft's development from a programming language 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.
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