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Timeline of DOS operating systems

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by JeremyMcCracken (talk | contribs) at 02:56, 12 October 2009 (doesn't appear to have been a version of LDOS that wasn't TRS-80). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article presents a timeline of events in the history of x86 DOS operating systems from 1973 to 2006.

Important Events in DOS History

Color key
Microsoft/MS-DOS/86-DOS IBM PC DOS/IBM DOS Digital Research/DR-DOS
FreeDOS PTS-DOS Other
1973 Gary Kildall writes a simple operating system for Intel 8080-based computers which he calls CP/M
1980 April Tim Paterson begins writing an operating system for use with Seattle Computer Products' 8086-based computer, due to delays by Digital Research in releasing their CP/M-86 operating system.
August QDOS 0.10 (Quick and Dirty Operating System) is shipped by Seattle Computer Products.
October Microsoft pays less than US$100,000 for the right to sell SCP's DOS to an unnamed client (IBM).
December Microsoft buys non-exclusive rights to market QDOS, which has been renamed to 86-DOS.
Digital Research releases CP/M-86
1981 July Microsoft buys all rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, and the name MS-DOS is adopted.
August IBM announces the IBM 5150 PC Personal Computer, featuring a 4.77-MHz Intel 8088 CPU, 64 KB (64 KiB) RAM, 40 KB ROM, one 5.25-inch floppy drive, and PC DOS 1.0
1982 May Microsoft releases MS-DOS 1.1
1983 March MS-DOS 2.0 for PCs is announced.
PC DOS 2.0 is released.
October PC DOS 2.1 is released
1984 March Microsoft releases MS-DOS 2.1
August Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.0. It adds support for 1.2 MB floppy disks and hard disks larger than 10MB.
PC DOS 3.0 is released.
November Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.1
1985 March PC DOS 3.1 is released.
December PC DOS 3.2 is released.
1986 Digital Research transforms CP/M into DOS Plus.
January Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.2. It adds support for 3.5-inch 720 KB floppy disk drives.
1987 April PC DOS 3.3 is released.
August Microsoft ships MS-DOS 3.3.
November Compaq ships Compaq MS-DOS 3.31 with support for hard disk partitions over 32 MB.
1988 January Digital Research rewrites DOS Plus as DR-DOS.
May Digital Research releases DR-DOS 3.31, supporting hard disk partitions up to 512 MB.
June Microsoft releases MS-DOS 4.0, including a graphical/mouse interface.
July IBM ships IBM DOS 4.0. It adds a shell menu interface and support for hard disk partitions over 32 MB.
1989 ROM-DOS introduced by Datalight.
1990 May Digital Research releases DR-DOS 5.0.
1991 May IBM DOS 5 is released. It featured the moving of command.com into HMA.
June Microsoft releases MS-DOS 5.0. The full-screen MS-DOS Editor is added to succeed Edlin. It adds undelete and unformat utilities, and task swapping. GW-BASIC is replaced with QBasic.
September Digital Research releases DR-DOS 6.0 with Super-Stor disk compression.
1993 March Microsoft introduces MS-DOS 6.0, including DoubleSpace disk compression.
April Novell acquires Digital Research and renames DR-DOS to Novell DOS
June IBM releases PC DOS 6.1. It is separate from MS-DOS 6.1, and IBM and Microsoft begin developing separately.[1]
December Novell releases Novell DOS 7.0.
PTS-DOS is introduced as PTS-DOS 6.4
1994 February Microsoft releases MS-DOS 6.21, removing DoubleSpace disk compression.
April IBM releases PC DOS 6.3.
June Microsoft releases MS-DOS 6.22, bringing back disk compression under the name DriveSpace.
PD-DOS, the open-source project later known as FreeDOS, is announced.[2]
1995 April IBM releases PC DOS 7.0, with integrated data compression from Stac Electronics (Stacker).
July PTS-DOS 7.0 is released.
August Windows 95 is released. It comes with an MS-DOS like bootloader reporting DOS version 7.0.
1996 August Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2.0 (OSR2.0) is released. It comes with MS-DOS 7.1, which adds support for the FAT32 file system.
1997 January Novell sells Novell DOS to Caldera Systems, who release it as open-source OpenDOS 7.01
December Caldera releases DR-OpenDOS 7.02.
1998 January FreeDOS alpha 0.05 is released.[3]
March Caldera re-releases DR-OpenDOS 7.02 as the closed source DR DOS 7.02.
FreeDOS beta 0.1 is released.[3]
April IBM releases PC DOS 2000, which is Y2K compliant.
October FreeDOS beta 0.2 is released.[3]
December DR-DOS is transferred to Caldera Thin Clients.
1999 April FreeDOS beta 0.3 is released.[3]
June Caldera Thin Clients becomes Lineo, who releases DR-DOS as Caldera DR-DOS 7.03.
September PTS-DOS 2000 is released.
December Lineo releases an OEM-only version of DR-DOS branded 7.04/7.05.
2000 April FreeDOS beta 0.4 is released.[3]
August FreeDOS beta 0.5 is released.[3]
September Microsoft Windows Me is released, identifying itself as DOS 8. It was the last MS-DOS, as future versions of Windows were based on the NT kernel.
2001 March FreeDOS beta 0.6 is released.[3]
September FreeDOS beta 0.7 is released.[3]
2002 April FreeDOS beta 0.8 is released.[3]
July Udo Kuhnt starts the DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project, based on source of OpenDOS 7.01.
October Lineo sells DR-DOS to DeviceLogics.
2004 March DeviceLogics releases DR-DOS 8.0
September FreeDOS beta 0.9 is released.[3]
November DR DOS Inc. splits from DeviceLogics.
2005 March Udo Kuhnt releases Enhanced DR-DOS 7.01.07 with FAT32 and LBA support.
June GNU/DOS is released.
October DR DOS Inc. releases DR-DOS 8.1, and removes it few days later because of alleged GPL violations
2006 September FreeDOS 1.0 is released.[4]
November GNU/DOS is discontinued.

See also

References

  1. ^ I.B.M. Executive Describes Price Pressure by Microsoft
  2. ^ Jim Hall (1994-06-29). "PD-DOS project *announcement*". Newsgroup: comp.os.msdos.apps. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Jim Hall (2007-10-02). "Removing old distributions from ibiblio". Newsgroup: Freedos-devel. Retrieved 2025-05-29. {{cite newsgroup}}: Check |newsgroup= value (help)
  4. ^ Hoover, Lisa (2006-09-18). "NewsForge: FreeDOS 1.0 Born After 12-Year Gestation". Linux Today. Retrieved 2009-10-07.
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