Timeline of x86 DOS operating systems
Encyclopedia
This article presents a timeline
of events in the history of x86 DOS
operating system
s from 1973 to 2006.
Timeline
A timeline is a way of displaying a list of events in chronological order, sometimes described as a project artifact . It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labeled with dates alongside itself and events labeled on points where they would have happened.-Uses of timelines:Timelines...
of events in the history of x86 DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym 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.Related...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s from 1973 to 2006.
Important Events in DOS History
| Microsoft/MS-DOS MS-DOS MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating... /86-DOS |
IBM PC DOS/IBM DOS | Digital Research/DR-DOS DR-DOS DR-DOS is an MS-DOS-compatible operating system for IBM PC-compatible personal computers, originally developed by Gary Kildall's Digital Research and derived from Concurrent PC DOS 6.0, which was an advanced successor of CP/M-86... |
| Compaq MS-DOS | FreeDOS FreeDOS FreeDOS is an operating system for IBM PC compatible computers. FreeDOS is made up of many different, separate programs that act as "packages" to the overall FreeDOS Project... |
PTS-DOS PTS-DOS PTS-DOS is a disk operating system, a DOS clone, developed in Russia by PhysTechSoft.- History and versions :PhysTechSoft was formed in 1991 in Moscow, Russia by graduates and members of MIPT, informally known as PhysTech. At the end of 1993, PhysTechSoft released the first commercially available... |
| 1973 | IBM IBM International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas... introduces the IBM 3740 data entry system, which introduced a new recording medium—the IBM diskette, to replace punched card Punched card A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions... s. See also: History of the floppy disk History of the floppy disk Over the history of the floppy disk a number of different formats were used. Floppy disks have now been largely superseded by other storage media and by network file transfer.-Origins, the 8-inch disk:... |
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| IBM introduces Winchester hard disk drive technology with the IBM 3340 direct access storage device Direct access storage device In mainframe computers and some minicomputers, a direct access storage device, or DASD , is any secondary storage device which has relatively low access time relative to its capacity.... for use on their System/370 mainframe Mainframe computer Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the... s. |
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| While working as a consultant Consultant A consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public... to Intel, Gary Kildall Gary Kildall Gary Arlen Kildall was an American computer scientist and microcomputer entrepreneur who created the CP/M operating system and founded Digital Research, Inc.... , an instructor at the Naval Postgraduate School Naval Postgraduate School The Naval Postgraduate School is an accredited research university operated by the United States Navy. Located in Monterey, California, it grants master's degrees, Engineer's degrees and doctoral degrees... , writes CP/M CP/M CP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc... , a simple "Control Program/Monitor" for an 8-bit 8-bit The first widely adopted 8-bit microprocessor was the Intel 8080, being used in many hobbyist computers of the late 1970s and early 1980s, often running the CP/M operating system. The Zilog Z80 and the Motorola 6800 were also used in similar computers... Intel 8080 Intel 8080 The Intel 8080 was the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and was released in April 1974. It was an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibility... microprocessor Microprocessor A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and... -based Intellec-8 microcomputer Microcomputer A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers... development system given him by Intel, to test out his PL/M PL/M The PL/M programming languageis a high-level language developed byGary Kildall in 1972 for Intel for its microprocessors.... compiler Compiler A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language... . The Intellec-8 supported a Teletype Teleprinter A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the... operating at 110 baud Baud In telecommunications and electronics, baud is synonymous to symbols per second or pulses per second. It is the unit of symbol rate, also known as baud rate or modulation rate; the number of distinct symbol changes made to the transmission medium per second in a digitally modulated signal or a... , a high speed punched paper tape Punched tape Punched tape or paper tape is an obsolete form of data storage, consisting of a long strip of paper in which holes are punched to store data... reader and a CRT Cathode ray tube The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms , pictures , radar targets and... terminal Computer terminal A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system... at 1200 baud. CP/M was finished before the hardware to run it on was completed, by using a PDP-10 PDP-10 The PDP-10 was a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from the late 1960s on; the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor model 10". The first model was delivered in 1966... to simulate the 8080. CP/M runs in approximately 3½ kilobyte Kilobyte The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information... s (KB) of memory Computer memory In computing, memory refers to the physical devices used to store programs or data on a temporary or permanent basis for use in a computer or other digital electronic device. The term primary memory is used for the information in physical systems which are fast In computing, memory refers to the... . |
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| 1974 | Bill Gates Bill Gates William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen... , Paul Allen Paul Allen Paul Gardner Allen is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates... and Paul Gilbert develop the Traf-O-Data Traf-O-Data Traf-O-Data was a partnership between Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Paul Gilbert. The objective was to read the raw data from roadway traffic counters and create reports for traffic engineers... Intel 8008 Intel 8008 The Intel 8008 was an early byte-oriented microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and introduced in April 1972. It was an 8-bit CPU with an external 14-bit address bus that could address 16KB of memory... -based computer. The 8-bit 8008 has a 14-bit address bus Address bus An address bus is a computer bus that is used to specify a physical address. When a processor or DMA-enabled device needs to read or write to a memory location, it specifies that memory location on the address bus... that can address Memory address A digital computer's memory, more specifically main memory, consists of many memory locations, each having a memory address, a number, analogous to a street address, at which computer programs store and retrieve, machine code or data. Most application programs do not directly read and write to... 214 (16,384) memory locations, or 16 KB of memory. |
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| Intel releases the 8080 (cost $360), which has a 16-bit address bus that can address 216 (65,536) memory locations, or 64 KB of memory. The dominant mainframe at the time, the IBM System/360, can address 224 (16,777,216) memory locations, or 16 megabyte Megabyte The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000... s (MB) of memory. |
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| Kildall refines CP/M. Convinced that magnetic-disk storage Magnetic storage Magnetic storage and magnetic recording are terms from engineering referring to the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetization in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is accessed using... would make the Intellec-8 more efficient, Kildall interfaced the computer with an 8-inch Shugart Shugart Associates Shugart Associates was a computer peripheral manufacturer that dominated the floppy disk drive market in the late 1970s and is famous for introducing the 5¼-inch minifloppy disk drive.... floppy disk Floppy disk A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles... drive using a custom built floppy disk controller Floppy disk controller A floppy disk controller is a special-purpose chip and associated disk controller circuitry that directs and controls reading from and writing to a computer's floppy disk drive . This article contains concepts common to FDCs based on the NEC µPD765 and Intel 8072A or 82072A and their descendants,... . Kildall's friend John Torode developed the controller hardware while Kildall worked on the disk operating system Disk operating system Disk Operating System and disk operating system , most often abbreviated as DOS, refers to an operating system software used in most computers that provides the abstraction and management of secondary storage devices and the information on them... software. Believing, along with Intel's designers, that the microprocessor would run embedded system Embedded system An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal... s such as digital watches, they market their hardware and software together—not as a microcomputer, but as a development system, used for programming 2048-bit Bit A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states... (256-byte Byte The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer... ) Intel 1602A programmable read-only memory Programmable read-only memory A programmable read-only memory or field programmable read-only memory or one-time programmable non-volatile memory is a form of digital memory where the setting of each bit is locked by a fuse or antifuse. Such PROMs are used to store programs permanently... (PROM) or erasable 1702A EPROM EPROM An EPROM , or erasable programmable read only memory, is a type of memory chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. In other words, it is non-volatile. It is an array of floating-gate transistors individually programmed by an electronic device that supplies higher voltages... chip Integrated circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material... s which are plugged into a socket on the Intellec-8's front panel Front panel A front panel was used on early electronic computers to display and allow the alteration of the state of the machine's internal registers and memory. The front panel usually consisted of arrays of indicator lamps, toggle switches, and push buttons mounted on a sheet metal face plate... . |
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| 1975 | The Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems was an American electronics company founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico that began manufacturing electronic calculators in 1971 and personal computers in 1975. Ed Roberts and Forrest Mims founded MITS in December 1969 to produce miniaturized telemetry... (MITS) Altair 8800 Altair 8800 The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. The designers hoped to sell only a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, and were... is introduced, sparking the microcomputer revolution Microcomputer revolution The microcomputer revolution is a phrase used to describe the rapid advances of microprocessor-based computers from esoteric hobby projects to a commonplace fixture of homes in industrial societies... . Gates and Allen found Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered 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... based on Altair BASIC Altair BASIC Altair BASIC was an interpreter for the BASIC programming language that ran on the MITS Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. It was Microsoft's first product , distributed by MITS under a contract... , which initially is primarily distributed on paper tape. MITS also distributes BASIC on cassette tape, which is supported by the Altair 88-ACR (Audio Cassette Recorder) interface board Printed circuit board A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring... s. The Altair's S-100 bus S-100 bus The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE696-1983 , was an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800, generally considered today to be the first personal computer... eventually becomes the first de facto standard De facto standard A de facto standard is a custom, convention, product, or system that has achieved a dominant position by public acceptance or market forces... microcomputer expansion bus Expansion bus An expansion bus is made up of electronic pathways which move information between the internal hardware of a computer system and peripheral devices. It is a collection of wires and protocols that allows for the expansion of a computer.- History :The first kit-built microcomputers used a bus design... . |
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| Kildall and Torode sell their first two machines and a word processor Word processor A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material.... for newspaper editing to OMRON OMRON is a Japanese electronics company based in Kyoto.Omron was established by Kazuma Tateishi in 1933 and incorporated in 1948. Omron's primary business is the manufacture and sale of automation components, equipment and systems, but it is generally known for medical equipment such as digital... , a small San Francisco computer terminal subsidiary of a Japanese electronics firm, splitting $25,000. OMRON was the first company to license CP/M, for use in their intelligent terminal. CP/M was also used to monitor programs in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952... Octopus network. |
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| The IBM 5100 IBM 5100 The IBM 5100 Portable Computer was a portable computer introduced in September 1975, six years before the IBM PC. It was the evolution of a prototype called the SCAMP that was developed at the IBM Palo Alto Scientific Center in 1973. In January 1978 IBM announced the IBM 5110, its larger cousin,... Portable Computer Portable computer A portable computer is a computer that is designed to be moved from one place to another and includes a display and keyboard. Portable computers, by their nature, are generally microcomputers. Portable computers, because of their size, are also commonly known as 'Lunchbox' or 'Luggable' computers... is introduced. Mass storage Mass storage In computing, mass storage refers to the storage of large amounts of data in a persisting and machine-readable fashion. Devices and/or systems that have been described as mass storage include tape libraries, RAID systems, hard disk drives, magnetic tape drives, optical disc drives, magneto-optical... is provided by quarter-inch cartridge (QIC) magnetic tape Magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders... drives. |
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| IMS Associates, Inc. IMS Associates, Inc. IMS Associates, Inc., or IMSAI, was a microcomputer company, responsible for one of the earliest successes in personal computing, the IMSAI 8080. The company was founded in 1973 by William Millard and was based in San Leandro, California. Their first product launch was the IMSAI 8080 in 1975. One... releases the IMSAI 8080 IMSAI 8080 The IMSAI 8080 was an early microcomputer released in late 1975, based on the Intel 8080 and later 8085 and S-100 bus. It was a clone of its main competitor, the earlier MITS Altair 8800. The IMSAI is largely regarded as the first "clone" computer. The IMSAI machine ran a highly modified version of... , a clone of the Altair 8800, and ship a large number of disk subsystems with a promise that an operating system would follow. |
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| 1976 | Kildall adapts CP/M to the IMSAI hardware, rewriting the parts that manage devices like diskette controllers and CRTs. Having adapted CP/M for four different controllers, and somewhat reluctant to adapt it to yet another, Kildall designs a general interface, which he calls the BIOS BIOS In IBM PC compatible computers, the basic input/output system , also known as the System BIOS or ROM BIOS , is a de facto standard defining a firmware interface.... (Basic Input/Output System), that a good programmer Programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to... could change on the spot for their hardware. This approach would be reinvented years later as the "hardware abstraction Hardware abstraction Hardware abstractions are sets of routines in software that emulate some platform-specific details, giving programs direct access to the hardware resources.... layer." Kildall founds Digital Research 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... and releases CP/M version 1.3 as a commercial product, at $70 per copy. His wife sends diskettes to customers responding to an ad they ran in Dr. Dobb's Journal Dr. Dobb's Journal Dr. Dobb's Journal was a monthly journal published in the United States by CMP Technology. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers. DDJ was the first regular periodical focused on microcomputer software, rather than hardware. It later became a monthly section within the periodical... , whose editor Jim Warren pushed for sale of CP/M to the general public. Demand for the diskettes was slow at first. |
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| 1977 | Torode's Digital Systems runs an ad in Byte Byte (magazine) BYTE magazine was a microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage... for its Altair/IMSAI (S-100) bus floppy disk system. |
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| IMSAI marketing director Seymour I. Rubinstein Seymour I. Rubinstein Seymour Ivan Rubinstein is a pioneer of the PC software industry. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and after a six year stint in New Hampshire, later moved to California. Programs developed partially or entirely under his direction include WordStar, HelpDesk, Quattro Pro, and WebSleuth, among... paid Kildall $25,000 for the right to run CP/M version 1.3, which eventually evolved into an operating system called IMDOS IMDOS IMDOS was a modified version of the CP/M operating system for Intel 8080 processors, used by IMS Associates, Inc. for their IMSAI 8080 personal computer... , on IMSAI 8080 computers. Other manufacturers follow and CP/M eventually becomes the de facto standard 8-bit operating system. |
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| 1978 | Intel releases the 16-bit 16-bit -16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16... Intel 8086 Intel 8086 The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978, when it was released. The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture of Intel's future processors... microprocessor, which has a 20-bit address bus that can address 220 (1,048,576) memory locations, or one megabyte of segmented memory. |
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| Rubinstein founds MicroPro International MicroPro International MicroPro International Corporation was the publisher of WordStar, a popular early word processor for personal computers.-History:Seymour I. Rubinstein was an employee of early microcomputer company IMSAI, where he negotiated software contracts with Digital Research and Microsoft... . Its WordStar WordStar WordStar is a word processor application, published by MicroPro International, originally written for the CP/M operating system but later ported to DOS, that enjoyed a dominant market share during the early to mid-1980s. Although Seymour I... word processor application would become a de facto standard. |
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| 1979 | January | Seattle Computer Products Seattle Computer Products Seattle Computer Products was a Seattle, Washington microcomputer hardware company which was one of the first manufacturers of computer systems based on the 16-bit Intel 8086 processor... ' Tim Paterson Tim Paterson Tim Paterson is an American computer programmer, best known as the original author of MS-DOS, the most widely used personal computer operating system in the 1980s.... finishes the design of his first 8086 CPU Central processing unit The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in... board for the S-100 bus. |
| May | Paterson takes his working prototype board to Microsoft to try it with Stand-alone Microsoft BASIC Microsoft BASIC Microsoft BASIC was the foundation product of the Microsoft company. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first BASIC, and the first high level programming language available for the MITS Altair 8800 hobbyist microcomputer.... , which Bob O'Rear Bob O'Rear Robert O'Rear is a former employee of Microsoft, and is among the group of twelve early Microsoft employees who posed for a company photo in 1978. A Texan, he has degrees in mathematics and physics. He left Microsoft in 1993, and reportedly owns a cattle ranch in Texas... developed for the 8086 by simulating the 8086 chip on a DEC Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s... computer. After eliminating a few minor bugs, Microsoft had a working 8086 BASIC. |
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| June | Microsoft and Paterson attend the National Computer Conference in New York City to show Microsoft's 8086 BASIC running on Seattle Computer's system, sharing Lifeboat Associates Lifeboat Associates Lifeboat Associates was a company that acted as a independent software broker marketing software to major hardware vendors such as Xerox, HP and Altos. As such Lifeboat Associates were instrumental in the founding of Autodesk... ' ten-by-ten foot booth. At that meeting, Paterson is introduced to Microsoft's M-DOS M-DOS M-DOS or MIDAS refers to an operating system that was designed by Marc McDonald of Microsoft in 1979... , which used the File Allocation Table File Allocation Table File Allocation Table is a computer file system architecture now widely used on many computer systems and most memory cards, such as those used with digital cameras. FAT file systems are commonly found on floppy disks, flash memory cards, digital cameras, and many other portable devices because of... (FAT) file system File system A file system is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the... . |
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| July | Intel releases the Intel 8088 Intel 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... microprocessor, a lower cost variant of the 8086 which has an 8-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086 (the 16-bit register Processor register In computer architecture, a processor register is a small amount of storage available as part of a CPU or other digital processor. Such registers are addressed by mechanisms other than main memory and can be accessed more quickly... s and one megabyte address space Address space In computing, an address space defines a range of discrete addresses, each of which may correspond to a network host, peripheral device, disk sector, a memory cell or other logical or physical entity.- Overview :... were unchanged). To the programmer, the 8086 and 8088 instruction set Instruction set An instruction set, or instruction set architecture , is the part of the computer architecture related to programming, including the native data types, instructions, registers, addressing modes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, and external I/O... s are identical, except for execution speed. |
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| November | Seattle Computer Products ships its 8086-based computer, which runs Stand-alone Microsoft BASIC. No operating system is available for it. | |
| 1980 | April | Paterson begins writing an operating system for use with Seattle Computer Products' 8086-based computer, due to delays by Digital Research in releasing an operating system for the 8086 and 8088. |
| July | IBM first contacts Microsoft to look the company over. Their secret Project Chess needs both programming language Programming language A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely.... s and an operating system. |
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| September | Paterson's "Quick and Dirty Operating System", crammed into 6 KB of code, is shipped by Seattle Computer Products as 86-DOS. | |
| Allen negotiates an agreement with Seattle Computer for a nonexclusive sublicense Software license agreement A software license agreement is a contract between the "licensor" and purchaser of the right to use software. The license may define ways under which the copy can be used, in addition to the automatic rights of the buyer including the first sale doctrine and .Many form contracts are only contained... for 86-DOS to an unnamed OEM OEM OEM means the original manufacturer of a component for a product, which may be resold by another company.OEM may also refer to:-Computing:* OEM font, or OEM-US, the original character set of the IBM PC, circa 1981... customer for $25,000. All that was left was to translate the terms into a formal contract within 60 days. |
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| October | Digital Research introduces CP/M-86 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... for Intel 8086/8088 microcomputers. The file format of CP/M, Release 2, was retained for compatibility. Like CP/M, CP/M-86 consists of three major modules: the BIOS, BDOS (Basic Disk Operating System) supporting 60 system call System call In computing, a system call is how a program requests a service from an operating system's kernel. This may include hardware related services , creating and executing new processes, and communicating with integral kernel services... s and the CCP (Console Command Processor). New system calls are mainly for the new memory allocation scheme that CP/M-86 uses. |
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| November | IBM signs a contract to license Pascal Pascal (programming language) Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal... , COBOL COBOL COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.... , FORTRAN Fortran Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing... and BASIC BASIC BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.... compilers, a BASIC interpreter Interpreter (computing) In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language... and an operating system for Project Chess from Microsoft. |
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| 1981 | January | Microsoft and Seattle Computer formally sign their agreement. |
| February | O'Rear gets 86-DOS to run on IBM's prototype computer. 86-DOS had to be converted from 8-inch to 5¼-inch floppy disks and integrated with the BIOS, which Microsoft was helping IBM to write.An Intellec ICE-88 in-circuit emulator In-circuit emulator An in-circuit emulator is a hardware device used to debug the software of an embedded system. It was historically in the form of bond-out processor which has many internal signals brought out for the purpose of debugging... expedited the debugging Debugging Debugging is a methodical process of finding and reducing the number of bugs, or defects, in a computer program or a piece of electronic hardware, thus making it behave as expected. Debugging tends to be harder when various subsystems are tightly coupled, as changes in one may cause bugs to emerge... . |
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| May | Paterson leaves Seattle Computer Products for Microsoft and joins O'Rear to finish DOS. | |
| July | Microsoft buys all rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, initially for an additional $50,000 and favorable licenses back from Microsoft. After settling a 1986 SCP lawsuit, the total cost to Microsoft was $1 million. | |
| August | Microsoft delivers MS-DOS MS-DOS MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating... 1.0 to its first OEM customer, IBM. The product includes three major modules: the BIOS initialization module SYSINIT, the kernel Kernel (computing) In computing, the kernel is the main component of most computer operating systems; it is a bridge between applications and the actual data processing done at the hardware level. The kernel's responsibilities include managing the system's resources... (IBMDOS.COM IBMDOS.COM IBMDOS.COM is the filename of the DOS kernel. It exists in DR-DOS and PC-DOS systems, with MS-DOS using MSDOS.SYS. The file is located in the root directory of the drive containing the operating system.... ), including the MS-DOS API MS-DOS API The MS-DOS API is an API used originally in MS-DOS/PC-DOS, and later by other DOS systems. Most calls to the DOS API invoke software interrupt 21h . By calling INT 21h with a subfunction number in the AH processor register and other parameters in other registers, one invokes various DOS services... , and the shell Shell (computing) A shell is a piece of software that provides an interface for users of an operating system which provides access to the services of a kernel. However, the term is also applied very loosely to applications and may include any software that is "built around" a particular component, such as web... (COMMAND.COM COMMAND.COM COMMAND.COM is the filename of the default operating system shell for DOS operating systems and the default command line interpreter on Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me... ) supporting internal commands Command (computing) In computing, a command is a directive to a computer program acting as an interpreter of some kind, in order to perform a specific task. Most commonly a command is a directive to some kind of command line interface, such as a shell.... COPY Copy (command) In computing, copy is a command in RT-11, RSX-11, OpenVMS, DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The command copies computer files from one directory to another. The destination defaults to the current working directory. If more than one source file is indicated, the destination must... , DIR, ERASE, RENAME and TYPE Type (command) In computing, type is a command in various VMS. AmigaDOS, CP/M, DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows command line interpreters such as COMMAND.COM, cmd.exe, 4DOS/4NT and Windows PowerShell. It is used to display the contents of specified files... , plus Paterson's EDLIN Edlin Edlin is a line editor included with MS-DOS and later Microsoft operating systems. It provides rudimentary capabilities for editing plain text files through a command-driven interface. Line numbers are specified using numerals, and operations are specified using single-character alphabetic... line editor Line editor A line editor is a text editor computer program that manipulates text primarily by the display, modification, and movement of lines. Line editors precede screen-based text editors and originated in an era when a computer operator typically interacted with a teleprinter , with no video display, and... and DEBUG debugger Debugger A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program that is used to test and debug other programs . The code to be examined might alternatively be running on an instruction set simulator , a technique that allows great power in its ability to halt when specific conditions are encountered but which... , linker LINK.EXE and a few external commands: FORMAT Format (command) Format is a command-line utility included in Microsoft DOS, IBM OS/2 and Microsoft Windows operating systems to produce disk formatting.The command will perform the following actions by default on a floppy drive, hard drive, solid-states , or other magnetic medium... , CHKDSK CHKDSK CHKDSK is a command on computers running DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows operating systems that displays the file system integrity status of hard disks and floppy disk and can fix logical file system errors. It is similar to the fsck command in Unix.The command is implemented as an executable... , SYS Sys.com SYS.COM is a component of DOS and Microsoft Windows 9x operating systems that will copy the command line shell , the boot loader , the kernel , and the boot sector to the corresponding drive, allowing the target drive to be bootable... , BASIC IBM Disk BASIC IBM Disk BASIC was a version of the Microsoft BASIC programming language licensed by IBM for the IBM PC DOS. It was included in the original IBM PC DOS and required the original IBM PC BIOS to run. The name Disk BASIC came from its use of floppy disks rather than cassette tapes to store programs... , BASICA, TIME and DATE Time and date In computing, time and date are commands that are used to display and set the current time and date of the operating system. Both commands are available in DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows command line interpreters such as COMMAND.COM, cmd.exe and 4DOS/4NT. The Unix command date displays both the... (the latter two added on IBM's request). MS-DOS 1.0, similar in many ways to CP/M, was not shipped to any other OEMs. It consisted of 4000 lines of x86 assembly language X86 assembly language x86 assembly language is a family of backward-compatible assembly languages, which provide some level of compatibility all the way back to the Intel 8008. x86 assembly languages are used to produce object code for the x86 class of processors, which includes Intel's Core series and AMD's Phenom and... source code and ran in 8 KB of memory. |
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IBM announces the IBM Personal Computer, model number 5150, featuring:
IBM combined SYSINIT with its customized ROM BIOS interface code to create the BIOS extensions file Computer file A computer file is a block of arbitrary information, or resource for storing information, which is available to a computer program and is usually based on some kind of durable storage. A file is durable in the sense that it remains available for programs to use after the current program has finished... IBMBIO.COM IBMBIO.COM IBMBIO.COM is the filename of the DOS-BIOS in many DOS operating systems, and as such part of PC-DOS, earlier versions of MS-DOS, and DR DOS 5.0 and higher... , which deals with input/output Input/output In computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it... handling, or device handling, and added a few external commands of their own: COMP, DISKCOMP, DISKCOPY Diskcopy (command) In computing, Diskcopy is a command used on IBM OS/2, PC DOS and MS-DOS, and Microsoft Windows for copying the complete contents of a diskette to another diskette.-Example:... , and MODE (configure printer) to finish their product. The 160 KB DOS diskette also included 23 sample BASIC program Computer program A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute... s demonstrating the capabilities of the PC, including the game DONKEY.BAS DONKEY.BAS Donkey, often known by its file name DONKEY.BAS, was a computer game written in 1981 and included with early versions of the PC-DOS operating system distributed with the original IBM PC. It is a driving game in which the player must avoid hitting donkeys... . The two system file System file A system file is a computer file important to the operating system. More specifically, it may refer to:* .sys — a Microsoft Windows file extension for system-related files* The System suitcase on Mac OS* Any file marked with a "system" attribute... s, IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM, are hidden. The first sector of DOS-formatted diskettes is the boot record Volume Boot Record A volume boot record is a type of boot sector introduced by the IBM Personal Computer... . Two copies of the File Allocation Table occupy the two sectors which follow the boot record. Sectors four through seven hold the file directory. The remaining 313 sectors (160,256 bytes) store the data contents of files. Disk space is allocated in one-sector clusters. DOS 1.0 diskettes have up to 64 32-byte directory entries, holding the 8-byte filename Filename The filename is metadata about a file; a string used to uniquely identify a file stored on the file system. Different file systems impose different restrictions on length and allowed characters on filenames.A filename includes one or more of these components:... , 3-byte filename extension Filename extension A filename extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file applied to indicate the encoding of its contents or usage.... , 1-byte file attribute File attribute A file attribute is metadata that describes or is associated with a computer file. For example, an operating system often keeps track of the date a file was created and last modified, as well as the file's size and extension . File permissions are also kept track of... (with a hidden bit, system bit and six undefined bits), 12 bytes reserved for future use, 2-byte last modified date, 2-byte starting cluster number and 4-byte file size File size File size measures the size of a computer file. Typically it is measured in bytes with a prefix. The actual amount of disk space consumed by the file depends on the file system.... . The two standard formats for program files are COM COM file In many computer operating systems, a COM file is a type of executable file; the name is derived from the file name extension .COM. Originally, the term stood for "Command file", a text file containing commands to be issued to the operating system , on many of the Digital Equipment Corporation mini... and EXE. The third kind of command processing file is the batch file Batch file In DOS, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows, batch file is the name given to a type of script file, a text file containing a series of commands to be executed by the command interpreter.... . AUTOEXEC.BAT AUTOEXEC.BAT AUTOEXEC.BAT is a system file found originally on DOS-type operating systems. It is a plain-text batch file that is located in the root directory of the boot device... is checked for, and executed by COMMAND.COM at start-up. Special batch file commands are PAUSE and REM. I/O I/O I/O may refer to:* Input/output, a system of communication for information processing systems* Input-output model, an economic model of flow prediction between sectors... is made device independent Device independent A program or file is device independent when its function is universal on different types of device.For the World Wide Web, this means writing simple common denominator Hypertext Markup Language and Cascading Style Sheets so that most Web user agents on most devices can render it acceptably.For... by treating peripheral Peripheral A peripheral is a device attached to a host computer, but not part of it, and is more or less dependent on the host. It expands the host's capabilities, but does not form part of the core computer architecture.... s as if they were files. Whenever the reserved filenames CON (console System console The system console, root console or simply console is the text entry and display device for system administration messages, particularly those from the BIOS or boot loader, the kernel, from the init system and from the system logger... ), PRN LPT LPT is the original, and still common, name of the parallel port interface on IBM PC-compatible computers. It was designed to operate a text printer that used IBM's 8-bit extended ASCII character set. The name derives from the fact that "line printer" was a common generic term at the time for any... (printer), or AUX (auxiliary serial port Serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time... ) appear in the file control block File control block A File Control Block is a file system structure in which the state of an open file is maintained.The FCB originates from CP/M and is also present in most variants of DOS... of a file named in a command, all operations are directed to the device. The video controller Video card A video card, Graphics Card, or Graphics adapter is an expansion card which generates output images to a display. Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors... , floppy disk controller, additional memory, serial and parallel port Parallel port A parallel port is a type of interface found on computers for connecting various peripherals. In computing, a parallel port is a parallel communication physical interface. It is also known as a printer port or Centronics port... s are added via 8-bit ISA Industry Standard Architecture Industry Standard Architecture is a computer bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers introduced with the IBM Personal Computer to support its Intel 8088 microprocessor's 8-bit external data bus and extended to 16 bits for the IBM Personal Computer/AT's Intel 80286 processor... expansion card Expansion card The expansion card in computing is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an expansion slot of a computer motherboard or backplane to add functionality to a computer system via the expansion bus.One edge of the expansion card holds the contacts that fit exactly into the slot... s. Delivery of the computer is scheduled for October. |
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| October | An InfoWorld InfoWorld InfoWorld is an information technology online media and events business operating under the umbrella of InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG... article asks, "Which Operating System Will Prevail?". Potential software developers must decide whether DOS or CP/M-86 will become the IBM PC standard. Rubinstein asserted that CP/M would be the winner. Nevertheless, MicroPro has made sure that WordStar will be available for both. |
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| November | Many of the approximately 50,000 attendees of the Northeast Computer Show in Boston keep IBM's booth packed with people interested in the new IBM Personal Computer and the Datamaster IBM System/23 The System/23 Datamaster was announced by IBM in July 1981, only one month before the IBM PC. The Datamaster was an all-in-one computer with text-mode CRT display, keyboard, processor, memory, and two 8-inch floppy disk drives all contained in one cabinet. The processor was an 8-bit Intel 8085,... . A two-page IBM ad in InfoWorld features a picture of the components of the PC and invites readers to write to IBM's Personal Computer Software department who will consider programs submitted by outside programmers for publishing by IBM. |
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| December | Digital Research releases MP/M MP/M MP/M was a multi-user version of the CP/M operating system, created by Digital Research developer Tom Rolander in 1979. It allowed multiple users to connect to a single computer, each using a separate terminal.... 2.0 and MP/M-86 multi-user or concurrent single-user Multi-user Multi-user is a term that defines an operating system or application software that allows concurrent access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leaving the... multiprogramming monitor control programs (operating systems) which support multiterminal access with multiprogramming Multiprogramming Computer multiprogramming is the allocation of a computer system and its resources to more than one concurrent application, job or user .... at each terminal. Kildall told InfoWorld that it took Digital Research three months to develop CP/M-86, while MP/M-86 (suggested retail $500) took four man-years (two actual years). Solving the problem of concurrency, among other things, accounted for the extra MP/M-86 development time. In concurrent systems, several functions, organized by the operating system, run simultaneously, using different files. These functions operate in the background, or multiground if there is more than one function operating. While this is happening, the user works on another task using the terminal screen, i.e., the foreground. The minimum system memory requirement for MP/M-86 is 128 KB. |
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| 1982 | January | The U.S. Justice Department United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated... drops its 13-year case against IBM, that had sought to break up the company that has dominated the computer industry, saying the suit was "without merit and should be dismissed." Government lawyers said the case was outdated because IBM no longer enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the computer industry. Time Time (magazine) Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong... called it "the case of the century" in 1979, in the midst of a five-year trial in which the defense eventually called 856 witnesses. |
| Corvus Systems released interfaces to make its line of Winchester disk drive systems and local area network Local area network A local area network is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building... fully hardware- and software-compatible with the IBM PC. Corvus offers storage capacities of 5, 10 and 20 MB on 5¼-in. and 8-in. Winchester disk systems. Prices range from $3,750 to 6,450. The Corvus Omninet local network scheme can spread the cost of a hard disk drive among several users. |
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| Digital Research releases CP/M-86 for the IBM Personal Computer, Version 1.0 to IBM. | ||
| March | Paterson finishes work on the first DOS upgrade, quits Microsoft and returns to work for Seattle Computer Products. | |
| April | At a recent meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club Homebrew Computer Club The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist users' group in Silicon Valley, which met from March 5, 1975 to December 1986... , members learned about Intel's just-announced iAPX 286 Intel 80286 The Intel 80286 , introduced on 1 February 1982, was a 16-bit x86 microprocessor with 134,000 transistors. Like its contemporary simpler cousin, the 80186, it could correctly execute most software written for the earlier Intel 8086 and 8088... superchip. Digital Research is producing an operating system for the 286. MP/M-286 will take advantage of the processor's memory management and protection. Intel is supplying Digital Research with the hardware to develop and test MP/M-286. Intel's marketing manager also spoke briefly of the planned iAPX 432 Intel iAPX 432 The Intel iAPX 432 was a commercially unsuccessful 32-bit microprocessor architecture, introduced in 1981.The project was Intel's first 32-bit microprocessor design, and intended to be the company's main product line for the 1980s. Many advanced multitasking and memory management features were... , Intel's next major processor. |
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| Digital Research announces Concurrent CP/M-86 Multiuser DOS Multiuser DOS is a soft real-time multi-user multi-tasking operating system for IBM PC-compatible microcomputers.An evolution of the older Concurrent CP/M-86 and Concurrent DOS operating systems, it was originally developed by Digital Research and later further developed by Novell... , aka Concurrent CP/M, a new CP/M-86-compatible single-user multitasking Computer multitasking In computing, multitasking is a method where multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions for... operating system. Concurrent CP/M allows users to go from one screen to another at the push of a key and programs to directly address up to 1 MB of memory. The first implementation will be on the IBM Displaywriter. The Concurrent CP/M project was an offshoot of MP/M development, and the two programs share a lot in common, including a real-time Real-time computing In computer science, real-time computing , or reactive computing, is the study of hardware and software systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"— e.g. operational deadlines from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within strict time constraints... nucleus Kernel (computing) In computing, the kernel is the main component of most computer operating systems; it is a bridge between applications and the actual data processing done at the hardware level. The kernel's responsibilities include managing the system's resources... that is the essential element in the system that allows programs to run simultaneously. The enthusiastic introduction of Concurrent CP/M is clear evidence that Kildall is betting on a future with powerful personal computers, not multi-user systems linking dumb terminals to a central processor. |
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| Microsoft runs an ad in InfoWorld promoting their first non-IBM OEM version of MS-DOS. Among the many licensees: manufacturers of non-IBM-compatible systems, such as those using the S-100 bus, e.g. Seattle Computer and Zenith's Zenith Data Systems Zenith Data Systems was a division of Zenith founded in 1979 after Zenith acquired Heathkit, which had, in 1977, entered the personal computer market. Headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan, Zenith sold personal computers under both the Heath/Zenith and Zenith Data Systems names... revolutionary Z-100 Z-100 (computer) The Z-100 computer was an early microcomputer made by Zenith Data Systems . It was a pre-assembled version of the Heathkit H-100, which left the final component assembly to early computer hobbyists.Z-100 Computers were early personal computer era alternatives to the hardware system that won the... , which had been released in mid-1981. Most marketed their customized versions of Microsoft's second release as MS-DOS 1.25. Zenith called their MS-DOS variant Z-DOS. |
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| IBM releases CP/M-86 (price: $240) as the third operating system it is offering for the IBM PC, after a delay for functional, usability and performance testing. For months PC DOS was the only operating system available for the PC. Recently, IBM also released the UCSD p-System. Existing CP/M-86 programs running on other computers must be converted to run on the IBM PC. Partly because CP/M-86 was priced six times higher than PC DOS (price: $40), it fails to challenge PC DOS as the 16-bit industry standard. | ||
| May | IBM releases an upgraded PC with IBM PC DOS 1.1 which supports its 320 KB (327,680 bytes) double-sided Double-sided disk In computer science, a double-sided disk is a disk of which both sides are used to store data.Early floppy disks only used one surface for recording. The term "single sided disk" was not common until the introduction of double-sided disks, which offered double the capacity in the same physical size... , double-density floppy disk drive. The double-sided directory increased from four to seven sectors, allowing up to 112 directory entries, leaving 630 sectors, i.e. 315 clusters (322,560 bytes) for data (cluster size doubled to two sectors). The 2-byte last modified time was inserted at the end of the directory's reserved field Field (computer science) In computer science, data that has several parts can be divided into fields. Relational databases arrange data as sets of database records, also called rows. Each record consists of several fields; the fields of all records form the columns.... , reducing it to 10 bytes. Timestamp Timestamp A timestamp is a sequence of characters, denoting the date or time at which a certain event occurred. A timestamp is the time at which an event is recorded by a computer, not the time of the event itself... ing on files is useful for incremental backup with the Corvus hard disk. PC-DOS 1.1 still ships on a 160 KB diskette. The DEL Del (command) In computing, del is a command in various DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows command line interpreters such as COMMAND.COM, cmd.exe, 4DOS/4NT and Windows PowerShell. It is used to delete one or more files or directories from a filesystem. It is analogous to the Unix rm command... command is added as a synonymous name for the ERASE command and REN Ren (command) In computing, ren is a command in various DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows command line interpreters such as COMMAND.COM, cmd.exe, 4DOS/4NT and Windows PowerShell. It is used to rename files and in some implementations also directories. It is analogous to the Unix mv command... is an abbreviated name for RENAME. DATE and TIME become internal commands. The EXE2BIN command is added and MODE is enhanced to configure serial ports and redirect printing to a serial port. A "P" MODE option causes continuous retries when a device is not ready, by making a portion of MODE permanently resident in memory Terminate and Stay Resident Terminate and Stay Resident is a computer system call in DOS computer operating systems that returns control to the system as if the program has quit, but keeps the program in memory... . BIOS modifications permit DOS to recognize whether a disk is single or double sided. IBM also released the Microsoft BASIC compiler. All five Microsoft languages are now available—FORTRAN released in December, and COBOL last month. A typical PC with 320 KB of disk storage, keyboard, printer, monochrome display and MDA costs $3695. |
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| June | Columbia Data Products Columbia Data Products Columbia Data Products introduced the MPC 1600 "Multi Personal Computer" in June 1982. It was an exact functional copy of the IBM PC model 5150 except for the BIOS which was clean roomed... introduces the MPC, the first PC clone IBM PC compatible 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... , soon followed by others including Eagle Computer Eagle Computer Eagle Computer of Los Gatos, California was an early microcomputer manufacturing company. Spun off from Audio-Visual Laboratories , it first sold a line of popular CP/M computers which were highly praised in the computer magazines of the day. After the IBM PC was launched, Eagle produced the... . These machines were not 100% IBM PC compatible. Satisfying "near-compatible" OEM requests for IBM compatibility proved difficult, and not until version 3.1 was Microsoft able to supply a system that other OEMs agreed was identical with IBM's. |
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| August | IBM introduces a new 64 KB memory-expansion card, expandable to 256 KB by adding three 64 KB RAM module kits. Two fully loaded expansion cards added 512 KB (cost $2150) to the main board's 64 KB, giving the PC 576 KB of memory. With another 64 KB card, users could reach the 640 KB barrier of conventional memory Conventional memory In DOS memory management, conventional memory, also called base memory, is the first 640 kilobytes of the memory on IBM PC or compatible systems. It is the read-write memory usable by the operating system and application programs... . |
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| September | |The MDA-compatible Hercules Graphics Card Hercules Graphics Card The Hercules Graphics Card was a computer graphics controller made by Hercules Computer Technology, Inc. which, through its popularity, became a widely supported display standard. It was common on IBM PC compatibles connected to a monochrome monitor . It supported one high resolution text mode and... is introduced. It added a 720x348 monochrome graphics mode and became a popular, widely supported display standard Computer display standard Computer display standards are often a combination of aspect ratio, display resolution, color depth, and refresh rate.This article describes the different display standards for computer displays.-History:... . |
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| October | Peter Norton Peter Norton Peter Norton is an American programmer, software publisher, author, and philanthropist. He is best known for the computer programs and books that bear his name. Norton sold his PC-Software business to Symantec Corporation in 1990.... becomes a pioneer in the DOS-based Utility software Utility software Utility software is system software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize or maintain a computer. A single piece of utility software is usually called a utility or tool.... industry, as the first ad for his Norton Utilities Norton Utilities Norton Utilities is a utility software suite designed to help analyze, configure, optimize and maintain the computer. The current version 15 of Norton Utilities Premier Edition for Windows XP/Vista/7 was released December 27, 2010.... , version 1.0, appears in InfoWorld (sold by Oregon-based Computer Exchange, which promotes itself as "the world's largest computer mail order firm"). Norton Utilities features the UNERASE Undeletion Undeletion is a feature for restoring computer files which have been removed from a file system by file deletion. Deleted data can be recovered on many file systems, but not all file systems provide an undeletion feature. Recovering data without an undeletion facility is usually called data... command which solved "a common problem to which there was no readily available solution." Microsoft would not provide a solution until version 5.0 of MS-DOS, and over a decade would pass before Windows 95 Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products... 's Recycle Bin appeared. |
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| November | Compaq Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard.... announces the first IBM PC compatible portable computer, the Compaq Portable Compaq Portable The Compaq Portable was the first product in the Compaq portable series to be commercially available under the Compaq Computer Corporation brand . It was the first IBM PC compatible portable computer... . It ran on Compaq MS-DOS 1.12. Compaq achieved compatibility legally by reverse engineering Reverse engineering Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation... through clean room design Clean room design Clean room design is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights and trade secrets associated with the original design. Clean room design is useful as a defense against copyright and trade secret infringement because it... . The Compaq Portable has a CGA-compatible display adapter which shows its text mode characters with MDA-resolution, effectively combining the virtues of the CGA and the MDA. |
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| 1983 | January | Lotus Development Corp. Lotus Software Lotus Software is a software company with headquarters in Westford, Massachusetts... releases Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:... , which would become the IBM PC's first "killer application Killer application A killer application , in the jargon of marketing teams, has been used to refer to any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, gaming console, software, or an operating system... ." It was programmed entirely in assembly language and bypassed the slower DOS screen input/output functions in favor of writing directly to memory-mapped Memory-mapped I/O Memory-mapped I/O and port I/O are two complementary methods of performing input/output between the CPU and peripheral devices in a computer... video display hardware. This reliance on the specific hardware of the IBM PC led to 1-2-3 being utilized as one of the two litmus test applications for true 100% compatibility. |
| March | Microsoft releases MS-DOS 2.0, which introduces a Unix Unix Unix is a multitasking, multi-user 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... /Xenix Xenix Xenix is a version of the Unix operating system, licensed to Microsoft from AT&T in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually superseded it with SCO UNIX .... -like hierarchical file system, installable device driver Device driver In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device.... s (e.g. ANSI.SYS ANSI.SYS ANSI.SYS is a device driver in the DOS operating system that provides extra console functions through ANSI escape sequences. It is partially based upon a subset of the text terminal control standard proposed by the ANSI X3L2 Technical Committee on Codes and Character Sets .-Usage:To use ANSI.SYS... ) in the system configuration file Configuration file In computing, configuration files, or config files configure the initial settings for some computer programs. They are used for user applications, server processes and operating system settings. The files are often written in ASCII and line-oriented, with lines terminated by a newline or carriage... CONFIG.SYS CONFIG.SYS CONFIG.SYS is the primary configuration file for the DOS, OS/2 as well as similar operating systems. It is a special file that contains setup or configuration instructions for the computer system.- Usage :... , and adds internal commands BREAK, CHDIR or CD, CLS, CTTY, EXIT, FC, MKDIR or MD, PATH, PROMPT, RMDIR or RD, SET (environments Environment variable Environment variables are a set of dynamic named values that can affect the way running processes will behave on a computer.They can be said in some sense to create the operating environment in which a process runs... ), VER, VERIFY and VOL Vol (command) In some operating systems vol is a command within the command line interpreters such as COMMAND.COM and cmd.exe... . New external commands are DISKCOPY (not identical to IBM's version), PRINT Print (command) In computing, print is a command in the command line interpreters of DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. It is used to add a text file to the print queue... (spooling Spooling In computer science, spool refers to the process of placing data in a temporary working area for another program to process. The most common use is in writing files on a magnetic tape or disk and entering them in the work queue for another process. Spooling is useful because devices access data at... ); three filters Filter (software) A filter is a computer program to process a data stream. Some operating systems such as Unix are rich with filter programs. Even Windows has some simple filters built into its command shell, most of which have significant enhancements relative to the similar filter commands that were available in... supported with standard devices and redirection: FIND Find (command) In computing, find is a command in the command line interpreters of DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. It is used to search for a specific text string in a file or files... , SORT and MORE; BACKUP, RESTORE and RECOVER. New batch file commands are ECHO, FOR, GOTO, IF and SHIFT. CONFIG.SYS commands are BREAK, BUFFERS, DEVICE, FILES and SHELL. New file attribute bits are read-only, volume label, subdirectory and archive Archive bit The archive bit is a file attribute used by Microsoft operating systems and by OS/2. Typically it's state indicates whether or not the file has been backed up.... . A team of six developers produced version 2.0, led by Paul Allen, Mark Zbikowski Mark Zbikowski Mark "Zibo" Joseph Zbikowski is a former Microsoft Architect and an early computer hacker. He started working at the company only a few years after its inception, leading efforts in MS-DOS, OS/2, Cairo and Windows NT. In 2006 he was honored for 25 years of service with the company, the third... and Aaron Reynolds AARD code The AARD code was a segment of obfuscated machine code that is included in several executables, including the installer and WIN.COM, in a beta release of Microsoft Windows 3.1. It was a block of code which was XOR encrypted, self-modifying, and deliberately obfuscated, using various undocumented... . |
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| The IBM PC/XT, the first PC to store data on a hard disk (10 MB), is announced. It ships with PC DOS 2.0, and introduces nine sectors per track floppy disk formats, which increase floppy storage capacity by about 12%. Single-sided 180 KB (184,320 bytes; 360 sectors) and double-sided 360 KB (368,640 bytes; 720 sectors) diskettes require more than the maximum 340 FAT entries a 512-byte sector can hold, so the FAT size is doubled, leaving 351 clusters (179,712 bytes) for data on single-sided disks and 354 clusters (362,496 bytes) on double-sided. In addition to Microsoft's new commands, IBM adds more including FDISK Fdisk On personal computer operating systems, fdisk is a commonly used name for a command-line utility that provides disk partitioning functions... , the fixed disk setup program, used to write the master boot record Master boot record A master boot record is a type of boot sector popularized by the IBM Personal Computer. It consists of a sequence of 512 bytes located at the first sector of a data storage device such as a hard disk... which supports up to four partitions Disk partitioning Disk partitioning is the act of dividing a hard disk drive into multiple logical storage units referred to as partitions, to treat one physical disk drive as if it were multiple disks. Partitions are also termed "slices" for operating systems based on BSD, Solaris or GNU Hurd... on hard drives. Only one DOS partition is allowed, the others are intended for other operating systems such as CP/M-86, UCSD p-System and Xenix. The fixed disk has 305 cylinder Cylinder (disk drive) A disk drive cylinder is a division of data in a disk drive, as used in the CHS addressing mode of a Fixed Block Architecture disk or the cylinder–head–record addressing mode of a CKD disk. The concept is concentric, hollow, cylindrical slices through the physical disks , collecting the respective... s (the equivalent of tracks), two platter Hard disk platter A hard-disk platter is a component of a hard-disk drive: it is the circular disk on which the magnetic data is stored. The rigid nature of the platters in a hard drive is what gives them their name . Hard drives typically have several platters which are mounted on the same spindle... s, thus four sides or head Disk read-and-write head Disk read/write heads are the small parts of a disk drive, that move above the disk platter and transform platter's magnetic field into electrical current or vice versa – transform electrical current into magnetic field... s, and 17 sectors per track, a total of 20,740 sectors or 10,618,880 bytes raw space. With DOS the only partition, DOS's FAT is eight sectors (16 sectors for two copies) and the root directory Root directory In computer file systems, the root directory is the first or top-most directory in a hierarchy. It can be likened to the root of a tree — the starting point where all branches originate.-Metaphor:... is 32 sectors long, room for 512 directory entries. With one master and one DOS boot sector, the combined overhead is 50 sectors, leaving 2586 8-sector clusters for data (10,592,256 bytes) and two unused sectors (not enough to form a cluster). A BIOS parameter block BIOS parameter block In computing, the BIOS parameter block, often shortened to BPB, is a data structure in the Volume Boot Record describing the physical layout of a data storage volume. On partitioned devices, such as hard disks, the BPB describes the volume partition, whereas, on unpartitioned devices, such as... (BPB) is added to volume boot records. PC-DOS does not include the FC command, which is similar to COMP. |
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| April | Digital Research releases the last 8-bit version of CP/M, it was major version 3, often called CP/M Plus. It incorporated the bank switching Bank switching Bank switching is a technique to increase the amount of usable memory beyond the amount directly addressable by the processor. It can be used to configure a system differently at different times; for example, a ROM required to start a system from diskette could be switched out when no longer... memory management of MP/M MP/M MP/M was a multi-user version of the CP/M operating system, created by Digital Research developer Tom Rolander in 1979. It allowed multiple users to connect to a single computer, each using a separate terminal.... in a single-user single-task operating system compatible with CP/M 2.2 applications. CP/M 3 could therefore use more than 64 KB of memory on an 8080 or Zilog Z80 Zilog Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes... processor. The system could be configured to support date stamping of files. The operating system distribution software also included a relocating assembler and linker. CP/M 3 was available on the last generation of 8-bit computers. |
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| May | Microsoft releases MS-DOS 2.01 for clones. It added support for individual country date, time and currency display formats via the CONFIG.SYS COUNTRY command, and Japanese Kanji Kanji Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet... characters. |
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| Microsoft introduces the Microsoft Mouse Mouse (computing) In computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons... . It comes in either a bus Bus mouse A bus mouse is a variety of PC mouse which is attached to the computer using a specialized interface... or serial version, with the Multi-Tool Notepad, a mouse-based text editor. Microsoft also introduces Multi-Tool Word, designed to work with the mouse. |
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| October | IBM releases the IBM 3270 PC IBM 3270 PC The IBM 3270 PC , released in October 1983, was an IBM PC XT containing additional hardware which could emulate the behaviour of an IBM 3270 terminal... , an IBM PC/XT containing additional hardware which could emulate the behaviour of an IBM 3270 IBM 3270 The IBM 3270 is a class of block oriented terminals made by IBM since 1972 normally used to communicate with IBM mainframes. As such, it was the successor to the IBM 2260 display terminal. Due to the text colour on the original models, these terminals are informally known as green screen terminals... mainframe terminal. |
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| Digital Research releases CP/M-86 Plus Version 3.1, based on the multitasking Concurrent CP/M kernel, it could run up to four tasks at once. CP/M-86 Plus was available for the ACT Apricot Computers Apricot Computers is a British manufacturer of business personal computers, originally founded in 1965 as "Applied Computer Techniques" , changing its name to Apricot Computers, Ltd. in the 1980s... Apricot PC Apricot PC The Apricot PC was Apricot Computers' first personal computer made for business use. The press received it well, especially for the high resolution of its time and its trackball cable . It is the first non-Japanese computer using 3.5" Sony floppy disc units.It uses a Intel 8086 processor running... (UK United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... ) and the Olympia PEOPLE computer. |
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| November | The IBM PCjr IBM PCjr The IBM PCjr was IBM's first attempt to enter the home computer market. The PCjr, IBM model number 4860, retained the IBM PC's 8088 CPU and BIOS interface for compatibility, but various design and implementation decisions led the PCjr to be a commercial failure.- Features :Announced November 1,... is announced. It had half-height 5¼-inch disk drives and ran PC DOS 2.1, which supported PCjr's ability to run programs from ROM cartridges and slightly different disk controller architecture. Its built-in CGA-compatible display adapter added three special graphics modes which would not be supported by later generation adapters. International modifications in MS-DOS 2.01 were not included because IBM did not want them. PCjr ships first quarter 1984. |
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| Borland Borland Borland Software Corporation is a software company first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, Cupertino, California and finally Austin, Texas. It is now a Micro Focus subsidiary. It was founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn.-The 1980s:... is launched by a single full-page ad for Turbo Pascal Turbo Pascal Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment for the Pascal programming language running on CP/M, CP/M-86, and DOS, developed by Borland under Philippe Kahn's leadership... in Byte magazine. Lacking money to pay for the ad, the company deceives Byte's salesman into running the ad on credit, by hiring extra people so Borland would look like a busy, venture-backed company, making sure the phones were ringing and the extras were scurrying around. Borland expected to sell maybe $20,000 worth of software and at least pay for the ad—they sold $150,000 worth. Without subterfuge, Borland International would almost certainly have folded. |
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| December | Microsoft combined versions 2.1 and 2.01 to create MS-DOS 2.11 for other OEMs. Version 2.11 was sold worldwide and translated into about 10 different languages. Later, version 2.25 added support for Korean Hangul Hangul Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean... characters. |
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| 1984 | January | |Clone competition heated up in the past two months, with new microcomputers from Leading Edge Leading Edge (company) Leading Edge Hardware Products, Inc., was a computer manufacturer in the 1980s and the 1990s. It was based in Westborough, Massachusetts.-History:... , Panasonic, Tandy Tandy Corporation Tandy Corporation was a family-owned leather goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas. Tandy was founded in 1919 as a leather supply store, and acquired RadioShack in 1963. The Tandy name was dropped in May 2000, when RadioShack Corporation was made the official name.-History:Tandy began in 1919... , Sperry Sperry Corporation Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the twentieth century... , North Star North Star Computers North Star Computers was originally named Kentucky Fried Computer and changed their name prior to the release of their Horizon product, an eight-bit business computer that was shipped with the then industry-standard CP/M operating system or North Star's proprietary operating system, NDOS.While... , Gavilan Gavilan SC The Gavilan SC was an early laptop computer, and was the first ever to be marketed as a "laptop".The brainchild of Gavilan Computer Corp. founder Manuel Fernandez, the Gavilan was introduced in May, 1983, at approximately the same time as the similar Sharp PC-5000... and others. A similar spate of IBM clones existed during IBM mainframe IBM mainframe IBM mainframes are large computer systems produced by IBM from 1952 to the present. During the 1960s and 1970s, the term mainframe computer was almost synonymous with IBM products due to their marketshare... s' late 1960s/early 1970s heyday, when many companies developed plug compatible computers. IBM improved its models and changed specifications so the clones were no longer compatible, and many plug compatible mainframe manufacturers went bankrupt. Suspicious that history could repeat, many recent microcomputer entrants are proud of their technological advances earned at the cost of compatibility, such as portability, faster performance, better graphics, increased memory or a simpler user interface than the IBM PC or PC/XT. |
| May | Accepting the emergence of PC-DOS as a de facto standard, Digital Research announced Concurrent PC-DOS, which allows users to run up to four programs simultaneously using PC-DOS and/or CP/M. Concurrent PC-DOS supports up to four window Window (computing) In computing, a window is a visual area containing some kind of user interface. It usually has a rectangular shape that can overlap with the area of other windows... s and requires 256 KB RAM, with 512 KB recommended. It can support two users, with one attaching a dumb terminal to the micro's serial port.Concurrent PC-DOS, due out by the end of 1984, will be offered for the AT&T 6300 Olivetti M24 The Olivetti M24 was a computer sold by Olivetti in 1983 using the Intel 8086 CPU.It was also sold as AT&T 6300.Contrary to other PC clones of that era, the M24 was highly compatible with IBM PC. One of its characteristics was a more powerful CPU than the Intel 8088 used in IBM's own PC... . |
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| Phoenix Software Associates Phoenix Technologies Phoenix Technologies Ltd designs, develops and supports core system software for personal computers and other computing devices. Phoenix's products — commonly referred to as BIOS or firmware — support and enable the compatibility, connectivity, security and management of the various components and... introduces the first Phoenix PC ROM BIOS which enabled OEMs to build essentially 100%-compatible clones without having to reverse-engineer the IBM PC BIOS themselves, as Compaq had done for the Portable, helping fuel the growth in the PC compatibles industry and sales of non-IBM versions of MS-DOS. |
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| August | The IBM PC/AT, a computer built around the Intel 80286 Intel 80286 The Intel 80286 , introduced on 1 February 1982, was a 16-bit x86 microprocessor with 134,000 transistors. Like its contemporary simpler cousin, the 80186, it could correctly execute most software written for the earlier Intel 8086 and 8088... microprocessor, with a 16-bit ISA bus and 20 MB hard drive, is introduced. It ships with PC DOS 3.0, which adds support for quadruple, or high density (80-track), 15 sectors per track 1.2 MB (1,228,800 bytes; 2400 sectors) floppy disks. Their FAT fills seven sectors (14 for two copies) and root directory 14 (holding up to 224 entries), leaving 2371 1-sector clusters (1,213,952 bytes) for data. The hard disk has 614 cylinders, four sides, and 17 sectors/track, a total of 41,752 sectors or 21,377,024 bytes raw space. The 12-bit FAT design allows for a maximum of 4,078 clusters. DOS cluster sizes are powers of two, so to avoid using 16-sector clusters and support larger hard disks more efficiently, DOS added a new partition type Partition type This is not an exhaustive list, notably ambiguous or obscure partition types are not covered.... (0x04) for partitions larger than 15 MB, using a 16-bit FAT, which allows a smaller 4-sector cluster size. As a result, DOS 2.x hard disks larger than 15 MB, which used a 12-bit FAT (type 0x01) are incompatible with later versions of DOS. The 286 has a 24-bit address bus that can address 16 MB of RAM, and IBM officially supported expansion to 3 MB. PC DOS 3.0 supported use of extended memory Extended memory In DOS memory management, extended memory refers to memory above the first megabyte of address space in an IBM PC or compatible with an 80286 or later processor. The term is mainly used under the DOS and Windows operating systems... with the VDISK.SYS installable device driver, which allowed configuration of one or more virtual disks (RAM disk RAM disk A RAM disk or RAM drive is a block of RAM that a computer's software is treating as if the memory were a disk drive... s). The /E switch caused virtual disks to use extended memory rather than conventional memory. VDISK used a BIOS memory transfer service BIOS interrupt call BIOS interrupt calls are a facility that DOS programs and some other software, such as boot loaders, use to invoke the facilities of the Basic Input/Output System... , known as the Interrupt 15h Hexadecimal In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a positional numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen... interface, to avoid switching directly into protected virtual address mode. However, the ROM BIOS routine did switch from real mode Real mode Real mode, also called real address mode, is an operating mode of 80286 and later x86-compatible CPUs. Real mode is characterized by a 20 bit segmented memory address space and unlimited direct software access to all memory, I/O addresses and peripheral hardware... to protected mode and back again, a relatively slow process which was not reliable for some applications. PC DOS 3.0 also provided the same international support included earlier in version 2.11. IBM also announced a PC/AT version of the Xenix multiuser operating system, the IBM PC-Network PC-Network PC-Network was a LAN system consisting of network cards, cables, and a small device driver known as NetBIOS . It used a data rate of 2 Mbit/s.... , developed for IBM by Sytek Sytek Inc The Sytek Inc., now known as , created the NetBIOS protocol, used by Microsoft to make its networks with MS Windows 3.x and 9x.Sytek was founded in Silicon Valley and last officed in their own building on Charleston Road in Mountain View. During this crucial period in LAN development, there were... , and a new multitasking windowing Windowing system A windowing system is a component of a graphical user interface , and more specifically of a desktop environment, which supports the implementation of window managers, and provides basic support for graphics hardware, pointing devices such as mice, and keyboards... software utility called TopView—all will be available in first quarter 1985. |
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| Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.05 for other OEMs concurrently. | ||
| October | IBM introduces the Enhanced Graphics Adapter Enhanced Graphics Adapter The Enhanced Graphics Adapter is the IBM PC computer display standard specification which is between CGA and VGA in terms of color and space resolution. Introduced in October 1984 by IBM shortly after its new PC/AT, EGA produces a display of 16 simultaneous colors from a palette of 64 at a... (EGA), which costs $524 and has 16 KB ROM and 64 KB RAM. An additional 64 KB RAM ($199) comes on a piggyback board Daughterboard A daughterboard, daughtercard or piggyback board is a circuit board meant to be an extension or "daughter" of a motherboard , or occasionally of another card... called the Graphics Memory Expansion Card. An additional 128 KB ($259) added to the piggyback board produces a fully loaded 256 KB EGA card (total cost: $982). For use with monochrome monitors, the EGA supports MDA-text mode and adds a 640x350 monochrome graphics mode, a slightly lower resolution than the Hercules' 720x348. The EGA has the advantage of being "IBM standard" with built-in BIOS support, while Hercules has the initial advantage of being more widely used and software-supported. For color monitors, all seven CGA modes are supported. 80-column text mode resolution improved from the CGA's 640×200 to 640x350—shy of the 720x350 resolution achieved by Compaq. Three new graphics modes were added, including 16 colors simultaneously from a palette Palette (computing) In computer graphics, a palette is either a given, finite set of colors for the management of digital images , or a small on-screen graphical element for choosing from a limited set of choices, not necessarily colors .Depending on the context In computer graphics, a palette is either a given,... of 64 colors at 640x350 resolution. See also: EGA palettes |
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| November | Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.1 which added a new local area network supplement Microsoft Networks 1.0 (identified earlier as MS-Net) for use on non-IBM network cards. Neither MS-Net, or its successor LAN Manager LAN Manager LAN Manager was a Network Operating System available from multiple vendors and developed by Microsoft in cooperation with 3Com Corporation. It was designed to succeed 3Com's 3+Share network server software which ran atop a heavily modified version of MS-DOS.-Development history:LAN Manager was... , was particularly successful competing against market leader Novell Novell Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise... , whose product Novell NetWare Novell NetWare NetWare is a network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, with network protocols based on the archetypal Xerox Network Systems stack.... had a seventy percent market share. |
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| 1985 | January | |InfoWorld names Borland's SideKick SideKick SideKick was an early Personal Information Manager software application by Borland launched in 1983 under Philippe Kahn's leadership. It was notable for being a Terminate and Stay Resident program, which enabled it to load into memory then return the computer to the DOS command prompt, allowing... 1984 Software Product of the Year (1-2-3 was their 1983 awardee). SideKick is a memory-resident, or Terminate and Stay Resident Terminate and Stay Resident Terminate and Stay Resident is a computer system call in DOS computer operating systems that returns control to the system as if the program has quit, but keeps the program in memory... (TSR) program that uses a hot-key Keyboard shortcut In computing, a keyboard shortcut is a finite set of one or more keys that invoke a software or operating system operation when triggered by the user. A meaning of term "keyboard shortcut" can vary depending on software manufacturer... pop up window to superimpose a calculator, calendar, notepad, phone dialer, and ASCII ASCII The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text... table onto PC-DOS software. Other companies soon discovered this wonderful DOS feature and TSRs began competing for the PC compatible's finite memory space. |
| Digital Research previews Concurrent DOS 286 in cooperation with Intel. The product functions strictly as an 80286 native mode operating system, allowing users to take full advantage of the protected mode to perform multi-user, multitasking operations while running 8086 emulation Emulator In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system... . |
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| March | PC DOS 3.1 is released with support for IBM's Network Adapter card on the IBM PC-Network. | |
| April | |At the Spring COMDEX COMDEX COMDEX was a computer expo held in Las Vegas, Nevada, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually second only to the German CeBIT, and by many accounts one of the largest trade shows in any industry sector... , Intel announces a memory board called Above Board that circumvents the 640 KB memory barrier, allowing use of up to 4 MB of RAM, and Lotus Development Corp. announce new versions of Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony intended to make use of the newly available memory. Above Board uses bank switching Bank switching Bank switching is a technique to increase the amount of usable memory beyond the amount directly addressable by the processor. It can be used to configure a system differently at different times; for example, a ROM required to start a system from diskette could be switched out when no longer... so the IBM PC and PC/AT can use what Intel and Lotus call the Expanded Memory Expanded memory In DOS memory management, expanded memory is a system of bank switching introduced April 24, 1985 that provided additional memory to DOS programs beyond the limit of conventional memory. Expanded memory uses parts of the address space normally dedicated to communication with peripherals for program... Device Interface Specification 3.0 (EMS, not to be confused with IBM's extended memory). A source estimated that 4 MB of RAM would yield about 500,000 cells in a spreadsheet Spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas... . EMS is implemented with the Expanded Memory Manager (EMM), supplied by the board manufacturer as a CONFIG.SYS DEVICE directive. The specification was publicly released to product developers, and similar memory boards were soon released by others including Tecmar Tecmar Tecmar was an American manufacturer of PC enhancement products based in Solon, OH. The company was founded in 1974 and their first products were data acquisition boards for the first generation of microcomputers. Popular products included the Scientific Solutions LabMaster series of boards for... and Quadram. |
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| May | Seven months after its introduction, the EGA has not displaced IBM's first generation of video boards because most developers have yet to adapt their software to it. Among the handful of software packages now fully supporting the EGA is Digital Research's GEM (Graphical Environment Manager Graphical Environment Manager GEM was a windowing system created by Digital Research, Inc. for use with the CP/M operating system on the Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000 microprocessors... ). For a number of reasons, software designed for the CGA's graphics mode won't work properly under the EGA's emulation mode, but software designed for the MDA generally does. |
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| Digital Research exposed problems with the emulation features on the C-1 step Stepping level The term stepping level in the context of CPU architecture or integrated circuitry is a version number.Stepping level refers to the introduction or revision of the lithographic mask or masks within the set of plates that generate the pattern that produces the CPU or integrated circuit... of Intel's 80286 chip which would not allow Concurrent DOS 286 to run 8086 software in the protected mode. The release of Concurrent DOS 286 was delayed until Intel develops a new version of the chip. Industry observers are by no means certain that Concurrent DOS 286 will ever be able to run existing software effectively in protected mode, even with Intel's refinements to the chip. |
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| June | Digital Research releases Concurrent DOS 86 Version 4.1, an updated version of Concurrent DOS that supports high-end IBM-compatibles, MS-DOS 2.1 applications and Digital Research's GEM software. | |
| AST Research AST Research AST Research, Inc. was a personal computer manufacturer, founded in Irvine, California in 1980 by Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey and Thomas Yuen. AST's original business was the manufacture and marketing of a broad range of microcomputer expansion cards, later focusing on higher-density replacements... announces the Rampage multifunction board, designed as a superset of the Lotus-Intel standard. |
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| August | IBM and Microsoft announce a long-term Joint Development Agreement to share specified DOS code and create a new multitasking operating system from scratch, known at the time as Advanced DOS (OS/2 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... would eventually be released in 1987). The pact was signed in June. |
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| Market reaction to IBM's Enhanced Graphics Adapter has not been overwhelming, partly because the EGA's complexity—five custom chips and 12 modes—has slowed software development and the board's price tag has been a damper for many, but the EGA is emerging as the next graphics standard. Lotus expects to release drivers supporting 1-2-3 and Symphony by the end of the month, and Microsoft Chart will join Word and Windows Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 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... in supporting the EGA. As many as five clone boards—presumably less expensive—are expected to hit the market over the next six months. Chips and Technologies Chips and Technologies Chips and Technologies was the first fabless semiconductor company, a model developed by its founder Gordon Campbell. Founded by Dado Banatao.Its first product was an EGA IBM compatible graphics chip... is creating a full, custom EGA chip set. IBM tried to insulate developers from the board and sidestep the driver problem by incorporating the Virtual Device Interface (VDI) from Graphic Software Systems (GSS) of Wilsonville, Oregon Wilsonville, Oregon Wilsonville is a city primarily in Clackamas County, Oregon, United States. A portion of the northern section of the city is in Washington County. Originally founded as Boones Landing due to the Boones Ferry which crossed the Willamette River at the location, the community became Wilsonville in... (founded in 1981 by four former Tektronix Tektronix Tektronix, Inc. is an American company best known for its test and measurement equipment such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment. In November 2007, Tektronix became a subsidiary of Danaher Corporation.... engineers) into the EGA, but many developers are choosing to ignore the IBM VDI. Digital Research has its own Virtual Device Interface, which they describe as similar to a superset of IBM's VDI, which they say has limited raster graphics Raster graphics In computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium... support. A number of vendors are writing directly to the screen rather than the VDI to get better performance, including Lotus and Ashton-Tate Ashton-Tate Ashton-Tate was a US based software company best known for developing the popular dBASE database application. Ashton-Tate grew from a small garage-based company to become a multinational corporation... . Microsoft's Windows uses Microsoft's Graphics Device Interface Graphics Device Interface The Graphics Device Interface is a Microsoft Windows application programming interface and core operating system component responsible for representing graphical objects and transmitting them to output devices such as monitors and printers.... , a superset of Graphic Software Systems' VDI. Ashton Tate's development director said that because the EGA slows down the 8088, creating performance problems, the EGA's technical benefits almost require the 80286. A Microsoft software engineer said the basic 64 KB EGA forces a trade-off between resolution and color—a user can have either 4-color 640x350 or 16-color 640x200 resolution, recommending the 64KB piggyback board for good performance of 16 colors at 640x350 resolution. Historically, graphics has been viewed as a vertical Vertical application A vertical application or vertical market application, is software defined by requirements for a single, or narrowly defined, market. It contrasts with horizontal application.... market—charting Charting application A charting application is a computer program that is used to graphically create a graphical representation based on some non-graphical data that is entered by a user, most often through a spreadsheet application, but also through a dedicated specific scientific application , or... or CAD/CAM. Graphics is moving from niche market Niche market A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact... s to an overall system technology incorporated in almost every type of application with the development of user interface Graphical user interface In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and... technology. |
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| After four weeks of testing E-step samples of the 80286, Digital Research acknowledged that Intel corrected all documented 286 errata, but said there were still undocumented chip performance problems with the prerelease version of Concurrent DOS 286 running on the E-step. Intel said the approach Digital Research wished to take in emulating 8086 software in protected mode differed from the original specifications. Intel will make minor changes in the microcode Microcode Microcode is a layer of hardware-level instructions and/or data structures involved in the implementation of higher level machine code instructions in many computers and other processors; it resides in special high-speed memory and translates machine instructions into sequences of detailed... that will allow Digital Research to run emulation mode much faster, incorporated into the E-2 step. |
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| September | Digital Research sidelines Concurrent DOS 4.1 into DOS Plus 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.... 1.x. The Philips :YES, a DOS Plus equipped Intel 80186 Intel 80186 The 80188 is a version with an 8-bit external data bus, instead of 16-bit. This makes it less expensive to connect to peripherals. The 80188 is otherwise very similar to the 80186. It has a throughput of 1 million instructions per second.... -based computer to be produced and marketed in Austria Austria Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the... , is announced. |
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| November | |InfoWorld reported that business users were displaying a nearly insatiable demand for more disk storage capacity. A company was selling a disk system for the PC/AT that could hold 240 megabytes in one file, and many 40- and 80-megabyte disks were in use. However, there was a problem. DOS limited partitions to only 32 MB—the BPB's Total Sectors on the Volume field limit was 65,536 (216), and 16-bit addresses passed to interrupts MS-DOS API The MS-DOS API is an API used originally in MS-DOS/PC-DOS, and later by other DOS systems. Most calls to the DOS API invoke software interrupt 21h . By calling INT 21h with a subfunction number in the AH processor register and other parameters in other registers, one invokes various DOS services... 25h and 26h. Many were surprised that IBM did not demolish the 32 MB barrier with PC-DOS 3.0 or 3.1. The most common way to resolve this problem was to treat large drives as if they were actually two or more drives. The drives are then called "logical"—or volume Volume (computing) In the context of computer operating systems, volume is the term used to describe a single accessible storage area with a single file system, typically resident on a single partition of a hard disk. Similarly, it refers to the logical interface used by an operating system to access data stored on... —drives, and work quite well so long as no one file is larger than 32 MB. |
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| Digital Research, in an effort to promote its stalled Concurrent PC-DOS operating system, modified the system to take advantage of the Rampage expanded memory specification. Concurrent PC-DOS XM is scheduled to be released in first quarter 1986, followed by a second quarter update compatible with PC-DOS 3.1's record Record locking Record locking is the technique of preventing simultaneous access to data in a database, to prevent inconsistent results.The classic example is demonstrated by two bank clerks attempting to update the same bank account for two different transactions. Clerks 1 and 2 both retrieve the account's... and file locking File locking File locking is a mechanism that restricts access to a computer file by allowing only one user or process access at any specific time. Systems implement locking to prevent the classic interceding update scenario .... scheme and file sharing Shared resource In computing, a shared resource or network share is a device or piece of information on a computer that can be remotely accessed from another computer, typically via a local area network or an enterprise Intranet, transparently as if it were a resource in the local machine.Examples are shared file... schemes. Both the Lotus-Intel-Microsoft and AST expanded memory specifications enable users to address up to 8 MB of RAM. |
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| December | |The European Computer Manufacturers Association Ecma International Ecma International is an international, private non-profit standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired its name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association changed its name to reflect the organization's global reach and activities... adopts and releases standard ECMA-107, Volume and File Structure of Flexible Disk Cartridges for Information Interchange, standardizing FAT12. |
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| 1986 | January | Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.2. It adds support for 3½-inch 720 KB floppy disk drives. Microsoft modified EMS to add support for multitasking operating systems, doubling the EMS memory limit to 8 MB, and the new version 3.2 was released as a joint effort of Lotus, Intel and Microsoft. Device driver RAMDRIVE.SYS was also added. It created a virtual disk in either conventional memory, extended memory or Lotus-Intel-Microsoft Expanded Memory. This is the first MS-DOS version Microsoft offered in a shrink-wrapped Shrink wrap Shrink wrap, also shrinkwrap or shrink film, is a material made up of polymer plastic film. When heat is applied it shrinks tightly over whatever it is covering. Heat can be applied with a hand held heat gun or the product and film can pass through a heat tunnel on a conveyor.-Composition:The... packaged version for smaller OEMs or system builders Custom built PC A custom built PC is a computer case that is built from components at hand under the individual person or organization from scratch. The main advantage of manual assembly is the ability to pick up a perfectly balanced machine for specific tasks... . |
| InfoWorld reported that during the past year a growing number of generic, no-name PC compatibles gained support as legitimate alternatives to major manufacturers' systems. Components of clones have become such standard commodities that most feel that the generic machines achieve a high degree of compatibility. Although some dealers include a copy of MS-DOS with their generic micros, many small dealers do not. Usually users can buy copies of IBM's PC-DOS from authorized IBM dealers. | ||
| IBM announces its reduced instruction set computer (RISC), the RT PC, with a 40 MB hard drive and a physical appearance virtually identical to the PC/AT. PC-DOS programs will run on RT PCs with an optional board containing an 80286 processor and a coprocessor Coprocessor A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor . Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, or encryption. By offloading processor-intensive tasks from the main processor,... program allowing users to switch between AIX and PC-DOS operations. |
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| February | Digital Research and IBM agreed to use Concurrent DOS 286 in versions of the PC/AT for point of sale Point of sale Point of sale or checkout is the location where a transaction occurs... in retail stores and other vertical applications. Concurrent DOS 286 will serve as the basis for IBM's 4680 operating system IBM 4690 OS IBM 4690 Operating System, sometimes shortened to 4690 OS or 4690, is IBM's specially designed Point of Sale operating system. 4690 is widely used by IBM's retail customers to drive retail systems running their own applications as well as IBM's Application Client Server Environment , Supermarket... . Numerous IBM value-added reseller Value-added reseller A value-added reseller is a company that adds features or services to an existing product, then resells it as an integrated product or complete "turn-key" solution... s with medical, legal and other vertical application packages have shown interest in the product. |
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| March | IBM released the first components of its Token Ring local area network, and PC DOS 3.2, which supports token ring operations and adds support for 3½-inch double-density 720 KB floppy disk drives. The Token Ring Network allows IBM PC users to share printers, files, and other devices. Supporting software includes the IBM Token Ring/PC Network Interconnect Program and the advanced program-to-program communications for the IBM PC (APP/PC). Some dealers carrying IBM's earlier networking product, the IBM PC Network, are waiting to gauge demand for the Token Ring Network before carrying the product. PC DOS 3.2 supports the IBM PC Convertible, IBM's first computer to use 3½-inch floppy disks, which will be available in May 1986. | |
| April | Microsoft releases MS-DOS 4.0, the first multitasking version, to European customers. Developers and industry insiders expect Microsoft to bypass that version in the United States in favor of a more powerful version, MS-DOS 5.0, which will access up to 16 MB of RAM. MS-DOS 4.0 will be sold by Apricot Computers Apricot Computers Apricot Computers is a British manufacturer of business personal computers, originally founded in 1965 as "Applied Computer Techniques" , changing its name to Apricot Computers, Ltd. in the 1980s... as the controlling program for network servers that support a new family of Apricot microcomputers. Apricot will also offer MS-Net 2, a new version of Microsoft's LAN. |
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| IBM announced the Expanded Memory Adapter (XMA) for the 3270 PC, which enables users to have multiple DOS sessions and a host session, or multiple host sessions and one DOS session. The XMA is not compatible with the Lotus-Intel-Microsoft specification, but uses a bank-switching technique that closely resembles AST's enhanced expanded memory specification (EEMS). | ||
| May | While software makers debate a standard for memory-resident programs, two developers are racing to develop utilities that promise to help normally incompatible TSRs work together. The programs are Referee from Persoft Inc. and Borland's MOM (Memory Organization Manager). Ultimately, users would rebel because they couldn't keep track of all the special conditions for each TSR. Many TSRs failed as products because dealing with the complexity was more trouble than the value delivered. | |
| August | IBM's retail PC market share slipped by 10 percent in the last year, and now accounts for less than half the PC-compatibles sold. For many, there seems to be no compelling reason to buy IBM anymore. In June, chief executive John F. Akers told analysts IBM would consider withdrawing from part of the PC market if it became too commodity-like. | |
| September | Compaq introduces the first 32-bit 32-bit The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory.... Intel 80386 Intel 80386 The Intel 80386, also known as the i386, or just 386, was a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were used as the central processing unit of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time... -based computer, the Compaq Deskpro Compaq Deskpro The Compaq Deskpro was a line of business-oriented personal computers manufactured by Compaq, discontinued after the merger with Hewlett-Packard... 386. It was the most powerful personal computer on the market. IBM had not yet ordered a single 386 chip from Intel. Compaq President Rod Canion Rod Canion Joseph Rodney "Rod" Canion is an American computer scientist and businessman. Canion is a co-founder and was a CEO of Compaq Computer Corporation.... warned that if IBM doesn't respond with its own 80386-based machine within six months, the Deskpro 386 will become the industry's 32-bit personal computer standard. Two models were announced, Model 40 (40 MB hard drive) and Model 130 (130 MB). Both came with built-in support for Expanded memory. The 386 has a 32-bit address bus that can address 232 (4,294,967,296) memory locations, i.e. 4096 MB or 4 gigabyte Gigabyte The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is... s (GB) of RAM. The Deskpro 386 system memory board was expandable to 10 MB, but no operating system was yet available to take advantage of more than the 1 MB address space of the original IBM PC (except by creating RAM disks). Compaq called their solution to the 32 MB partition limit enhanced disk, which was implemented with a custom Compaq version of FDISK that allowed creation of multiple MS-DOS partitions on a single hard drive, and the ENHDISK.SYS device driver installed into CONFIG.SYS to access those extra partitions. Model 130's enhanced disk could hold four 32 MB partitions. |
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| November | Phar Lap Software Phar Lap (company) Phar Lap was a software company specializing in software development tools for DOS operating systems. They were most noted for their software allowing developers to access memory beyond the 640 KiB limit of DOS and were an author of the VCPI standard.Phar Lap Software, Inc. was founded in April... introduced a DOS extender DOS extender A DOS extender is a computer software program which enables software to run under a protected mode environment even though the host operating system is only capable of operating in real mode.... , 386/DOS-Extender, a software developer Software developer A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management... 's tool that allows 32-bit mainframe-size application programs to run under MS-DOS 3.1 or 3.2 on any 80386-based IBM PC-compatible computer by taking advantage of the 80386's protected-mode memory capabilities. |
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| The Software Link The Software Link The Software Link, Incorporated was a company in Norcross, Georgia that developed software for personal computers from 1986 to 1994... demonstrated PC-MOS/386 PC-MOS/386 PC-MOS/386 was a multi-user, multi-tasking operating system produced by The Software Link, announced at COMDEX in November 1986 for February 1987 release. It will run much MS-DOS software on the host machine or a terminal connected to it... at COMDEX. Release of the multiuser operating system that supports the 80386 virtual and protected modes is scheduled for February 1987. |
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| 1987 | January | Digital Research's new Flexible Automation Business Unit introduced its first product, the real-time operating system Real-time operating system A real-time operating system is an operating system intended to serve real-time application requests.A key characteristic of a RTOS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is jitter... FlexOS FlexOS FlexOS was a modular real-time multi-user multi-tasking operating system designed for computer-integrated manufacturing, laboratory, retail and financial markets... 286, a re-engineered version of Concurrent DOS 286 designed specifically for computer-integrated manufacturing. |
| February | Digital Research launches Concurrent DOS 386, which runs up to four applications concurrently supporting up to 10 users on a system. | |
| April | Fox Software announced Foxbase 2.0 386, the first database Database A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information... to take full advantage of the 386's memory, by using the Phar Lap DOS extender program, which intercepts calls to DOS and automatically switches the system back to real mode for those functions. By tapping the chip's protected mode, the entire program can run in memory, eliminating disk access times and improving execution speed in some cases by a factor of 10. The program does not support multitasking, which must wait for advances in the operating system, so it is an interim solution. |
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| The IBM Personal System/2 IBM Personal System/2 The Personal System/2 or PS/2 was IBM's third generation of personal computers. The PS/2 line, released to the public in 1987, was created by IBM in an attempt to recapture control of the PC market by introducing an advanced proprietary architecture... line is released. Models range from the 8086-based Model 30, with Multicolor Graphics Array (MCGA) to the 80386-based Model 80, with 256 KB RAM Video Graphics Array Video Graphics Array Video Graphics Array refers specifically to the display hardware first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, but through its widespread adoption has also come to mean either an analog computer display standard, the 15-pin D-subminiature VGA connector or the 640×480 resolution... (VGA). They run on PC DOS 3.3 (the new protected mode multitasking Operating System/2 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... is announced, but not released until December). Version 3.3 added support for high density 3½-inch 1.44 MB floppy disk drives, which IBM introduced in its 80286-based and higher PS/2 models, and introduced a partition type (0x05) for extended partitions, which could hold up to 23 logical drives. The Micro Channel architecture Micro Channel architecture Micro Channel Architecture was a proprietary 16- or 32-bit parallel computer bus introduced by IBM in 1987 which was used on PS/2 and other computers through the mid 1990s.- Background :... (MCA) bus is introduced—Models 50 and 60 use a 16-bit version, while Model 80 uses a version that supports 32-bit data and addressing. The upgrade from DOS 3.2 to 3.3 was completely written by IBM, with no development effort on the part of Microsoft, who were working on "Advanced DOS 1.0". Soon after release, some users with non-IBM hardware reported hard drive problems. The MS-DOS version of 3.3 was still being tested by Microsoft. |
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| June | IBM delivers the 8514/A display adapter, an optional upgrade for PS/2 models 50, 60 and 80. | |
| July | Fox Software ships Foxbase 2.0 386. Phar Lap admits its 386/DOS Extender conflicts with TSR programs as well as Novell NetWare. Fox found Intelligent Graphics Corp.'s X-AM currently more reliable, and built an X-AM run-time version into Foxbase 2.0 386. The key to X-AM's performance is apparently its ability to switch from protected 386 mode to virtual 8086 mode Virtual 8086 mode In the 80386 microprocessor and later, virtual 8086 mode allows the execution of real mode applications that are incapable of running directly in protected mode while the processor is running a protected mode operating system.VM86 mode uses a segmentation scheme identical to that of real mode In... . |
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| August | Compaq files a U.S. patent Patent A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention.... application for "software emulation of bank-switched memory using a virtual DOS monitor and paged memory management." Their invention uses 80386 paging Paging In computer operating systems, paging is one of the memory-management schemes by which a computer can store and retrieve data from secondary storage for use in main memory. In the paging memory-management scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage in same-size blocks called... hardware and virtual 8086 mode to emulate expanded memory using extended memory. The patent would be issued in 1990. |
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| Microsoft ships MS-DOS 3.3. It has the same feature set as the version IBM has been shipping since April. | ||
| Lotus-Intel-Microsoft EMS 4.0 is announced. Key features include the capability to execute program code from expanded memory, including memory-resident programs; boosting the expanded memory ceiling from 8 to 32 megabytes; and the capability for multiple programs to use expanded memory at the same time. Quarterdeck Quarterdeck Office Systems Quarterdeck Office Systems, later Quarterdeck Corporation , was an American computer software company. It was founded by Therese Myers and Gary Pope in 1981and incorporated in 1982... introduced an update of QEMM QEMM Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager , was a memory manager produced by Quarterdeck Office Systems in the late 1980s through late 1990s. It was the most popular memory manager for the MS-DOS and other DOS operating systems.-QEMM product ranges:QRAM: A memory manager for 286 or higher CPU. It... supporting EMS 4.0. The new EMS is designed to eliminate "RAM cram," the overstuffing of conventional memory with TSR programs. |
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| November | Compaq ships Compaq MS-DOS 3.31 with support for hard disk partitions over 32 MB, up to 512 MB. Partitions over 32 MB use a new partition type (0x06). Compaq dropped support for creating enhanced disks from their version of FDISK, while maintaining support for ENHDISK partitions created by previous versions. This version introduced the Compaq Expanded Memory Manager (CEMM) CEMM CEMM, for Compaq Expanded Memory Manager was the first so-called PC "memory manager" for Intel 80386 CPUs, able to transform "XMS" extended memory into "EMS" expanded memory by using the virtual memory features and the virtual 8086 mode of the CPU.... , which was the first so-called PC "memory manager Memory manager In IBM PC compatible computing, DOS memory management refers to software and techniques employed to give applications access to more than 640K of "conventional memory". The 640kB limit was specific to the IBM PC and close compatibles; other machines running MS-DOS had different limits, for example... " for Intel 80386 CPUs. |
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| 1988 | January | Digital Research sidelines Concurrent DOS 6.0 as DR DOS 3.xx. |
| May | Digital Research releases DR DOS 3.31, supporting hard disk partitions up to 512 MB. | |
| July | IBM ships IBM DOS 4.0. It adds an optional text-based Text-based Usually used in reference to a computer application, a text-based application is one whose primary input and output are based on text rather than graphics or sound. This does not mean that text-based applications do not have graphics or sound, just that the graphics or sound are secondary to the... file manager File manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to work with file systems. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files are: create, open, edit, view, print, play, rename, move, copy, delete, search/find, and modify file attributes, properties... shell (DOSSHELL DOS Shell The DOS Shell is a file manager, debuted in MS-DOS and IBM DOS 4.0 . It was discontinued after version 6.0, but retained as part of the "Supplemental Disk" until 6.22 for MS-DOS; as such, it was not a core part of the operating system throughout its evolution, but rather an add-on... ) with pull-down menus called by typing the F10 key, optional mouse support and a user interface which is a subset of OS/2 version 1.1's Presentation Manager Presentation Manager Presentation Manager is the graphical user interface that IBM and Microsoft introduced in version 1.1 of their operating system OS/2 in late 1988.-History:... . The DOS Shell could run in either text mode or graphics mode (on supported hardware), depending on how it was configured in the file DOSSHELL.BAT. Text mode is required to avoid incompatibilities (video conflicts) while running many popular TSR programs in graphics mode. IBM DOS 4.0 supports Lotus-Intel-Microsoft EMS 4.0 on IBM's Expanded Memory Adapter, and hard disk partitions over 32 MB, up to 1024 MB. It also offers a hard drive installation program as an alternative to the procedure used in previous versions (FDISK, FORMAT, SYS, COPY), enhanced video/graphics support and improved error handling. The release was simultaneously announced by Microsoft, but no other OEMs had yet released it for their machines.Because Microsoft already sells in Europe a multitasking version of DOS, which is called DOS 4.0, it is not clear if Microsoft will use a different version number for the new operating system. |
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| Microsoft released an extended memory specification, XMS, Version 2.0, implemented by the A20 handler A20 line The A20 or addressing line 20 is one of the plethora of electrical lines that make up the system bus of an x86-based computer system. The A20 line in particular is used to transmit the 21st bit on the address bus.... HIMEM.SYS in Windows/286. When run on 286- and 386-based systems, XMS can boost access to conventional memory by adding 64 KB (the high memory area) normally considered part of the extended-memory address range. |
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| September | IBM ships unannounced IBM DOS 4.01. Plagued with reports of bugs and incompatibilities, DOS 4.0 has been widely reported as being virtually unusable in its present state. IBM said that this was not a new version but a "maintenance diskette" to fix minor problems. However, early users said that the more serious incompatibilities resulting from a change in file structure have not been fixed by the upgrade. IBM also released two enhanced PS/2 Model 30s that use the classic AT bus rather than the MCA bus, based on the 286 instead of 8086 processor, with VGA instead of MCGA graphics and 1.44 MB disk drives replacing 720 KB drives. | |
| The 'Gang of Nine' PC clone makers, led by Compaq, announced the Extended Industry Standard Architecture Extended Industry Standard Architecture The Extended Industry Standard Architecture is a bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers... (EISA) bus. New EISA computers are expected by late 1989. |
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| October | Microsoft urged its OEMs to wait for a bug-fixing update of DOS 4.0 code before shipping their own versions. Microsoft released a DOS 4.0 Binary Adaption Kit - containing the operating system and utilities to help OEMs adapt it to their hardware - shortly after the mid-July announcement of DOS 4.0. Microsoft told manufacturers who distribute DOS under their own labels not to use that BAK and instead wait for the maintenance update, which contains several bug fixes, primarily for a problem with page frames involving EMS. | |
| November | Microsoft releases MS-DOS 4.01, including a graphical/mouse interface, support for hard disk partitions up to 2 GB, and the SmartDrive SmartDrive SmartDrive was a disk caching program that shipped with MS-DOS versions 4.01 through 6.22 and Windows 3.x. It improved disk transfer rates by storing frequently accessed data in the main memory. Early versions of SmartDrive were loaded through a CONFIG.SYS device driver named SMARTDRV.SYS... disk caching Page cache In computing, page cache, sometimes ambiguously called disk cache, is a "transparent" buffer of disk-backed pages kept in main memory by the operating system for quicker access. Page cache is typically implemented in kernels with the paging memory management, and is completely transparent to... program. |
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| 1989 | ROM-DOS, designed for embedded systems, is introduced by Datalight Datalight Datalight is a privately held software company specializing in data management for embedded devices, particularly mobile phones. The company was founded in 1983 by Roy Sherrill, and is headquartered in Bothell, Washington.-Overview and history:... . |
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| January | Developers Struggle With DOS Choices: As companies such as Lotus and Microsoft bring out improved but code-intensive versions of their programs, they're relying on bank-switching techniques or DOS extenders to make their programs run more efficiently under the 640K of RAM allowed by DOS. The choice is not a simple one. Each has its own set of assets and liabilities. But with OS/2 currently stalled in the market, there seems to be a future for alternatives. Microsoft has chosen bank switching for Excel Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications... and Windows, while Lotus has seriously looked at DOS extenders for its unreleased 1-2-3, Release 3.0. |
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| April | Compaq announced the availability of Compaq's MS-DOS version 4.01. Compaq continues to market their MS-DOS 3.31 as well. Compaq enhancements to MS-DOS 4.01 include Fastart, which speeds installation, and support for Lotus-Intel-Microsoft EMS 4.0. | |
| June | Lotus ships Release 3.0 of its market leading spreadsheet 1-2-3, more than two years after the product was announced. The company spent $15 million bug testing 3.0, which was translated into C C (programming language) C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system.... and uses extended memory by way of Rational Systems' Virtual Control Program Interface (VCPI)-compatible DOS/16M 16-bit 80286 extender. |
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| July | InfoWorld reported that a year after its introduction, DOS 4.01's acceptance by users is slower than expected and lags behind the endorsements that greeted its predecessors. Users said they don't need its large disk partitions, can't afford to update their existing machines, and are wary of problems with how DOS 4.0 handles expanded memory. Also, no software developers have yet released applications that require the new version of DOS, which could force users to make the jump. Hardware vendors are taking longer than usual to adopt the new DOS for their hardware. Since other DOS updates have traditionally entered the workplace primarily accompanying the purchase of new PCs, this too hampered its adoption. | |
| September | InfoWorld reports that shadow RAM, a technique used by Chips and Technologies' NEAT chipset NEAT chipset The NEAT chipset was a 3-chip chipset for IBM PC compatible computers. It was developed by Chips and Technologies.- History :... and AT/386 chipset Chipset A chipset, PC chipset, or chip set refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together. They are usually marketed as a single product.- Computers :... s to speed performance by loading ROM BIOS functions into the upper memory area Upper Memory Area In DOS memory management, the upper memory area refers to memory between the addresses of 640 KB and 1024 KB in an IBM PC or compatible. IBM reserved the uppermost 384 KB of the 8088 CPU's 1024 KB address space for ROM, RAM on peripherals, and memory-mapped input/output... , has become a significant problem for users who want to run programs that use DOS extenders on 1-megabyte systems. The problem arises when products like Lotus 1-2-3, Release 3.0 try to use the memory that is tied up supporting shadow RAM. Invisible Software Inc. announced a $40 program called Invisible RAM which extends DOS memory from 640K to as high as 736K, allowing Release 3.0 users to load the program and have as much as 90 KB remaining for worksheet space. Or users could spend several hundred dollars for additional memory, with prices continuing their slow decline. |
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| Microsoft unveils 16-bit OS/2 1.2, featuring the Installable File System Installable File System The Installable File System is a filesystem API in IBM OS/2 and Microsoft Windows that enables the operating system to recognize and load drivers for file systems... API Application programming interface An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other... and High Performance File System (HPFS). |
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| November | Responding to increasing industry confusion about the relative roles of Windows and OS/2, during the COMDEX IBM and Microsoft jointly issue a news release titled "IBM and Microsoft Expand Partnership; Set Future DOS and OS/2 Directions." The majority of development resources will be applied to OS/2, with the intent to deliver a version that exploits the advanced capabilities of the 386 and i486 Intel 80486 The Intel 80486 microprocessor was a higher performance follow up on the Intel 80386. Introduced in 1989, it was the first tightly pipelined x86 design as well as the first x86 chip to use more than a million transistors, due to a large on-chip cache and an integrated floating point unit... in 1990, with advanced features such as demand paging Demand paging In computer operating systems, demand paging is an application of virtual memory. In a system that uses demand paging, the operating system copies a disk page into physical memory only if an attempt is made to access it... , the ability to run multiple DOS applications concurrently, and allow applications to exploit the 32-bit flat memory model Flat memory model Flat memory model or linear memory model refers to a memory addressing paradigm in low-level software design such that the CPU can directly address all of the available memory locations without having to resort to any sort of memory segmentation or paging schemes.Memory management and... ; and enable OS/2 for 2 MB entry systems. DOS and Windows are recommended for systems with 1-2 MB of memory or fixed disk drives smaller than 30 MB. |
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| 1990 | April | Digital Research introduces DR DOS 5.0, a DOS clone which is a strong competitor to MS-DOS 3.3 and 4.01. It includes the MemoryMax "memory manager", the first memory management DOS memory management In IBM PC compatible computing, DOS memory management refers to software and techniques employed to give applications access to more than 640K of "conventional memory". The 640kB limit was specific to the IBM PC and close compatibles; other machines running MS-DOS had different limits, for example... system to allow loading TSRs, device drivers and the operating system into upper memory blocks, and the operating system to be loaded into the high memory area. Also, ViewMAX ViewMAX ViewMAX is the file manager supplied with DR DOS versions 5.0 and 6.0. It is based on a cut-down version of the GEM GUI.-Versions:ViewMAX/1 was distributed with DR DOS 5.0. It had a very similar appearance to previous GEM desktops – two fixed-size windows... , a graphical front end functionally equivalent to MS-DOS 4.01's graphics shell. It supports hard disk partitions up to 512 MB. |
| May | DOS Protected Mode Interface DOS Protected Mode Interface In computing, the DOS Protected Mode Interface is a specification introduced in 1989 which allows a DOS program to run in protected mode, giving access to many features of the processor not available in real mode... (DPMI) version 0.9 is formally released by a consortium Consortium A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal.... of eleven PC companies. Unlike VCPI, DPMI was designed for a multitasking operating system. |
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| Microsoft releases Windows 3.0 Windows 3.0 Windows 3.0, a graphical environment, 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... , which would become the first widely successful version of Windows. Its File Manager became a popular alternative to the DOS Shell. Windows 3.0 runs on DOS 3.1 or higher. This is the last version of Windows that could run on the IBM PC/XT (i.e., in real mode, which DOS runs in). |
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| July | Digital Research ships DR DOS 5.0 to retailers. This was the first version of DOS sold directly to end-users. About 40 percent of the nearly 7 million Intel-based PCs shipped this year will be shipped without an operating system, spelling big bucks for retail DOS sales. | |
| September | IBM and Microsoft announce a realignment of their OS/2 development relationship. | |
| 1991 | March | Microsoft said that it had received a letter in June from the Federal Trade Commission Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act... advising it of an investigation of its competitive practices, limited to the November 1989 joint announcement with IBM regarding OS/2. Some industry executives think the investigation will lead the F.T.C. to a range of what they consider to be anti-competitive practices Anti-competitive practices Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market .- Anti-competitive practices :These can include:... by Microsoft. Digital Research said that after it introduced its DR DOS version 5.0 in April 1990, Microsoft immediately announced a version of MS-DOS, with "amazing similarity," which has yet to appear Vaporware Vaporware is a term in the computer industry that describes a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually released nor officially canceled. Vaporware is also a term sometimes used to describe events that are announced or predicted,... . |
| AddStor Inc. announces the first version of SuperStor on-the-fly disk compression Disk compression A disk compression software utility increases the amount of information that can be stored on a hard disk drive of given size. Unlike a file compression utility which compresses only specified files - and which requires the user designate the files to be compressed - a disk compression utility... software. |
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| May | IBM DOS 5 is released. It featured the moving of the DOS kernel and command.com into the high memory area. | |
| June | Microsoft releases MS-DOS 5.0. The full-screen MS-DOS Editor is added to succeed Edlin Edlin Edlin is a line editor included with MS-DOS and later Microsoft operating systems. It provides rudimentary capabilities for editing plain text files through a command-driven interface. Line numbers are specified using numerals, and operations are specified using single-character alphabetic... . It adds undelete and unformat utilities, and task swapping. GW-BASIC GW-BASIC GW-BASIC was a dialect of the programming language BASIC developed by Microsoft from BASICA, originally for Compaq. It is compatible with Microsoft/IBM BASICA, but was disk based and did not need the ROM BASIC. It was bundled with MS-DOS operating systems on IBM PC compatibles by Microsoft... is replaced with QBasic QBasic QBasic is an IDE and interpreter for a variant of the BASIC programming language which is based on QuickBASIC. Code entered into the IDE is compiled to an intermediate form, and this intermediate form is immediately interpreted on demand within the IDE. It can run under nearly all versions of DOS... . |
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| July | Novell announces that it intends to acquire Digital Research. Completion of the merger is expected in October. Both companies intend to augment DR DOS to handle basic Novell NetWare functions. | |
| September | Digital Research releases DR DOS 6.0 with AddStor's SuperStor disk compression. | |
| 1992 | October | Forbes Forbes Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week... ranks Microsoft chairman Bill Gates as America's richest person, topping its Forbes 400 Forbes 400 The Forbes 400 or 400 Richest Americans is a list published by Forbes Magazine magazine of the wealthiest 400 Americans, ranked by net worth. The list is published annually in September, and 2010 marks the 29th issue. The 400 was started by Malcom Forbes in 1982 and treats those in the list like... list. |
| 1993 | January | Microsoft overtakes IBM in market capitalization Market capitalization Market capitalization is a measurement of the value of the ownership interest that shareholders hold in a business enterprise. It is equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding of a publicly traded company... . Each is valued at over $26 billion. |
| March | Microsoft introduces MS-DOS 6.0, including DoubleSpace DoubleSpace DriveSpace is a disk compression utility supplied with MS-DOS starting from version 6.0. The purpose of DriveSpace is to increase the amount of data the user could store on disks, by transparently compressing and decompressing data on-the-fly. It is primarily intended for use with hard drives, but... disk compression. |
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| Novell tried to dampen Microsoft's DOS 6 launch with the announcement that the new Novell DOS 7, based on the integration of DR DOS 6.0 and Novell's NetWare Lite, will include advances such as peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application... networking that Microsoft left out of its latest release. |
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| June | IBM releases PC DOS 6.1, including SuperStor/DS, a special version of AddStor's disk compression utility. IBM and Microsoft begin developing separately. | |
| August | A month after the Federal Trade Commission deadlocks for the second time with a 2-2 vote on whether to take action against Microsoft, the Justice Department officially notified Microsoft that it was proceeding with the case, ending the FTC's three-year investigation. | |
| November | Microsoft replaces MS-DOS 6.0 with MS-DOS 6.2, leapfrogging IBM's PC-DOS 6.1. | |
| December | Novell releases Novell DOS 7. | |
| PTS-DOS PTS-DOS PTS-DOS is a disk operating system, a DOS clone, developed in Russia by PhysTechSoft.- History and versions :PhysTechSoft was formed in 1991 in Moscow, Russia by graduates and members of MIPT, informally known as PhysTech. At the end of 1993, PhysTechSoft released the first commercially available... is introduced as PTS-DOS 6.4 |
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| 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 FreeDOS FreeDOS is an operating system for IBM PC compatible computers. FreeDOS is made up of many different, separate programs that act as "packages" to the overall FreeDOS Project... , is announced. |
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| 1995 | April | IBM releases PC DOS 7.0, replacing SuperStor/DS with Stac Electronics Stac Electronics Stac Electronics, originally incorporated as State of the Art Consulting and later shortened to Stac, Inc, was a technology company founded in 1983... ' Stacker, Version 4.02. This is the first DOS to feature a command-line calculator, REXX REXX REXX is an interpreted programming language that was developed at IBM. It is a structured high-level programming language that was designed to be both easy to learn and easy to read... language support, and a viewer that can open help files other than its own (OS/2 INF style). |
| June | |ECMA adopts the 2nd edition of standard ECMA-107, Volume and File Structure of Disk Cartridges for Information Interchange, standardizing FAT16 support for zip drive Zip drive The Zip drive is a medium-capacity removable disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Originally, Zip disks launched with capacities of 100 MB, but later versions increased this to first 250 MB and then 750 MB.... s and optical disc Optical disc In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc is a flat, usually circular disc which encodes binary data in the form of pits and lands on a special material on one of its flat surfaces... s. |
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| July | PTS-DOS 7.0 is released. | |
| August | Windows 95 Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products... is released. It comes with an MS-DOS -like bootloader reporting DOS version 7.0. |
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| 1996 | July | Novell sells Novell DOS 7 to Caldera, Inc Caldera (company) Caldera was a US-based software company founded in 1994 to develop Linux- and DOS-based operating system products.- Caldera :Caldera, Inc... . |
| 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 | February | Caldera, Inc., releases OpenDOS 7.01 by Caldera UK, Ltd. |
| May | Caldera, Inc., releases M.R.S. open-source kit of OpenDOS 7.01 by Caldera UK, Ltd on 1997-05-05. This is also the first DOS to be released on a CD-ROM. | |
| December | Caldera, Inc., releases DR-OpenDOS 7.02 by Caldera UK, Ltd. | |
| 1998 | January | FreeDOS alpha 0.05 is released. |
| March | Caldera re-releases DR-OpenDOS 7.02 as the closed source DR-DOS 7.02, which is Y2K compliant. | |
| FreeDOS beta 0.1 is released. | ||
| April | IBM releases PC DOS 2000, which is Y2K compliant. | |
| August | Caldera, Inc. creates two new subsidiaries, Caldera Systems, Inc., and Caldera Thin Clients, Inc. | |
| October | FreeDOS beta 0.2 is released. | |
| 1999 | January | Caldera Thin Clients, Inc., releases Caldera DR-DOS 7.03 by Caldera UK, Ltd. |
| February | Caldera, Inc., closes Caldera UK, Ltd. | |
| April | FreeDOS beta 0.3 is released. | |
| July | Caldera Thin Clients, Inc., becomes Lineo Lineo Lineo was a thin client and embedded systems company spun out of Caldera Thin Clients, on 20 July 1999.Caldera Thin Clients, Inc., had been created as a subsidiary of Caldera, Inc., on 2 September 1998... , Inc., who re-releases DR-DOS as Caldera DR-DOS 7.03. |
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| September | PTS-DOS 2000 is released. | |
| November | Versions of OEM DR-DOS branded 7.04/7.05 are released. | |
| 2000 | April | FreeDOS beta 0.4 is released. |
| August | FreeDOS beta 0.5 is released. | |
| September | Microsoft Windows Me Windows Me Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me , is a graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft, and was the last operating system released in the Windows 9x series. Support for Windows Me ended on July 11, 2006.... is released, identifying itself as MS-DOS 8.0. It was the last MS-DOS, as future versions of Windows were based on the NT kernel. |
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| 2001 | March | FreeDOS beta 0.6 is released. |
| September | FreeDOS beta 0.7 is released. | |
| 2002 | April | FreeDOS beta 0.8 is released. |
| July | Udo Kuhnt starts the DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project, based on source of OpenDOS 7.01. | |
| October | DeviceLogics DeviceLogics DeviceLogics is a startup company in Lindon, Utah, United States of America, founded in 2002. Bryan Sparks co-founded DeviceLogics, and acquired DR-DOS from the Canopy Group, a Utah technology venture group... acquires parts of the Caldera DR-DOS 7.03 sources. |
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| 2004 | March | DeviceLogics releases DR-DOS 8.0 |
| September | FreeDOS beta 0.9 is released. | |
| 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. |
| November | GNU/DOS is discontinued. | |
See also
- Comparison of x86 DOS operating systemsComparison of x86 DOS operating systems- Historical and licensing information :Originally MS-DOS was designed to be an operating system that could run on any computer with a 8086-family microprocessor. It competed with other Operating Systems written for such computers, such as CP/M-86 and UCSD Pascal. Each computer would have its own...
- Timeline of Microsoft WindowsTimeline of Microsoft WindowsThis article presents a timeline of events in the history of Microsoft Windows operating systems from 1985 to present.-Desktop/Server:-Mobile:-See also:*History of Microsoft Windows*Comparison of Microsoft Windows versions...
- Timeline of OpenBSD
- Timeline of operating systems
- Comparison of operating systemsComparison of operating systemsThese tables compare general and technical information for a number of widely used and currently available operating systems.Because of the large number and variety of available Linux distributions, they are all grouped under a single entry; see comparison of Linux distributions for a detailed...
- List of operating systems