MS-DOS

MicroSoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS)

History

Version 1 was so buggy it was rewritten mostly from scratch by IBM and Microsoft for version 1.1 (and the later but identical MS-DOS 1.25), which is the reason all subsequent DOS releases from Microsoft contain an IBM copyright notice. The manual for DOS was also an internal IBM product and not written by either Microsoft or Seattle Computer Products (SCP).

Version 2 bought with it a host of improvements, some of them like the new file handling mechanism inspired by features from Microsoft Xenix and while most software originally written for 1.x did work with 2 and later releases, they did cause a few programs problems.

Articles

• Vagif Ashumov: Some features of MS-DOS 8.0

Memory management

• VCPI Standard
• eXtended Memory Specification v3.0
• eXtended Memory Specification v2.0

Publications

• Van Wolverton: Running MS-DOS - Microsoft Press 1985
• Van Wolverton: Supercharging MS-DOS - Microsoft Press 1986
• Kris A. Jamsa: DOS: The Pocket Reference - Osborne/McGraw-Hill 1988, ISBN 0-07-881376-X
• Kris A. Jamsa: Using MS-DOS – Osborne/McGraw-Hill 1988, ISBN 0-07-881442-1
• Kris A. Jamsa: DOS Programming: The Complete Reference - Osborne/McGraw-Hill 1992, ISBN 0-07-881782-X
• Kris A. Jamsa: DOS: The Complete Reference 4th Revised edition - Osborne/McGraw-Hill 1993, ISBN 0-07-881904-0

Links

• The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0, for reference purposes