DOS
Description
A fairly rudimentary operating system originally shipped with the IBM PC in 1981, primarily a CP/M clone with some facilities modified for a more "IBM like" behaviour or to conform to IBM naming conventions (config.sys etc.). DOS is also a subsytem of OS/2, running in cohabitation with version 1.x and as a task in version 2 and later, and a collective name for a variety of operating systems that offer compatibility with the PC-DOS system to varying degrees.
Version 1 was so buggy it was rewritten mostly from scratch by IBM and Microsoft, 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 SCP.
Porting issues
Since we have a few given facts such as:
- OS/2 command line was developed with compatibility with DOS in mind
- OS/2 has support for all known DOS codepages
- OS/2 has a DOS subsystem that is a full version of DOS v5 built in
It is somewhat apparent that porting to and especially from DOS is as easy as it gets, if you cannot get the tools or the time to make a 32 bit version for OS/2, you can in a worst case scenario run the original program under the DOS subsystem. Most plain text mode tools port with little or no changes, primarily you will have to keep note of integer and floating point values since a 32 bit system will respond differently than a 16 bit one, and there are minor API differences, not every last DOS call has a 100% equivalent in OS/2.
Known versions
This lists major versions of DOS, minor versions such as 6.21 or 6.22 that are product specific upgrades or minor bug fix releases are not listed
- DOS Plus
- DR-DOS v5
- DR-DOS v8
- DR-DOS v8.1
- Enhanced DR-DOS 7.01.08
- aka EDR-DOS
- FreeDOS 1.1
- MS-DOS v1
- MS-DOS v1.1
- MS-DOS v2
- MS-DOS v3
- MS-DOS v3.3
- MS-DOS v4
- MS-DOS v5
- MS-DOS v6
- MS-DOS v6.2
- MS-DOS v7
- MS-DOS v8 (Current)
- OpenDOS v7.01
- PC-DOS v1
- PC-DOS v5
- PC-DOS v6
- PC-DOS v6.1
- PC-DOS v6.3
- PC-DOS v7
- PC-DOS 2000
- PC-DOS v7.1 (Current)
- PTS-DOS 32
Authors
- Seattle Computer Products (Original Author)
- IBM
- Microsoft
- Digital Research et al.
Links
- http://www.opus.co.tt/dave/indexall.htm - Link site
- http://www.drdosprojects.de - Enhanced DR-DOS & Forums
- http://drdos.com