Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Before Windows, there was MS-DOS—that’s the Microsoft Disk ...

Microsoft’s MS-DOS (and its IBM-branded counterpart, PC DOS) eventually became software juggernauts, powering the vast majority of PCs throughout the ’80s and serving as the underpinnings of Windows ...

What was Microsoft’s best Windows operating system of all time? If you’re like us, you have…opinions. Even if you’re not the type to parse through all of the little details that separated Windows 98 ...

Before Microsoft released MS-DOS, there was 86-DOS. Now version 0.1 is online thanks to a hobbyist’s archival work. By Andrew Paul Published Jan 5, 2024 2:13 PM EST Get the Popular Science daily ...

Microsoft has open-sourced another bit of computing history this week: The company teamed up with IBM to release the source code of 1988’s MS-DOS 4.00, a version better known for its unpopularity, ...

It's no joke. Microsoft and IBM have joined forces to open-source the 1988 operating system MS-DOS 4.0 under the MIT License. Why? Well, why not? That got Hanselman and Wilcox digging into the ...

Reader Steve P. sends in this question: “I’m running Windows 2000 and want to upgrade my system BIOS. The instructions say to create a bootable disk with the format a:/s command. However, the /s doesn ...

Unlock the full InfoQ experience by logging in! Stay updated with your favorite authors and topics, engage with content, and download exclusive resources. Vivek Yadav, an engineering manager from ...

In context: Back in 1980, Tim Paterson was creating a new operating system he called QDOS or Quick and Dirty Operating System. The system was later renamed 86-DOS, as it was being designed to run on ...

TL;DR: Microsoft will likely never release the original source code of Windows into the wild, but the company is clearly interested in sharing important episodes of its software development history.

Right now, as I sit here typing these words, it is February of the year 2017. The words of which I speak? They are entirely about DOS. Yes—that DOS. The one that powered so many computers throughout ...