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 ...

It was 1989, and I was obsessed with the Mac. Apple's portable, 9-inch-screen computer was an exciting graphical leap, and I wanted to use it for everything. But I wasn't using it. Instead, I, like ...

In the annals of PC history, IBM’s OS/2 represents a road not taken. Developed in the waning days of IBM’s partnership with Microsoft—the same partnership that had given us a decade or so of MS-DOS ...

In the era of floppy disks and early operating systems like CP/M and MS-DOS, A: and B: were reserved for floppy disk drives, ...

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 ...

A decade after releasing the source code for MS-DOS 1.1 and MS-DOS 2.0, Microsoft has open sourced a (slightly) more recent operating system: MS-DOS 4.0. First released in 1988, you can now download ...

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 ...

We’re not 100% sure which phase of Microsoft’s “Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish” gameplan this represents, but just yesterday the Redmond software giant decided to grace us with the source code for MS ...

Some expensive DOS game images. Back in the early days of personal computers, one of the most popular interfaces was MS-DOS, which stands for Microsoft Disk Operating System. Unlike competitors like ...

Microsoft has arguably done more to shape the evolution of the PC than any other company. This week, Microsoft celebrates its 50th anniversary on April 4, 2025. Fifty years is a long time for anyone, ...