COMPARISON OF X86 DOS OPERATING SYSTEMS

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Contents

Key Points of DOS history

Historical and licensing information

Technical specifications

Notes

External link

Key Points of DOS history

★ 1973: Gary Kildall writes a simple operating system which he calls CP/M

★ April 1980: Tim Paterson begins writing an operating system for use with Seattle Computer Products' 8086-based computer, due to delays by Digital Research in releasing their CP/M-86 operating system.

★ August 1980: QDOS 0.10 (Quick and Dirty Operating System) is shipped by Seattle Computer Products.

★ October 1980: Microsoft pays less than US$100,000 for the right to sell SCP's DOS to an unnamed client (IBM).

★ December 1980: Microsoft buys non-exclusive rights to market QDOS, which has been renamed to 86-DOS.

★ December 1980: Digital Research releases CP/M-86

★ July 1981: Microsoft buys all rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, and the name MS-DOS is adopted.

★ August 1981: IBM announces the IBM 5150 PC Personal Computer, featuring a 4.77-MHz Intel 8088 CPU, 64KB RAM, 40KB ROM, one 5.25-inch floppy drive, and PC-DOS 1.0

★ May 1982: Microsoft releases MS-DOS 1.1

★ March 1983: MS-DOS 2.0 for PCs is announced.

★ October 1983: IBM introduces PC-DOS 2.1

★ March 1984: Microsoft releases MS-DOS 2.1

★ August 1984: Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.0. It adds support for 1.2 MB floppy disks, and bigger than 10 MB hard disks.

★ November 1984: Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.1

★ June 1986: Digital Research transforms CP/M into DOS Plus.

★ January 1986: Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.2. It adds support for 3.5-inch 720 KB floppy disk drives.

★ August 1987: Microsoft ships MS-DOS 3.3.

★ November 1987: Compaq ships Compaq MS-DOS 3.31 with support for hard disk partitions over 32 MB.

★ January 1988: Digital Research rewrites DOS Plus as DR-DOS.

★ May 1988: Digital Research releases DR-DOS 3.31, supporting hard disk partitions up to 512 MB.

★ June 1988: Microsoft releases MS-DOS 4.0, including a graphical/mouse interface.

★ July 1988: IBM ships PC-DOS 4.0. It adds a shell menu interface and support for hard disk partitions over 32 MB.

★ 1989: ROM-DOS introduced by Datalight.

★ May 1990: Digital Research releases DR-DOS 5.0.

★ June 1991: Microsoft releases MS-DOS 5.0. A full-screen editor Edit is added to succeed Edlin. It adds undelete and unformat utilities, and task swapping. GW-BASIC is replaced with QBasic.

★ September 1991: Digital Research releases DR-DOS 6.0 with Superstore disk compression.

★ March 1993: Microsoft introduces MS-DOS 6.0, including DoubleSpace disk compression.

★ April 1993: Novell acquires Digital Research and renames DR-DOS to Novell DOS

★ November 1993: Microsoft releases MS-DOS 6.2.

★ December 1993: Novell releases Novell DOS 7.0.

★ February 1994: Microsoft releases MS-DOS 6.21, removing DoubleSpace disk compression.

★ April 1994: IBM releases PC-DOS 6.3.

★ June 1994: Microsoft releases MS-DOS 6.22, bringing back disk compression under the name DriveSpace.

★ June 1994: PD-DOS, the open-source project later known as FreeDOS, is announced.

★ April 1995: IBM releases PC-DOS 7, with integrated data compression from Stac Electronics (Stacker).

★ July 1995: PTS-DOS 7.0 is released.

★ August 1995: Windows 95 is released. It comes with a MS-DOS like bootloader reporting DOS version 7.0.

★ August 1996: 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.

★ January 1997: Novell sells Novell DOS to Caldera Systems, who release it as open-source OpenDOS 7.01

★ December 1997: Caldera releases OpenDOS 7.02 as closed-source software.

★ April 1998: IBM releases PC-DOS 7.01 (aka PC-DOS 2000), which is Y2K compliant.

★ June 1999: Caldera Systems sells OpenDOS to Lineo, who release it as DR-DOS 7.03.

★ September 1999: PTS-DOS 2000 is released.

★ December 1999: Lineo releases an OEM-only version of DR-DOS 7.04.

★ January 2000: Lineo releases DR-DOS 7.05 beta but soon drops development on it.

★ July 2002: Udo Kuhnt starts the DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project, based on the opensource OpenDos 7.01.

★ October 2002: Lineo sells DR-DOS to DeviceLogics.

★ March 2004: DeviceLogics releases DR-DOS 8.0

★ November 2004: FreeDOS beta 0.9 is released.

★ March 2005: Udo Kuhnt released Enhanced DR-DOS 7.01.07 with FAT32 and LBA

★ June 2005: GNU/DOS is released

★ October 2005: DeviceLogics releases DR-DOS 8.1, and removes it few days later because of piracy

★ September 2006: FreeDOS 1.0 is released

Historical and licensing information

Name	Creator	Current code owner/maintainer	License	First public release date
MS-DOS 1.1	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	1982
MS-DOS 2.0	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	1983
MS-DOS 3.0	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	1984
MS-DOS 3.2	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	1986
MS-DOS 3.3	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	1987
MS-DOS 4.0	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	1988
MS-DOS 5.0	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	1991
MS-DOS 6.0	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	1994
MS-DOS 6.22	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	1994
MS-DOS 7.0 (Windows 95A)	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	1995
MS-DOS 7.1x (Windows 95B/OSR2, 95C/OSR2.5, 98, and 98SE)	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	1996
MS-DOS 8.0 (Windows ME)	Microsoft	No longer supported	Proprietary	2000
DOS Plus 1.2	Digital Research	No longer supported	Proprietary	1986
DR-DOS 6.0	Digital Research	No longer supported	Proprietary	1991
DR-DOS 7.03	Lineo	DeviceLogics	Proprietary	1999
DR-DOS 8.0	DeviceLogics	DeviceLogics	Proprietary	2004
FreeDOS 1.0	Bernd Blaau	Bernd Blaau	Open Source	2006
Novell DOS 7.0	Novell	No longer supported	Proprietary	1993
OpenDOS 7.01	Caldera Systems	Udo Kuhnt?	Proprietary	1997
PC-DOS 1.0	IBM	No longer supported	Proprietary	1981
PC-DOS 7.x / 2000	IBM	IBM	Proprietary	1995
PTS-DOS 32	PhysTechSoft	PhysTechSoft	Proprietary	?
PTS-DOS 2000	PhysTechSoft	PhysTechSoft	Proprietary	?
PTS-DOS 2000 PRO	PhysTechSoft	PhysTechSoft	Proprietary	?
ROM-DOS	Datalight	Datalight	Proprietary	?

Technical specifications

Name	Max Hard Drive partition size	File systems supported natively	3.5" Floppy capacities supported natively	5.25" Floppy capacities supported natively	Integrated disk compression utility?	Long File Names supported natively?
MS-DOS 1.1	n/a	FAT12	n/a	360kB
MS-DOS 2.0	10MB	FAT12	n/a	360kB
MS-DOS 3.0	32MB	FAT12	n/a	360kB, 1.2MB
MS-DOS 3.2	32MB	FAT12	720kB	360kB, 1.2MB
MS-DOS 3.3	32MB	FAT12	720kB, 1.44MB	360kB, 1.2MB
MS-DOS 4.0	2GB	FAT12, FAT16	720kB, 1.44MB	360kB, 1.2MB
MS-DOS 5.0	2GB	FAT12, FAT16	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB
MS-DOS 6.0	2GB	FAT12, FAT16	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	Doublespace
MS-DOS 6.22	2GB	FAT12, FAT16	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	DriveSpace
MS-DOS 7.0 (Windows 95A)	2GB	FAT12, FAT16	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	?	No (DOSLFN)
MS-DOS 7.1x (Windows 95B/OSR2, 95C/OSR2.5, 98, and 98SE)	124.55GB (with FAT32)	FAT12, FAT16, FAT32	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	?	No (DOSLFN)
MS-DOS 8.0 (Windows ME)	124.55GB (with FAT32)	FAT12, FAT16, FAT32	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	?	No (DOSLFN)
DOS Plus 1.2	32MB	FAT12, FAT16, CP/M-86	n/a	360kB, 1.2MB, CP/M 320kB
DR-DOS 6.0	2GB	FAT12, FAT16	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	Superstore
DR-DOS 7.03	2GB	FAT12, FAT16	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	Stacker
DR-DOS 8.0 and 8.1	?	FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 (buggy ?)	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	?
FreeDOS 1.0	2TB	FAT12, FAT16, FAT32	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	?	No (DOSLFN)
Novell DOS 7.0	2GB	FAT12, FAT16	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	?
OpenDOS 7.01	2GB	FAT12, FAT16, FAT32	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	?
PC-DOS 1.0	n/a	FAT12	n/a	160kB
PC-DOS 7.x / 2000	2GB	FAT12, FAT16	720kB, 1.44MB, 1.86MB (XDF), 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB, 1.54MB (XDF)	Stacker
PTS-DOS 32	?	FAT12, FAT16, FAT32	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	?
PTS-DOS 2000	?	FAT12, FAT16, FAT32	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	?
PTS-DOS 2000 PRO	?	FAT12, FAT16, FAT32	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	?
ROM-DOS	?	FAT12, FAT16, FAT32	720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB	360kB, 1.2MB	?

Notes

Current understanding has it that if one has a license to run a Windows version, one can also legally install any MS-DOS version up to the level of that Windows' version.

MS-DOS 8.0 has most of the functionality of previous versions, but there are significant losses of usability, like: the loss of FORMAT /S command, that can be substituted by formatting HDD/FDD and then copying IO.SYS from CD-boot A: image, as first ever file onto drive; loss of SYS A: (or SYS B:) command for floppies, that can be substituted too in the same way as FORMAT /S; inability to boot to a command prompt without substitution/modification of IO.SYS (other than CD-boot version) and COMMAND.COM. For purpose of booting from C: drive, an unmodified IO.SYS from simulated A: boot diskette image placed on Windows ME OEM CD from which that CD boots can be used, and COMMAND.COM can be substituted by (now free as in beer) 4DOS (from which NDOS is derived) [1]

As mentioned at Microsoft's KB article 184006, the limit of 124.55GB for FAT32 partition size is a primarily a limitation of Windows 95/98's 16-bit SCANDISK utility. Other DOS versions supporting FAT32 may allow a larger partition size closer to the theoretical ~8TB maximum suggested by FAT32's specifications (maximum of 268,435,445 clusters times 32 Kb cluster size). Windows 2000 and XP can mount and use a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB, but they cannot natively create one, which according to Microsoft is by design.

While Windows ME may be unsupported and end-of-life, a version of its underlying DOS is included with Windows XP. When one formats a floppy in Windows XP and selects "Create an MS-DOS startup disk", the floppy is formatted with a DOS version that identifies itself as "Windows Millennium [Version 4.90.3000]".

External link

★ Detailed timeline of DOS variants