Historical and Licensing Information
Originally MS-DOS was designed to be an operating system that could run on any computer with a 8086-family microprocessor. It competed with other operating systems written for such computers, such as CP/M-86 and UCSD Pascal. Each computer would have its own distinct hardware and its own version of MS-DOS, a situation similar to the one that existed for CP/M, with MS-DOS emulating the same solution as CP/M to adapt for different hardware platforms. So there were many different original equipment manufacturer (OEM) versions of MS-DOS for different hardware. But the greater speed attainable by direct control of hardware was of particular importance, especially when running computer games. So very soon an IBM-compatible architecture became the goal, and before long all 8086-family computers closely emulated IBM hardware, and only a single version of MS-DOS for a fixed hardware platform was all that was needed for the market. This specific version of MS-DOS is the version that is discussed here, as all other versions of MS-DOS died out with their system. One version of such a generic MS-DOS (Z-DOS) is mentioned here, but there were dozens more. All these were for personal computers that used a 8086-family microprocessor, but which were not IBM PC compatible.
Name | Creator | Current code owner-maintainer | License | First public release date |
---|---|---|---|---|
PC DOS 1.0 | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | 12 August 1981 |
PC DOS 1.1 | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | May 1982 |
PC DOS 2.0 | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | March 1983 |
PC DOS 2.1 | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | October 1983 |
PC DOS 3.0 | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | August 1984 |
PC DOS 3.1 | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1985 |
PC DOS 3.2 | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1986 |
PC DOS 3.3 | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1987 |
IBM DOS 4.0 (called PC DOS 4.0) | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1988 |
IBM DOS 5.0 (called PC DOS 5.0) | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1991 |
PC DOS 6.1, PC DOS 6.3 | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1993 |
PC DOS 7.0 (revision 0) | IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1995 |
PC DOS 2000 (PC DOS 7.0 revision 1) |
IBM | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1998 |
PC DOS 7.10 | IBM | IBM | Proprietary | 2003 |
MS-DOS 1.0 | Microsoft | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1982 |
Z-DOS 1.25 | OEM Zenith | No longer supported | Proprietary | May 1982 |
MS-DOS 2.0 (first version with name of "MS-DOS") | Microsoft | No longer supported | Proprietary | March 1983 |
MS-DOS 2.11 | Microsoft | No longer supported | Proprietary | December 1983 |
MS-DOS 3.0 | Microsoft | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1984 |
MS-DOS 3.1 | 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 | 1993 |
MS-DOS 6.20 | Microsoft | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1993 |
MS-DOS 6.21 | 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 7.10 (Windows 95 OSR 2, Windows 95 OSR 2.5, Windows 98, and Windows 98 SE) |
Microsoft | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1996 |
MS-DOS 8.0 (Windows Me) | Microsoft | No longer supported | Proprietary | 2000 |
DOS Plus 1.2 & 1.2a | Digital Research | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1985 |
DOS Plus 2.1 | Digital Research | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1986 |
DR DOS 3.31-3.35 | Digital Research | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1988 |
DR DOS 3.40-3.41 | Digital Research | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1989 |
DR DOS 5.0 | Digital Research | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1990 |
DR DOS 6.0 | Digital Research | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1991 |
Novell DOS 7 | Novell | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1993 |
Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 | Caldera, Inc.; Caldera UK, Ltd. | Not officially supported; A derivative, Enhanced DR-DOS, is maintained by Udo Kuhnt |
Free non-commercial use | 1997 |
Caldera DR-OpenDOS 7.02 | Caldera, Inc.; Caldera UK, Ltd. | No longer supported | Free non-commercial use | 1997 |
Caldera DR-DOS 7.02 | Caldera, Inc.; Caldera UK, Ltd. | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1998 |
Caldera DR-DOS 7.03 | Caldera Thin Clients, Inc.; Caldera UK, Ltd; Lineo, Inc. |
DRDOS, Inc. | Proprietary | 1999 (pre-released in 1998) |
DR-DOS 8.0 | DeviceLogics | No longer supported | Proprietary | 2004 |
DR-DOS 8.1 | DRDOS, Inc. | No longer supported | Proprietary | 2005 |
FreeDOS 1.0 | Jim Hall et al. | The FreeDOS Project | GPL | 2006 |
FreeDOS 1.1 | Jim Hall et al. | The FreeDOS Project | GPL | 2 January 2012 |
PTS-DOS 32 | PhysTechSoft | PhysTechSoft | Proprietary | 1991 |
PTS-DOS 2000 | PhysTechSoft | PhysTechSoft | Proprietary | ? |
PTS-DOS 2000 PRO | PhysTechSoft | PhysTechSoft | Proprietary | ? |
ROM-DOS | Datalight | Datalight | Proprietary | 1989 |
DIP DOS 2.11 | Atari Corporation | No longer supported | Proprietary | 1989 |
Read more about this topic: Comparison Of DOS Operating Systems
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