DOS/V was a Japanese computing initiative starting in 1990 to allow personal computers to handle double-byte Japanese text via software alone. It was developed by IBM for its PS/55 machines (a localized version of the PS/2). Kanji fonts and other locale information were stored on the hard disk rather than on special chips as in the preceding AX architecture. As with AX, its great value for the Japanese computing industry was in allowing compatibility with foreign software. This had not been possible under NEC's proprietary PC-98 system, which was the market leader before DOS/V emerged. DOS/V stands for Disk Operating System/VGA (not for "version five"). DOS/V came out at approximately the same time as DOS 5.
The promotion of DOS/V was done by IBM and its consortium called PC Open Architecture Developers' Group, also called OADG.
Famous quotes containing the word dos:
“There’s something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting out at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)