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X86 DOS Comparison
Comparison of various DOS operating systems for the x86/PC family
Brief 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 86-DOS.
- December 1980: Digital Research releases CP/M-86
- July 1981: Microsoft buys all rights to QDOS 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
- 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 transforms CP/M into 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. Edlin is replaced with a full-screen editor. 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
- 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.
- 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 7.1 (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.
Basic general information about the DOS packages: creator/company, file systems supported, etc.
| Name
| Creator
| Current code owner/maintainer
| License
| First public release date
| Max Hard Drive partition size
| File systems supported natively
| 3.5" Floppy capacities supported natively
| 5.25" Floppy capacities supported natively
| Long File Names supported natively?
|
| MS-DOS 1.1
| Microsoft
| No longer supported
| Proprietary
| 1982
| n/a
| FAT12
| n/a
| 360kB
| No
|
| MS-DOS 3.0
| Microsoft
| No longer supported
| Proprietary1
| 1984
| 32MB
| FAT12
| n/a
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| No
|
| MS-DOS 3.2
| Microsoft
| No longer supported
| Proprietary1
| 1986
| 32MB
| FAT12
| 720kB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| No
|
| MS-DOS 3.3
| Microsoft
| No longer supported
| Proprietary1
| 1987
| 32MB
| FAT12
| 720kB, 1.44MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| No
|
| MS-DOS 4.0
| Microsoft
| No longer supported
| Proprietary1
| 1988
| 2GB
| FAT12, FAT16
| 720kB, 1.44MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| No
|
| MS-DOS 6.22
| Microsoft
| No longer supported
| Proprietary1
| 1994
| 2GB
| FAT12, FAT16
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| No
|
| MS-DOS 7.0 (Windows 95A)
| Microsoft
| No longer supported
| Proprietary1
| 1995
| 2GB
| FAT12, FAT16
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| Yes
|
| MS-DOS 7.1x (Windows 95B/OSR2, 95C/OSR2.5, 98, and 98SE)
| Microsoft
| No longer supported
| Proprietary1
| 1996
| 124.55GB (with FAT32)3
| FAT12, FAT16, FAT32
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| Yes
|
| MS-DOS 8.0 (Windows ME)2
| Microsoft
| No longer supported
| Proprietary1
| 2000
| 124.55GB (with FAT32)3
| FAT12, FAT16, FAT32
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| Yes
|
| DR-DOS 6.0
| Digital Research
| No longer supported
| Proprietary
| 1991
| 2GB
| FAT12, FAT16
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| No
|
| DR-DOS 7.03
| Lineo
| DeviceLogics
| Proprietary
| 1999
| 2GB
| FAT12, FAT16
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| No
|
| DR-DOS 8.0
| DeviceLogics
| DeviceLogics
| Proprietary
| 2004
| ?
| FAT12, FAT16, FAT32
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| No
|
| FreeDOS beta 0.9
| Bernd Blaau
| Bernd Blaau
| Open Source
| ?
| ?
| FAT12, FAT16, FAT32
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| Yes
|
| Novell DOS 7.0
| Novell
| No longer supported
| Proprietary
| 1993
| 2GB
| FAT12, FAT16
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| No
|
| OpenDOS 7.01
| Caldera Systems
| Udo Kuhnt ?
| Open Source
| 1997
| 2GB
| FAT12, FAT16, FAT32
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| No
|
| PC-DOS 1.0
| IBM
| No longer supported
| Proprietary
| 1981
| n/a
| FAT12
| n/a
| 360kB
| No
|
| PC-DOS 7.x / 2000
| IBM
| IBM
| Proprietary
| 1995
| 2GB
| FAT12, FAT16
| 720kB, 1.44MB,
1.86MB (XDF), 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB,
1.54MB (XDF)
| No
|
| PTS-DOS 32
| PhysTechSoft
| PhysTechSoft
| Proprietary
| ?
| ?
| FAT12, FAT16, FAT32
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| Yes
|
| PTS-DOS 2000
| PhysTechSoft
| PhysTechSoft
| Proprietary
| ?
| ?
| FAT12, FAT16, FAT32
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| Yes
|
| PTS-DOS 2000 PRO
| PhysTechSoft
| PhysTechSoft
| Proprietary
| ?
| ?
| FAT12, FAT16, FAT32
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| Yes
|
| ROM-DOS
| Datalight
| Datalight
| Proprietary
| ?
| ?
| FAT12, FAT16, FAT32
| 720kB, 1.44MB, 2.88MB
| 360kB, 1.2MB
| Yes
|
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.
Note 2: 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; loss of SYS A: (or SYS B:) command for floppies; inability to boot to a command prompt without substitution/modification of IO.SYS and COMMAND.COM.
Note 3: The limit of 124.55GB for FAT32 partition size is a limitation of Microsoft's SCANDISK utility. Microsoft's KB article 184006. Other DOS versions supporting FAT32 may allow a larger partition size closer to the theoretical ~2TB maximum suggested by FAT32's specifications.
See also
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