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Categories: Operating systems | DOS on IBM PC compatibles | Software comparison

X86 DOS Comparison

Contents

1 Comparison of various DOS operating systems for the x86/PC family

1.1 Brief DOS History
1.2 Basic general information about the DOS packages: creator/company, file systems supported, etc.

2 Notes

3 See also

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.

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