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Thirty years ago this week, Microsoft set in motion a series of events that would make them the largest name in personal computing and its founders some of the richest men on the planet.
On July 27, 1981, Microsoft finalized a deal to purchase what was then called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Seattle Computer Products. QDOS was authored by Tim Paterson, a programmer for SCP that had written the operating system for use on in-house hardware.
Once purchased by Microsoft, the operating system was renamed MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) and was bundled with the IBM PC shortly after.
As the story goes, IBM came to Microsoft in 1981 and requested an operating system for their line of personal computers. IBM's original plan was to use Digital Research's CP/M-86 OS but the two were never able to iron out a deal. Instead, IBM went with Microsoft's 86-DOS and shipped it on IBM computers as PC-DOS. Microsoft paid a total of $75,000 for the eventual goldmine.
Paterson landed a job with Microsoft in May 1981 and eventually worked with the company on and off until 1998. He now runs Paterson Technology, a small company that develops unique hardware and software products near Seattle, Washington.
MS-DOS had a solid run and was updated several times since its debut.Its eventual demise would come in 1994, just a year before Microsoft released Windows 95. Microsoft has released several major revisions since WIndows 95, with current version Windows 7 being the fastest selling operating system in history.
User Comments: 33
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Hip hip hooray!
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The scarier part is that DOS is still sort of used. The repair console on the windows xp install disk is based off of MS-DOS.
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Lokalaskurar said:
What works well, works well. What worked well, was working en-lieu for its expectations. Hip hip hooray for DOS!
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Wish I would have bought some MS stock back then. I had 10k sitting in the bank and was going to do it, but the wife gave me second thoughts and i never pulled the trigger.....she is ex-wife now !
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I miss DOS in a way. When using it, at least you felt you were in total command of what was going on with your computer. Now with Windows, I don't even know what half of the 100 processes are running in the background.
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i've got an unopened package of DOS.. 6.1 I think..
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I totally feel for you. I really miss DOS for the simple fact of knowing exactly every single thing running in my system. The only thing I don't miss is the 640k base memory. I would gladly still use DOS if I could get my job done to be perfectly honest. I surely don't mind typing instead of clicking.
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I don't miss the non-reentrancy either.
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I saw a DOS screen at a local McDonald's drive through the other night... They still run it!
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Lot's of shops and firms still use MS-DOS look-a-like programs because they're easy and simple to use.
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I remember when I installed for first time the windows 95 (in which you didn't had to type “win” for start the windows shell like in 3.11) I was search inside the autoexec.bat for delete the “win” command. And I was very upset because I didn't found it
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i started my computer career learning dos and still use it for customers who are
running a dos program called GarageKeeper for service stations. windows 7 is
no problem and xp was even better. i love it and keep all the tools including
my microsoft complier. i think dos or some form of it will always be with us
untill the big softftware houses (microsoft and the rest) produce a whole new
OS.
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treetops said:
something like that, i first remember pounding on my granpas key board as a kid just to see it type out letters, i thought it was pretty cool at 5 years old that I could press a button on keyboard and it would appear on a screen
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CP/M operating system and founded Digital Research, Inc. WAS GARY KiLDALL
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So even MS's original OS was created by someone else. I find that majorly ironic. Innovation has never been strong with them.
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+1 Loka
But hey in those days I spent lots of time troubleshooting stuff (which we now take for granted), but that was nothing out of ordinary as even the Macs of that era could be a major pita.
@Last Guest
For example, Not everything in the original Mac OS was 'innovated' by apple - by the way, most of its ideas came about from Xerox Alto project (minus the final UI and few other things), for which Jobs gave them stock options of the company. A little reference from history just in case.
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Archean, did you even see the word "Apple" in my post ? Or did I come on as a happy Apple fanboy who bashes MS first chance he gets ? I don't own a single Apple product and don't intend to buy any soon, cause they're just overpriced.
You're probably employed by MS then
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Sorry I didn't intend it to sound that way, accordingly corrections has been made.
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stewi0001 said:
Guest said:So even MS's original OS was created by someone else. I find that majorly ironic. Innovation has never been strong with them.
yea and they basically stole it from the guy
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stewi0001 said:Guest said:
So even MS's original OS was created by someone else. I find that majorly ironic. Innovation has never been strong with them.
yea and they basically stole it from the guy
Everybody steals, look at the patent lawsuits these days and that has been since forever, but that`s not the point. Gates refined it and marketed it otherwise the guy who made this would have probably still use the code today in his basement for some obscure research project.
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That feeling of your DOS screen maximising on my good old 14" CRT when I played Wolfenstein 3D... awesome!
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So hard to remember that DOS syntax now days!
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I miss DOS in a way. When using it, at least you felt you were in total command of what was going on with your computer. Now with Windows, I don't even know what half of the 100 processes are running in the background.Ya know Tom, if you have a hundred processes going, that computer is running you, not the other way around! (Just Kidding).
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Fancy coming across this. I still keep deltree and format in the root directory from an old set of 6.22 dics. Very helpful when windows says you are not authorised to delete files when you are the admin. Windows still has its little faults.
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Well there is this security tab through which one can assign rights/take ownership, just a side note really.
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