MS-DOS

MS-DOS, standing for Microsoft Disk Operating System, was the most popular DOS

How was it made?

By 1981, IBM has found out that PCs can be not just gigantic machines taking up entire rooms made for huge corporations, but also small "micro computers" made for home users. IBM decided to develop one, that was called IBM Personal Computer, IBM PC or IBM 5150. The PC was pretty weak: 4,77 Megahertz CPU (Which is Intel 8088. For comparison: My laptop has a processor with 2600 Megahertz or 2,6 Gigahertz.), 16 kylobytes of RAM (Can be extended to 256 Kylobytes yet thats still just nothing. My laptop has 8 gygabytes of RAM right now.) IBM PC didnt even have a hard disk, instead there was Two slots for Floppy Disks (its not the 1,44 megabyte ones you know. It was 160 kylobytes floppies) where into one slot you would put a floppy disk with operating system, and into another you would put floppy disk with a program you need.

But this is IBM PC, what about MS-DOS? Well, you cant just create a PC and thats it. It also needs an OS. IBM litteraly stands for International Bussiness Machines. Weird name for a company working on a personal computer. But IBM knew a little company called Microsoft, by its name you would understand its working on software for those. IBM knew them because they made Microsoft Basic. IBM decided to let Microsoft develop Operating System for its PC. And Microsoft stole another DOS (86-DOS that you can download at Other DOS page), remade it a bit and called it MS-DOS. But it was buggy. Microsoft tried to fix the bugs, but IBM decided to fix them itself as well. IBM in the end rebranded it as PC DOS (you can download it from PC DOS page), but MS-DOS stayed as well. IBM decided to let Microsoft have its DOS and sell and spread it however they like to. MS-DOS gave Microsoft Success, but by 1995, it became a piece of legacy that Microsoft wanted to get rid of already.

Fun fact! In Russia, where i live in, there was actual protests against Windows supporting DOS in 1990s.

More and more versions of MS-DOS will be added here over time!

• 💾 MS-DOS 1.25 (June 1982)- 1.25 was a version of 1.24 made for PCs not made by IBM, like PC-DOS 1.1. MS-DOS 1.25 included support of 5,25 inch 320K floppies, which is the one its distributed on (The file is 320K size and is .img)
• 💾 MS-DOS 2.0 (March 1983)- Created because of release of IBM PC XT or 5160. Added support of hard drives up to 15 megabytes (yes, it used to only support floppies before). Added support of 360 kylobyte floppies (which is the one its distributed on here). Added support of catalogs (before 2.00, all files had to be in the root). New commands: FC, BACKUP, RESTORE, TREE, CD, MD, RD, PATH. Added the following commands for batch files: GOTO, IF, ECHO. Added support of CGA
• 💾💾💾 MS-DOS 2.10 (November 1983)- Was made because IBM PCjr was made. Its based off 2.00 with modifications for PCjr. Archive contains 3 5,25 inch 360K diskettes on which OS is.
• 💾💾 MS-DOS 2.11 English (March 1984)- Version for PCs that wasnt made by IBM. Based on 2.10 with modifications from 2.01. New command COUNTRY (that was added in 2.01 but theres no 2.01 here so i put this here). It was translated to 10 languages, unfortunately i only have English and German.
• 💾 German MS-DOS 2.11
• 💾💾 MS-DOS 3.0 (August 1984)- Created due to creation of IBM PC/AT that had a 20 MB hard disk. File System was upgraded from FAT12 to FAT16 and now Hard Disks up to 32 megabytes are supported. Added support of 5,25 inch 1,2 MB floppy disks. New commands: ATTRIB, LABEL, SELECT, KEYB, SHARE, GRAFTABL, COUNTRY. Added support of a virtual disk in RAM.
• 💾💾 MS-DOS 3.1 (November 1984)- Added support of Microsoft's networks. New commands: JOIN, SUBST
• 💾💾 Experimental Multitasking MS-DOS 4.00 (1985)- Was an experimental version, in the end it didnt become public or even RTM. It had multitasking in real mode, made for 8086 CPUs. It had movable and unloadable segments of memory for code and movable segments of data (Windows Memory Manager was a version of MS-DOS 4 Memory Manager). Also had dynamical switching between screens.
• 💾💾 MS-DOS 3.2 (January 1986)- Created due to creation of IBM PC Convertible. Added support of 3,5 inch 720K floppies. New commands: REPLACE and XCOPY. FORMAT will now not let you format a disk by accident. Added DRIVER.SYS for creating dummy drives. Added RAMDRIVE.SYS for creating a virtual disk in RAM.
• 💾💾 MS-DOS 3.3 (August 1987)- Created due to creation of IBM PS/2. Supports splitting of hard disks of any size into logical drives up to 32 megabytes. There can only be 2 partitions on 1 logical disk - MS-DOS and EXT-DOS and not more than 2 of hard disks themselves. EXT-DOS can have up to 23 subsections (from D to Z). Without any external programs hard disk itself cant be larger than 32 megabytes. With interruption of INT 13H, that was added to BIOS only in 1994, maximum size of HDD can be 24x32=768 Megabytes. Added support of 3,5 inch HD (high density) 1,44 megabyte floppies. Added support of code pages (national kit of symbols and sorting tables.). However, MS DOS 3.3 has some errors. For example, FORMAT can reject a working disk. New commands: APPEND, CALL, CHCP, FASTOPEN, NLSFUNC.
• 💾 MS-DOS 3.31 (November 1987)- MS-DOS 3.3 that was modified by Compaq. It added support of 32-bit logical sector of numbers and upgraded to FAT16B (now hard disks up to 512 megabytes are supported)
• 💾 MS-DOS 4.01 (December 1988)- (Note: Since MS-DOS 4.0 is not included, its changelog will be in MS-DOS 4.01 one). Now supports logical disks higher than 32 megabytes. Maximum size of hard disk cant be more than 528 megabytes without third-party software. (In old BIOS versions it would even be 504 megabytes). INT 13H interruption allows to make it up to 7,8 gygabytes (Due to a bug, it was impossible to make hard disks higher than that before MS DOS 7.1). Allows to use first 64 kb of HMA for placement of resident programs. Extended support of national languages. New command: MEM. Full support of EGA and VGA. 4.00 was known for its high amount of bugs, however 4.01 fixed them. Added MS-DOS Shell
• 💾💾💾💾💾💾 Soviet MS-DOS 4.01 (April 5, 1990) -- First version of MS-DOS translated to russian.
• 💾 Work disk for Soviet MS-DOS 4.01 (April 5, 1990)--Setup will ask for it calling it "work disk".
• 💾 MS-DOS 5.0 (June 1991)- -Added support of up to 8 hard disks. You can create up to 4 partitions on disk, so you can install 4 OS on 1 HDD. Added support of 3,5 inch 2,88 megabyte EHD floppies. Added new memory manager. New commands: DELOLDOS, DOSKEY, EXPAND, LOADHIGH, MIRROR, SETVER, UNDELETE, UNFORMAT. Added a fullscreen text editor "EDIT". Added fullscreen coding language QBASIC. Added interactive reference HELP. Parts of new utilities (MIRROR, UNDELETE and UNFORMAT) was actually licensed from Central Point Software. MS-DOS 5.0 was also sold on 6 360K floppies or 2 1200K floppies. MS-DOS 5.0 was the last MS-DOS version that was fully identical to PC-DOS 5.00
• 💾💾💾 MS-DOS 6.0 (March 1993)- - New commands: DELTREE, MOVE, CHOICE . Removed commands RECOVER, ASSIGN, GRAFTABL, JOIN, MIRROR, COMP, BACKUP, EXE2BIN and PRINTER.SYS driver. Improved commands DIR, MEM, UNDELETE, FORMAT, SYS. You can now undo some commands in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT overall. Added CD-ROM support. New utility to manage energy consumption POWER. Added Microsoft MemMaker, Microsoft DoubleSpace, Microsoft Defragmenter (that was actually licensed from Symantec), Microsoft Backup, Microsoft Anti-Virus (licensed from Central Point Software), information utility Microsoft Diagnostics, Interlink, Microsoft Undelete
• 💾💾💾💾 MS-DOS 6.2 (November 1993)- - Improved commands: FORMAT, DISKCOPY, COMMAND. SMARTDRV now can cache CD-ROMs. HIMEM.SYS can test extended memory now. Microsoft Doublespace was modernized. Added utility to test Hard Disk ScanDisk (yes, the one that doesnt let you install Windows 9x without testing the disk). No more MS-DOS Shell
• 💾💾💾💾 MS-DOS 6.21 (February 1994)- - Microsoft DoubleSpace was removed in here due to a legal injunction. DriveSpace was not yet ready.
• 💾💾💾 MS-DOS 6.22 (June 1994)- -Last standalone version of DOS, also probably the most famous one. Added DriveSpace that uses format of data storage incompatible with DoubleSpace. If neeeded, file can also be turned into another format. Added date and time representations for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
• 💿 MS-DOS 7.10 (August 1996)- -As a part of Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98. Added support of LFN (long file names). All code from MSDOS.sys moved to IO.sys, while MSDOS.SYS is now a text file with settings. New commands at config.sys: ACCDATE, BUFFERSHIGH, FCBSHIGH, FILESHIGH, LASTDRIVEHIGH, STACKSHIGH. Now comes with CD-ROM driver pre-installed: OAKCDROM.SYS. Now has FAT32 instead of FAT16, so hard disks up to 137 gygabytes can be made. fdisk can only make logical disks not higher than 63,5 gb, but you can make disks with more memory using SeaTools. Maximum disk size is 2 terrabytes. To install, you will need a bootable medium, as PCs back then couldnt boot from CD-ROMs.

💾 CD-ROM Driver for MS-DOS 6.22

Download link. You will need it to install Windows 3.1, as MS-DOS 6.22 doesnt support CD-ROMs by itself.