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Category Archives: PC history
MS-DOS 1.1, 2.0 Source Code Released
In cooperation with the excellent Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Microsoft released the source code to MS-DOS 1.1, MS-DOS 2.0, and Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a. Here’s hoping that this is a sign of things to come and Microsoft … Continue reading
Posted in DOS, Microsoft, PC history
53 Comments
Preserving Floppies
For many years, software was delivered predominantly on floppies. This was true especially in the world of PCs where by definition (almost) every system contained at least one floppy drive and prior to the mid-1990s and mass arrival of CD-ROMs, … Continue reading
Posted in PC history, Virtualization
25 Comments
86-DOS Was an Original
In case it wasn’t sufficiently obvious already: A forensic expert now confirmed that 86-DOS, née QDOS, and (by extension) MS-DOS were not copies of CP/M, either on source or binary level. This comes hardly as a surprise, despite years (nay, … Continue reading
Posted in DOS, Microsoft, PC history
6 Comments
Another witness against WordStar
Previous posts examined the question why IBM implemented the A20 hardware in the PC/AT, causing endless headaches to future PC hardware and software developers. WordStar emerged as a possible culprit, but no one would quite point the finger at it. … Continue reading
Posted in DOS, PC history, WordStar
17 Comments
Redirectors and DOS 3.0
When attempting to determine when exactly the network redirector interface was introduced in DOS, the situation seems to be quite clear. Available literature agrees that DOS 3.1 (released in April 1985 by IBM, possibly earlier by Microsoft OEMs) was when … Continue reading
Posted in DOS, Networking, PC history
14 Comments
From a Feature to a Bug
Sometimes the quest for backwards compatibility has unintended consequences. In some cases, the presumably beneficial backwards compatibility turns into a source of problems. The costs end up far outweighing the benefits, yet the “feature” may be difficult to get rid … Continue reading
Posted in DOS, PC history, Windows
13 Comments
Operating System/2 announced 25 years ago
On April 2nd of 1987 (not April 1st, that wouldn’t do!), IBM and Microsoft jointly announced Operating System/2, the long-awaited protected-mode version of DOS. However, OS/2 was not the only product announced on that day. OS/2 was merely one part … Continue reading
Posted in IBM, Microsoft, OS/2, PC history
27 Comments
Lotus 1-2-3 R3 copy protection
Release 3 of Lotus 1-2-3 (1989) utilized a mild form of copy protection which relied partially on technology but primarily on shaming would-be pirates. 1-2-3 installed from copied disks prominently showed the name of the original owner every time the … Continue reading
Posted in DOS, OS/2, PC history
9 Comments
Retro development with aclock
In the past few days, I embarked upon a project to port Antoni Sawicki’s aclock, a small text-based clock program (aclock stands for analog clock), to 16-bit Windows. While aclock itself has been ported to over 150 platforms, it is a … Continue reading
Posted in Development, PC history, Windows
14 Comments
What’s in a name… OS/2 or DOS?
There have been many rumors that the name “OS/2” was chosen only shortly before the product was announced. It’s not entirely clear what the name would have been otherwise, but quite likely DOS 5; certainly DOS in some form. There … Continue reading
Posted in Documentation, DOS, OS/2, PC history
1 Comment