What is DOS?

I am actually interested in all operating systems but for this thread I am perfectly happy to limit the discussion to operating systems that run in a similar fashion to MicroSoft DOS (MS-DOS) or attempt to obtain some level of binary compatability with MS-DOS. (I missed FreeDOS from my original list by accident.)

I have changed the section title on OS History to 'MS DOS Clones' to reduce confusion.

Both MS-DOS and DR-DOS can be considered decendants of CP/M
http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2201

MS Windows NT can be considered a decendant of MS-DOS
http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2444

As can OS/2
http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2262

ReactOS attempts to provide Windows NT compatability and hence indirectly could be considered another decendant.
http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2341

As DOS stands for 'Disk Operating System' you might well guess it has been used for a large number of operating systems over the years and I am happy to discuss any errors or omissions from the complete list of DOSes I have so far found :-

DOS/Batch-11 - http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2251

IBM DOS - http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2237

Apple DOS - http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2220

Data General DOS - http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2325

I think I got most of the other DOSes covered there

Thanks for pointing out the ambiguity of the original title.

You have over 1000 posts on the dosbox forum and yet you don't know what dos is. You have missed...

tandy dos,apple dos,atari dos, freedos,4dos,command prompt which i feel is sort of a form of dos.

My understanding was Tandy DOS was MS DOS relicenced or at least that is what the documentation would seam to indicate.
http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/documents.html

I would be very interested in knowing when Tandy DOS diverged from MS-DOS or if it had significant differences ot the OS level.

Atari DOS - When transfering the graphical timeline to the new website I forgot to transfer that. Good spotting. I will do that shortly.

We could have a long debate about 4dos. I consider it an extention rather than and OS. As I understand it does not replace the underlying OS in the same was as for example Windows 3.11 for Workgroups added 32 bit disc IO.

FreeDOS and AppleDOS are covered in my previous post.

Thanks

I don't see a reference to CP/M-86 in your list? (and your CPM entry should be CP/M).

Didn't PC Booters use some form of DOS to boot?

Yep, Looks like Flight Simulator 2.13 uses IBM PC-DOS v1.00.

Need to ask that retrograde guy what versions of DOS all of his booters use. Hopefully he kept a list.

Never put a section live when you are tired.
CP/M section is now corrected with all the info rather than just a place holder page.

CP/M has a great history but CP/M-86 was definately too late. By the time it was delivered MS-DOS/PC-DOS was already at version 2 and established on the x86 platform.

Thanks for spotting

UnderMine wrote:

Atari DOS - When transfering the graphical timeline to the new website I forgot to transfer that. Good spotting. I will do that shortly.

I have done a significant update but realised when doing the update I have no relationship between Atari DOS and Apple DOS in the graphical version which is a major omission. Oh fun I get to reorganise the whole timeline again.

Thanks again for your help

DosFreak wrote:

Didn't PC Booters use some form of DOS to boot?

PC Booters? You mean those self-booting games like Microprose's Sid Meier's Pirates!? (not gold, but the original)

Yup, I can't post a link here but if you type "retrograde booter" into google you should see the site.

Tandy dos and ms dos and pc dos are not the exact same. 4dos counts as an os as it attaches on your real dos. You missed dos/360,pro dos and commodore dos and ams dos.

4dos is a shell replacement, no OS.

abyss wrote:

Tandy dos and ms dos and pc dos are not the exact same.

Was Tandy DOS like Compaq DOS or Toshiba DOS which where MS DOS with device driver tweaks only or was it very different?
I haven't yet done TRS-DOS (Tandy Radio Shack - DOS) which is very different.

abyss wrote:

4dos counts as an os as it attaches on your real dos.

As I said earlier we can have a debate aboute that 😉 As I understand things 4dos is a replacement for the command.com (hence 4os/2 and 4win/NT do similar things for those OSes). I did not think 4dos did any memory management like QEMM286/386 or altered the underlying OS libraries like OS/2 for Windows.

abyss wrote:

You missed dos/360,pro dos and commodore dos and ams dos.

My understanding is OS/360 is the collective name given by IBM marketing to DOS, BOS and TOS (Disc, Basic and Tape). DOS/360 was the shorthand way of referring to OS/360 DOS.
The OS/360 series can be found here :-
http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2238

By Pro DOS are you refering to Apple ProDOS which split into ProDOS and ProDOS 16. This is in the timeline diagram but not on the website so more fixes for me 🙁

As for Commodore DOS - I missed it 😉

Thanks for the help

Commodore DOS? Didn't all the Commodore machines come with a ROM-based BASIC interpreter that had hooks to load programs from an IEEE-something-bus? It was not a Disk-Operating-System as such.

And since the BASIC-interpreter could be re-vectored throgh a jump-table in RAM, the normal way to use the IEEE-bus attached disks was to load a special disk-command interpreter from the IEEE-device, that inserted itself in the jump-table, and only then could you start to use the disks.

If I remember correctly, the command was something like LOAD "",$8 with the $8 being a device-ID on the IEEE-bus.

If that qualifies as a DOS, then Locomotive BASIC on my Amstrad CPC 464 with the optional and external diskette drive for 3" rigid, dual-sided diskettes, also counts as a DOS.

MiniMax wrote:

Commodore DOS? Didn't all the Commodore machines come with a ROM-based BASIC interpreter that had hooks to load programs from an IEEE-something-bus? It was not a Disk-Operating-System as such.

This is a difficult one. Does the BASIC ROM or the CBM-DOS count? They could certainly be considered an embedded system and the basic ROMs certainly do more than some proto-OSes such as DECSYS which is really just a boot loader. For the purposes of my history of computer operating systems I will include them as they certainly influenced things.
That leaves the question of where to put them.

MiniMax wrote:

If that qualifies as a DOS, then Locomotive BASIC on my Amstrad CPC 464 with the optional and external diskette drive for 3" rigid, dual-sided diskettes, also counts as a DOS.

AMSDOS was actually seperate from locamotive basic and provided more of a BIOS level of disc support.
The CPC series could use the disc drive to boot a seperate OS (CP/M+ 3.3 on the CPC 6128 as I remember. I could probably dig out the discs from somewhere in the loft. As an aside ever tried to get a 3" drive working with a PC? never did get it reading the discs properly 🙁 ).

Maybe I need to create a new subsection of the site dedicated to BIOSes and low level embedded systems. I already cover some embedded systems.
http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2372

That would allow me to cover off things like Award, Pheonix etc BIOSes which have evolved over the years to full blown diagnostic systems.

Actually I will do that when I get a chance. I am already covering things like RT-11 which is a full OS but was cut down to be used as the boot sequence controller for some VAX machines.

Thanks for the feedback

DR-DOS also has quite an involved history, having changed hands several times and giving rise to OpenDOS and other derivatives. (I noticed the other day that some are now sometimes called EDR-DOS.) There are some comprehensive DR-DOS fansites that give the details.

Other OEM-licensed versions of MS-DOS were released by Dell, Osborne, and Hyosung.

You forgot tr dos which is on the pentagon which is a modified spectrum for the russian market. I am in canada in the city of sudbury.

Jorpho wrote:

DR-DOS also has quite an involved history, having changed hands several times and giving rise to OpenDOS and other derivatives. (I noticed the other day that some are now sometimes called EDR-DOS.) There are some comprehensive DR-DOS fansites that give the details.

I have done a major update to the DRDOS page filling in a load of versions which are currently missing from the diagram but I have not yet transcribed all the GEM/ViewMax and CDOS/MultiuserDOS infromation from the diagram.

Jorpho wrote:

Other OEM-licensed versions of MS-DOS were released by Dell, Osborne, and Hyosung.

This is turning out to be quite a quest so far I have come accross :-
Toshiba, Compaq, Wyse, AT&T, Wang, Zenith, Televideo, Amstrad, Kaypro, Texas Instruments, DTK and a US Gov version.
Tandy (inc a ROM version)
Adding to this Dell, Osborne and Hyosung gives us some 17 OEM varients plus various language varients.

I have no idea how I am going to do this graphically 😕 but I may well only cover the distinct varients in the graphical version but document the others in a separate section.

The Amstrad one is fun as they bundled DR GEM making it a DR/MS Hybrid release.

Thanks for the help

OK so we missed one DIP DOS which is an MS DOS 2.11 compatible ROM embedded in the Atari Portfolio/dip Pocket PC