Overview
An operating system developed and marketed by Microsoft for 16-bit PCs with Intel 8086 series CPUs and widely used in PCs before Windows became popular.
The version licensed to IBM is called PC DOS. It was originally developed by Microsoft for the IBM PC at the request of IBM.
It was released in 1981 as PC DOS 1.0 for the IBM PC. Microsoft acquired the rights to sell PC DOS to non-IBM customers and released it as MS-DOS 1.25 in 1982.
Subsequently, it was upgraded to MS-DOS 2.0 in 1983, MS-DOS 3.1 in 1984, MS-DOS 3.2 in 1986, MS-DOS 4.0 in 1988, MS-DOS 5.0 in 1991, and MS-DOS 6.0 in April 1993. Microsoft stopped providing licenses to IBM after MS-DOS 5.0 and separated it from IBM's version of PC DOS.
Features
It is a simple OS, focusing on disk management and device driver loading. It uses a character-based user interface (CUI) with keyboard commands. It is functionality very poor compare to UNIX and later Windows products. It has a hierarchical file system, but does not have a graphical shell such as Explorer (version 4 and 5 came with a DOS shell, but it was not widely used in Japan).
Although the OS itself did not have a function to control graphics and sound, the introduction of a device driver system solved compatibility problems to some extent, and made it easier for third parties to sell peripherals. However, when installing device drivers, users had to rewrite the configuration file (CONFIG.SYS), which was extremely complicated and often caused problems. This specification of DOS became a problem later on as PCs became more powerful, and it continued to trouble users until Windows became popular.
MS-DOS in Japan
In Japan, NEC acquired the distribution rights, and the PC-9800 version initially came with the software for free (until 2.25).
MS-DOS 3.2 was not widely released, but NEC's own enhanced version, MS-DOS 3.3, was released for the PC-9800 under the NEC brand. At the same time, NEC introduced the infamous "EPSON Check" (a checker that prevents the program from booting on non-NEC-compatible machines), and EPSON acquired the sales rights and released it for 98-compatible machines. 4.0 was not released by NEC, but only the EPSON version. 5.0 was released by both NEC and EPSON.
In Japan, MS-DOS 6.2/V for PC/AT compatible released in May 1994. It was the last release as a stand-alone package. MS-DOS 6.2 for PC-9800 was the last release through PC manufacturers, and after Windows95, Microsoft released it through its own sales network.
MS-DOS after that
However, MS-DOS continued to be developed. This is because Windows95, Windows98, and WindowsMe were "MS-DOS that automatically and forcibly launched GUI software", and the actual operating system was still MS-DOS itself.
This was the reason for the instability of the Win9x series. In fact, the kernel part of the OS was still 16-bit MS-DOS, which caused a series of memory-related problems (although 98SE was considered to be much more stable).
When a boot disk was created with a floppy disk, it accepted operations at the command prompt, just like MS-DOS.
Unlike other countries, which by this time were almost exclusively PC/AT compatible (and Macintosh), there were still some problems in Japan, such as foreign-made software not starting or running properly on the PC-9800 version of Windows9x. This would have to wait until Windows 2000 to be completely resolved, but at the same time, it would be the last major OS for the PC-9800.
And After That
Windows XP also came with it as a bonus. At the time, it was common practice to boot from a floppy disk to repair Windows when it failed to start.
But Windows 2000 did not have this feature, which caused inconvenience. For this reason, XP came with a tool to create MS-DOS-based boot disks.
The IBM version of PC-DOS was discontinued in 2001.
After Microsoft acquired Virtual PC, a virtual machine system, in 2003, MS-DOS was officially supported to run on Virtual PC, and it was often run on the virtual environment instead of the actual machine. Then, in 2014, long after its existence had been forgotten, the curtain came down completely on its long history with the end of support for Windows XP.
