Although MS-DOS and PC DOS were initially developed in parallel by Microsoft and IBM, the two products diverged after twelve years, in 1993, with recognizable differences in compatibility, syntax, and capabilities.īeginning in 1988 with DR-DOS, several competing products were released for the x86 platform, and MS-DOS went through eight versions, until development ceased in 2000. IBM licensed and re-released it in 1981 as PC DOS 1.0 for use in its PCs. MS-DOS was the main operating system for IBM PC compatibles during the 1980s, from which point it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in various generations of the graphical Microsoft Windows operating system. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few operating systems attempting to be compatible with MS-DOS, are sometimes referred to as 'DOS' (which is also the generic acronym for disk operating system). MS-DOS ( / ˌ ɛ m ˌ ɛ s ˈ d ɒ s/ em-es- DOSS acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. MS-DOS versions 1x-7.0 unsupported as of Decem MS-DOS versions 7.10 and 8.0 unsupported as of July 11, 2006.
