MS-DOS Dead
MS-DOS
KindOperating system
Appeared1981
Ended2000
StatusDead
CreatorTim Paterson / Microsoft & IBM
FamilyDOS
Platformx86
Also known asPC DOS
Sourcewww.pcjs.org ↗
'Quick and Dirty Operating System' bought for $75,000 — CP/M's API on 8086 hardware that became the most-shipped OS of its century.
1960198020002020
Descended from CP/M
Succeeded by Windows (classic)
Ran on IBM PC
Descendants Windows (classic)
Influenced FreeDOS
Predecessors CP/M
Microsoft bought Tim Paterson's 'Quick and Dirty Operating System' (itself a CP/M workalike for the 8086) for $50,000 and licensed it to IBM as PC-DOS — the most consequential $50,000 in software history.\n\nMS-DOS ran the PC industry through the 80s and 90s — COMMAND.COM, CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT — and is still embedded in every Windows NT boot path that needed legacy hardware access. Microsoft's last standalone version shipped in 2000.