IBM PC DOS

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PC DOS (IBM DOS)

A typical command line in PC DOS.
Company / developer	IBM
OS family	DOS
Working state	Historic
Source model	Closed source
Latest stable release	PC DOS 2000 / 1998
Default user interface	Command line interface
License	Proprietary

IBM PC DOS is a freeware DOS system for the IBM Personal Computer and compatibles, manufactured and sold by IBM from the 1980s to the 2000s.

Naming

Official product name of "PC DOS" are as below:

• IBM Personal Computer Disk Operation System 1.0 (short-name:PC DOS 1.0)
• IBM Personal Computer Disk Operation System 2.0 (short-name:PC DOS 2.0)
• IBM Personal Computer Disk Operation System 3.0 (short-name:PC DOS 3.0)
• IBM DOS 4.0 (IBM changed product name)
• IBM DOS 5.0
• IBM DOS 5.02 (First retail upgrade)
• IBM DOS 6.00 (DOS 6.0 was released in 5.02 style packaging).
• IBM PC DOS 6.1 (IBM changed product name again. "PC DOS" is not short-name.)
• IBM PC DOS 6.3
• IBM PC DOS 7
• IBM PC DOS 2000 (IBM's last version)

History

The original 1981 arrangement between IBM and Microsoft was that Microsoft would provide the base product and that both firms would work on developing different parts of it into a more powerful and robust system, and then share the resultant code. PC DOS and MS-DOS were to be marketed separately: IBM selling to itself for the IBM PC, and Microsoft selling to the open market. However, at no time did IBM acquire the ownership of the source code of the operating system for its own PCs.

After Microsoft

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PC DOS remained a rebranded version of MS-DOS until 1993. IBM and Microsoft parted ways—MS-DOS 6 was released in March, and PC DOS 6.1 (separately developed) followed in June. QBasic was dropped and the MS-DOS Editor was replaced with E. PC DOS 6.3 followed in December.

PC DOS 7 was released in November 1994. The REXX programming language was added, as well as support for a new floppy disk format, XDF, which extended a standard 1.44 MB floppy disk to 1.86 MB.

The most recent release was PC DOS 2000, which found its niche in the embedded software market and elsewhere. It was based on PC DOS 7, and corrected issues with the Year 2000 problem. Branding of PC DOS 2000 included the phrase "includes PC DOS 7".

ThinkPad products currently have a copy of the latest version of PC DOS in their Rescue and Recovery partition.^{[citation needed]}

For a short time in April 2008, IBM offered the license for PC DOS for just under $10,000, in the operating systems list for custom orders.^{[1][2][unreliable source?]}

Versions

See Timeline of x86 DOS operating systems for version information and a timeline.

See also

• MS-DOS
• Comparison of x86 DOS operating systems
• List of DOS commands
• Rexx
• E (PC-DOS)

References

Further reading

• IBM Corporation and Microsoft, Inc. Dos 3.30: User's Guide. IBM Corporation, 1987. Part number 80X0933.
• IBM Corporation and Microsoft, Inc. Dos 3.30: Reference (Abridged). IBM Corporation, 1987. Part number 94X9575.
• IBM Corporation. Getting Started with Disk Operating System Version 4.00. IBM Corporation, 1988. Part number 15F1370.
• IBM Corporation. Using Disk Operating System Version 4.00. IBM Corporation, 1988. Part number 15F1371.
• IBM Corporation. IBM Disk Operating System Version 5.0. User Guide and Reference. IBM Corporation, 1991. Part number 07G4584.
• IBM Corporation. PC DOS 7 User's Guide. IBM, 1995.
• IBM Corporation. IBM PC DOS and Microsoft Windows User's Guide. Indianapolis, IN: Que Corporation, 1995. ISBN 0-7897-0276-2.

External links

• ftp://ftp.boulder.ibm.com/software/dos/ PC DOS 2000 (Chinese Edition), freely available for download from IBM
• IBM ServerGuide Scripting toolkit - its DOS Edition contains PC DOS 7.1 (June 2005) with LBA and FAT32 support