| 1973 |
|
Gary Kildall writes a simple operating system for Intel 8080-based computers which he calls CP/M |
| 1980 |
April |
Tim Paterson begins writing an operating system for use with Seattle Computer Products' 8086-based computer, due to delays by Digital Research in releasing their CP/M-86 operating system. |
| August |
QDOS 0.10 (Quick and Dirty Operating System) is shipped by Seattle Computer Products. |
| October |
Microsoft pays less than US$100,000 for the right to sell SCP's DOS to an unnamed client (IBM). |
| December |
Microsoft buys non-exclusive rights to market QDOS, which has been renamed to 86-DOS. |
| Digital Research releases CP/M-86 |
| 1981 |
July |
Microsoft buys all rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, and the name MS-DOS is adopted. |
| August |
IBM announces the IBM 5150 PC Personal Computer, featuring a 4.77-MHz Intel 8088 CPU, 64 KB (64 KiB) RAM, 40 KB ROM, one 5.25-inch floppy drive, and PC DOS 1.0 |
| 1982 |
May |
Microsoft releases MS-DOS 1.1 |
| 1983 |
March |
MS-DOS 2.0 for PCs is announced. |
| PC DOS 2.0 is released. |
| October |
PC DOS 2.1 is released |
| 1984 |
March |
Microsoft releases MS-DOS 2.1 |
| August |
Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.0. It adds support for 1.2 MB floppy disks and hard disks larger than 10MB. |
| PC DOS 3.0 is released. |
| November |
Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.1 |
| 1985 |
March |
PC DOS 3.1 is released. |
| December |
PC DOS 3.2 is released. |
| 1986 |
|
Digital Research transforms CP/M into DOS Plus. |
| January |
Microsoft releases MS-DOS 3.2. It adds support for 3.5-inch 720 KB floppy disk drives. |
| 1987 |
April |
PC DOS 3.3 is released. |
| August |
Microsoft ships MS-DOS 3.3. |
| November |
Compaq ships Compaq MS-DOS 3.31 with support for hard disk partitions over 32 MB. |
| 1988 |
January |
Digital Research rewrites DOS Plus as DR-DOS. |
| May |
Digital Research releases DR-DOS 3.31, supporting hard disk partitions up to 512 MB. |
| June |
Microsoft releases MS-DOS 4.0, including a graphical/mouse interface. |
| July |
IBM ships IBM DOS 4.0. It adds a shell menu interface and support for hard disk partitions over 32 MB. |
| 1989 |
|
ROM-DOS introduced by Datalight. |
| 1990 |
May |
Digital Research releases DR-DOS 5.0. |
| 1991 |
May |
IBM DOS 5 is released. It featured the moving of command.com into HMA. |
| June |
Microsoft releases MS-DOS 5.0. The full-screen MS-DOS Editor is added to succeed Edlin. It adds undelete and unformat utilities, and task swapping. GW-BASIC is replaced with QBasic. |
| September |
Digital Research releases DR-DOS 6.0 with Super-Stor disk compression. |
| 1993 |
March |
Microsoft introduces MS-DOS 6.0, including DoubleSpace disk compression. |
| April |
Novell acquires Digital Research and renames DR-DOS to Novell DOS |
| June |
IBM releases PC DOS 6.1. It is separate from MS-DOS 6.1, and IBM and Microsoft begin developing separately.[1] |
| December |
Novell releases Novell DOS 7.0. |
|
PTS-DOS is introduced as PTS-DOS 6.4 |
| 1994 |
February |
Microsoft releases MS-DOS 6.21, removing DoubleSpace disk compression. |
| April |
IBM releases PC DOS 6.3. |
| June |
Microsoft releases MS-DOS 6.22, bringing back disk compression under the name DriveSpace. |
| PD-DOS, the open-source project later known as FreeDOS, is announced.[2] |
| 1995 |
April |
IBM releases PC DOS 7.0, with integrated data compression from Stac Electronics (Stacker). |
| July |
PTS-DOS 7.0 is released. |
| August |
Windows 95 is released. It comes with an MS-DOS -like bootloader reporting DOS version 7.0. |
| 1996 |
August |
Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2.0 (OSR2.0) is released. It comes with MS-DOS 7.1, which adds support for the FAT32 file system. |
| 1997 |
January |
Novell sells Novell DOS to Caldera Systems, who release it as open-source OpenDOS 7.01 |
| December |
Caldera releases DR-OpenDOS 7.02. |
| 1998 |
January |
FreeDOS alpha 0.05 is released.[3] |
| March |
Caldera re-releases DR-OpenDOS 7.02 as the closed source DR DOS 7.02. |
| FreeDOS beta 0.1 is released.[3] |
| April |
IBM releases PC DOS 2000, which is Y2K compliant. |
| October |
FreeDOS beta 0.2 is released.[3] |
| December |
DR-DOS is transferred to Caldera Thin Clients. |
| 1999 |
April |
FreeDOS beta 0.3 is released.[3] |
| June |
Caldera Thin Clients becomes Lineo, who releases DR-DOS as Caldera DR-DOS 7.03. |
| September |
PTS-DOS 2000 is released. |
| December |
Lineo releases an OEM-only version of DR-DOS branded 7.04/7.05. |
| 2000 |
April |
FreeDOS beta 0.4 is released.[3] |
| August |
FreeDOS beta 0.5 is released.[3] |
| September |
Microsoft Windows Me is released, identifying itself as DOS 8. It was the last MS-DOS, as future versions of Windows were based on the NT kernel. |
| 2001 |
March |
FreeDOS beta 0.6 is released.[3] |
| September |
FreeDOS beta 0.7 is released.[3] |
| 2002 |
April |
FreeDOS beta 0.8 is released.[3] |
| July |
Udo Kuhnt starts the DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project, based on source of OpenDOS 7.01. |
| October |
Lineo sells DR-DOS to DeviceLogics. |
| 2004 |
March |
DeviceLogics releases DR-DOS 8.0 |
| September |
FreeDOS beta 0.9 is released.[3] |
| November |
DR DOS Inc. splits from DeviceLogics. |
| 2005 |
March |
Udo Kuhnt releases Enhanced DR-DOS 7.01.07 with FAT32 and LBA support. |
| June |
GNU/DOS is released. |
| October |
DR DOS Inc. releases DR-DOS 8.1, and removes it few days later because of alleged GPL violations |
| 2006 |
September |
FreeDOS 1.0 is released.[4] |
| November |
GNU/DOS is discontinued. |
