DOS

Also known as Disk Operating System, PC-compatible DOS

thumb|The boot screen and command-line interface of MS-DOS 6, with an example of its directory structure thumb|The boot screen and command-line interface of FreeDOS, showing version information and an example of its directory structure

AI overview

DOS (Disk Operating System) is an older computer operating system that used a text-based command line instead of graphical windows, and it was the standard system for personal computers in the 1980s and early 1990s. It matters historically because it was foundational to personal computing, and versions like MS-DOS became widely used before graphical systems like Windows took over.

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Wikidata facts

Image: IBM PC DOS 1.0 screenshot.jpg

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Commons category: DOS
Stack Exchange tag: stackoverflow.com/tags/dos
inception: 1981-00-00

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~32 min read

Article

21 sections

Contents

History
Origins
Decline
Continued use
Embedded systems
Emulation
Design
Boot sequence
File system
Drive naming scheme
Reserved device names
Memory management
DOS under OS/2 and Windows
User interface
Terminate and stay resident
Software
Development tools
See also
References
Further reading
External links

DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. It primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later, compatible systems from other manufacturers are DR-DOS (1988), ROM-DOS (1989), PTS-DOS (1993), and FreeDOS (1994). MS-DOS dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995.