Concept in Definition ABC

The most veterans in this of microcomputer still remember a time when the standard interface of a computer It was not the mouse and a series of windows on the screen, if not the keyboard and a long list of commands that we had to know and memorize in order to work.

Among the command line operating systems, one stands out above all, due to its enormous popularity, and which marked a whole era before Windows and its interface graph ended up taking over our computers in 1995: MS-DOS.

MS-DOS (acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System) is a DOS-type operating system produced from 1981 to 2000 by Microsoft.

Belongs (or, rather, belonged) to the family DOS operating systems, which includes a series of operating systems with a command interpreter, compatible with each other, and that in addition to MS-DOS also includes DR-DOS or FreeDOS.

Its history dates back to the first IBM PC, when the prestigious manufacturer received the visit of two young entrepreneurs that went by the names of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, and that they had founded a software company called Microsoft.

At that time, and with its first microcomputer about to hit the market, IBM was looking for a operating system with which to equip it.

At IBM they firmly believed that the future of their business lay in the sale of hardware, not software. so they were willing to hand over this part of the business to a third party who would "get rid of it."

The best of the case is that Gates and Ballmer went to the IBM offices to sell smoke, since they had nothing or almost nothing on their hands, so when the order of Big blue (nickname by which IBM was known) became firm, they had to improvise a solution so as not to disappoint their client.

And that solution consisted of buying the operating system that had a guy they knew in Seattle, called 86-DOS, and that cloned certain aspects of functionality and way of working of the operating systems of the large mainframes, but transferring it to the x86 chip with which the first ones worked PCs.

Renamed PC-DOS, it was included as an operating system on the first IBM PC. Gates and Ballmer made a masterstroke by getting a favorable deal from IBM that they could license their operating system to third parties.

It turned out that, for patent and rights issues, the IBM PC hardware was easily clonable - legally, leaving aside technical issues that also made it easy to copy - and all other manufacturers' computers required to function like the original IBM PC was the same system operational.

Microsoft had played the masterpiece of wringing IBM the possibility of selling the software to others, so the clones of the IBM PC that were sold at a fraction of the price of the original machine, they were fully compatible at the software level by using the same system operational.

This, in turn, led to a proliferation of "compatible IBM PCs," which assembled different hardware but required the same operating system, cementing Microsoft's future dominance.

Interestingly, Windows NT (the ancestor of Windows XP and the later saga of Windows versions) also exited Microsoft's relationship with IBM, this time to create what was called to be the successor to the MS-DOS.

But let's not stray from the topic. from the launch From the IBM PC, MS-DOS was evolving, and through its different versions, it incorporated technologies such as support for hard drives and file systems that allowed to store increasing amounts of data, internationalization support, multitasking (from version 4.0 of the system), or an editor of text (in MS-DOS 5.0).

MS-DOS would still be present until Windows Me, after which, Windows XP would already be derived from the aforementioned Windows NT and, therefore, would cut with the inheritance MS-DOS.

In its years of dominance, MS-DOS would also come up with some clones to rival it, such as Digital's DR-DOS Research, which had its moment of fleeting glory, but which never managed to build a firm alternative in the market to MS-DOS.

With the popularization of graphical environments, operating systems whose interface was a command line had their days numbered.

For example, in my case I remember that from a certain time I hardly touched the DOS interface, but entered directly to Windows 3.1. He had even modified the system boot so that, automatically, once DOS loaded, will run Windows.

Currently, FreeDOS keeps alive the way of working of DOS systems, with enough compatibility with MS-DOS (although not complete), being able to see it installed with some low-cost OEM PCs. There are also a multitude of emulators for various platforms that take us back to the microcomputer of the 80s and a good part of the 90s.

Fotolia photos: Milo827 / LanSea

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