 They found 86-dos 0.1 and 0.34, holy fucking shit! https://archive.org/details/86-dos-version-0.1-c-serial-11-original-disk MS bought the code of this operating system to create MS-DOS. 13 comments
@fraggle some sources are in the archives that were digitised (i think they will be completely released soon), but, i don't think it's complete, and far newer than 0.10 (86dos 1.00 to 1.14, 1.00 is april 81, 1.10 and 1.14 are similar to dos1 but a bit older and with different compile options and not for ibm pc)  @starfrost Sadly still no PC-DOS 1.8C (the internal version from IBM Toronto Software Lab). @starfrost It was from about 1983ish, I remember using it in parallel with PC-DOS 2.0. It didn't have the modern features of DOS 2.0 like hierarchical directories, but it did have a much more advanced FORMAT.COM utility that could format floppies to 42x10x2 rather than the 40x8x2 DOS 1.1 standard or the 40x9x2 DOS 2.0 standard. Marked "IBM Internal Use Only" (my mother was an IBMer so she could get it for our home PC). The developer was a guy named Jack Botner VE3LNY aka TOROLAB(BOTNER).  @starfrost The only earlier versions would have been QDOS 0.11 (Quick and Dirty OS) which was finished in August 1980. It was renamed to 86-DOS that fall. Interestingly, the license/contract which Seattle Computer Products had with Microsoft allowed them to continue to sell 86-DOS and all future versions of it so long as it was bundled with one of their computers. SCP originally sold a S-100 bus 8086 computer (for which they needed an OS). @starfrost The result was that you could get MS-DOS as a sort of "OEM bundle" from SCP. It consisted of the software and a CPU with no other circuitry :) See, we're selling a computer! @starfrost This is some real history of the PC archeology going on here. You think of how radically different the computer industry would be if SCP hadn't existed and had an OS on hand that already ran on 8086. Like, would MS have ended up as a straight language/tools company like Borland or something and not progressed to operating systems? @starfrost I wonder if the DOSV is something like some version of 86-Dos for a non-IBM semi-compatible like the NEC APC III. I have a client with one. It uses a lot of the same commodity hardware as an IBM PC, but with a different BIOS and some sophisticated video capabilities and the ability to insert/remove expansion cards without opening the case.  |
Gregory's Server
@starfrost curious to see if someone puts this into a git repo with history along with the msdos 1 and 2 sources that already got released. Could be interesting to see what changed