Unlock the full InfoQ experience by logging in! Stay updated with your favorite authors and topics, engage with content, and download exclusive resources. Vivek Yadav, an engineering manager from ...

A late operating system, a stopgap deal, and the accident that made DOS dominant A blog post by programmer Nemanja Trifunovic, The Late Arrival of 16-bit CP/M, is on the face of it an interesting ...

Microsoft’s MS-DOS (and its IBM-branded counterpart, PC DOS) eventually became software juggernauts, powering the vast majority of PCs throughout the ’80s and serving as the underpinnings of Windows ...

Reader Steve P. sends in this question: “I’m running Windows 2000 and want to upgrade my system BIOS. The instructions say to create a bootable disk with the format a:/s command. However, the /s doesn ...

Microsoft, in conjunction with the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, has released the source code for MS-DOS 1.1, MS-DOS 2.0, and Word for Windows 1.1a. These programs are probably the three ...

The first step is getting DOS 6.22, the most recent version released in 1994, set up with all the drivers and software needed to access the Internet. At the time of its release there were many ...

Microsoft arguably built its business on MS-DOS, and on Tuesday the software giant and the Mountain View, CA-based Computer History Museum took the unprecedented step of publishing the source code for ...

Some things we don't think much about; we just accept them. But have you ever wondered why the hard drive on a Windows system ...

TL;DR: Microsoft will likely never release the original source code of Windows into the wild, but the company is clearly interested in sharing important episodes of its software development history.

In context: Back in 1980, Tim Paterson was creating a new operating system he called QDOS or Quick and Dirty Operating System. The system was later renamed 86-DOS, as it was being designed to run on ...

Back in the early ‘90s, at the television station where I worked, we had a newsroom computer system that the reporters, anchors, and producers used to write and produce the newscasts. The system ...

"The site formerly known as Twitter" is just as legitimate a way to describe Twitter as "The artist formerly known as Prince" was for him. The idea that this qualifies as hate speech is absurd. Even ...