MS-DOS Is 30 Years Old Today

An anonymous reader writes "Thirty years ago, on July 27 1981, Microsoft bought the rights for QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Seattle Computer Products (SCP) for $25,000. QDOS, otherwise known as 86-DOS, was designed by SCP to run on the Intel 8086 processor, and was originally thrown together in just two months for a 0.1 release in 1980 (thus the name). Meanwhile, IBM had planned on powering its first Personal Computer with CP/M-86, which had been the standard OS for Intel 8086 and 8080 architectures at the time, but a deal could not be struck with CP/M's developer, Digital Research. IBM then approached Microsoft, which already had a few of years of experience under its belt with M-DOS, BASIC, and other important tools — and as you can probably tell from the landscape of the computer world today, the IBM/Microsoft partnership worked out rather well indeed."

Re:Cue a gazillion posts...

[operagost]

They're so old, their Slashdot IDs are negative.

Microsoft Dirty Operating System

[Kell Bengal]

The MS-DOS acronym It always made me wonder. If QDOS was Quick and Dirty Operating System, then surely MS-DOS is Microsoft Dirty Operating System. It's a weird way to brand your product.

Re:Cue a gazillion posts...

[Samalie]

C:\OFFLAWN.COM

Re:Still in use

[Darinbob]

I teach a course in using buggy whips and I have had several managers tell me that these have come in useful in their jobs.

Re:Still in use

[camperdave]

For a while there, I kept my .bat files in c:\belfry.