Microsoft Disk Operating System, Lab Report Example

In 1980 International business Machines approached Bill Gates for discussing Microsoft products. Bill gates shared his thoughts regarding the functionality of the operating system. IBM decided to give a contract to Microsoft to write an operating system to replace the current system which was CP /M (Controlled program for Microprocessors). ‘MSDOS’ was based on QDOS (Quick and dirty operating system) written by Tim Patterson of Seattle computers Products (“Qdos.” 1) . Microsoft got acquisition for the rights of ‘QDOS’ secretly. Bill gates requested IBM for the licensing of the new operating system which was ‘MSDOS’. It was the most extensively used operating system in the 1980’s providing the PC compatibility platform (“MicroSoft Disk Operating System.” 310-310). It was programmed to execute on an IBM machine consisting of Intel 8088 16 bit bus chip, 64 Kilobytes memory and a clock rate of 4.77 Mega Hertz. There were total 6 versions of ‘MSDOS’.  Microsoft disk operating system was released in August 1981. Each version adding functionality and features as compared to the previous versions. ‘MS DOS’ was a small operating system making it faster to execute providing express control of the processes to the user. Customize programs were easy to program on ‘MSDOS’ but graphics are not supported. It does also not support multitasking as compared to Linux. Only one user can login at a time. One more significant disadvantage of ‘MSDOS’ is it does not support networking.

Works Cited

“MicroSoft Disk Operating System.” Network Dictionary (2007): 310-. Print.

“Qdos.” Computer Desktop Encyclopedia (2010): 1. Print.