24 lines
3.4 KiB
HTML
24 lines
3.4 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>MS-DOS</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../M.html" title="M"/><link rel="previous" href="mouso.html" title="mouso"/><link rel="next" href="mu.html" title="mu"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">MS-DOS</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="mouso.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">M</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="mu.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="MS-DOS"/><dt xmlns="" id="MS-DOS"><b>MS-DOS</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="pronunciation">/M·S·dos/</span>, <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> [MicroSoft Disk Operating System] A <a href="../C/clone.html"><i class="glossterm">clone</i></a> of
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<a href="../C/CP-M.html"><i class="glossterm">CP/M</i></a> for the 8088 crufted together in 6 weeks by
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hacker Tim Paterson at Seattle Computer Products, who called the original
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QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) and is said to have regretted it
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ever since. Microsoft licensed QDOS in order to have something to demo for
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IBM on time, and the rest is history. Numerous features, including vaguely
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Unix-like but rather broken support for subdirectories, I/O redirection,
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and pipelines, were hacked into Microsoft's 2.0 and subsequent versions; as
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a result, there are two or more incompatible versions of many system calls,
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and MS-DOS programmers can never agree on basic things like what character
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to use as an option switch or whether to be case-sensitive. The resulting
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appalling mess is now the highest-unit-volume OS in history. Often known
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simply as DOS, which annoys people familiar with other similarly
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abbreviated operating systems (the name goes back to the mid-1960s, when it
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was attached to IBM's first disk operating system for the 360). The name
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further annoys those who know what the term
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<a href="../O/operating-system.html"><i class="glossterm">operating system</i></a> does (or ought to) connote; DOS is more properly a set
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of relatively simple interrupt services. Some people like to pronounce DOS
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like “<span class="quote">dose</span>”, as in “<span class="quote">I don't work on dose, man!</span>”,
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or to compare it to a dose of brain-damaging drugs (a slogan button in wide
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circulation among hackers exhorts: “<span class="quote">MS-DOS: Just say No!</span>”).
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See <a href="mess-dos.html"><i class="glossterm">mess-dos</i></a>.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="mouso.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../M.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="mu.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">mouso </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> mu</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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