When it debuted in 1981, MS-DOS probably didn’t seem like a promising platform for gaming. But from roughly 1981 to 1997, publishers released thousands of games in every genre for the PC and its ...

Update, July 5, 2021: It's the July 4 holiday weekend in the US, which means Ars staff gets a well-deserved holiday to catch up on this summer's Steam sale (or maybe just to rest). As such, we're ...

A decades-old quarrel over a defining event in computer history -- the creation of the program that propelled Microsoft to dominance -- has suddenly become a legal dispute that could lead to a public ...

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the original IBM PC is how Microsoft ended up with the contract for the operating system. This would eventually make Microsoft's MS-DOS the standard and set ...

LINDON, UTAH – A start-up is looking to dust off and buff up DR-DOS, a largely dormant operating system that still attracts a hardcore following but is best-known for a colorful past that some see ...

Gary Kildall started Intergalactic Digital Research (later shortened to Digital Research or just DRI) and created the first microcomputer operating system, CP/M, used on many hobbyist personal ...

Building a complete operating system by compiling its source code is not something for the faint-hearted; a modern Linux or BSD distribution contains thousands of packages with millions of lines of ...

As the forerunner to the graphical user interfaces in Microsoft’s Windows platform, MS-DOS helped set the stage for the company’s dominance in the PC software market. When MS-DOS was released in 1981, ...

When old programmers like me (I'm 41) get together we talk about the applications from the old days. What happens to these beauties? The answer, obviously, is that their fate only matters if people ...

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 ...

The PC has been one of the most powerful gaming platforms for as long as it has existed, continually providing the best graphics and most advanced features. In its early days, players were impressed ...