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 ...

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 ...

Before “Micro Soft” became Microsoft, Bill Gates wrote BASIC interpreters. Microsoft’s first shipping operating system was a Unix distro called Xenix. Then, in 1980, Microsoft got its shot at the big ...

On this day in 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded a company called Micro-Soft in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The two men had worked together before, as members of the Lakeside Programming group in ...

Editor's take: Microsoft continues to tightly control the release of some of its most important pieces of legacy software. While enthusiasts and programmers are eager to see newer versions of MS-DOS ...

After [Andy]’s discovery of an old ISA soundcard at his parents’ place that once was inside the family PC, the onset of a wave of nostalgia for those old-school sounds drove him off the deep end. This ...

Back in the 1970s, the operating systems market was far less intriguing than today. Back then, there was no Android, no Windows, and no Linux. CP/M arrived in 1974 and, by the end of 1981, had sold ...

In this guide, we'll show you how to build a retro gaming PC, based on original hardware from the 1990s, with a few modern touches. It can run DOS games and early Windows games, but it'll also look ...