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QDOS Stands for "Quick and Dirty Operating System". QDOS had been developed as a clone of the CP/M 8-bit Operating System, in order to provide compatibility with the popular business applications of the day such as WordStar and dBase. CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) was written by Gary Kildall of Digital Research several years earlier and had become the first operating system for Microcomputers in general use.

QDOS was written by Tim Paterson, a Seattle Computer Products employee, for the new ppIntel[[ 16-bit 8086 CPU, and the first version was shipped in August, 1980. Although it was completed in a mere six weeks, QDOS was sufficiently different from CP/M to be considered legal. Paterson was later hired by Microsoft.

Until its acquisition of QDOS, Microsoft had been mainly a vendor of computer programming languages. Bill Gates and co-founder Paul Allen had written Microsoft BASIC, and were selling it on disks and tape mostly to PC hobbyists.


Microsoft Operating System Versions
Microsoft Operating System Versions:

MS-DOS: QDOS | 1.0 | 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.11 | 3.0 | 3.1 | 3.2 | 3.21 | 3.3 | 3.3A | 3.31 | 4.0 | 4.01 | 4.01A | 5.0 | 5.0A | 6.0 | 6.2 | 6.21 | 6.22 | 7.0 | 7.1 | 8.0

Windows 1.x: 1.0 | 1.01 | 1.02 | 1.03 | 1.04

Windows 2.x: 2.0 | 2.01 | 2.1 | 2.2

Windows 3.x: 3.0 | 3.0A | 3.1 | 3.11 | 3.2

Windows for Workgroups 3.x: 3.1 | 3.11

Windows 9x: 95 | 98 | ME

Windows NT: 3.1 | 3.5 | 3.51 | 4.0 | 2000 | XP | 2003

Future Windows NT: Vista | Longhorn Server | Blackcomb Server

Windows CE: 1.0 | 1.1 | 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.11 | 2.12 | 3.0 | 4.0 | 4.1 | 4.2 | 5.0

Windows Embedded: NT | XP

Windows Mobile: 2003 | 5.0

Previous Windows Codenames: Janus | Snowball | Kato | Daytona | Chicago | Memphis | Millennium | Cairo | Odyssey | Neptune | Whistler | Longhorn | Blackcomb

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