29 Oct
2016
29 Oct
'16
9:06 p.m.
> Simplest test for MS-DOS 1.25 would the the dates
of the files,
> particularly IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS. IIRC, 1.25 would be in 1982, maybe
> June.
On Sat, 29 Oct 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote:
1.25 was licensed for OEM customization for quite some
time, so dates
could well be later, depending on the OEM.
Very true.
When was the earliest that a 1.25 was released to OEMs?
On the other end, 2.00 came out somewhere around march or April 1983.
If the dates are in the right range, then there are other clues, such as
matching file sizes.
Starting with 2.00? there was a version number buried in the code, and the
VER command would print some text, and then calculate what to display for
the numbers (major version, period, minor version as a 2 digit decimal
number.0 (19h gave .25)
But, if 1.25 didn't have that, then somewhere in COMMAND.COM, there might
be text saying "MS-DOS 1.25", instead of the later ""MS-DOS ", to
be
followed by calculated values.
Did 1.25 have ANSI.SYS and CONFIG.SYS?
For somebody who remembers the detaails of the transition, many of the
text messages in COMMAND.COM might be recognizable.