ETen Chinese System (倚天中文系統) was the most popular

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

-compatible traditional Chinese operating system before Chinese

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

. DOS did not support Chinese characters, which are not in

Extended ASCII Extended ASCII is a repertoire of character encodings that include (most of) the original 96 ASCII character set, plus up to 128 additional characters. There is no formal definition of "extended ASCII", and even use of the term is sometimes critic ...

. Many companies in Taiwan developed their own

IBM PC compatible An IBM PC compatible is any personal computer that is hardware- and software-compatible with the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) and its subsequent models. Like the original IBM PC, an IBM PC–compatible computer uses an x86-based central p ...

traditional Chinese operating system running on DOS, which were mutually incompatible between the OS, such as Kuo Chiao (國喬) and Acer. The developer of the Eten OS, E-TEN, earned their early profits from sales of their hardware based plug-in card based Chinese system products. Their software (only) Chinese systems were widely copied by many traditional Chinese users and software pirates, but this was difficult for E-TEN to control. Most traditional Chinese products were compatible with the Eten OS at that time. When

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

developed the Chinese Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, traditional Chinese software developer and users shifted to Windows from DOS. The last version of the Eten OS was a Chinese Windows-compatible version. The Eten and other traditional Chinese OS are now used in a few DOS based POS systems.

References

External links

E-TEN corporate website

E-TEN Chinese system website
{{Disk operating systems DOS on IBM PC compatibles