Z-DOS is a discontinued
OEM version of
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...
's
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...
specifically adapted to run on the hardware of the
Zenith Z-100 personal computer.
Z-100 at old-computers.com
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Overview
The Z-100 used a 8086-family microprocessor, (the Intel 8088
The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external Bus (computing), data bus instead of the 16-bit computing, 16-bit bus of ...
), but otherwise had a completely different internal architecture from the IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a tea ...
.
At the time Microsoft's MS-DOS wasn't specifically geared to any specific hardware platform, but could be tailored to run on most any system as long as it used a 8086
The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and June 8, 1978, when it was released. The Intel 8088, released July 1, 1979, is a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allo ...
-compatible microprocessor, a situation completely like with the popular CP/M systems of the time, which typically used a 8080
The Intel 8080 (''"eighty-eighty"'') is the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel. It first appeared in April 1974 and is an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibil ...
-compatible (8080, 8085 and Z80
The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were ...
among others) microprocessor. In order to achieve this, MS-DOS, like CP/M, relied on a platform-specific (DOS-)BIOS
In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...
, which had to be written for the target machine, so that the hardware-independent DOS kernel could run on it. Beside IBM's OEM version of MS-DOS released as PC DOS there were dozens of other OEM versions of MS-DOS geared to a specific non-IBM-compatible OEM hardware—among them Zenith's Z-DOS. Only later, when almost 100% IBM-compatible clone
Clone or Clones or Cloning or Cloned or The Clone may refer to:
Places
* Clones, County Fermanagh
* Clones, County Monaghan, a town in Ireland
Biology
* Clone (B-cell), a lymphocyte clone, the massive presence of which may indicate a pathologi ...
s became the norm, "MS-DOS" became the generic version which could run on most of them. This generic version of MS-DOS, however, could not run on the older non-IBM-compatible machines like the Z-100.
See also
* DOS API
* Towns OS – an MS-DOS adaptation by Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...
for FM Towns
* List of DOS commands
This article presents a list of commands used by DOS operating systems, especially as used on x86-based IBM PC compatibles (PCs). Other DOS operating systems are not part of the scope of this list.
In DOS, many standard system commands were p ...
* Timeline of DOS operating systems
References
{{Disk operating systems
Disk operating systems
DOS variants
Floppy disk-based operating systems