A boxed set of DR DOS 6!

I feel like I righted a wrong in some small way recently. It also gives me an excuse to write another of my shaggy dog posts about old computers, which I’ll never pass up the opportunity to do. Behold, our boxed copy of Digital Research DOS 6.0 from 1992: The first OS I ever used was MS-DOS 5.x on the family 486, upgraded shortly after to MS-DOS 6.2 [sic], then Windows 95. DOS was “what came with computers” to me at the time, so the idea there were alternatives didn’t even cross my mind. MS-DOS’s origins lay with QDOS, itself a broad clone of Digital Research’s CP/M operating system. CP/M-86 was compiled and offered for the original PC, but IBM famously went with Microsoft instead. The circumstances surrounding this decision remain… contentious. Either way, I’ve had a soft spot for Gary Kildall since I first saw him on those archived episodes of the Computer Chronicles. People like exploring an alternative universe where IBM went with CP/M over DOS, and Gary had become the billionaire…