Can someone help, someone has to have it. Please!! I spent about 7 hours looking for it and couldn't find it. I know you guys can help me. Thanks, Æ

Try here.... http://cpm.interfun.net/cpm86.html

Just 7 hours huh? whoosh you must be exhuasted. I had a freeware program that i used everyday for 3D graphics creating, One day it became corrupt and i didnt have the install program to reinstall it because i deleted it a year and half earlier to make room on my drive (the program was about 27 Megs in size). So i go to the main site to download again and the company's been bought by another company who now wants to charge $399.00 for it (mind you, i cant afford that kind of money for a program, my car cost $700.00 used, its what i could buy). So i spend a month and half (thats 45 days) searching the world over on the net till i finally found the program again on some FTP site in Russia i think it was. The moral of the story? Please dont complain about a 7 hour search, for some people who come to this site (and i know im not the only one) a 7 hour search for something is nothing. A tired world traveler (electronically of course).

SEVEN HOURS??!??!?!?!? My god, you practically devoted your life to this cause, didn't you? How did you manage to keep up the search? What I don't understand is how you managed *not* to find this stuff! It took me a grand total of less than a minute to find it. Here's what I did: Directed Opera (my Web browser) to Yahoo!'s search page Entered the words "cpm 86 dos" into the search field Searched the Web for all matching words In seconds, I had a long list of sites that offered CPM/86 (a.k.a. "86-DOS") support and files for download, including the site for which Steve posted the URL. This was my first attempt to find this stuff. Similar searches should not have taken much longer. Dude, there are files and applications that took me months and sometimes even *years* to find. If you try just a little harder, you'll be amazed at the things you can find on your own. Play around with search engines. Search the Web a bit. Finding things on the Web can be a very valuable skill that can be learned quite easily.

Sorry, but 86-DOS is *NOT* the same as CP/M-86. Both date from the same era, but are totally different OSes. 86-DOS comes on a Single-sided, single- density 8" floppy. I guess the file systems can be transferred to another media. At least one can get a sector-by- sector disk dump of that eight-incher, or at least all the actual files, which should be able to run on most PC, just like later DOS versions. 86-DOS has first started as Q-DOS 0.10 in July 1980, "Quick-and dirty Operating System" written by Tim Paterson. It's been renamed 86-DOS 0.30 in December 1980. In April 1981, 86-DOS 1.00 came out and Tim Paterson worked from that version to make PC-DOS 1.00 that would run on the first PC ever in August 1981... CP/M-86 was an ALTERNATIVE to DOS on PCs by 1982 (or end 1981?). It's written by Digital Research for IBM, and is derived from CP/M-80. This said, I'm also HARDLY looking for 86-DOS, especially the 0.x betas from '80. I've been looking for them for quite a long time now. Please let me know if anyone knows where to download, or have original disks, copies, manuals, ... Thanks Luc

Sorry, but 86-DOS is *NOT* the same as CP/M-86. Both date from the same era, but are totally different OSes. 86-DOS comes on a Single-sided, single- density 8" floppy. I guess the file systems can be transferred to another media. At least one can get a sector-by- sector disk dump of that eight-incher, or at least all the actual files, which should be able to run on most PC, just like later DOS versions. 86-DOS has first started as Q-DOS 0.10 in July 1980, "Quick-and dirty Operating System" written by Tim Paterson. It's been renamed 86-DOS 0.30 in December 1980. In April 1981, 86-DOS 1.00 came out and Tim Paterson worked from that version to make PC-DOS 1.00 that would run on the first PC ever in August 1981... CP/M-86 was an ALTERNATIVE to DOS on PCs by 1982 (or end 1981?). It's written by Digital Research for IBM, and is derived from CP/M-80. This said, I'm also HARDLY looking for 86-DOS, especially the 0.x betas from '80. I've been looking for them for quite a long time now. Please let me know if anyone knows where to download, or have original disks, copies, manuals, ... Thanks Luc

I would say that finding 86-DOS maybe a pretty hopeless cause. MicroSoft purchased the rights to it and with it they effectively put it off the market. According to Tim Patterson the creator of QDOS(Quick and Dirty OS), that became 86-DOS, in July 1981 MicroSoft purchased all rights to DOS from Seattle Computer Products. Therefore to my knowledge 86-DOS 1.14 was the last version. Since I believe that all pre-1.00 versions were only internally distributed only those on the inside of SCP would probably have a copy of those. Since sales of 86-DOS weren't exactly stellar, I would think finding a working copy might be pretty hard. In all likely-hood if any versions of 86-DOS still exist they are deep inside a Microsoft vault or in Tim Patterson's attic. You could try contacting Tim Patterson about anything he might know. Unlike Gary Kildall or Tim Olmstead he's still alive. Assuming he has a copy he could probably get Microsoft to allow him to let old-timers have a copy for nostalga. Personally I don't think there is much reason why anyone would want to play with 86-DOS other than to see the early roots of DOS. Microsoft found over 300 errors in QDOS for approx. 40,000 lines of Assembly code. There was a reason to call it quick and dirty. Quick in that it was made in approx. 2 months of time. Dirty in that it was of questionable originality and clearly buggy.