Historic MS-DOS and Word for Windows source code available to the public

March 27, 2014

The software giant, Microsoft released the source codes of MS-DOS and Word for Windows in collaboration with the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Silicon Valley. The source code from MS DOS 1.1 and 2.0, as well as Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, is made public under a non-commercial license that forbids re-publication elsewhere on the Web.

Purpose: To understand how software has evolved from primitive roots to become a crucial part of our civilization.
These important pieces of source code and history will be preserved and made available to the community for historical and technical scholarship.
Users can download the code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows from CHM Historical source code series.
MS-DOS secured Microsoft’s monopoly of the PC market for more than 20 years and the massive success of Word for Windows would go on to cultivate Microsoft’s Office suite, which has generated hundreds of billions of dollars for the company.
Both MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0 are written in Assembly Language (ASM) and the Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a is written in C language.
These source codes will be helpful for the project work of university. We can hack the code and then load it up in a Windows emulator but can’t redistribute it.

About the Computer History Museum

Headquarters: Mountain View, California.
Non-profit organization: The world’s leading institution exploring the history of computing and its ongoing impact on society.
Dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computer history and is home to the largest international collection of computing artifacts in the world, encompassing computer hardware, software, documentation, ephemera, photographs and moving images.

Note: The source codes are available for educational and non-commercial purposes only.

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