Alpha

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This build is from 31st January 1985 and was presumably distributed to developers and testers in February. It was distributed on four 5.25" 360 kB floppy disks containing the OS, development tools and applications.

Compared to DR5, it contains some UI changes and stability improvements, but remains visually very similar to its predecessor. The installation is still done via a batch file, but support for monochrome EGA displays is now included (in addition to CGA and Hercules from DR5).

Major feature additions include support for PIF files and a PIF editor (PIF files were first introduced by IBM TopView some months before), and support for running DOS applications under Windows (which is what PIF files are for). The up-arrow cursor, last seen in COMDEX 1983-era builds, makes an unexpected (and short-lived) return in this build. Tandy Trower became product manager for Windows in January 1985, so this could be the last release that was not overseen by him.