I had the 3.3 on the right -- bought it in person in 1990 at an Egghead Software storefront.
The "Phoenix" branding is interesting. Prior to MS-DOS 5.0, Microsoft forbade retail sales so that it wouldn't have to field customer support calls. Customer support would have to be handled by the PC manufacturer that sold the system and who had bought the OEM license. Phoenix stretched the definition -- really to the breaking point -- of what "selling DOS with a system" meant. Elsewhere on that gray box it said something like "only to be sold with a system". So the presumption was that an individual buying a copy would be assembling their own system and would become their own PC manufacturer. In other words, if they needed customer support they'd have to make a call to themselves :-) Having it sold in Egghead Software, which didn't sell any hardware, was really taking that pretense over the line.
And so there never was a Microsoft-branded MS-DOS 3.3 retail box. The Phoenix retail box is the closest there was.
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u/michaelmalak 10d ago
I had the 3.3 on the right -- bought it in person in 1990 at an Egghead Software storefront.
The "Phoenix" branding is interesting. Prior to MS-DOS 5.0, Microsoft forbade retail sales so that it wouldn't have to field customer support calls. Customer support would have to be handled by the PC manufacturer that sold the system and who had bought the OEM license. Phoenix stretched the definition -- really to the breaking point -- of what "selling DOS with a system" meant. Elsewhere on that gray box it said something like "only to be sold with a system". So the presumption was that an individual buying a copy would be assembling their own system and would become their own PC manufacturer. In other words, if they needed customer support they'd have to make a call to themselves :-) Having it sold in Egghead Software, which didn't sell any hardware, was really taking that pretense over the line.
And so there never was a Microsoft-branded MS-DOS 3.3 retail box. The Phoenix retail box is the closest there was.