DOS codepages (and their history)

Common area (00-7F)

Characters 00-7F (hex) in the following chart are common to all DOS codepages listed here.

The chart is similar to ASCII except for control characters. Codepoints 00-1F and 7F (hex), marked with pink, have a dual nature. They can be used both as invisible ASCII control characters and displayed on the screen. Because of this, DOS codepages are downwards compatible with ASCII.

Exception: Codepage 864 Arabic is different from all other DOS codepages. It supports different symbols in the control character area. We are not going any further into the differences in this article.

Codepage 437 United States

Alternative names: Personal Computer, MS-DOS United States, MS-DOS Latin US, OEM United States, DOS Extended ASCII (United States), PC-ASCII

Codepage 437 is the original IBM "PC-ASCII" codepage. It's the basis for all other codepages. Differences exist in the 80-FF (hex) range.

In the charts that follow, differences to 437 are highlighted in green. Click the images to compare to 437.

Codepage 737 Greek II

Alternative names: 437 G, MS-DOS Greek, OEM Greek

This codepage has formerly been known as 437G.

Codepage 775 Baltic Rim

Alternative names: MS-DOS Baltic Rim, OEM Baltic

Codepage 775 is not a DOS codepage in the strictest sense. It never appeared in standalone MS-DOS. The page covers Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian (and even Polish). It conforms to Lithuanian Standard LST 1590-1.

Codepage 850 Multilingual (Latin I)

Alternative names: Personal Computer - Multilingual Page, MS-DOS Multilingual (Latin 1), OEM Multilingual Latin 1, Western European

This codepage covered most of Western Europe, Latin America and also Canada.

A euro version of 850 exists. It was formed by changing dotless ı to € (hex D5). It is confusingly known with two different codepage numbers, namely 850 and 858.

Codepage 852 Slavic/Eastern European (Latin II)

Alternative names: Latin 2 - Personal Computer, MS-DOS Slavic (Latin 2), OEM Latin 2, Central European

According to MS-DOS 6.22, this codepage covered Albania, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, (Russia), Slovakia, Slovenia and Yugoslavia (Latin).

According to IBM, a euro version exists where € was added to unused position hex AA.

Codepage 855 Cyrillic I

Alternative names: Cyrillic - Personal Computer, IBM Cyrillic, MS-DOS Cyrillic, OEM Cyrillic (primarily Russian)

According to MS-DOS 6.22, this codepage covered Yugoslavia (Serbia/Montenegro, Macedonia), Bulgaria and Russia.

According to IBM, a euro version (codepage 872) exists where € appears in place of ¤ (hex CF).

Codepage 857 Turkish

Alternative names: Latin #5, Turkey - Personal Computer, IBM Turkish, MS-DOS Turkish, OEM Turkish

According to IBM, a euro version exists where € was added to unused position hex D5.

Codepage 860 Portuguese

Alternative names: Portugal - Personal Computer, MS-DOS Portuguese, OEM Portuguese

According to MS-DOS 6.22, this codepage was for Portugal (but not Brazil).

Codepage 861 Icelandic

Alternative names: Iceland - Personal Computer, MS-DOS Icelandic, OEM Icelandic

Codepage 862 Hebrew

Alternative names: Israel - Personal Computer, MS-DOS Hebrew, OEM Hebrew

Codepage 863 Canadian-French

Alternative names: Canadian French - Personal Computer, MS-DOS Canadian French, MS-DOS French Canada, OEM French Canadian

Codepage 865 Nordic

Alternative names: Nordic - Personal Computer, MS-DOS Nordic, OEM Nordic

This codepage was for Denmark and Norway.

Codepage 866 Russian (Cyrillic II)

Alternative names: PC Data, Cyrillic, Russian; MS-DOS Cyrillic CIS 1; MS-DOS Russian; OEM Russian

This codepage was developed for the Russian language version of MS-DOS 4.01. It doesn't cover all Cyrillic languages such as Ukrainian.

According to IBM, a euro version (codepage 808) exists where € appears in place of ¤ (hex FD).

Codepage 869 Greek

Alternative names: Greece - Personal Computer, IBM Modern Greek, MS-DOS Greek 2, OEM Modern Greek

According to IBM, a euro version exists where € was added to unused position hex 87.

Codepage 912 ISO 8859-2 (Latin)

Introduced by IBM to PC DOS 7 for countries of Eastern Europe. Not a codepage in MS-DOS or Windows. Positions hex 80–9F are empty as they are reserved for invisible control characters in the ISO 8859-2 standard, even though it doesn't appear DOS actually supported these control characters.

Codepage 915 ISO 8859-5 (Cyrillic)

Introduced by IBM to PC DOS 7 for Cyrillic alphabets of (the former) Yugoslavia. Not a codepage in MS-DOS or Windows. Positions hex 80–9F are empty as they are reserved for invisible control characters in the ISO 8859-5 standard, even though it doesn't appear DOS actually supported these control characters.

Codepage 850 also exists as a euro version. It has the dotless ı changed to € in position hex D5. The same codepage appears with two different codepage numbers. The usual number is 858, but PC DOS 2000 calls it 850 instead.

Codepage 850 Multilingual (Latin I), euro version

This is how codepage 850 looks in PC DOS 2000, which was released in 1998. Confusingly, the codepage number is still 850 even though it's different from the original version of 850.

Codepage 858 Multilingual Latin I + euro

Alternative names: Personal Computer - Multilingual with euro, OEM Multilingual Latin 1 + Euro symbol, Multilingual Latin I + Euro

Codepage 858 is exactly the same as the euro version of 850. It is supported by Windows command line mode.

In order to use codepage 858 in Windows 10, one needs to select a TrueType font for the command line box and issue the command chcp 858. In Windows 2000, one needs to first install 858 support via the Control Panel, then do the other steps mentioned. Raster fonts don't appear to have the € symbol.

Codepage 708 Arabic (ASMO 708)

Codepage 708 in Arabic Windows 98 SE differs from Microsoft documentation of 708 from 1995. The differences are in pink. Line drawing characters with double lines appear as single lines. Several other characters look different as well.

Codepage 708 is downwards compatible with standards ASMO 708 (1988) and ISO 8859-6 (Arabic). Codepage 708 adds characters to positions unused in the standards (for comparison see the ASMO 708 set in ISO-IR 127 and ECMA-114). A reference to codepage 708 appears in the RTF file format specification, where it was added during 1989–1993.

Codepage 709 Arabic (ASMO 449+, BCON V4)

Codepage 709 is inadequately documented in online sources. A reference to it appears in the RTF file format specification, where it was added during 1989–1993.

Codepage 709 appears to have been built on the ASMO 449 standard. ASMO 449 is a 7-bit ASCII-like encoding (see ISO-IR 089) that has Arabic letters in place of letters A-Z, and also some symbols. Codepage 709 has lifted ASMO 449 characters to the area 80-FF (hex) and added some extra characters to unused positions. The tilde (~) at FE (hex) is incompatible with ASMO 449, though. See also: ASMO 449+.

Codepage 709 is quite similar to 708 what comes to Arabic letters and Arabic symbols, but not what comes to Latin letters, ASCII symbols and digits.

Codepage 710 Transparent Arabic

Codepage 710 was introduced in Arabic MS-DOS 3.3. It is inadequately documented in online sources.

Codepage 711 Arabic (Nafitha Enhanced)

Codepage 711 is inadequately documented in online sources. A reference to it appears in the RTF file format specification, where it was added during 1989–1993. Nafitha was a program that added Arabic support to DOS.

Codepages 710 and 711 are somewhat similar but not compatible with each other.

Codepage 720 Arabic (Transparent ASMO)

Alternative name: MS-DOS Arabic (Transparent ASMO)

Codepage 720 in Arabic Windows 98 SE differs from Microsoft documentation of 720. The differences are in pink. Line drawing characters with double lines appear as single lines. Several other characters look different as well.

Codepage 720 was added to MS-DOS 6.22 (1994). A reference to it appears in the RTF file format specification, where it was added during 1989–1993.

Codepage 864 Arabic (MS-DOS)

Alternative names: Arabic - Personal Computer, OEM Arabic

Codepage 864 in Arabic Windows 98 SE differs from Microsoft documentation of 864 from 1996. The differences are in pink. The 1996 documented version, which is a conversion table, supports more characters than the ones actually implemented in Windows 98.

According to MS-DOS 6.22, this was the only Arabic codepage available.