Hi, On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 6:59 PM, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Win98 is a protected mode OS, and DOS serves as a real mode > loader. Once Win98 is up and running, DOS is out of the loop, and > Win98 *is* the OS.
If DOS is "out of the loop", then why are you still able to run DOS files (.COM, .EXE, .BAT)?? Does Windows emulate it? Or is it really just calling back to DOS itself? What is responding to the int 21h kernel calls? For something like Windows XP, then definitely DOS isn't there, it's emulated in NTVDM. But to pretend that Win98 runs all by itself without DOS is a bit of a stretch. Hasn't this already been discussed to death before? MS was later sued (and lost) for illegally bundling their DOS with their Windows. I think Caldera (or Lineo or whatever they were eventually called) even legitimately proved that they could boot Win95 atop DR-DOS. Win95 and MS-DOS weren't bundled for technical reasons, only marketing reasons. It was much closer (technically) to Windows 3.1 than most people realize. I'm not sure why they bothered. Obviously NT had much higher requirements back then (mid '90s), e.g. 16 MB minimum (and 80 MB disk space?) while Win95 could (very slowly) run atop a 4 MB 386. They wouldn't even fix NTVDM bugs for Quake (from id Software, compiled for DOS via DJGPP) because "NT wasn't for games"! But that's all lost to the sands of time now that XP fully replaced Win9x for "home" users. (2000 first added Win9x-era LFNs and FAT32, but even that wasn't yet targeted at home users, hence we were only offered Windows ME.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dive into the World of Parallel Programming The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
