On Sun, 29 Jan 2023 at 22:59, Jim Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote: > > The thought experiment starts with: What might have happened if > Microsoft had decided to keep "DOS" and not go the "Windows" route? A > command line operating system, but one that takes advantage of newer > hardware features?
Microsoft *did.* The product was released to a few customers in Europe under the name "MS-DOS 4.0" and there are disk images out there. Then, later, the efforts went into OS/2 and the name "MS-DOS 4" was reused for the single-tasking product based on IBM PC DOS 4.0. The original DOS 4 is described here: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/multitasking-ms-dos-4-0-lives/ And here: https://betawiki.net/wiki/Multitasking_MS-DOS_4 Here's a recent write-up from earlier this month: https://virtuallyfun.com/2023/01/17/looking-back-at-ms-dos-4-00m-or-in-the-beginning-before-there-was-os-2/ You can run it in an emulator: https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/sys/dos/microsoft/4.0M/ This later morphed into CP-DOS: https://www.os2museum.com/wp/before-os2-was-os2/ Which became "Football": https://www.os2museum.com/wp/playing-football/ -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
