Hey! As a matter of curiosity, given that we were unable to find a precise answer to why Microsoft dropped IFS after MS-DOS 5.0 (although we had speculations), I thought, why not ask ChatGPT (Bing) about that?
The answer is quite curious (I can't send the image due to mailing list size limitations, but here it is the text): "Microsoft IFS (Installable File System) was a feature of MS-DOS 4.0 that allowed third-party file systems to be used with MS-DOS. However, it was not widely adopted by OEMs and had compatibility issues with some applications. MS-DOS 5.0 dropped support for IFS as it needed more conventional memory and focused on other improvements, such as memory management, disk utilities, and a full-screen editor". and it looks good, if it weren't because the main source for this answer was precisely my own previous email message in this mailing list. If asked THE SAME question (except that by accident I wrote "why" and not "Why"), I got a different answer, and had to interact with it: "I’m sorry, I couldn’t find any information about why Microsoft dropped support for IFS after MS-DOS 5.0. Do you have any more details about what IFS stands for or what it does? >> IFS is a feature that allows third-party file systems to be used with MS-DOS. Thank you for clarifying. I found some information about third-party file systems for MS-DOS. According to Wikipedia1, some examples of third-party file systems are HPFS, NTFS, CD-ROM and network file systems. However, I couldn’t find a clear reason why Microsoft dropped support for IFS after MS-DOS 5.0. One possible explanation is that Microsoft wanted to promote its own file system formats, such as FAT16B and later FAT3212, which were more compatible with Windows and other operating systems" Also sounds accurate. So the conclusions of this experience for me are: - The content was added fast to ChatGPT (this thread was recent) - ChatGPT was mostly able to "understand" the question (as much as a machine can "understand"), i.e. the algorithms are well tuned. And the answers look sensible. - Probably, there's no other information about IFS publicly available, so this is all we can have. I had hoped that there was some page that we weren't unable to find. Or even it could have been better if ChatGPT had any access to information from Microsoft that was not easily publicly accessible. Neither seems to be true. As a lover of computing archaeology, I fear that when Mr. Gates passes away, we will have to do with ChatGPT's answer. Oh well. Aitor On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 15:03, Liam Proven <lpro...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, 24 Feb 2023 at 02:52, Ralf Quint <freedos...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Well, it was OS2.NLM for Netware 3.1x up to 4.10, for 4.11, they named > > it LONG.NLM. > > Faint memory now but sounds right. > > > I think starting with Netware 5.0, it was a build-in > > module, no need to load a special name space anymore. > > Could be. I did a training course on NW5 but never deployed it in prod. > > > But by that time, > > the easy use of Netware was gone.... > > IMO that disappeared with 4. > > > > Yeah, that one I remember wasn't very popular, when thinking about that > > one, actually old "MC Hammer" comes into my head, "can't touch that"... > 😛 > > You needed a Mac client for Netware, and it wasn't popular. I did see > it a handful of times but the kind of companies who bought Macs and > Netware were, in my world, mutually exclusive. > > > Don't recall anything like this. Also hard to imagine, given the way how > > they handled permissions. After all, you wouldn't even see sub > > directories you didn't have the rights to access (one of the stupid > > things in Windows,). > > Even so. > > Internally: name begins with $XC%CVBE$%XD%, then don't let users > $45678 see that... > > > > IIRC, when trying once to do some data recovery on > > a Netware drive with the help of some folks at Compaq, it was very > > similar to a FAT filesystem. > > Yup. > > > Novell never published any technical info > > about the file system > > Yup. It was one nearly half meg file of handcoded assembly, and only a > few senior programmers understood it. It was the crown jewels and they > couldn't modernise or adapt it. > > Which is why NW5 brought in a whole new FS, but that didn't have the > performance and brough them down to mainstream nondedicated OS level. > > > > and the guys at Compaq could only give me hints > > over the phone, they had tech info from Novell but were not allowed to > > share anything in hard copy from that... > > Sounds highly plausible. > > > > I never used anything past 4.11, they tried to compete too much with NT > > Server at that time already and everything from 5.0 and up was a hot > mess. > > Somewhat but it did get better-integrated with time. > > > Might have to check if anyone ever continued to work on MARSNWE, which > > looked promising for a while until the original author dropped it. Just > > saw that a couple of years ago, it had been put up on GitHub (GitLab?) > > For a while but it's EOL now, I believe. > > IPX was removed from the kernel just recently (as an aside) > > https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/03/linux_may_soon_lose_support/ I > wrote about it. > > > > Have a server (I think it's a 486 with 16MB RAM and something like a > > 1.2GB data drive), running a 10 user Netware 3.12, sitting hidden in my > > storage, something like this would be a great "companion" to FreeDOS... > > :-) > > > -- > 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 >
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