On Thu, 06 Jul 2006 09:16, Jim Hall wrote: > Gerry Hickman wrote: > > Hi Ray, > > > >>> with it's own bootsector and startup files? You've then got the HIMEM, > >>> EMM386 and IFSHLP to worry about. > >> > >> No, it is just a shell. > > > > What do you mean by "just a shell"? > > > >> I don't use it any more but I still have the > >> batch file to run it. In one of my older machines it was run from > >> autoexec.bat. The line is still there but remed. > > > > You mean you booted into MS-DOS 6.22 and then started WfW from within > > DOS 6.22? If so, I have to ask why?? > > That's actually how Windows 1.x-3.x worked ... technically, Win95/98 > also worked a similar way, but Microsoft kind of changed things to make > it not so obvious. > > For Windows 3.11 (WFW) you boot into DOS, then you run "win" to start > Windows. Think of Windows as being just like Norton File Commander, or > MS-DOS DOSSHELL. While Windows had its own device drivers and > executable file format, Win 1.x-3.0 still used MS-DOS for all basic > operations. Windows just sat on top of DOS and managed the > multitasking. Windows 3.11 (WFW) stopped using DOS for file i/o, but > still made pretty heavy use of DOS for other operating system > functions. Windows wasn't so much an operating system as an "extension" > that leveraged DOS to do most of the "behind the scenes" work. That's > what Ray means with "just a shell".
Yes, one of the first things I learnt on a A+ techies course I took a few years ago was that if you fiddled around with Win9x batch files and suchlike, you could have some quite interesting things happening - including setting Win9x to boot to command.com instead of the Explorer shell. It's common knowledge. Microsoft _did_ stuff it up, of course - it made everything overly complex, and as a result, horribly fragile. Wesley Parish -- Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish ------------- Mau ki ana, he aha te mea nui? You ask, "What is the most important thing?" Maku ki ana, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people." Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
