Hi, On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 3:10 PM, Eric Auer <e.a...@jpberlin.de> wrote: > > Yes, FreeDOS clones DOS and that forces it to support old interfaces... > >> DR DOS had a multitasker.
DR-DOS 7.03 is the last "full" version (circa 1998), and it's even still sold online, if you're morbidly curious. It had both task switcher (for 286+) and true multitasker (386+). The former basically pauses the app while you start another one. The latter requires V86 mode to do its dirty work. > Would be interesting to know which multitasker is how strong, in particular > the DR DOS one. Since DR-DOS hasn't been updated since 1998, I think it's not good to pin many hopes to it. The whole 7.x series was based upon Novell DOS. I can't remember, but I think 7.02 or such improved the built-in DPMI server (bugfixes, now 32-bit), which is important because it wouldn't multitask without it. So DR-DOS 7.03 forcibly needed its own (weird, hybrid, bundled VxD or whatever) EMM386, which had its own built-in XMS (so no separate HIMEM needed) plus built-in DPMI (so no CWSDPMI needed). But it was allegedly limited to 64 MB per task, hardcoded, no matter if you incorrectly tried to switch out the XMSv2 (e.g. trying to use HIMEMX) or not. As you probably know, a lot of things (e.g. GCC) can easily use that much RAM. (I think it falsely reported XMSv3, dunno why, that is very untrue!) The irony is that DR-DOS could run Win 3.x flawlessly, allegedly "30% faster". (I guess this was Novell's way of having a competing product.) And that could multitask, too, of course. Unfortunately, DR-DOS was never publicly compatible with Win95 (due to undocumented APIs or whatnot), so even when they won the lawsuit, no further developments of DR-DOS (AFAIK, at least no major new editions) were ever produced. So "it's dead, Jim". While some of the alternatives (e.g. DOSEMU) may not be perfect, it's far better than nothing. (BTW, DR-DOS 7.03 doesn't support FAT32, LBA, or LFNs out-of-the-box.) > (By the way: If we both are in Germany, you can try some of my cards...) Wie Sie diese in DOS hören? Mplayer??? (danke https://translate.google.com) https://www.youtube.com/user/ScorpionsVEVO/videos >> IMHO, for games lack of sound and mouse/joystick support really is the >> fun-killer. In fairness, we're just lucky anything works. Games are not high priority, by any stretch, since they do no useful work. I think we have bigger priorities, honestly. I'm not opposed, of course, but it's unlikely to gain any traction these days. P.S. I just have to mention this one bit of trivia. I am not a trendy person, but I just noticed that my new shampoo says it's "10 in 1 multi-tasker repairs"! That is the weirdest thing I've ever heard. (C'mon, DOS, get with the times, even shampoo can out-multitask you! j/k lol) ;-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and traffic patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols are consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow, J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity planning reports. http://sdm.link/zohomanageengine _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
