On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 19:11, Ralf Quint <freedos...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, in that part, Michael was correct. And as people like you seem > to pushing that old myth of "Windows 9x runs on top of DOS", one of my > next projects when I find time will be to come up with the definitive > proof for that... I ran the beta while it was still called Windows 4. I gave feedback to Microsoft on it. I built a custom version of it for PC Pro magazine in the UK that installed and ran from a 16MB SSD (as big as we could get in 1996) -- which meant removing about ¾ of Windows' files by hand, including trimming the fonts that it used, to get it into so little space. Windows 95A uses MS-DOS 7, which it is possible to boot directly into by editing the MSDOS.SYS file (which in this version is a configuration file, not a binary as in older versions.) Win95B and later use MS-DOS 7.1, which adds FAT32 support. Again, it is perfectly possible to extract this and run it standalone if you wish. Indeed people have done this and made it into a standalone product, which you can download -- for example, here: https://winworldpc.com/product/ms-dos/7x > Well, basically see above. Windows ME doesn't depend on "DOS" just as > much (or little) as Windows 9x does, and they removed one additional > stop from the boot process to make it even less dependent... It skips the config files and loads the GUI directly -- i.e. it executes C:\WINDOWS\WIN.COM directly, instead of COMMAND.COM. You can easily patch it not to do so. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2802303/dos-lives-in-windows-me--how-to-regain-the-ability-to-boot-and-run-in-character-mode.html Windows ME will even create a boot floppy for you, which boots to normal command-line DOS -- with some restrictions. If you wish, you can patch the boot disk by changing just 2 bytes to make it completely functional: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/3286/how-did-windows-me-cripple-dos WinME still runs on DOS. DOS was bundled with Win95, Win98 & WinME, which was an illegally anti-competitive move since other companies sold DOS-compatible OSes. MS were sued by Digital Research: http://www.digitalresearch.biz/DR/Info/fullstory/amendment.html DR produced a modified version of DR-DOS that could run Windows 95: https://web.archive.org/web/20170624231328/https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/1996865/cebit-caldera-windows-dr-dos-denying-ms-claims It was codenamed "Winglue" and demonstrated at CEBIT: https://www.theregister.com/1998/09/28/caldera_s_dr_gets_onsatellite/ I stand by my comments. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
