Hello Tom, I mostly agree with your arguments. However...
On Sun, 26 Dec 2021 at 01:42, tom ehlert <t...@drivesnapshot.de> wrote: > however DesqView, GEM and Windows 3.x are certainly multitasking systems > running on top of DOS. that doesn't make DOS a multitaskig system. > Why isn't multitasking just another feature that you "add" on top? I mean, from 1980 to 1998 DOS has been surprisingly surviving from a series of innovations and obstacles that made it is what it is today (or was in 1998): - A system that originally could do just FAT, created the redir (and later ifs) to be able to mount other drives, - A single user, to add share to be able to operate in networks, - From 1 MB memory to higher with xms (HIMEM) - From single tasking to preemptive multitasking (with DOS386.EXE) Why DOS386.EXE (later renamed to VMM32.VXD) would run "on top" of DOS and not be DOS itself, the natural way DOS adapts to a 386? Just because, for commercial reasons, Microsoft never sold this DOS unbundled from their GUI, I don't see this to be part of Windows, but DOS. (and if it isn't, where is the technical limit? EMM386.EXE is more alike to VMM32.VXD than to MSDOS.SYS) My point here is, NT has indeed quite a bunch of more stable and better thought features of an operating system that was conceived in the late 80's rather in the late 70's (a better filesystem, more suitable to networks, and basically, a brand new Win32 API more suitable for writing stable applications), but I don't see multitasking as the feature that killed DOS. If Microsoft did not do it, imagine how nice it would be that there were in FreeDOS an open source version of VMM32 with a good set of well written VxDs (and that the very first thing it does after loading is NOT to find that KRNL386.EXE and run it). Of course, that's an outstanding challenge, I don't think anyone would do it :( Aitor > > >> programs would only multitask if specifically written to the DRDOS API > >> - which almost nobody did (for commercial avalable software). > > > This is not true. > ou might be right, but I would be surprised. > > > > >> that is true. the (mostly) complete source code MSDOS 6.2 escaped into > the wild, > >> even if not widely available. > > > You said, quote: > > >> > it wasn't a sanctioned release from microsoft. > > > Don't try to revise this now. > > I have no idea what you are arguing about. > > MSDOS 6.2x sources went into the wide plains of the internet, and > probably are still available now in public. Just don't expect to have > google to turn up sensible sources for 'msdos 6.21 source code' > > And this is completely irrelevant in 2021, or forever (except for > historical > reasons). > > beside this: everybody a nice christmas and a happy new year! > > > Tom > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >
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