On Wed, 29 Mar 2023 at 00:20, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: > > IIRC, DR-DOS 7.03 (circa 1999) had task swapping for 286s and > preemptive multitasking for 386s (TASKMGR.EXE). But you had to use > their DR EMM386.EXE (no HIMEM.SYS needed) with their built-in DPMI > enabled.
That's correct. > (It had a lot of bundled / hidden .VXDs or whatever.) Did it? This is news to me. Do you have any links or anything? I'd like to know more. > It was > limited to 64 MB per task (despite the false claim of XMS v3 support). Interesting. I didn't know that. Plenty for most DOS apps, though! > And no FAT32 support. It does now. Both the DR DOS Enhancement Project added this, and later the commercial DR-DOS too. > They stopped selling DR-DOS online back in 2018, right? I don't know the date. > But I'd be > surprised if DR-DOS was still considered a true derivative of CP/M-86. I am not sure. I may have to try to contact Mr Sparks myself. > Almost all of the CP/M support was probably stripped out. I don't think it supports CP/M binaries any more but then again that hasn't mattered in 30+ years and I'm not sure even Multiuser DOS does any more. If the OS was derived from CP/M, does it matter if it still supports CP/M apps? > I'm overly > skeptical about that. Which part? > (The so-called "OpenDOS" was only kernel and > shell for "non-commercial use", AFAIK That's right. > and wasn't even patched with > the latest Novell fixes.) I think those were re-discovered and re-incorporated later on. So, not in the OpenDOS version, which had to re-implement the fixes. > Minix 2.0.4 (circa 2003) could run atop FAT16 (e.g. DOS). Um. This seems a veer into an unrelated direction to me, but maybe I am missing something. Now, with full read-write NTFS support in kernel 5.15 and later, you can boot and run Linux from NTFS. So what, though? That's just a filesystem. No underlying OS is present. > Or just develop in standard C (or Modula-2) atop Minix [DOSMinix, > booting atop FAT], with its multitasking for faster development, and > later transfer your sources to DOS to compile natively. Seems a lot of work TBH. > You could also run old Slackware 11 (ZipSlack) atop FAT (Linux 2.4 > kernel, UMSDOS). IIRC, it had GCC 3.4.6. Maybe even an old DOSEMU > would run there. That is true. > Memory is such a mess (and I don't mean 16-bit). So many things have > corner cases or bugs. Yes it is. But the key question is, how many DOS apps are still around? Does anyone care if 1-2-3 r3 doesn't work, so long as popular games do, say? And do gamers care about multitasking? I doubt it. > In case it wasn't obvious, I did buy DR-DOS (online in 2004) They sent me a review copy. > but I > rarely used their multitasking. Same. > The main potential uses (to me) would > be 1). finding files in the background (or grepping), 2). compiling > some sources, or 3). file compression. But I rarely needed to care. True. I found it useful for formatting media (i.e. floppies) in the background, and for rendering big fractals while still being able to use the computer. :-) > (Most people would also prefer listening to music or downloading > files.) Yes, true, but does this apply to DOS use? > As a workaround, locally in FreeDOS, I always (weakly) tried to > simplify things (build processes), use speedy tools, better > algorithms, etc. Running atop RAM disk and/or cache also helps a ton. > DJGPP can be quite slow (and worse with LFNs enabled). You know, if > everything is quick and efficient (and accurate), you don't need to > multitask as much. (But I hate brittle makefiles that are easy to > break. I'd rather just rebuild slowly from scratch via shell script.) Good points. > There are some brilliant apps that use the mouse (e.g. JED), but I > rarely relied on it. Oh! That surprises me. It's quite important to me. > Sound is the weakest link in DOS (and probably > not crucial to "real work" for most people). Agreed. I don't care myself, but I'm not a gamer. > Network can be very > useful but isn't well-supported (lack of packet drivers). True. > That vaguely reminds me. I think I once suggested someone use FreeBSD > and QEMU as a sort of way to multitask DOS. You don't even need X11 > installed. The minimum (last I checked) for FreeBSD was 64 MB of RAM > (486 DX or better), but of course probably much more required with a > guest running. (They've had their own hypervisor, bhyve, since 2014 or > so, using VT-X [EPT] I had to look up this abbreviation. I don't think bhyve needs VT-X v2. > but I don't specifically know if they ever > bothered running DOS with it. Me neither. But FreeBSD isn't much lighter than Linux, TBH. > I think they did have some shims for > BIOS-based Windows. Oh? I have not looked. I will try to find out. > But stick with the QEMU package for now. Or KVM? Or Xen? > Even Minix 3, formerly with lots of funding, still dried up in 2016. Dr Tanenbaum retired. > It's sad, but most people don't want a 32-bit only OS that doesn't > have USB support (very complex). True. > Well, except Intel for its Management > Engine. ;-) Ha! Yes. > I was always impressed by Minix and how much they > accomplished, even in the 2.x days. Oh really? I didn't look at 2. > I'm sure there are dozens of improvements we could make to FreeDOS. Or > just workarounds. I just don't have any perfect answers. There are no _perfect_ answers. Part of *my* interest is: is there existing tech that can be salvaged and reused? Another is: is the changing baseline of recent hardware and software changing the requirements of what is useful? -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
