Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 119 posts

Re: The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0

#91

Post by theclaw »

tinus_hn wrote: post #75
codesnik wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote you, but what you say doesn't make much sense. git is distributed and works offline, this means that nothing could prevent you from making commit with a "fake" date, you always can change time on your machine. So there's nothing really hackish in that, and that has nothing to do with format in which time stored in git internally. And you can have legitimate uses for "faking" commit date. I'd say rep…

The format Git uses determines the range of dates it can store. If it uses the normal Unix epoch system 0 means 1-1-1970 so you can’t represent dates before that.

I thought unix time was a signed integer, so you can go negative all the way back to 1901:

  $ perl -e 'print gmtime(-2147483648).""'
  Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901

Re: The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0

#92

Post by lioeters »

forapurpose wrote: post #66

Don't overlook the email by v1.25 (and v2.0?) author Tim Paterson: https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/master/v1.25/Tim_Pa... ... or the version history in the v2.0 MSHEAD.ASM file: https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/master/v2.0/source/... EDIT: Found better version history

Apparently, Tim Paterson worked on MS-DOS up to v1.25 (completed March, 1982).

Source: http://www.patersontech.com/dos/origins-of-dos.aspx

Re: The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0

#93

Post by avidphantasm »

I have tons of nostalgia for DOS having first used it in 1992. However, as soon as I used Linux in 1994, it was instantly apparent how backward and hard to use DOS was compared to Unix-like systems. With hardware like Raspberry Pis, not sure why anyone would want to use DOS on x86 for embedded purposes today.

Re: The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0

#94

Post by dfox »

Jaruzel wrote: post #88
rnd0 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's 86box, based on PCEM; https://github.com/86Box/86Box/ ...it has support for several PC/XT/AT models. If you can get it onto a floppy image, I'm sure it would run it just fine.

> If you can get it onto a floppy image, I'm sure it would run it just fine. There's a bit of a catch-22 there. Technically, you need to be running DOS X.X to create a bootable floppy (real or image) of DOS X.X, as to make a disk bootable you have to type 'SYS A:' from the running DOS to write bootblock onto the floppy and copy over the current IO.SYS MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM. So, on say.. a modern machine, with no…

It is even more complex than that. This source code (and the compiled binaries) does not contain the PC-specific DOS code, which were supposed to be written by the OEM (in PC case that probably means IBM). In order to build bootable DOS out of this you have to link SYSINIT.OBJ and SYSIMES.OBJ and your hardware interface code into binary (on PC the result of that is IBMIO.COM for PC-DOS and IO.SYS for MS-DOS for PC) and if you want to boot from floppy you also have to provide some kind of bootloader.

Re: The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0

#95

Post by simcop2387 »

Narishma wrote: post #81
simcop2387 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet at least until the whole .com .exe stuff was sorted out. After .exe was created they finally got more than a single segment in a binary, so they probably we're using C by then for some things at least. I imagine all the .com files were ask even at 6.22 though, because of the 64kb limit of them

I'm pretty sure .EXE was supported from the first release.

Looks like you're probably right, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_MZ_executable

There's at least support in 1.0, but the api changed in 2.0. Though I believe the few bits of software I've seen from that era, there were fewer .exes (I suspect for the same language distinction I postulated earlier).

Re: The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0

#96

Post by jakobdabo »

Jaruzel wrote: post #89

I'd like to see tiny 80x86 boards (about the size of the Pi Zero) that you could boot DOS on, with full access to GPIO/SERIAL/PARALLEL etc. I know arduino exists in this space, but for DOS lovers, little hobbyist boards like this would be great, and ideal for bootstrapping single purpose apps written in C.

There is the 86Duino borad, based on Vortex86EX SoC.

Re: The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0

#97

Post by Jaruzel »

jakobdabo wrote: post #96
Jaruzel wrote: post #89

I'd like to see tiny 80x86 boards (about the size of the Pi Zero) that you could boot DOS on, with full access to GPIO/SERIAL/PARALLEL etc. I know arduino exists in this space, but for DOS lovers, little hobbyist boards like this would be great, and ideal for bootstrapping single purpose apps written in C.

There is the 86Duino borad, based on Vortex86EX SoC.

oooh those look interesting. Thanks!

Re: The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0

#98

Post by qwerty456127 »

stordoff wrote: post #49
jmspring wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you started moving up the chain with Win3, etc, throw in config.ini and program.ini amongst others. So many painful memories or is that nostalgia.

I still remember copying win.ini (IIRC) to recover a friend's PC where it had somehow gone missing.

BTW I have never actually installed (and never seen installation discs of) Windows before Windows 95 - we just copied it between PCs.

Re: The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0

#99

Post by qwerty456127 »

xahrepap wrote: post #56
qwerty456127 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love it nostalgically (and I actually enjoyed using it back in the days), many people still use some flavor of DOS e.g. in supermarkets and post offices. I believe there is a lot of old hardware that is only compatible with DOS still in use.

In 2006 I worked at a dry-cleaner/laundromat that had its computer system all running on DOS. I remember when the computer died one day, my boss went to the local thrift store and found a computer old enough to just move the drive over and keep things running. I thought it was odd, but it worked great! Kept us from using it to play games :)

> Kept us from using it to play games :)

Why? All the best games ever run under DOS!

Post reply on HN