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Open Sourcing DOS 4

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Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#31

Post by dosman33 »

MSDOS 4 was reportedly an overall bad release and was not in wide circulation, in all my days I think I only came across it once. This is why DOS 3.3 and 5.0 were much more common to find in circulation together.

I'm sure the source for 4 will make for some interesting bug hunting. Anyone remember the MUF list? "Microsofts Undocumented Features".

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#33

Post by rnd0 »

willxinc wrote: post #27
rwl4 wrote: post #11

Weird that for a couple minutes, these paths existed: * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/bin * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/bin/DISK1 * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/pdf But they disappeared as I browsed the repo. I guess they didn't want that part public? Edit: I knew I wasn't seeing things! Somebody forked it along with those files: https://github.com/Own…

Looks like they were moved to the Ozzie subfolder: https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0-ozzie

That was literally just added; I have a tab open that doesn't have that folder. This is wild and strangely exciting to see released in real time.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#34

Post by farmerbb »

rwl4 wrote: post #11

Weird that for a couple minutes, these paths existed: * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/bin * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/bin/DISK1 * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/pdf But they disappeared as I browsed the repo. I guess they didn't want that part public? Edit: I knew I wasn't seeing things! Somebody forked it along with those files: https://github.com/Own…

They force-pushed the repo to remove an insult towards Tim Patterson in one of the source files.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#35

Post by rnd0 »

dosman33 wrote: post #31

MSDOS 4 was reportedly an overall bad release and was not in wide circulation, in all my days I think I only came across it once. This is why DOS 3.3 and 5.0 were much more common to find in circulation together. I'm sure the source for 4 will make for some interesting bug hunting. Anyone remember the MUF list? "Microsofts Undocumented Features".

This is "multitasking dos 4" though, which isn't the same as the much-reviled ms-dos 4. As I understand it, it's a lot closer to dos 3 than it is to dos 4 in terms of functionality.

I wouldn't expect this to understand extended partitions, much less large partitions (that dos 4 uses)

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#36

Post by geoelectric »

chx wrote: post #29
_mlbt wrote: post #4

Holy cow, this is huge! DOS 1.x and 2.x are too old to run a lot of vintage DOS software, but 4.x would run just about everything.

No, you are thinking of 4.01 this is 4.0. Those are very different operating systems, this is DOS 3.2 + later abandoned very crude multitasking features. Roughly. And this matters because DOS 3.3 was a milestone. 4.01 comes from 4.00 which has nothing to do with 4.0 (yay for versions).

It’s stuff like this that sent me over to DR-DOS back in the day.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#37

Post by rnd0 »

chx wrote: post #29
_mlbt wrote: post #4

Holy cow, this is huge! DOS 1.x and 2.x are too old to run a lot of vintage DOS software, but 4.x would run just about everything.

No, you are thinking of 4.01 this is 4.0. Those are very different operating systems, this is DOS 3.2 + later abandoned very crude multitasking features. Roughly. And this matters because DOS 3.3 was a milestone. 4.01 comes from 4.00 which has nothing to do with 4.0 (yay for versions).

>And this matters because DOS 3.3 was a milestone

DOS 3.3 couldn't understand large partitions -except for Compaq dos 3.31. But regular dos 3.3 couldn't. I don't think dos 3.2 could even understand extended partitions/logical drives -much less large disks.

Still -pretty neat!

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#38

Post by esafak »

farmerbb wrote: post #34
rwl4 wrote: post #11

Weird that for a couple minutes, these paths existed: * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/bin * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/bin/DISK1 * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/pdf But they disappeared as I browsed the repo. I guess they didn't want that part public? Edit: I knew I wasn't seeing things! Somebody forked it along with those files: https://github.com/Own…

They force-pushed the repo to remove an insult towards Tim Patterson in one of the source files.

Don't leave us hanging!!

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#39

Post by bfors »

Looking at this code is a nice reminder that I have virtually no real understanding of how computers work, and every part I work with is a nice polished abstraction that hides 99% of the complexity involved in actually creating value with a computer.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#40

Post by skissane »

farmerbb wrote: post #34
rwl4 wrote: post #11

Weird that for a couple minutes, these paths existed: * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/bin * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/bin/DISK1 * https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/pdf But they disappeared as I browsed the repo. I guess they didn't want that part public? Edit: I knew I wasn't seeing things! Somebody forked it along with those files: https://github.com/Own…

They force-pushed the repo to remove an insult towards Tim Patterson in one of the source files.

They changed line 70 of v4.0/src/DOS/STRIN.ASM from [0]:

; Brain-damaged Tim Patterson ignored ^F in case his BIOS did not flush the

to [1]:

; Brain-damaged TP ignored ^F in case his BIOS did not flush the

[0] https://github.com/OwnedByWuigi/DOS/blob/ffd70f8b4fb77e2e6af...

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/main/v4.0/src/DOS/S...

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