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Open Sourcing DOS 4

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Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#91
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2038, you say? If your calendar is based on Unix epoch time, then ensure that you have upgraded to 64-bit timestamps before then.

ReactOS will still be buggy AF by then I'm sure. I had hoped they'd at least have it to Windows 2000 alpha levels by now.

[deleted]

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#93

As Scott mentioned in the blog post, we were able to get this running on one of my original IBM XTs with an original IBM monochrome display adapter and display. It was very cool to be able to switch between a running version of a small game, Turbo Pascal, and a DOS prompt with a single key press. It is always great to have period software on period hardware! (added: Short video of it running - https://www.youtube.com…

> It is always great to have period software on period hardware!

Really is. This is why I keep a load of old hardware around. Stuff like Mac OS 9 should be run on real hardware and same for old MS-DOS.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Paterson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tim Paterson (born 1 June 1956) is an American computer programmer, best known for creating 86-DOS, an operating system for the Intel 8086. This system emulated the application programming interface (API) of CP/M, which was created by Gary Kildall. 86-DOS later formed the basis of MS-DOS, the most widely used personal computer operating system in the 1980s.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#95
post #29
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).

The source released is for the IBM-started version of DOS 4.0, but most of the talk here is about the Multitasking DOS 4 files (a binary copy of the first beta)

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#96
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.

Although 5.0 was the first version to include HIMEM.SYS

DOS 5.0 was peak perfection. 6.22 or whatever was just stupid double stack and other worthless garbage.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#97
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a long time since I messed with things, but "net drives" something didn't work in FreeDOS a long time ago. This was useful, because it meant you could from within a PC emulator access your host file system. It's entirely possible that works on FreeDOS now.

This is almost completely unrelated to your comment, but it sparked a fun memory. At one point I had a system set up that would boot dos via ipxe with iscsi drives. I thought it was almost magical how dos had no clue it was using a network drive. I still don't know exactly how it worked. but I suspect ipxe was patching the bios.

DOS was pretty reliable about using BIOS interfaces for drives; if you imitate the BIOS interface it’ll just work.

The problems came from limitations of the BIOS interface (especially size)

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#98
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

DR-DOS also open source now.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#99
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you can't even say "sanity check", much less mention brain damage.

Wait, I missed the bus on this one. What's wrong with "sanity check"?

These days it would be considered a problematic allusion to people with cognitive or emotional issues.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#100
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.

IF running software is what matters, there's dosemu2 and dosbox-x.

For the actual hardware or PCem, FreeDOS exists and is alive. DR-DOS has also been open sourced.

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