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

Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 218 posts

Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”

#41

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

imoverclocked wrote: post #9

Time to find vulnerabilities! I remember in the naughts, coming across a dos machine that was quite out of time… even for the university basement it was living in next to a pile of lead brick. Its only job was to run an instrument via an home-built ISA card and write data out to 5.25” floppies. What uses would this code have in 2026?

It's a single user OS that runs everything in ring zero by design. I'm not sure, definitionally, that it can have security vulnerabilities. I... guess maybe code execution on exposure to an untrusted floppy disk filesystem?

Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”

#42

Post by stevesimmons »

dhosek wrote: post #20
teamsolid wrote: post #5

It is wonderful how early years of modern computing was brilliant. We treated machines as they really are: machines. Performance, creativity, science..., all possible to make a 386 machine work. Nowadays is all about libraries, virtualization, [bad] code over [bad] code over [bad] code..., I dont like it.

I sometimes think that my mental model of a computer is still an Apple ][+ with 48K of RAM leads to my writing better code.

And mine is a Commodore Vic-20 circa 1981, with 3583 bytes of free RAM. Programmed in 6502 assembler. Can't get much closer to the CPU than that.

Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”

#43

Post by andsoitis »

debesyla wrote: post #40
SoftTalker wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it had to have been on disk or tape at some point. It wasn't all typed in by hand every time they needed to build a new version.

unless they used punch cards

> unless they used punch cards

For MS-DOS?

Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”

#44

Post by onion2k »

jshier wrote: post #14
SoftTalker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet another case where text printed on paper outlived any digital storage.

Seems like it was never digitally stored in the first place, and the printed text was barely readable due to age. Not really a big win for paper.

Early versions of some things, MS Basic being one example I think, were baked into ROM. One of the best innovations that Paul Allen came up with was adding software hooks to the code so bugs that were found later could still be patched.

Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”

#45

Post by WalterBright »

locusofself wrote: post #10

wow, they had to OCR it back in from paper printouts > This source code is old enough that it hadn’t been stored digitally. “A dedicated team of historians and preservationists led by Yufeng Gao and Rich Cini,” calling itself the “DOS Disassembly Group,” painstakingly transcribed and scanned in code from paper printouts provided by Paterson. This process was made even more difficult because modern OCR software strugg…

I've recovered some ancient software I wrote via scanning in listings I found among my dad's papers.

Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”

#46

Post by WalterBright »

debesyla wrote: post #40
SoftTalker wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it had to have been on disk or tape at some point. It wasn't all typed in by hand every time they needed to build a new version.

unless they used punch cards

I threw out all my punch cards. Wish I'd kept at least a listing!

Re: Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”

#49

Post by WalterBright »

zargon wrote: post #26
jshier wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it was never digitally stored in the first place, and the printed text was barely readable due to age. Not really a big win for paper.

The idea that it never existed digitally is obviously untrue. Likely poor wording in the author's part. They probably meant something like, so old that a printout is all that survived (which sounds vaguely like not being digital to someone in an era so far removed from a time when programs were/could realistically be printed.)

Having printouts were necessary when:

1. you were using a DECwriter dot matrix printer as a terminal

2. using an ASR-33 teletype as a terminal

3. using punch cards or paper tape

4. using a glass tty that could only display 24 lines

5. when you did not have a remote terminal, and wanted to spread your code out on a table and debug it

Post reply on HN