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Open Sourcing DOS 4

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Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#151

Post by cout »

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).

Thanks for pointing that out. I was wondering why I couldn't find the source for dosshell!

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#152

Post by eesmith »

freedomben wrote: post #67
zdimension wrote: post #32

https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/2d04cacc5322951f187... > ; REV 2.15 7/13/83 ARR BECAUSE IBM IS FUNDAMENTALY BRAIN DAMAGED, AND Someone was angry that day. Wonder if any IBM dev ever stumbled upon this when MS and IBM worked together.

This was the good 'ol days, back when you could put stuff in comments like that and not worry about legal

Oh, you had to worry about legal. But since lawyers are concerned with risk, if the source is all proprietary and internal, the risk was lower.

When Mozilla went open source back in the 1990s, Netscape's lawyers required the source first be bowdlerized. (Search for "censorzilla" for some examples.)

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#153

Post by billforsternz »

jmspring wrote: post #119

My brain is rusty, but I feel like MSDOS 5.11 was where things finally just worked. TSRs, memory managers, etc. Moving a lot and not being a packrat I've lost some of that history. It'd be interesting to see 5.x and 6.x released.

I was kind of happy with MSDOS 2.11, I felt that they'd got the basics in place (in particular hard disk / subdirectory support) and that bloat hadn't started. From memory I used this for years and years although I was young so time didn't rush past so quickly so who really knows. I kept a version of MSDOS 2.11 debug.com around for decades (patched with itself so it wouldn't just do a version check then quit). From memory it was something like 12K bytes whereas debug.exe from MSDOS 6.x was more like 60K bytes.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#154

Post by drey08 »

Stratoscope wrote: post #139
WalterBright wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just that there are more descriptive and neutral terms available to us, so why not use them? Because it's boring.

Walter, you and I have known each other for a long time. Not in person; we've never met. But through our interactions here on HN. I have a lot of respect for you and for everything you have accomplished. So I have to ask you directly: Is being "boring" or not the way we should decide how to express ourselves? Regarding a "quick test" vs. a "sanity test". Instead of judging this on what is "boring", why can't we make…

Have you ever heard someone get called slow? That's an insult too.

So now you have quick tests. That's disrespectful towards me because I got called slow once.

This can go on forever.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#155

Post by elwell »

randomdata wrote: post #143
latentsea wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sunset() triggers me due to all the times I've seen companies "sunset" APIs only to still have them in production 5 years later. Let's change it to cancelled()

cancelled() makes it seem as if PHP is a sexual predator – which may be the case, but as a matter of course... How about goodbye()?

goodbye() could offend someone whose father "went out to get a pack of smokes" and never came back

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#156

Post by at_a_remove »

mattl wrote: post #93
sponaugle wrote: post #53

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.

If not for space considerations, I would be right there with you.

I still have hardware and software to get me back to NT 4.0 or Windows 95 (OSR 2, please, it wasn't tolerable before that). I haven't needed to in a while, but in a previous job, we'd run across old disks in some author's archive and I'd go home to dig around, find a 5.25" drive and rig something up, reach back in time.

I could maybe do Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

If shipping weren't so brutal, I would love to send off my old stuff to someone who would use it. I still have working SCSI equipment! I bet somewhere there is someone stymied on trying to liberate some ancient works but for the necessary hardware/software setup.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#157

Post by exe34 »

Stratoscope wrote: post #101
steelbrain wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As someone who recently asked our QA team to change the name of one of our test suites from "sanity test" to "quick test", maybe I can provide some perspective. Many software developers like me have faced challenges to our mental health. Indeed, there has been a time or two when I questioned my own sanity. And perhaps the sanity of some of my colleagues! It's not so much that there is something inherently wrong with…

I've struggled with mental illness all my life and have made several attempts to catch the bus. I'm diagnosed with several mental issues. Somehow I'm still not offended with the phrase "sanity check". What am I doing wrong? Is it possible to learn to get offended by this sort of thing? Will it make me happy?

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#158

Post by rasz »

grishka wrote: post #125
lchengify wrote: post #12

So if MS-DOS 4 was released in 1986, and it is now 2024, that's a 37 year gap between release and open source. That means Windows XP should be open sourced by ... 2038. Not as far away as it seems. I'll add it to my calendar.

I doubt Microsoft would ever open-source any NT Windows versions because the current ones are based on the same code, just with added touchscreen nonsense, adware, and overt contempt for the user. We may see Windows 9x open-sourced. But then again, it's a stretch because Win32 API is still in wide use today. Releasing the sources for 32-bit Windows versions even this old may have an adverse effect on Microsoft's mark…

NT sources leaked, same for 2000. There is also leaked DOS 6 beta. The only thing releasing stuff this old brings is nerd goodwill.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#159

Post by exe34 »

randomdata wrote: post #143
latentsea wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sunset() triggers me due to all the times I've seen companies "sunset" APIs only to still have them in production 5 years later. Let's change it to cancelled()

cancelled() makes it seem as if PHP is a sexual predator – which may be the case, but as a matter of course... How about goodbye()?

This is double plus good.

Re: Open Sourcing DOS 4

#160

Post by eesmith »

elwell wrote: post #124
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Other terms are neither more descriptive nor more neutral. 2. If someone has a problem with the term "sanity check", they are overly sensitive and they need to adjust to the realities of life. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to coddle them.

Can we please change PHP's die() function to unalive()?

But that's what you call to make your process be a zombie. ;)

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

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