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Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x

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Re: Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x

#31

Post by didgetmaster »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #10
bitwize wrote: post #2

But OS/2 was a better DOS than DOS, and a better Windows than Windows!

Well, technically Windows 2.1 (released May 1988) came before OS/2 1.1 (released October 1988). OS/2 1.0 was text-only. So at least for 5 months in 1998, Windows technically beat OS/2. And OS/2 1.1 was very similar to Windows 2.1, so it's arguable if it was actually much better. OS/2 1.2 was a massive leap though, not only beating Microsoft GUI wise by a whole year, they even implemented tons of advanced features tha…

When I started working at Novell in October 1988, I was on the OS/2 team. The version I installed first was 1.0 so I remember that there was no GUI. A few months later we got the update (1.1) with the GUI.

What I remember the most is that they ordered us memory expansion cards that gave us an extra 4MB of RAM for a total of 5MB. I didn't see the actual invoice, but I remember them telling me that the expansion card cost about $2,000. I try to remember that when I complain about memory DIMMs measuring in the dozens of GB going up a bit in price.

Re: Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x

#32

Post by didgetmaster »

didgetmaster wrote: post #31
d3Xt3r wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, technically Windows 2.1 (released May 1988) came before OS/2 1.1 (released October 1988). OS/2 1.0 was text-only. So at least for 5 months in 1998, Windows technically beat OS/2. And OS/2 1.1 was very similar to Windows 2.1, so it's arguable if it was actually much better. OS/2 1.2 was a massive leap though, not only beating Microsoft GUI wise by a whole year, they even implemented tons of advanced features tha…

When I started working at Novell in October 1988, I was on the OS/2 team. The version I installed first was 1.0 so I remember that there was no GUI. A few months later we got the update (1.1) with the GUI. What I remember the most is that they ordered us memory expansion cards that gave us an extra 4MB of RAM for a total of 5MB. I didn't see the actual invoice, but I remember them telling me that the expansion card c…

I also still have an unopened box (still shrink wrapped) of OS/2 Warp sitting on my shelf.

Re: Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x

#33

Post by TheSkyHasEyes »

BeetleB wrote: post #28
coderssh wrote: post #4

Feels like we remember MS-DOS as simple because it fit the time. One user, limited hardware, not much going on in the background. As soon as you try to add multitasking, networking, or even basic isolation, that simplicity doesn’t really hold up.

I was looking back to why I enjoyed computing so much more in the 80's and 90's compared to now, and of the many reasons, one of them was "No multitasking". Or even "little multitasking" because while Windows had multitasking, we didn't have the HW to do too many things at the same time. Right now we're on the crazy end of that spectrum. Every tab on your browser is potentially an application, and we multitask like c…

> enjoyed computing so much more in the 80's

Also the days when you turned on a computer it was ready to rock within two seconds. A few friends were discussing video game load times throughout the years. Overall the elapsed times haven't changed much at all.

Re: Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x

#34

Post by ndiddy »

> This is a major release of Windows and, similarly to the previous one [ep 10], it is not a complete operating system, but it’s simply a graphical user shell that is meant to be run on top of MS-DOS; thus, it inherently gains its limitations, albeit the developers had time to fix some things with this release, as well as add new features such as icons on the desktop and keyboard shortcuts.

This is largely untrue. When Windows is running, it's about 95% of a complete operating system. MS-DOS is only used to run DOS software and for file access. Windows takes control of the memory management, process management, video hardware, system timer, keyboard, mouse, printer, serial port, etc (basically every system resource except disk I/O) while it's running.

Despite how bad early Windows looks, it's doing some very impressive technical wizardry under the hood to be able to work in real mode on the 8086 and 286. It's a lot more complex than something like Mac OS 1 or GEM, and it makes sense why it kept getting delayed over and over for years. For example, they got multiple DOS programs to run simultaneously in real mode by intercepting all the DOS API calls and patching them on the fly to avoid breaking Windows. To get multitasking to work at all in 384 KB, they had to be able to dynamically load and unload chunks of programs when necessary to deal with memory pressure, and then walk all the stacks on the system and patch out any calls/returns to the unloaded code to instead call the memory manager and make it reload the code from disk. Making this transparent to software authors required a series of complicated workarounds which Raymond Chen has written about. See here if you're interested: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110316-00/?p=11... https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20120622-00/?p=73... https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20120629-00/?p=72... https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140103-00/?p=21...

Re: Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x

#36

Post by blisscast »

mwkaufma wrote: post #35

"Gui Wonderland" series header is underlined but isn't a hyperlink. Oversight, or minor nit designed to make me crazy?

Hello, I'm the author of this article, I checked it, and it looks fine on my end. Where is the problem exactly, and which browser are you using?

Edit: I spoke to EmeraldDM8, who made the UI, and if it's what he thinks it is, it's because the series page is not done yet, and once it's ready, that will include a link to that page.

Re: Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x

#37

Post by wat10000 »

TheSkyHasEyes wrote: post #33
BeetleB wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking back to why I enjoyed computing so much more in the 80's and 90's compared to now, and of the many reasons, one of them was "No multitasking". Or even "little multitasking" because while Windows had multitasking, we didn't have the HW to do too many things at the same time. Right now we're on the crazy end of that spectrum. Every tab on your browser is potentially an application, and we multitask like c…

> enjoyed computing so much more in the 80's Also the days when you turned on a computer it was ready to rock within two seconds. A few friends were discussing video game load times throughout the years. Overall the elapsed times haven't changed much at all.

Any sort of GUI took a minute or two to boot. My laptop today is ready to go before I get the lid fully open.

Re: Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x

#38

Post by nik282000 »

blisscast wrote: post #19
BirAdam wrote: post #15

Fun fact, while Trower was the manager who got Windows moving, it was Gabe Newell who served as the lead developer of Windows versions 1, 2, and 3. Win95 was the first version he wasn’t really involved with. By that time, he was working on porting Doom to Windows.

He's an awesome guy!

If you play any Valve games with commentary he prefaces them with an invitation to email him directly with comments or questions. He's said that he doesn't have time to answer every one but he tries to read them all.

For a multi-yacht owning, industry driving billionaire, he does seem pretty cool.

Re: Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x

#39

Post by rasz »

coderssh wrote: post #4

Feels like we remember MS-DOS as simple because it fit the time. One user, limited hardware, not much going on in the background. As soon as you try to add multitasking, networking, or even basic isolation, that simplicity doesn’t really hold up.

Id go other way too. Disk Operating System might seem simple or even downright pleasant. Easy to understand and well compartmentalized DOS/BIOS Interrupt API, small functions doing small things.

Then you read some "under the hood" book or source code and start stumbling upon decade of hacks upon hacks to keep this cart rolling while computer revolution was happening in the background.

One example: IBM in its infinite wisdom didnt expect to support more than one type of floppy in 5150 BIOS. IVT (Interrupt Vector Tble) has allocated space for only one DPT entry (Diskette Parameters Table), same goes for DBA (Bios Data Area). Few years later 1.2MB 5.25 drives showed up, year later 720KB 3.5 ones and so one. As a result BIOS was forced to play musical chairs under the hood constantly shuffling contents of that _one DPT entry_ replacing it on the fly while trying to keep track of whats going on. Of course DOS needs to run on older PCs without multi floppy format aware BIOS thus 1986 MS-DOS 3.2 introduced DRIVPARM doing exactly the same shuffling one layer above https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/060/Q60091/

DOS was build one small hack at a time. High Memory, Upper Memory, Expanded memory, Extended memory, A20, exit from Protected mode, more than one kind of floppy, hard drive, more than two hard drives, the list of kludges just keeps going.

Re: Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x

#40

Post by dcrazy »

ndiddy wrote: post #34

> This is a major release of Windows and, similarly to the previous one [ep 10], it is not a complete operating system, but it’s simply a graphical user shell that is meant to be run on top of MS-DOS; thus, it inherently gains its limitations, albeit the developers had time to fix some things with this release, as well as add new features such as icons on the desktop and keyboard shortcuts. This is largely untrue. Wh…

I would posit that Windows only became more technically sophisticated than early Mac OS with the release of Windows/386, the version of Windows 2.1 that ran multiple DOS VMs in protected mode.
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