Hi, On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 8:46 AM, Eric Auer <e.a...@jpberlin.de> wrote: > >> You mean LZ DOS is an improved rip of the MS DOS 7 kernel? Or >> is it just another DOS kernel which provides DOS 7.x compat? > > Unfortunately it is not improved at all: Somebody just took a > few components of MS DOS 7 and PC DOS 7 and REBRANDED and then > recompressed them. Not worth mentioning IMHO because everybody > who likes to ignore licenses can just as well download a grey > copy of the real MS DOS 7 or PC DOS 7 somewhere anyway.
I'm not a PC-DOS expert, but IIRC, they both forked after v5 circa 1991. Hence development of PC-DOS was entirely handled by IBM in later versions. IIRC, PC-DOS used "IBMBIOS.COM and IBMDOS.COM" for the kernel files instead of IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS. Presumably we're talking about the same thing here, the so-called LZ-DOS that was really the "kernel" of MS-DOS 7 (and nothing to do with PC-DOS, though I have no idea where any other utils come from). > Forum http://reboot.pro/topic/14520-lz-dos/ says, excerpted: > > The file dates on LZ-DOS is 11/9/2003, which is identical to the build > date on pc-dos 7.10.0129 ... PC-DOS 7 was circa 1995, no? PC-DOS 2000 was just some minor fixes later. The "Server Scripting Toolkit" that Lucho always talked about supposedly had an updated kernel that also supported FAT32. But AFAIK, that kernel was never in an official, commercial release. In fact, I am very very skeptical whether the Server Scripting Toolkit is legal at all, at least for home users. Maybe it is, maybe not, but just because it's available online somewhere isn't proof. But the only way to know for sure is contact the copyright owner, and most big companies are notoriously bad about responding to inquiries of this kind. > we see a very close match between the two, to the point where the bulk > of the file is a light string hack (gsar -s"PC DOS" -r"LZ-DOS" -o > command.com), does most of the work. The shell is an entirely separate issue. Actually, there were some regulars here who preferred IBM PC-DOS over others, but perhaps they're too busy to compare and contrast the various binaries for us. > you will indeed discover that the bulk of the differences between 1.29 > command.com and lz-dos command.com lies entirely in PC DOS -> LZ-DOS, > and a few copyright strings. There is a single change of byte elsewhere > in the file (05 -> 06 or something). > > ... and only 4 CODE byte changes might offer any improvements ... > > LZ's io.sys was compressed with apack.com. I don't know how you know that. Maybe true, but I doubt aPACK is designed to work like that. I know EDR-DOS at one time also allowed compression of the kernel (as does FreeDOS, natch) with UPX. > See also: http://reboot.pro/topic/5497-ms-dos-71/ on how to > mix various commercial DOS variants into something useful to > those who are not looking at licenses. Well, once again, if your country's laws allow it, then I doubt it's unethical since (AFAIK) "nobody" is selling it nor depending on its sales for livelihood. But still, in countries where copyright is so rigid, we don't have a good choice: buy an old copy (eBay?) or use something else ("just use Haiku", heh). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sponsored by Intel(R) XDK Develop, test and display web and hybrid apps with a single code base. Download it for free now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=111408631&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
