On Wed, 29 Mar 2023 at 00:20, Rugxulo wrote:
>
> IIRC, DR-DOS 7.03 (circa 1999) had task swapping for 286s and
> preemptive multitasking for 386s (TASKMGR.EXE). But you had to use
> their DR EMM386.EXE (no HIMEM.SYS needed) with their built-in DPMI
> enabled.
That's correct.
> (It had a lot of bundled / hidden .VXDs or whatever.)
Did it? This is news to me. Do you have any links or anything? I'd
like to know more.
> It was
> limited to 64 MB per task (despite the false claim of XMS v3 support).
Interesting. I didn't know that. Plenty for most DOS apps, though!
> And no FAT32 support.
It does now. Both the DR DOS Enhancement Project added this, and later
the commercial DR-DOS too.
> They stopped selling DR-DOS online back in 2018, right?
I don't know the date.
> But I'd be
> surprised if DR-DOS was still considered a true derivative of CP/M-86.
I am not sure. I may have to try to contact Mr Sparks myself.
> Almost all of the CP/M support was probably stripped out.
I don't think it supports CP/M binaries any more but then again that
hasn't mattered in 30+ years and I'm not sure even Multiuser DOS does
any more.
If the OS was derived from CP/M, does it matter if it still supports CP/M apps?
> I'm overly
> skeptical about that.
Which part?
> (The so-called "OpenDOS" was only kernel and
> shell for "non-commercial use", AFAIK
That's right.
> and wasn't even patched with
> the latest Novell fixes.)
I think those were re-discovered and re-incorporated later on. So, not
in the OpenDOS version, which had to re-implement the fixes.
> Minix 2.0.4 (circa 2003) could run atop FAT16 (e.g. DOS).
Um. This seems a veer into an unrelated direction to me, but maybe I
am missing something.
Now, with full read-write NTFS support in kernel 5.15 and later, you
can boot and run Linux from NTFS.
So what, though? That's just a filesystem. No underlying OS is present.
> Or just develop in standard C (or Modula-2) atop Minix [DOSMinix,
> booting atop FAT], with its multitasking for faster development, and
> later transfer your sources to DOS to compile natively.
Seems a lot of work TBH.
> You could also run old Slackware 11 (ZipSlack) atop FAT (Linux 2.4
> kernel, UMSDOS). IIRC, it had GCC 3.4.6. Maybe even an old DOSEMU
> would run there.
That is true.
> Memory is such a mess (and I don't mean 16-bit). So many things have
> corner cases or bugs.
Yes it is. But the key question is, how many DOS apps are still
around? Does anyone care if 1-2-3 r3 doesn't work, so long as popular
games do, say?
And do gamers care about multitasking? I doubt it.
> In case it wasn't obvious, I did buy DR-DOS (online in 2004)
They sent me a review copy.
> but I
> rarely used their multitasking.
Same.
> The main potential uses (to me) would
> be 1). finding files in the background (or grepping), 2). compiling
> some sources, or 3). file compression. But I rarely needed to care.
True. I found it useful for formatting media (i.e. floppies) in the
background, and for rendering big fractals while still being able to
use the computer. :-)
> (Most people would also prefer listening to music or downloading
> files.)
Yes, true, but does this apply to DOS use?
> As a workaround, locally in FreeDOS, I always (weakly) tried to
> simplify things (build processes), use speedy tools, better
> algorithms, etc. Running atop RAM disk and/or cache also helps a ton.
> DJGPP can be quite slow (and worse with LFNs enabled). You know, if
> everything is quick and efficient (and accurate), you don't need to
> multitask as much. (But I hate brittle makefiles that are easy to
> break. I'd rather just rebuild slowly from scratch via shell script.)
Good points.
> There are some brilliant apps that use the mouse (e.g. JED), but I
> rarely relied on it.
Oh! That surprises me. It's quite important to me.
> Sound is the weakest link in DOS (and probably
> not crucial to "real work" for most people).
Agreed. I don't care myself, but I'm not a gamer.
> Network can be very
> useful but isn't well-supported (lack of packet drivers).
True.
> That vaguely reminds me. I think I once suggested someone use FreeBSD
> and QEMU as a sort of way to multitask DOS. You don't even need X11
> installed. The minimum (last I checked) for FreeBSD was 64 MB of RAM
> (486 DX or better), but of course probably much more required with a
> guest running. (They've had their own hypervisor, bhyve, since 2014 or
> so, using VT-X [EPT]
I had to look up this abbreviation. I don't think bhyve needs VT-X v2.
> but I don't specifically know if they ever
> bothered running DOS with it.
Me neither.
But FreeBSD isn't much lighter than Linux, TBH.
> I think they did have some shims for
> BIOS-based Windows.
Oh? I have not looked. I will try to find out.
> But stick with the QEMU package for now.
Or KVM? Or Xen?
> Even Minix 3, formerly with lots of funding, still dried up in 2016.
Dr Tanenbaum retired.
> It's sad, but most people don't want a 32-bit only OS that
