5 ms·

Not a problem most of us have in 2017. I wonder what the use case is for having a bunch of DOS machines.

by fusiongyro 9y ago

slco1 9y ago
Retro computing is a bit of a hobby for some of us. I'll find the program very useful personally.
kyberias 9y ago
From the page: 'For years, I was using LapLink to transfer files between my various "retro" computers.'
sigstoat 9y ago
until 4-5 years back, my wife's lab still owned some old scientific equipment whose control software ran on DOS. they'd dumped another piece of equipment a few years before that which ran an embedded DOS system, and booted/ran off of a 1.44MB floppy. (not a good design decision for long lasting hardware.) both pieces of hardware were sold to folks who intended to use them.
lightedman 9y ago
DOSBox really does suck in some specific use cases and thus a native MS/PC-DOS is needed.
- stuaxo 9y ago
  Probably doesn't help in those situations, but there has been a lot of progress in the last year or so on DOSEMU https://github.com/stsp/dosemu2 https://github.com/stsp/dosemu2
  - lightedman 9y ago
    Unfortunately you're correct - these use case scenarios do not work with any emulation.
pkaye 9y ago
Before 10 years ago it was used heavily in PC hardware development and testing. Basically DOS as a bootloader that gives you full access to the computer hardware. Windows had too many things going on in the background to give that control plus the driver development is not so easy. These days Linux seems the answer since you have the source code and can trim it down to the minimal needed for control. I'd have killed for a networking file system for DOS back then. I think we ended up using something like a lap link protocol to transfer files from my development system to the test systems.
hazeii 9y ago
DOS (without or with older hardware) is great for hardware hacking, e.g. it's trivial to write code to directly access hardware and find out how it works; the information can then be used to e.g. implement a linux driver. Note that performance is also very good as well, e.g. for bit-banged I/O just disable interrupts for minimal latency and maximum throughput. Also for simple network-attached embedded devices that have to be ultra-reliable, there isn't much to go wrong.
cat199 9y ago
Sidenote: If anyone wants to make a new-school 64 bit DOS-alike, that would be really kool. thx.
- throwanem 9y ago
  FreeDOS seems to have a 64-bit version on Sourceforge, but it's a year stale and I can't vouch for its functionality. Still, might be worth a look: https://sourceforge.net/projects/dos64/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/dos64/

Not a problem most of us have in 2017. I wonder what the use case is for having a bunch of DOS machines.

slco1 9y ago

Retro computing is a bit of a hobby for some of us. I'll find the program very useful personally.

kyberias 9y ago

From the page: 'For years, I was using LapLink to transfer files between my various "retro" computers.'

sigstoat 9y ago

until 4-5 years back, my wife's lab still owned some old scientific equipment whose control software ran on DOS. they'd dumped another piece of equipment a few years before that which ran an embedded DOS system, and booted/ran off of a 1.44MB floppy. (not a good design decision for long lasting hardware.) both pieces of hardware were sold to folks who intended to use them.

lightedman 9y ago

DOSBox really does suck in some specific use cases and thus a native MS/PC-DOS is needed.

stuaxo 9y ago
Probably doesn't help in those situations, but there has been a lot of progress in the last year or so on DOSEMU https://github.com/stsp/dosemu2 https://github.com/stsp/dosemu2
- lightedman 9y ago
  Unfortunately you're correct - these use case scenarios do not work with any emulation.

pkaye 9y ago

Before 10 years ago it was used heavily in PC hardware development and testing. Basically DOS as a bootloader that gives you full access to the computer hardware. Windows had too many things going on in the background to give that control plus the driver development is not so easy. These days Linux seems the answer since you have the source code and can trim it down to the minimal needed for control. I'd have killed for a networking file system for DOS back then. I think we ended up using something like a lap link protocol to transfer files from my development system to the test systems.

hazeii 9y ago

DOS (without or with older hardware) is great for hardware hacking, e.g. it's trivial to write code to directly access hardware and find out how it works; the information can then be used to e.g. implement a linux driver. Note that performance is also very good as well, e.g. for bit-banged I/O just disable interrupts for minimal latency and maximum throughput. Also for simple network-attached embedded devices that have to be ultra-reliable, there isn't much to go wrong.

cat199 9y ago

Sidenote: If anyone wants to make a new-school 64 bit DOS-alike, that would be really kool. thx.

throwanem 9y ago
FreeDOS seems to have a 64-bit version on Sourceforge, but it's a year stale and I can't vouch for its functionality. Still, might be worth a look: https://sourceforge.net/projects/dos64/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/dos64/