7 ms·
It's still pointless because no MS-DOS system will be alive in 2107.
by burade 6y ago
It's still pointless because no MS-DOS system will be alive in 2107.
- exikyut 6y agoYes it will; it (the last one) will host a single file documenting the true source of the "640K of RAM" quote. And it will make it available over PC/TCP, using a chain of adaptors and converters from 100BASE-TX.
- userbinator 6y ago"Wanna bet...?" I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were some original embedded systems still running machinery and the like in a century from now, catastrophic events notwithstanding. The sort of low-power embedded systems likely to be running DOS don't really experience any wear. There's quite a bit of equipment in the "low-level" manufacturing industry which is around a century old, and has basically been in continuous operation since it was installed.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoTheir capacitors will die. In the power supply this could destroy unobtanium parts.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoCapacitors are replaceable, and in fact the process of replacing them is already a routine operation in the retrocomputing community.
- Iv 6y agoI don't think any hardware running MS-DOS will survive that long.
- flomo 6y agoModern x86 PCs still can boot DOS, no? (If not, sounds like a bug.) The bigger issue would be ISA control cards and the like. A HN user recently posted a link of "new" ISA boards for sale, but the latest CPU support was Pentium 4 (about 20 years ago).
- Iv 6y agoI am not even sure of that. Booting DOS requires a legacy BIOS mode and some legacy video modes that I am not sure manufacturers support anymore.
- djxfade 6y agoI think most (if not all) modern PCI-E GPUs still supports this. If I am not mistaken, this is what is preventing them from working on ARM right now (Raspberry PI 4, Apple M1, etc.), because the driver expect specific BIOS features
- exikyut 6y agoAaaand that's why X11 has an x86 (v86) emulator in it, so Suns (circa late 90s/early 2000s) could use PC-focused graphics cards with BIOSes containg x86 initialization code. ._.
- userbinator 6y agobut the latest CPU support was Pentium 4 No, you can find plenty of ones that will hold a recent i7: https://www.dfi.com/product/index/1502 https://www.dfi.com/product/index/1502 https://ipc.msi.com/product_detail/Industrial-Motherboard/ATX/MS-98L9-V2.0 https://ipc.msi.com/product_detail/Industrial-Motherboard/AT... http://ibase-usa.com/english/ProductDetail/EmbeddedComputing/MB950 http://ibase-usa.com/english/ProductDetail/EmbeddedComputing... (I wish they would make "ultimate" mobos with all the interfaces in between too --- I mean if ISA with a Coffee Lake CPU is possible, how about a pair of IDEs, floppies, and parallel ports too...)
- flomo 6y ago
- jbay808 6y agoI wonder how many transit systems worldwide are running on DOS right now?
- Iv 6y agoAnd will for 80 more years?
- jbay808 6y agoAh, yeah the hardware probably won't still be running in 2107, but will be running in 2040. Of course, if New York's subway controls are anything to go by, 2107 is pretty reasonable.
- Frenchgeek 6y agoOr in the industrial sector: Milling machines running Windows 95/98 (fun times getting it to talk with windows 10 on the network) or working with floppies are still around: Those beasts are too expensive to not run until dead.
- imhoguy 6y agoI guess some said same about buildings and bridges centuries ago.
- colejohnson66 6y agoHopefully
- throwaway201103 6y agoThey will be if they are still providing value.
- shakna 6y agoI find this statement to be overly hopeful. Legacy systems exist in all walks of life, for all kinds of systems. They've solved the problem they were set up for, and so even maintaining them is often something management can be unwilling to set a budget for. There's an oft shown, but rarely sourced, image suggesting that the US Navy food service management system was running on MS-DOS in 2011, and if that is accurate, I can't find any suggestion they have since changed that situation.
- xvilka 6y agoIf it works, has all necessary features, no significant bugs, and still performing all functions - why change? Especially since the change to modern technologies will not guarantee to produce a better result in terms of features and stability. The change is necessary if the system unmaintainable, buggy, or can't be easily interfaced with other modern systems.
- shakna 6y ago> The change is necessary if the system unmaintainable, buggy, or can't be easily interfaced with other modern systems. Unfortunately, all of these are frequently true of legacy systems. Only a small number are relatively bug free. Most are simply unmaintained. Few are easy to interface with. I have no particular problem with old software and hardware. But the massive expenditure leading up to Y2K is demonstrative of the legacy problem. Let it rot until an impending crisis forces your hand, costing far more than if you had simply maintained it.
- oblio 6y agoUnless you want to end up with Adeptus Mechanicus worshipping the Machine God in the MS-DOs boxen, you need to change from time to time. You need to at least be able to open the metaphorical box and see if you can reproduce it in case of disaster recovery. The more important the system, the higher the existential threat for the organization if you just let it be. I do understand that it's a thankless job, so this needs to be enforced from up high.
- epx 6y agoOnce a guy told me that MS-DOS would be alive in 2000, I laughed at him. It was 1994 or so. Worked in DOS-based systems (running on Windows machines, at least) until 2005, had to find a job cross-country, and tell "no" firmly a number of times, to finally get rid of them and force the clients to move on. Clipper/xBase systems that do their job is one niche of MS-DOS apps that refuse to die. Another niche I know of, is gambling machines (one-armed bandits), for some reason people kept using DOS (at least they moved to FreeDOS by early 2000s).
- pjmlp 6y agoAs someone that wrote Clipper applications during the early 90's, there are few systems that can match its elegance for CRUD driven applications. Doing DB operations is relatively simple, formdata entry and validation is super easy, supports modules, OOP and even compiles to native code. Yeah not good for networked operations, but in many mom and pop shops it isn't needed anyway. Even VB/Delphi for all their RAD capabilities were already much more complex than Clipper, but they messed up their migration into the GUI world and CA Visual Objects was too complex for the Clipper crowd.
- neverartful 6y agoSpot on with Clipper. I used it to write software for a mom and pop shop and it worked fantastic until I started running out of memory. We transitioned from DOS/Clipper to OS/2 with VX-REXX at that point. VX-REXX was also equally impressive.
- watermelon59 6y agoDo you think Clipper/xBase is a niche one could get into at this point in history? Or is that market already fully taken by old timers?
- neverartful 6y agoThere are 2 aspects you would need to consider - the toolset and the product market. I don't think Clipper is sold anymore although there are some alternatives (Harbour). I think the products that still use Clipper would likely either be POS or a niche utility use. I don't know the feasibility of new entries in those markets.
- cable2600 6y agoWings of Hope, my uncle volunteered for them. They use MS-DOS and Netware to control flight simulators and other old stuff. NASA still uses PC-DOS based IBM PCs to control things. DOS doesn't crash like Windows. GRR Martin uses Wordstar and MS-DOS to write his novels because he does not want to be distracted by pop up windows and system alerts and updates.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago> DOS doesn't crash like Windows. No, it crashes like DOS. I suppose if your application is well written and you have fully exercised the functionality that you use, it might be more stable, but "reliable" is not a word I would have associated with those systems.
- jacobush 6y agoIt’s like embedded software. DOS is basically bug free at this point. If there are bugs in DOS, they are known. ANY bugs will be in the application.
- neverartful 6y agoOr misconfigured CONFIG.SYS.
- beagle3 6y agoOr some clash with a TSR (sidekick?)
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoIf you a write a simple protected mode monitor and debug it well, your app (running under the abovementioned monitor) will be more stable than if it were running on Linux, Windows or other monstrosity.
- pjmlp 6y agoIndeed it doesn't crash, just hangs in some strange way that forces a reboot, or if you are lucky it affects the beeper that starts issuing random beep noises with different kinds of volume until you reach for the power button running like crazy,