7 ms·

Holy cow, this is huge! DOS 1.x and 2.x are too old to run a lot of vintage DOS software, but 4.x would run just about everything.

by _mlbt 2y ago

Scaevolus 2y ago
Are there specific parts of the DOS API that existing emulators like DOSBOX don't handle accurately enough? I don't understand if this source can be usefully integrated into modern DOS preservation projects.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  It was a long time since I messed with things, but "net drives" something didn't work in FreeDOS a long time ago. This was useful, because it meant you could from within a PC emulator access your host file system. It's entirely possible that works on FreeDOS now.
  - somat 2y ago
    This is almost completely unrelated to your comment, but it sparked a fun memory. At one point I had a system set up that would boot dos via ipxe with iscsi drives. I thought it was almost magical how dos had no clue it was using a network drive. I still don't know exactly how it worked. but I suspect ipxe was patching the bios.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      DOS was pretty reliable about using BIOS interfaces for drives; if you imitate the BIOS interface it’ll just work. The problems came from limitations of the BIOS interface (especially size)
      - lproven 2y ago
        Yup. Boot DOS off a USB key and it suddenly speaks USB. :-) Only for drives, but still...
asveikau 2y ago
I feel like FreeDOS could already run just about everything for 20 years or longer. If your goal is to run DOS software your use case was probably already adequately covered with free software. An interesting thing about DOS is the OS wasn't very involved. Programs did a lot of things we now think of as the realm of an OS, like talking directly to I/O addresses or installing interrupt handlers. I feel like a DOS implementation doesn't even need to do a lot of things, maybe part of why DOS4 is "good enough".
LeoPanthera 2y ago
Although 5.0 was the first version to include HIMEM.SYS
- bombcar 2y ago
  DOS 5.0 was peak perfection. 6.22 or whatever was just stupid double stack and other worthless garbage.
  - lproven 2y ago
    > stupid double stack DoubleSpace/DriveSpace? Mostly, you are absolutely right, yes. MS-DOS 5.0 was the peak, and then it started to acquire bloat as MS bundled stuff to compete with DR-DOS 6 and DR-DOS 7. But the thing is that by modern standards, the bloat is tiny. :-) I gave MS Office 97 a bad review at the time because it was several times bigger than Office 95, had virtually no new functionality, but introduced a pointless new file format just to get people to upgrade so they could read the files sent to them by companies with the newer version. But for a decade now, Word 97 is my go-to version. With all the service releases installed, it works great, it's tiny by modern standards -- I think a full install of Word with all the optional filters and things totals 14MB -- and it's lightning fast on 21st century hardware. Word 95 is even smaller and quicker, but it can't read or write the file format that everyone else, from Pages to Wordpad, uses. So it's crippled: everything has to go through LibreOffice first, to convert it to a .DOC format anything else can view, import, edit, or print. Time changes the meaning of bloat somewhat.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      Bloat is partially the eye of the beholder, and 6.22 wasn't terribly large by any means, but the things it added were not incredibly stable and it showed. It's also amazing how long things like DOC to DOCX took to really "take hold" in the industry at large. I still get DOC files now and then.
    - garaetjjte 2y ago
      What format was used by Word 95? RTF?
chx 2y ago
No, you are thinking of 4.01 this is 4.0. Those are very different operating systems, this is DOS 3.2 + later abandoned very crude multitasking features. Roughly. And this matters because DOS 3.3 was a milestone. 4.01 comes from 4.00 which has nothing to do with 4.0 (yay for versions).
- geoelectric 2y ago
  It’s stuff like this that sent me over to DR-DOS back in the day.
  - snvzz 2y ago
    DR-DOS also open source now.
    - roytam87 2y ago
      But only OpenDOS 7.01, not older(DR DOS 3.30-7.00) or newer(7.02-8.0/8.1) versions.
      - rnd0 2y ago
        The whole opendos thing is pretty questionable, too. CPM is open source as is its' derivatives. Cool so far. But is DR-DOS a derivative of it? Or is it bound by the 'non commercial' license of the 90's which a) was revoked b)isn't exactly open source (limits distribution) in the first place. Microsofts' releases have the benefit of being unambiguous.
      - davidgnz 2y ago
        OpenDOS isn't open-source, its source-available. The license reads more like trial software: "Caldera grants you a non-exclusive license to use the Software in source or binary form free of charge if your use of the Software is for the purpose of evaluating whether to purchase an ongoing license to the Software. The evaluation period for use by or on behalf of a commercial entity is limited to 90 days; evaluation use by others is not subject to this 90 day limit but is still limited to a reasonable period"
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
3.31 and 6.22 were the lands of stability for pre-Chicago MS-DOS for older and newer applications respectively.
snvzz 2y ago
IF running software is what matters, there's dosemu2 and dosbox-x. For the actual hardware or PCem, FreeDOS exists and is alive. DR-DOS has also been open sourced.
- davidgnz 2y ago
  DR-DOS hasn't been open sourced. Caldera did release the source for the kernel and a few other bits, but the license only allowed free use for evaluation purposes. After 90 days (for a company) or "a reasonable period" for non-commercial entities you were required to buy a license. Bryan Sparks did open-source CP/M a little while back, but AFAIK he hasn't said anything about DR-DOS so far.
  - snvzz 2y ago
    There was an actual open source version, which was retracted[0]. Fortunately for the commons, what's done is done. 0. https://archiveos.org/drdos/ https://archiveos.org/drdos/
    - davidgnz 2y ago
      Thats the DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project. Its a set of patches for the Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 kernel. The license file inside the original Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 source archive says: "Caldera grants you a non-exclusive license to use the Software in source or binary form free of charge if (a) you are a student, faculty member or staff member of an educational institution (K-12, junior college, college or library), a staff member of a religious organization, or an employee of an organization which meets Caldera's criteria for a charitable non-profit organization; or (b) your use of the Software is for the purpose of evaluating whether to purchase an ongoing license to the Software. The evaluation period for use by or on behalf of a commercial entity is limited to 90 days; evaluation use by others is not subject to this 90 day limit but is still limited to a reasonable period." So that website is incorrect when it says OpenDOS was released under an open-source license. Not surprising though - most websites discussing OpenDOS make this error. Possibly because at the time I believe Caldera did actually talk about open-sourcing DR-DOS, they just failed to to actually follow through. If he still has the source code, whats needed is for Bryan Sparks to release it under some regular open-source license like Microsoft have done here.

Holy cow, this is huge! DOS 1.x and 2.x are too old to run a lot of vintage DOS software, but 4.x would run just about everything.

by _mlbt 2y ago

Holy cow, this is huge! DOS 1.x and 2.x are too old to run a lot of vintage DOS software, but 4.x would run just about everything.

Scaevolus 2y ago

Are there specific parts of the DOS API that existing emulators like DOSBOX don't handle accurately enough? I don't understand if this source can be usefully integrated into modern DOS preservation projects.

actionfromafar 2y ago
It was a long time since I messed with things, but "net drives" something didn't work in FreeDOS a long time ago. This was useful, because it meant you could from within a PC emulator access your host file system. It's entirely possible that works on FreeDOS now.
- somat 2y ago
  This is almost completely unrelated to your comment, but it sparked a fun memory. At one point I had a system set up that would boot dos via ipxe with iscsi drives. I thought it was almost magical how dos had no clue it was using a network drive. I still don't know exactly how it worked. but I suspect ipxe was patching the bios.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    DOS was pretty reliable about using BIOS interfaces for drives; if you imitate the BIOS interface it’ll just work. The problems came from limitations of the BIOS interface (especially size)
    - lproven 2y ago
      Yup. Boot DOS off a USB key and it suddenly speaks USB. :-) Only for drives, but still...

asveikau 2y ago

I feel like FreeDOS could already run just about everything for 20 years or longer. If your goal is to run DOS software your use case was probably already adequately covered with free software. An interesting thing about DOS is the OS wasn't very involved. Programs did a lot of things we now think of as the realm of an OS, like talking directly to I/O addresses or installing interrupt handlers. I feel like a DOS implementation doesn't even need to do a lot of things, maybe part of why DOS4 is "good enough".

LeoPanthera 2y ago

Although 5.0 was the first version to include HIMEM.SYS

bombcar 2y ago
DOS 5.0 was peak perfection. 6.22 or whatever was just stupid double stack and other worthless garbage.
- lproven 2y ago
  > stupid double stack DoubleSpace/DriveSpace? Mostly, you are absolutely right, yes. MS-DOS 5.0 was the peak, and then it started to acquire bloat as MS bundled stuff to compete with DR-DOS 6 and DR-DOS 7. But the thing is that by modern standards, the bloat is tiny. :-) I gave MS Office 97 a bad review at the time because it was several times bigger than Office 95, had virtually no new functionality, but introduced a pointless new file format just to get people to upgrade so they could read the files sent to them by companies with the newer version. But for a decade now, Word 97 is my go-to version. With all the service releases installed, it works great, it's tiny by modern standards -- I think a full install of Word with all the optional filters and things totals 14MB -- and it's lightning fast on 21st century hardware. Word 95 is even smaller and quicker, but it can't read or write the file format that everyone else, from Pages to Wordpad, uses. So it's crippled: everything has to go through LibreOffice first, to convert it to a .DOC format anything else can view, import, edit, or print. Time changes the meaning of bloat somewhat.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Bloat is partially the eye of the beholder, and 6.22 wasn't terribly large by any means, but the things it added were not incredibly stable and it showed. It's also amazing how long things like DOC to DOCX took to really "take hold" in the industry at large. I still get DOC files now and then.
  - garaetjjte 2y ago
    What format was used by Word 95? RTF?

chx 2y ago

No, you are thinking of 4.01 this is 4.0. Those are very different operating systems, this is DOS 3.2 + later abandoned very crude multitasking features. Roughly. And this matters because DOS 3.3 was a milestone. 4.01 comes from 4.00 which has nothing to do with 4.0 (yay for versions).

geoelectric 2y ago
It’s stuff like this that sent me over to DR-DOS back in the day.
- snvzz 2y ago
  DR-DOS also open source now.
  - roytam87 2y ago
    But only OpenDOS 7.01, not older(DR DOS 3.30-7.00) or newer(7.02-8.0/8.1) versions.
    - rnd0 2y ago
      The whole opendos thing is pretty questionable, too. CPM is open source as is its' derivatives. Cool so far. But is DR-DOS a derivative of it? Or is it bound by the 'non commercial' license of the 90's which a) was revoked b)isn't exactly open source (limits distribution) in the first place. Microsofts' releases have the benefit of being unambiguous.
    - davidgnz 2y ago
      OpenDOS isn't open-source, its source-available. The license reads more like trial software: "Caldera grants you a non-exclusive license to use the Software in source or binary form free of charge if your use of the Software is for the purpose of evaluating whether to purchase an ongoing license to the Software. The evaluation period for use by or on behalf of a commercial entity is limited to 90 days; evaluation use by others is not subject to this 90 day limit but is still limited to a reasonable period"

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

3.31 and 6.22 were the lands of stability for pre-Chicago MS-DOS for older and newer applications respectively.

snvzz 2y ago

IF running software is what matters, there's dosemu2 and dosbox-x. For the actual hardware or PCem, FreeDOS exists and is alive. DR-DOS has also been open sourced.

davidgnz 2y ago
DR-DOS hasn't been open sourced. Caldera did release the source for the kernel and a few other bits, but the license only allowed free use for evaluation purposes. After 90 days (for a company) or "a reasonable period" for non-commercial entities you were required to buy a license. Bryan Sparks did open-source CP/M a little while back, but AFAIK he hasn't said anything about DR-DOS so far.
- snvzz 2y ago
  There was an actual open source version, which was retracted[0]. Fortunately for the commons, what's done is done. 0. https://archiveos.org/drdos/ https://archiveos.org/drdos/
  - davidgnz 2y ago
    Thats the DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project. Its a set of patches for the Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 kernel. The license file inside the original Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 source archive says: "Caldera grants you a non-exclusive license to use the Software in source or binary form free of charge if (a) you are a student, faculty member or staff member of an educational institution (K-12, junior college, college or library), a staff member of a religious organization, or an employee of an organization which meets Caldera's criteria for a charitable non-profit organization; or (b) your use of the Software is for the purpose of evaluating whether to purchase an ongoing license to the Software. The evaluation period for use by or on behalf of a commercial entity is limited to 90 days; evaluation use by others is not subject to this 90 day limit but is still limited to a reasonable period." So that website is incorrect when it says OpenDOS was released under an open-source license. Not surprising though - most websites discussing OpenDOS make this error. Possibly because at the time I believe Caldera did actually talk about open-sourcing DR-DOS, they just failed to to actually follow through. If he still has the source code, whats needed is for Bryan Sparks to release it under some regular open-source license like Microsoft have done here.