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The History of DR DOS
- stuaxo 2y agoThe era of it having a port of Mac System 7 is so interesting, somewhere there must be disks with that on it (project Star Trek). Who is still alive that might have it?
- bbarn 2y agoSounds like that never made it to market. Would have been great for me at the time, I was stuck having to trade my Outbound notebook in for a PC one because I couldn't get system 7 on it, and 7 was a game changer compared to 6 (Multi-tasking!!). Would likely have never left mac if it weren't for that.
- skissane 2y agoProbably some developer still has a stack of floppy disks with the source code on it. Issue is, they aren’t supposed to, do they want to risk getting in legal trouble with their former employer over it?
- snvzz 2y agoThese floppies won't be readable forever. There's a level of moral obligation to do preservation.
- skissane 2y agoThe problem is that copyright laws were not designed to encourage historical preservation, at least not for computer software. Source code escrow should be a condition of copyright for closed source software.
- anthk 2y agoApple gave versions up to 7.5.3 for free on its page. Not libre, but there's Executor (a fork of it) under Github which can run System 6/7 binaries.
- skissane 2y agoThat’s not what we are talking about here. We are talking about the unreleased “Star Trek” project in which Apple ported System 7.1 to run on top of Novell DOS 7 (descendant of DR-DOS) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project
- snvzz 2y agoWe're talking about something else entirely. But even for "up to 7.5.3", it is just binaries; no source code.
- 29athrowaway 2y agoDR-DOS was great but it could not run Windows.
- pjmlp 2y agoAs DR-DOS 5.0 owner, it run Windows 3.1 just fine. You are referring to Windows 95 trick from Microsoft, regarding DR-DOS 6.
- rnd0 2y agoI don't think Windows 95 could run on any other dos without a lot of hacking and highly specific expertise?
- pjmlp 2y agoSecond part of my comment. This book has the background history about it, if I remember correctly. https://archive.org/details/unauthorizedwind00schu_1 https://archive.org/details/unauthorizedwind00schu_1 And there was the whole court case. https://www.wired.com/1999/06/more-legal-trouble-for-microsoft/ https://www.wired.com/1999/06/more-legal-trouble-for-microso...
- 29athrowaway 2y agoI see. I ran a version of DR-DOS that wasn't compatible then.
- LeoPanthera 2y agoI think you are probably referring to a beta of Windows 3.1 which deliberately barfed if run on any version of DOS that wasn't MS-DOS. That code was never included in any final non-beta product. Windows 95 doesn't care what version of DOS you have because it replaces it with its own - MS-DOS "7.0".
- ghaff 2y agoBasically MS/PC-DOS was there and it was "free." And its (many) shortcomings could be overcome by a ton of cheap or free add-on utilities for power users who were so inclined. It's also amazing how many Caldera tentacles snaked into so many things.
- greenthrow 2y agoEhhh it's a stretch to say all of MS-DOS's shortcomings could be over come by add ons. Many were intrinsic to the OS and fixes could only be simulated so long as programs and users agreed to abide by the band aids. It's also why so many things even in Windows 11 today are inelegant kludges to maintain backwards compatibility.
- ghaff 2y agoFair enough. There was definitely a step function to even "real" 16-bit OSs of the minicomputer world (and ultimately *nix) that was just hard to make because of path dependency.
- 9front 2y agoWhen IBM released the Personal PC it offered MS-DOS for $40 and DR-DOS for $240, thus neutering DR-DOS. Back then $200 was a lot of money for something that looked and worked very much like MS-DOS.
- pavlov 2y agoThat would be CP/M-86. It also missed the launch window for the IBM PC and wasn’t available until six months later, so PC-DOS had every opportunity to establish itself. As the article notes, DR-DOS didn’t become a product until many years later.
- rasz 2y agoExcept that $240 price point was negotiated by Kildall, he simply didnt expect Microsoft to sell something as important as Operating System for the price of Atari game.
- k__ 2y agoI remember installing Windows on new PCs that came with DR DOS in th early 2000s. Always wondered why they didn't come with Linux.
- psunavy03 2y agoBecause early-2000s Linux was made by techies and geeks for techies and geeks. Windows and Mac succeeded because they had a GUI for nontechnical users and didn't require an inordinate amount of futzing in the terminal to use. Even discounting Android, Linux is much better nowadays, but in the early 21st Century, it was temperamental and finicky enough to install and use that it scared away nontechnical users.
- arp242 2y agoYeah, Linux was horrible compared to the brilliant n00b-friendly user experience DR-DOS. Tons of non-tec and non-geek people just loved the DR-DOS experience.
- psunavy03 2y agoThe poster I was replying to was talking about installing Windows, not using the DR-DOS command line.
- Terretta 2y ago> didn't require an inordinate amount of futzing … scared away nontechnical users You write that as if past tense.
- skissane 2y agoThe big problem with 90s/early 2000s Linux was drivers. Which is still a problem with 2020s Linux, but significantly less of a problem than it once was. However, if a hardware manufacturer wanted to support Linux, they could develop/test the required drivers, and install them preconfigured. The real issue was they didn’t perceive there being sufficient market demand to make it worth their while investing in that It has gotten better-I remember having to muck around with modelines in X11 (not sure if this was 1990s or early 2000s-you get to a certain age and the decades start to blend together in your memory)-but who has to do that nowadays? Still, a HW manufacturer preinstalling Linux could have done that for you
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- oniony 2y agoWorth nothing that DRI's GEM was used as the default desktop environment on the Atari ST, so was actually quite successful this very popular home computer. In fact I owned an ST and used GEM and had no idea it was a product in its own right: I always had assumed it was part of the prouduct that Atari made.
- NikkiA 2y agoGEM was relatively successful on PCs too, for a brief time when DTP packages like Timeworks and Ventura Publisher required it.