DOS ain't dead

Just saw this in SvarDOS forum: https://old.reddit.com/r/DOS/comments/1rnfw4e/ive_been_quietly_rebuilding_dr_dos_from_scratch/

Sounds quite interesting!
Thanks.

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Visit my personal blog at https://www.javiergutierrezchamorro.com

> Sounds quite interesting!
> Thanks.

No FAT32 support...
Only very basic support for BAT file language...
So far unusable.

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DOS-u-akbar!

> No FAT32 support...
> Only very basic support for BAT file language...
> So far unusable.

It seems it's only for license gaming not for real use :)

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> > Sounds quite interesting!
> > Thanks.
>
> No FAT32 support...
> Only very basic support for BAT file language...
> So far unusable.

Even better, only FAT16 support. FAT12 is not supported either!

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l

> > > Sounds quite interesting!
> > > Thanks.
> >
> > No FAT32 support...
> > Only very basic support for BAT file language...
> > So far unusable.
>
> Even better, only FAT16 support. FAT12 is not supported either!

and not all cluster sizes are supported, > 8KB cluster size seems to be unsupported at the moment.

> > No FAT32 support...
> > Only very basic support for BAT file language...
> > So far unusable.
>
> It seems it's only for license gaming not for real use :)

I think it would be more worthwhile to try to reconstruct the functionality of MS-DOS 5 and 6 on the 4.01 base, honestly...

Which I've been trying to do but that's not really in my wheelhouse. I'd be open to integrating improvements in my fork

Man, if someone could pump Microsoft for 6.21 the way that one guy did for 4, I have a specific list of things I want to do with MS-DOS. (My fork does contain an improved ATTRIB as well as a rewrite of 6.0's CHOICE. But that's only a couple things.)

> > > No FAT32 support...
> > > Only very basic support for BAT file language...
> > > So far unusable.
> >
> > It seems it's only for license gaming not for real use :)
>
> I think it would be more worthwhile to try to reconstruct the functionality
> of MS-DOS 5 and 6 on the 4.01 base, honestly...
>
> Which I've been trying to do but that's not really in my wheelhouse. I'd
> be open to integrating improvements in my fork
>
> Man, if someone could pump Microsoft for 6.21 the way that one guy did for
> 4, I have a specific list of things I want to do with MS-DOS. (My fork
> does contain an improved ATTRIB as well as a rewrite of 6.0's CHOICE. But
> that's only a couple things.)

My project, the lDOS kernel, re-implements most kernel features of MS-DOS v5 (HMA, UMA use) and some of v7.00 (LBA, HMCB chain, LFN awareness). Not included are boot menues for config.sys and support for DriveSpace/DoubleSpace.

FAT32 also isn't supported at all yet. Further, the shell and most other utilities are barely updated. The exception is MSDebug which is actually based on the 2018 MS-DOS v2.xx release and recreates most features of later MS-DOS Debug.

---
l

> > > Sounds quite interesting!
> > > Thanks.
> >
> > No FAT32 support...
> > Only very basic support for BAT file language...
> > So far unusable.
>
> Even better, only FAT16 support. FAT12 is not supported either!

new buid say it support FAT12 but no bootsector to test

> Just saw this in SvarDOS forum:
> https://old.reddit.com/r/DOS/comments/1rnfw4e/ive_been_quietly_rebuilding_dr_dos_from_scratch/

I tried out the two most recent revisions this week: https://pushbx.org/ecm/dokuwiki/blog/pushbx/2026/0516_dr-dos_v9_trial

Part of the reason was figuring out the exact responses for version calls (21.30, 21.3306, 21.4452) for the updated interrupt list: https://github.com/LoopZ/TheList/pull/106

---
l

I still think that the DR-DOS 9 is not usable yet however the project is still under development and it is quite frequently updated.
So one day maybe...
Here is the changelog.

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DOS-u-akbar!

> I still think that the DR-DOS 9 is not usable yet however the project is
> still under development and it is quite frequently updated.
> So one day maybe...
> Here is the
> changelog.


I didn't realize Whitehorn Limited had picked up the DR-DOS torch.

https://whitehorn.ltd/solutions/dr-dos/
https://www.dr-dos.com/releases/9.0/9.0.1151/license.txt
https://www.dr-dos.com/releases/9.0/9.0.1151/
https://www.dr-dos.com/releases/9.0/
https://www.dr-dos.com/index.html

I think that for learning "how operating systems actually work", something that has a publicly available source code would be better than this.