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DR-DOS 8.1 (Announce)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 22.11.2007, 10:53
(edited by Rugxulo on 22.11.2007, 11:07)

> OK, changing memory manager wouldn't be problem. Just wonder how new DOS
> version had too old XMS support.
Well, it's not a "new" DOS, it's barely updated since Novell owned it. Besides, most DOS software doesn't need > 64 MB XMS anyways.

> solved by /chipset=ram switch
I guess you know that UMBPCI works in FreeDOS, right? It also works in MS-DOS and DR-DOS too. But just FYI, that's not a unique feature.

> And taskmgr is for me the most valuable thing on DRDOS than other DOSes
> doesn't have. Without it it's uninteresting for me and rather use FreeDOS
> or MSDOS...
Well, there are a few things like that: OpenGem/XM, SEAL (buggy), DesqView (abandoned? dead? locked up?). And MS-DOS 6.22 had DOSSHELL (task switching in conv. mem. at least ... not true multitasking but better than nothing).

There's also REAL/32, TSX-DOS, and other weird DOS-ish clones that I'm not really familiar with and have barely any perception of.

There are specific DOS programs and unofficial interfaces that support multitasking (TP unit, DJGPP's pthreads port, MT, LWP, NDN's background copying, ESP archiver's Tetris or Snake game, XS compiler, some DOS Forths) but that seems to be overlooked (unstable? unpopular? too hard to use?).

EDIT: Forgot about TriDOS (which sol has said is too unstable and could cause data corruption, doh!). Maybe somebody will fix it one of these days. (Hey, it could happen! It should, at least in my opinion. Maybe I'll do it one day, God willing!) :lookaround: *not impossible but very doubtful*

Some (lazy) people would just suggest you drop DOS (and all its apps which you use/write) in favor of: Linux, Windows, Minix, FreeBSD, OctaOS. Granted, that's not a horrible solution, but it ain't perfect. (Minix is lightweight but doesn't support SSE or even maybe? MMX or FPU, I forget. OctaOS doesn't have a full C library yet plus lacking docs so it's a bit quirky and requires at least a 586. Linux 2.6.x (e.g. latest PuppyLinux) requires 128 MB RAM, last I heard. tomsrtbt is too minimal and overformatted/potentially incompatible and yet DamnSmallLinux, which rocks, is still quite imperfect, seemingly requiring 32 MB minimum, e.g. more than Win95. Menuet32 barely works on 32 MB and is too quirky/wimpy for my tastes although it's nicely done. I dunno what FreeBSD requires, at least a 486DX last I heard.)

> I currently like rather DNOSP because it runs good in all DOS/Win9x/NT so
> I can have only one version to use it everywhere. NDN dos version have
> still some problems running under NT. I reported it to NDN forum and hope
> will be fixed.
NDN has more features but is closed src (not trying to complain because I mostly? don't care, just stating the facts). It has been updated a lot until recently (thesis and job issues of the author). I expect it will continue to get better. It does a few things that DNOSP doesn't (e.g. disasm view). But yeah, feel free to use both (emphasis on free). ;-)

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