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Operating Systems Software

Dr. DOS Still 'Doing It' At 8.0 69

Posted by simoniker from the the-doctor-is-in dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Believe it or not, DOS -- DR-DOS, no less -- is still alive and kicking after all these years! Devicelogics, a company founded by former executives of Caldera and Lineo in Utah, says it has begun shipping version 8.0 of DR-DOS today. The company says the most significant enhancement in the latest version of this long-lived (and 'stable') operating system is support for FAT32 large partitions, enabling DR-DOS 'to keep up with market demand for DOS-based embedded solutions built on FAT32 platforms.'"
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Dr. DOS Still 'Doing It' At 8.0 More

Dr. DOS Still 'Doing It' At 8.0

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  • I still use dos (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slothman32 ( 629113 ) <pjohnjackson@gmail. c o m> on Monday March 29, 2004 @05:57PM (#8708033) Homepage Journal
    I know DOS is archaic but I still use it. It's useful for apps when you want limited stuff in memory. Linux and windows can't compete with 100k kernal. Plus I use it whenever I want a new os. I just format in DOS mode then install from there. PC-DOS released version 8, yeah I know different, along time ago. I wonder what the actual differences are between PC 8 and DR 8. Does anyone call DR-DOS "doctor-dos?" I always do. Of course I don't call MS-DOS, "missz. dos," like a possibly-married female.

    • Re:I still use dos (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > PC-DOS released version 8, yeah I know different, along time ago.

      AFAIK, IBM only released PC-DOS 7, and later PC-DOS 2000, which was just PC-DOS 7 with some Y2K fixes.
    • It might be archaic but devicelogics is quite proud [devicelogics.com] of it. 5 user licenses, $200.00. Where was that post with the URL for FreeDOS?

    • Re:I still use dos (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      > I know DOS is archaic but I still use it. It's useful for apps when you want
      > limited stuff in memory. Linux and windows can't compete with 100k kernal.

      I don't mess with the embedded stuff. However, DOS has other uses too. I'm
      not talking about having it be my regular desktop system, but it has uses.
      Uses besides running legacy software, I mean. For one thing, it'll run on
      pretty much *any* x86 system, irrespective of the details of the hardware,
      and it has *no* trouble fitting on a floppy with plen

  • I noticed this earlier today (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @05:59PM (#8708046) Journal
    I downloaded some utilities for a Western Digital HD. It make a boodisk with - to my surprize - DrDOS as the base. First thing I thought was "Hey wow, haven't see that in awhile!"

    It makes sense, though. DOS will run on just about any x86 based machine out there, insuring a very wide compatability, it's something most people are used to (ie: DOS, as opposed to a linux based bootloader, which fewer people are accustomed to) and I'm sure the licensing is a mere fraction of MSDOS - or at least it would be if MS still supported it.

    Makes you wonder about things like FreeDOS... maybe it's still a bit unrefined for these uses? Maybe buyers actually do want a "real company" behind the products they use?
    =Smidge=
  • i used to use drdos on a laptop because i liked its multitasking kludge :)

    im happy to see it is alive and well.
    • I never used Dr DOS, but I was under the impression that its multitasking was the real deal. Unlike the broken multitasking in MS-DOS.

      • Re:ahh the memories... (Score:2, Informative)

        by ophix ( 680455 )
        msdos really didnt multitask at all, unless the application you were running would let you spawn off a shell.

        drdos had 2 different multitasking options. i barely remember the differences between them other than one would stop all other apps you had open except for the one you were in currently, and the other would actually give all the apps a slice of cpu time. this is if i am remembering correctly.

        this is dos we are talking about so any form of multitasking is going to be a kludge.
        • this is dos we are talking about so any form of multitasking is going to be a kludge.

          How so? Since DOS is such a simple collection of services, it runs great in little virtual 86 compartments. In fact, the whole protected-mode scheme from Intel was designed in a way that DOS would be able to run in 'virtual 8086 machines'. DOS applications run on a multitasking environment like NT or OS/2 quite well, and quite well in 'emulation' (really not emulation') with the Free Software dosemu package.
        • msdos really didn't multitask at all

          Yes, MS-DOS 4.0 actually did do proper multi-tasking. It was paid for by a bunch of European computer companies, including Apricot (any Brits remember them?) and ICL (RIP). For reasons I don't know, it was withdrawn, and Microsoft later came out with 3.3, and then 4.0 (totally unrelated to the first 4.0).

          I did once have a copy of the multi-tasking 4.0 but didn't do anything with it. It would have been interesting.

          • actually didnt ms skip the number 4 in version numbers for dos?

            i know dos4 was proper about multitasking, but does it count? i was under the impression it never really saw the light of day

            Ophix

            • Re:ahh the memories... (Score:5, Interesting)

              by grotgrot ( 451123 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @07:00PM (#8708716)
              actually didnt ms skip the number 4 in version numbers for dos?

              Nope, they shipped version 4.0 twice. The second version of 4.0 didn't really offer anything over 3.3 (and was really buggy), so most people just skipped from 3.3 to 5.0 (I still have the manuals :-)

              You can see the timeline at the bottom of http://www.maxframe.com/HISZMSD.HTM [maxframe.com]. There is also a timeline at http://www.nukesoft.co.uk/msdos/dosversions.htm [nukesoft.co.uk]

              Since we are playing nostalgia, I should also mention that I used MS-Windows 1.0 once. I was really impressed that it had a Paint program, and went to save my work of art. In those days, standard file dialogs didn't exist (you had to wait till Windows 3.1 for them). It brought up a dialog with a textfield asking for the filename. I started typing, and then wondered how long a name it would let me enter. The answer is that it let me enter a really really long name - I mashed the keyboard until I got bored. I click OK, and the screen froze and the hard disk light blinked every 5 seconds or so. I eventually rebooted the machine to discover most of the root directory entries had gone. Ah, the joys of buffer overflows! A quick session with Norton Disk Doctor got them back. I didn't touch Windows 1 again, but was an avid user of Windows 286, and then 3.0 and onwards once Windows became more mainstream.

              • >Nope, they shipped version 4.0 twice. The second version of 4.0 didn't really offer anything over 3.3 (and was really buggy), so most people just skipped from 3.3 to 5.0 (I still have the manuals :-)

                The version numbers were 4.0 and 4.01, although I don't think that I actually saw a copy of 4.0.
        • Did you ever use time sharing multi tasking shells? Desqview used to be great. It's not a kludge, it used to work just fine.
          • Ah, DESQView... now there was a classy, lean, multitasker. It's a shame it got canned by Quarterdeck, then sold off. DV/X sucked ass, but it never really got the chance for refinement.

            It was the only OS (for lack of a better word) in those days that could survive running "format a:" in 2 windows at the same time. Not that there was much point -- the disks were totally unusable afterwards -- but it was my stress test of choice. DOS/Windows failed the test, OS/2 failed, Win95 failed, and Windows NT (3.1

            • Download DESQView 2.8, QEMM 8.03 or 9, and other stuff here:
              http://www.chsoft.com/dv.html [chsoft.com]

              If you want to find old stuff, go to #oldwarez on EFNet (or something similar) or fire up EMule 0.42d and search. Also, Googling the web or google.groups can be rather an effective way to lay your hands on abandonware.

              What next? Repton? Alley Cat? Herzog Zwei rom dump?

              Historic reference to the final version of DV, 2.80.

              From: marsha@test120.qdeck.com (Marsha Ailing)
              Organization: Quarterdeck
              Date: Tue, 30 Apr 96 16:
        • Ok, here we have the usual misunderstanding about exactly what multitasking is. From the user point of view, mutlitasking is what happens when you run two programs at once. But that's just a feature that multitasking supports. Really, multitasking is the ability to schedule and coordinate multiple tasks.

          If memory serves, MS-DOS had multitasking somewhere along the line, but because of screwups in the way the kernel was coded, you had to be very careful how you used it. Most programs didn't even try. So fr

          • The problem was that the DOS function calls were not re-entrent (is that the right word?). So if an app was in the middle of a file save and another app interrupted it to do a file save, the first file save was toast. Or keyboard read, or whatever. Apparantly they didn't quite get that fixed, so they dropped the multi-tasking version. The others (desqview?) got around that by basically doing what Windows did -- they took over the DOS functions and did them themselves, using DOS just get things started in th
            • DOS INT 21 services were non-reentrant but it was really, really easy to write your own routines (or buy off-the-shelf replacements), otherwise ten years of TSR's (Terminate & Stay Resident) applications wouldn't have worked well. Also, back then BIOS routines (including keyboard reads at INT 8, disk IO at INT 13, DPMI at INT 31, and so on) were still useful, and they are reentrant.

              There wasn't really any attempt to change this (let alone "fix" it). DOS was never intended to multi-task, and since it's

        • Re:ahh the memories... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by 2TecTom ( 311314 )
          I remember supporting Novell DOS 7 circa 1993

          ~ multitasking (stable)
          ~ DPMS memory management
          ~ peer to peer networking w/ snmp, security
          ~ disk & file compression
          ~ antivirus & backup

          Oddly enough, Windows 3.10 was the only unstable app on those systems.
        • > msdos really didnt multitask at all, unless the application you were
          > running would let you spawn off a shell.

          MS-DOS offered _approximately_ the same level of multitasking as Windows 3.1
          and MacOS 9. That is to say, there was no real multitasking at the OS level,
          but an application could be designed to multitask cooperatively, and there
          were various apps out there for DOS that were designed to do this, usually
          by hanging off the timer interrupt and only using a few cycles each time.
          Win3.1 and MacOS 9

  • Caldera? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by AKnightCowboy ( 608632 )
    Do we hate DR-DOS or like it this week? Caldera is SCO now right? So these are guys that used to work for the company that became SCO? So, we should hate DR-DOS... I think.

    • Re:Caldera? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      These guys left before Darl and company moved in; they have, AFAIK, nothing to do with him or with the continuing legal farce which is the new SCO. Just because somebody once worked for a company which, after a change of management, went on to do bad things doesn't implicate them in any way in that.

      • Re:Caldera? (Score:3, Funny)

        by Eneff ( 96967 )
        Just because somebody once worked for a company which, after a change of management, went on to do bad things doesn't implicate them in any way in that.

        Look here, buster. We're short on two minute hate subjects today and you're trying to defend a known villain?

        Silence!

  • So... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @06:07PM (#8708117) Homepage Journal
    What's the point of linking a story that simply repeats, word for word, the Slashdot story?

    And you might have mentioned, for those who think that the only OSs are Windows, Linux, and MacOS, that DR-DOS is the current incarnation of CP/M -- the OS that would have been the OS if the folks at Digital Research hadn't been so paranoid about NDAs.

    • Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 )
      What's the point of linking a story that simply repeats, word for word, the Slashdot story?

      You must be new here...

      Nobody is expected to actually read the articles. Therefore, the story summary must be detailed enough for people to:

      1) Form strong (sometimes overbearing) opinions on the subject
      2) Draw "Insightful" conclusions about the scenario, based only on the summary of course
      3) Claim to be an expert on the subject
      4) Completely refute any arguments in the summary, and declare the whole subject moot
      5)

    • Re:So... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Endive4Ever ( 742304 )
      No, the 'current' incarnation of CP/M would be CP/M-86, which still has some enthusiasts involved in it's use and continuing development. It has patches that allow it to (wow!) access hard drive partitions larger than 4 MB, which wasn't possible with the Stock CP/M-86 that I have in a boxed set on my shelf.

      DR-DOS was a derivative product from Digital Research.

      And Digital Research's problem with signing NDAs came out of the hippy culture the company grew up in. That never really changed enough for the co
      • I have two Digital laptops on my desk now... Was Digital Research same as DEC? Can't remember now. Can't care either. Both laptops work fine...
        • Since you don't care that Digital Research was not Digital Equipment Corp, I won't say anything. But did you know that DR was originally call Intergalactic Digital Research?
          • That's a real real real cool name! :-) I better get an Intergalactic DR-DOS to go with my Pan-Intergalactic Gargle Blaster.
        • No.
          DEC - Digital Equipment Corp. made hardware (VAX) and the VMS operating system on which Windows NT is based. DEC became a part of Compaq, now HP.
          DR - Digital Research made the CP/M and DR/DOS operating systems.

  • No single user license pricing? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CaptKilljoy ( 687808 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @06:17PM (#8708248)
    Interesting, the buy icon at the bottom has only a 5-licence pack for $200. The previous version is $29 for a single user licence.

    (I must say the site isn't very professional. It lists DPMI/DPMS in two bullet points and multi-tasking in three.)
    • If you are single user, FreeDOS makes more sense. More or less the same functionality and free as free beer. If you want text functionality and multi-tasking, Running a small linux kernel (1.2 family kernel for example) would make real sense. The development of those still go on and they fit in a floppy, unlike 2.x kernels which tend to be pretty large. I used to have 386's with 4MB ram for networking and X stuff (1MB Trident ISA is good enough for any X client). Still FreeDOS makes more sense if you want t

  • Fat32 Support (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Goo.cc ( 687626 ) * on Monday March 29, 2004 @06:18PM (#8708251)
    Wouldn't they have to pay a royalty to Microsoft due to the patents on Fat32 in embedded devices?

    • Re:Fat32 Support (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Shurhaian ( 743684 )
      If they did have to pay such a royalty, so would FreeBSD, as well as every Linux flavour I've encountered, because they all had Fat32 support. My guess is that as long as they don't use Microsoft code to accomplish it, and instead people just peered at the raw data until they figured it out, it's okay(or the FreeBSD project and anyone else who includes fat32 drivers does in fact pay).

      Or is there some ultra-important distinction I'm missing? Wouldn't be the first time.
      • Or is there some ultra-important distinction I'm missing?

        Yes. You're thinking of copyright. FAT32 is patented, which means you need a license to use the technology, even if you wrote the code from scratch. MS has never enforced the patent, but now that FAT32 is so popular, they're apparently going to, just like Unisys and GIF.

        On the plus side, patents only last for 20 years, unlike forever-and-a-day for copyrights.

        • Yes. You're thinking of copyright. FAT32 is patented

          Which means nothing if Microsoft has no plans to assert the patent against developers of free software. Microsoft doesn't want to become the victim of a burnallfat32 FUD campaign that could become higher profile than the one directed at Unisys [burnallgifs.org].

        • That might be true if i read MSDN about FAT32. But FAT32 isn't that hard to re-implement using reverse engeneering.
          • That might be true if i read MSDN about FAT32. But FAT32 isn't that hard to re-implement using reverse engeneering.

            Reverse engineering is prohibited too. That's the difference between copyright and patents -- with copyright, only copying is prohibited, but with patents, you're not allowed to use the technology at all without the patent holder's permission, no matter how you managed to obtain it. Even if you thought of the same idea completely independently, you can't use it until the patent expires.

  • It's good to see that DR-DOS survived being a prop in an anti-Microsoft show trial and is still a viable Operating System for some uses.

    Noorda is a bitter, bitter man.

  • DR-DOS still going strong (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ianoo ( 711633 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @06:27PM (#8708352) Journal
    ... and they say that BSD is dying! ;)

  • ASUS ships FreeDOS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dan_bethe ( 134253 ) <slashdot&smuckola,org> on Monday March 29, 2004 @06:36PM (#8708439)
    FYI, when you buy an ASUS motherboard, its utility cdrom boots FreeDOS.

    • Re:ASUS ships FreeDOS (Score:4, Informative)

      by shamino0 ( 551710 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @08:19PM (#8709412) Journal
      FYI, when you buy an ASUS motherboard, its utility cdrom boots FreeDOS.

      Well, a stripped-down version with a broken installer. The FreeDOS [freedos.org] people warn against using this CD for anything other than flashing a corrupted BIOS. Those who try to install FreeDOS from this CD may end up with a trashed boot sector [freedos.org].

    • I believe that Sun's SunPCi x86 co-processor cards also use FreeDOS by default on their virtual drive files.

      My pipe dream is to have a Sun workstation with an x86 card and a mythical PowerPC card... several versions of Solaris, several versions of Linux, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Mac OS X all in one box! Those dual-boot fanboys would drop to their knees and beg for mercy from such a beast!

      • My pipe dream is to have a Sun workstation with an x86 card and a mythical PowerPC card... several versions of Solaris, several versions of Linux, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Mac OS X all in one box! Those dual-boot fanboys would drop to their knees and beg for mercy from such a beast!
        You could do the equivalent with any Power Macintosh running Linux! :)
    • The utility floppies that come with Western Digital harddrives boot DRDOS. I don't know about the cdroms they recently started using instead of floppies.

  • Interesting use of Linux technology (Score:4, Informative)

    by Voivod ( 27332 ) <cryptic.gmail@com> on Monday March 29, 2004 @10:03PM (#8710120)
    I've talked to the DrDOS guys a few times... they're pretty cool and are very pro-Linux. They were pushing their Drlx product that lets you use Linux device drivers in a DOS environment to get things like USB support which is nice.

    Anyone who thinks DOS is dead does not work anywhere near the embedded world. It's very much alive and kicking in little boxes all around you and new products are still being developed based on it. Problem is that nobody is putting out device drivers for "new" technology like USB for DOS so unless they find a way to utilize existing drivers they're in trouble as older standards like ISA fade. Linux to the rescue. :-)

  • Great News -- Time to upgrade (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anna Merikin ( 529843 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @12:55AM (#8711146) Journal
    I've been using DrDOS (Caldera OpenDOS) 7.03 for many years now; it came with Caldera 1.3 Linux' DosEMU package and a free for individual use license, so I have installed it on all my boxes (it uses Lilo to dual/triple boot) as I still use several DOS programs, and it runs under DosEMU in my Knoppix 3.2 hard disk install as well.

    And, yeah, I would call version 7.03 stable (although 7.0 and 7.02 definitely were NOT stable when using DPMS.) I have never had an issue with it, uptimes rivaled Linux.

    Some DOS programs are irreplaceable (Dragmax and Pipemax for auto racers, several truly great astrology programs, and my favorite scientific encyclopedia -- Compton's original CD. The Windows versions of it do not have as much content unless you count "movie clips" as content.)

    So it's time to upgrade so I can read/write FAT32 partitions, as well, I guess. I just hate to see a "free" (as in beer) license go commercial, though.
    • Even students can do that: http://www.phystechsoft.com/

      I wonder if FAT32 is the only noteciable update in Dr.DOS 8

      BTW, does DR DOS or FreeDOS has some scripting like REXX in IBM DOS ?
      • This thread doubtless is down to only us, but thankx for the link; I didn't know about PTS DOS, even though I use(d) arachne's browser -- an efficient, monstrously-ugly thing (on which DR-DOS under Caldera built its own browser.)

        To answer your question, I agree that a full version upgrade for this feature, promised by Caldera back in 1995 or 6, is overkill. But perhaps the leap from RH 8 to 9 or Slack from 4.x to 7 IIRC inspired them. ;o}

  • The relentless march of technology (Score:3, Funny)

    by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @05:08AM (#8712179) Journal
    to keep up with market demand for DOS-based embedded solutions built on FAT32 platforms. ..... because you can't buy 2GB drives anymore :-)
  • I noticed once that my local bowling alley used DRDOS for Scoring. Somebody managed to crash it once by bowling the ball at the wrong time :(

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