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MS DOS: A Eulogy

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the alas-we-knew-ye-all-too-well dept.

roadhog95 writes: "Love it or hate it, I'm sure everyone's got a love story or traumatic memory of the infamous MS-DOS. Byte magazine reports on the passing away of DOS in light of the recent Windows XP launch. Even Regis Philben stopped by to pay tribute: 'Bill... Is that your final command prompt?'"

2 of 794 comments (clear)

  1. 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit... by fleeb_fantastique · · Score: 5, Interesting

    With the creation of the 32-bit Windows OSes, Microsoft had these relatively unpleasant hacks involving wowexec and system/system32 folders. I suppose they were relatively necessary (although I'm sure folks here could have thought of a better way, but we have the benefit of hindsight).

    Now they're finally leaving 16-bit behind, only to introduce similiar (if not worse) hacks between 32-bit and 64-bit OSes. Instead of following their old design (which at least would have been consistent), they opted to use the system32 folder to hold 64-bit stuff, and to have another folder (is it system64?) hold the 32-bit stuff.

    Confused yet?

    Oh well...

    --
    And so it goes.
  2. Does Micrsoft still license DOS? by weave · · Score: 5, Interesting
    What is on the floppy when I get a BIOS driver update disk from Dell or other manufacturers? Oh, it boots DOS. Golly. Will Microsoft refuse to license bootable DOS floppies now? Are they now free? Do they have an alternative solution that boots some minimal OS to do firmware upgrades or other needed tasks?

    Somehow I don't think DOS is as dead as they make it out.