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MS DOS: A Eulogy
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?'"
While it was around I could always use this joke..."I know DOS backwards...it's SOD". I guess I'll need to find/think up/steal some more material.
Just because xp doesn't use it, doesn't mean I am not going to use dos.
Yet another reason NOT to go to Microsoft for new software.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Hopefully FreeDOS and the DOSEmu will live on!
I bet this is not "First Post."
If I never have to rename my autoexec.bat and config.sys files to play Wolfenstein again, I could die a happy man. You know, there's a reason they called it the dosHELL.exe =)
~Aaron.
student of animation and the fine arts
I'm still Redneck Rampaging with MS DOS running.
Leonard, Here I am! Leonard? Come on Leonard!
In lieu of flowers, we respectfully request that you make contributions to the charity of your choice.
Good plan! Let's donate to open source projects in honor of the death of DOS.
Mmmm... irony. Good stuff.
I remember when I was younger I used a .bat file to create a simple menu system for my brothers to be able to play the games they wanted to play. It even had simple graphics from the wonderful echo command.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
I still use it for some things, like when im doing some chip programing. No i'm note an old fart that sticks only with dos, I run several osen
linux windowze beos they all have something good about them.
What kind of crack-rock shit is that?
;)
Apparently you've not been keeping up with Sting over the last 10-15 years. Par for the course, really.
how Macs now finally have a command prompt (in OS X), but XP has lost it now?
Mac users users used to be the object of derision for their lack of command prompt. Now XP users will be.
There's some cosmic karma in there somewhere.
They are both at their respective .org
FreeDOS
DOSEmu
There is a lot of info on the net too, just google it.
I bet this is not "First Post."
This just sounds like a Microsoft publicity stunt more than anything. A sort of "We have evolved beyond needing prompts, and are now fully graphically inspired."
Still, I'd be willing to argue that the removal of legacy DOS functionality isn't always a good thing. You break functionality with code that used to run on previous MS Operating systems. Furthermore, I'd imagine everyone who's been working in computers for awhile has watched the Windows GUI break, and then need the command prompt to fix it.
Now on the other hand, this may be a plus. Microsoft might actually believe that Windows is stable enough that you don't need the DOS prompt anymore. Stability is always good. But even on the most stable platform in the world, I'd still rather not have something crippled from my operating system just because MS doesn't think I need it anymore.
But back to this little tid bit of a story...just a marketing ploy, not really news.
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.
RIP
Here lies DOS
"I can't beleive is actually died"
"Yeah I thought it would never die"
"Wait a second.. I think its moving"
"WOW whats in it"
"I'll find out"
C:\>ls
'ls' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
"Dammit, I hate DOS, why dont they just use real commands"
"Wanker"
Does XP come with a terminal? If not, who thunk of that?
Gates: "If you need a terminal to get to it, you don't need to get to it". Thanks Bill. No wonder people are losing MS servers right and left.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
DOS was fantastic!! Writing TSR proggies to fake DLLs! Hooking int 2f and adding your own services... int 2e backdoor to the interpreter. Grabbing the entire serial port interrupt mechanism so you you write your own serial packet state machines. You started app development by writing a keyboard handler!
You could stick things anywhere, cruise the operating system, write semi re-entrant code with the use in the InDOS flag, hack hack hack.... Just don't tryu to be hardware independent!
It was amazing what people did get out of a DOS machine. 640K is still quite a lot you know.....
Matthew.
http://www.freshbrains.co.uk
"None of this shit works" -W.Shatner
Love it or hate it, I'm sure everyone's got a love story or traumatic memory of the infamous MS-DOS.
I never used MS-DOS. Everyone I knew had Amigas at the time, since they were far, far superior to MessyDos of the day. I progressed from that, directly to Linux. This doesn't mean I never had the opportunity to type a command or two under MS-DOS, but it does mean that I never *used* it for anything, realistically. I don't have a fond memory, or traumatic memory of MS-DOS.
I feel like someone who managed to live through a war without any emotional scars. The thing is, I know many, MANY people that NEVER used a Windows or DOS box, yet lived through the DOS era. These are owners of Amiga, Apple, Atari or other boxes of the era. They commanded a significant market share in the beginning of things, and only later on did their number wane to insignificance. You dishonour them by implying that they never existed, and that there was no other option at the time.
This is supposed to be a place where people realise the significance of computers in history, and know a little of that history. Please keep that in mind.
Where are my Karma Points when I need them?
DOS wasn't licensed from Gary Kildall (who actually was the father of CP/M), but from Tim Paterson.
You would have known this if you had read the article you're commenting on.
Sure - try DOSEMU with FreeDOS ripcord.
If it doesn't work, try dosemu with DR-DOS - not open source, but at least $0.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
So Bill Gates typed "exit" and (wow!) the prompt closed, no more DOS, no more unreliable crappy OS's, just XP and .NET - hurray!
It all began with DOS and DOS will end it as well, or something very much like it - GUI's are overrated. Sometimes you just want a Quick and Dirty Operating System that goes well with scripting, say changing your entire folder of mp3 to use a standard name or just organizing images, perhaps you need to do something that the GUI cant handle. There's nothing a prompt cant handle!
Long boring story short -> DOS as we know it is dead, but Quick and Dirty Operating System's are the future.
Long live DOS!
--
Anataka suki desu. Itsumo. Itsumademo.
here @ freedos.org
I have used it for formating and fdisking fat16
and fat32 filesystems, or to remove linux
partitions without a linux bootflop or bootcd.
And i know people using DOS for there daily
programming, creation of Embedded Systems and
ofcourse webbrowsing and chatting....
Quazion.
From "Microsoft the Company"
http://www.aaxnet.com/topics/msinc.html
* 1982 - Digital Research sues Microsoft and IBM - Wins - . It was obvious MS-DOS and its PC-DOS variant were simply rip- offs of Digital Research's CP/M operating system. It remained only to prove it contained DR code. DR's Gary Kildall sat down at an IBM PC supplied by IBM and, using a secret code, got it to pop up a Digital Research copyright notice.
It's case won, Digital Research received monetary compensation and the right to clone MS-DOS. This is why Microsoft never sued DR over DR-DOS, but used every other means to destroy it. The settlement was under a strict non- disclosure agreement, so few even know DR sued, never mind that they won.
Digital Research was purchased by Novel and destroyed by neglect and mismanagement. The products now belong to Caldera, which has filed suit against Microsoft over predatory practices used to destroy DR-DOS's market.
OK, I'm not seriously saying that Mac OS 7 was as powerful as XP, but I find it funny that for years the main argument against Macintosh was it had no command line interface, and now here Microsoft is removing MS-DOS from their OS. It doesn't really matter though because XP has so many other arguments against it already. I guess it's time for everyone to switch to Linux.
~ now you know
There is still the problem of having to wait for each stage of the pipe to finish before the next can begin, but there is definately life in the old DOS yet and I'll be using JP's shells long after COMMAND/CMD has gone the way of the dodo.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I have seen edlin.com living somewhere in system32 on either Professional, and/or Home Edition of XP.
On the other hand, vi is on almost every unix system (as well as ed) so I guess it's only fair...
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Is it too much to ask the slashdot editors to check things like this before posting ? This troll is not even worthy of inadequacy.org
What I always found funny was that when a certain DOS program went bezerk, EMM386 thought to jump in and save your ass with... that's right, shutting down the computer before you could save _ANYTHING_, showing words similar to:
"EMM386 has shutdown your computer to prevent loss of data".
Thankfully these days are over... o wait, nv_disp.dll just went into a stop 0xea
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Circa 1990...
After reinstalling his OS, I informed my associsate that "command.com" is not a game file that can be deleted.
Oh, the canabalistic power of "format C:". I used to type it and just stare at it with my finger on Enter.
check http://www.sealsystem.org/
Calling MS-DOS an operating system is stretching the concept quite a bit.
DOS was nothing but a glorified interrupt handler. It wasn't unstable, since there was practically nothing to be unstable with.
It didn't protect itself from userland programs, which is generally considered a bad thing. Granted, this gave the programmer freedom to completely work around the operating system, but at the same time allowed said programs to royally mess things up.
From a single-task, single-user system, it was quite good, provided the programs behaved nicely. DOS Extensions even provided it with protected memory, making life a bit easier.
New command interpreters, like 4DOS, injected new life into the system.
If you accepted it as a single-user, single-task enviroment, it was adequate.
I find the decision to remove any and all CLI from Windows a bit odd, considering that Apple went the opposite direction with Mac OS X.
Only for new apps. I`ll be writing/fixing DOS apps for years... dont forget the hundreds of thousands of DOS apps running on 2/3/486s and which work just fine, thank you very much. Why change them? I mean, if you cant do it 1) for free, and 2) with 0% chance of no bugs being introduced, forget it.
[Bil Gates] stated, "It's the end of the MS-DOS era," referring to the exorcism of 16-bit code from the Windows code base.
What, again??
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
cat
It took much longer than I thought it should have. I did a quick 'dir' and... yikes! Everything on D: was gone! I lost a bunch of stuff (fortunately nothing utterly irreplaceable). I reinstalled FS5, and sure enough, it bombed out again, and there was a crosslink from inside D:\FS5 to D:\.
I did some digging, and found out that if I disabled SmartDrive, it'd work fine. That's right, Microsoft Flight Simulator 5 is incompatible with... Microsoft SmartDrive.
At that point I started using Linux in earnest.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Moving to Windows was initially fantastic, but I very quickly grew to miss the old command-line interface of DOS. Then I found Linux/Unix and I haven't looked back! I must be the only person in the known universe to have started using Linux/Unix because of DOS!
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
The Nietzschean purpose of MS-DOS was to survive long enough (1981-2001) that the faint rumblings and beginnings of an artificial intelligence operating system (AI-OS) could emerge from the decaying corpus delicti where MS-DOS had gone before.
Choose your battles, is an ancient dictum. Back in 1978 at a meeting of the Northwest Computer Society here in Seattle, a call went out from the podium for anyone who would be willing to work on the newsletter of the society. Very truly yours Mentifex here shrank back, unwilling to work on anything but a Theory of Mind for AI. To the relief of all us AI and non-AI slackers, a certain historically immortal Tim Patterson of Seattle Computer Products spoke up and volunteered to work on the computer society newsletter. Such a quiet, unassuming fellow -- and yet Tim Patterson turned Bill G*tes into a multi-multi-billionaire, because Tim Patterson was the author of Quick-and-dirty-DOS, or QDOS, which Microsoft bought from Seattle Computer Products for fifty thousand dollars ($50K) and foisted upon the world as MS-DOS. My only real gripe about MS-DOS was the weirdness of Paul Allen in declaring that henceforth all users should use a backslash (e.g., C:\mind.html) path-separator instead of the Un*x forwards-slash separator, as in http://mind.sourceforge.net/alife.html -- the way G*d intended computers to work.
Now, are there any ankle-biters who would like to follow up here with posts about how the slowly emerging AI OS is somehow off-topic to the passing away of MS-DOS? If so, fire cowardly away.
In announcing MS-DOS's demise, Microsoft founder Bill Gates typed "exit" at the MS-DOS command line during the launch of Windows XP.
A prize to the person who provides an explanation for how Billy Boy typed "exit" at a command line that doesn't exist?
I haven't had a chance to get at an WinXP machine to check, but the command line must still be there. There's too many reasons that it's necessary, e.g. SQL Server has loads of command-line utilities. Just because MS have taken it off the start menu doesn't mean that it can't be accessed by someone with half a brain.
People keep complaining about DOS all the time... about autoexec.bat, config.sys, and what not. IMHO, DOS was and _is_ one of the best and cleanest operating systems to learn about the intel architecture. Where else can you issue BIOS interrupts, and play around with system memory? Linux doesnt let me do that unless I compile a kernel module, and what not.
Trey, DOS wasnt the best desktop/server/handheld Operating System, but it surely was a great learning experience for all who used and programmed for it.
I still use TurboC on DOS when I need to try out some small program, and dont want to wait for linux to load.
Another point, I dont think you can ever have a successful operating system without any command prompt. Copying and moving files can never be as easy using a dumb GUI file manager.
Don't Panic
That's not DOS, dumbass. That's the command line.
Please mod the parent down. It isn't insightful.
Gates liscensed DOS from SCP. SCP based their product on CP/M, originally written by Gary Kildall.
DOS was advanced by the standards of microcomputers of the day. CP/M's 16-bit version, CP/M-86 wasn't ready when MS-DOS 1.0 hit the market, and by the time CP/M-86 did ship, MS-DOS already hit version 2.0. Version 2 had neat-o features like subdirectories and a Unix-like C API that pushed it ahead of CP/M. CP/M eventually did surpass DOS, but it was called DR-DOS by that time.
Of course, DOS was well behind most all versions of Unix, including Microsoft's Xenix. Peter Norton once wrote that Xenix might have been the "operating system" of the future. Unfortunately, Mitch Kapor wrote Lotus 1-2-3 to run under MS-DOS rather than Xenix. In those days, people bought PCs to run Lotus. The operating system was just the black screen with gibberish text you saw before Lotus booted up.
"I wonder if the geeks that are so rabidly against Microsoft would be so vociferous if Unix was running on over 95% of the world's PCs ?"
I think yes- There's bad flavors or Unix (imagine 95% of the world running AIX!- Ahhhhh!).
But seriously, an M$ unix as a base would have made a huge difference in the world today- Imagine a well written 32-bit OS, readily available, widely used, STABLE!, with none of the memory restrictions of the DOS world and Hundreds of easily installed applications. The computing world would be a very different place today, IMHO.
it still has 'edlin' -- whoohoo!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Surely any that has _tried_ to use DOS/16-Bit applications under Windows NT and Windows 2000 would be grateful that DOS is being phazed out with XP..
:)
DOS Virtual Machine? I'd rather not sit there burning up my CPU at 100% load just to run edit.com.
Hurrah for the demise of the Windows command line
C:\>pkg_add bash2.02.tar.gz
'pkg_add' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
Sniffed one worker,"Oh God!!! Why!? How the hell am I supposed to fix anything now? Corrupted registries can't be fixed with ren user.da0 user.dat. I can't del or deltree. And with Microsoft's registration bullshit, the hundreds of Windows reinstalls I'll be doing are going to take even longer! Damn you, Gates! DAMN YOU!!!"
She then proceeded to wrap her arms around her knees, and rock back and forth, muttering "Where are my bookmarks? It won't print! I don't remember where I saved it! I opened this attachment called iloveyou.vbs, is that ok?" over and over again.
sigs are for suckers
It's a publicity stunt, but it's also slightly wrong:
at least on XP RC2, you can easily get to the command line.
I use it for Perl stuff sometimes, and ping and things. It might not be full DOS (oh, the loss of that extreme power will be sorely felt), but it is a command line.
Does Byte still exist as a print mag? I don't remember seeing it in any bookstores recently. Last I remember, it was a pretty thin excuse for a magazine where once it was thick with articles and advertising. :-(
at a Msft sales, uh, 'technical presentation' here in '96. The showman said, and I quote, "Lets have a moment of silence for DOS... " altho what he was refering to was dropping support for DOS as a seperate product.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
DOS itself may be dead, but XP still has a command line prompt (cmd.exe) or, more accurately, the idea of Console-Mode executable. Unfortunately the 32-bit prompt still acts brain-dead to emulate the COMMAND.COM behaviour, so scripting is painful, there are still hacks to "magic" file names (CON, PRN etc.) and, at some levels, the "ohmigod I can't believe that crashes the machine" mentality survives - the following code as a console app will crash an NT, Win2K or XP machine - no BSOD, just plain gone...
#include
main(void)
{
printf("\t\b\b");
return 0;
}
T
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
Hell or even worse - HP-UX 9...
You have a valid point, but it is sad, isn't it to realise just how many human lives have been wasted by Microsofts bug-ridden software.
Although Microsoft have not actually committed genocide, they must have wasted the equivalent of a few thousand lives if you count all the wasted hours spend looking at BSODs and rebooting...
Alas poor DOS we gnu ye well...
Somehow I don't think DOS is as dead as they make it out.
At first, I thought this was a joke. But, a quick search to google later, I'm now even more confused. According to this article, Windows for Pens came out some time in 1992. To use the theories of the great Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, since I have no recollection of this whatsoever, it must have flopped pretty hard. Did anyone actually buy something that can run windows for pens? Can you run Linux on it?
A joke that I remembered about DOS :
Q) How do you rename a directory in DOS?
A) Create a new directory with the name you want, copy everything there, and then delete the old directory.
Q) How do you change the color of the walls in your house?
A) You make a new house, paint it in the new color, shift everything from the old to the new house, and destroy the old house.
Don't Panic
I guess this means we will now never know the correct answer to -
Error reading drive A:
Abort, Retry, Ignore?
Here's my reality... and I'm not kidding about this, but feel free to mod up to "funny".
I work for a software company, maintaining 15 year old DOS Software. The company is owned by older people that can't move fast enough to be in this industry... but somehow, we're still managing to sell this software to unsuspecting people.
We have 2 applications... both of which are touted as "high-end", mission critical apps. A typical installation could cost the client somewhere around $50,000 USD, sometimes more. Here's what they get:
1. A nasty DOS app written in Qbasic, using a Btrieve database on a Novell Server, all running over our favorite protocol, IPX.
Sounds good? Well, its my nightmare!!!
When win2k was released, a lot of little things in our DOS app stopped working. Our company's president refused to believe that MS-DOS was anything less than cutting edge. Now that XP was released, and more things are broken, our company's president refuses to believe that microsoft would abandon DOS.
Anyway, enough rambling about this. Its a sad fact that there are companies STILL working with DOS programs. Sad. Even worse, is that I'm typing here, rather than working on that Qbasic crap.
c:\> del *.*
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
MS-DOS could have survived, if back in the early 90's, Microsoft had wanted to continue developing it. They made it obsolete by choice... I'm sure they could have easily turned it into a multitasking, 32 bit, networked OS, and still could have put a GUI on top of that.
It just wasn't in their best interested to do so.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
DAMN! And I was preparing to go out and buy that internal combustion-powered vehicle! I almost forgot that its core technologies are over a century old. Thanks for reminding us that anything based on the past is old - and therefore sux.
I'm surprised General Fay-lure didnt attend the ceremony ....
What's so bad about AIX? I much prefer it's disk space management scheme to things like Solaris.
If your / partition is too small in Solaris...tough. Rebuild the box. In AIX, it's trivial to grow a filesystem. You can even do it live without users even being aware that it happened.
Even through I now solely use Linux I will miss DOS. It was my first operating system and my lifeline whenever the users on the network screwed up with their Window$ boxes.
With DOS and Doom I learned syntaxsis, options and commands. It gave me the challenge and the boost necessary for me to head towards an IT career.
So long DOS, you were Window$ last hope!
Writing: no longer done with the fountain pen, now done with an eraser.
There was little I could do on my Tandy 1000 that was more enjoyable than
/s
.bat files? I still regularly use "killdocs.bat" to clean the pr0n out of my documents menu.....
dir \*.*
and watch it grind away through my 10MB drive.
Also, does this mean no more support for
I've used software that uses the same "protection" scheme Microsoft plans for XP. It was a huge pain in the ass.
Achieving Reality
While the underlying DOS is gone from new windows versions, the need and use of command lines is not gone from Windows. I assume that there is still an option to get to a command line in XP, just as there is in 2000. As much as MS has tried to make remote admining a Windows machine feasible, and Windows Terminal Server is close, nothing will beat the ability to run a lean and mean text only interface to a remote machine. Not to mention the ability to store scripts. I'm guesing there are a lot of key business processes that rely on batch files. I just hope that MS doesn't phase out the ability to execute commands from the command line.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
that the part of linux a lot of us love(the CLI) is the part that windows has been so desparate to get rid of.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
I think it'll be around for a while however, considering I have 15 8088s that won't take windows XP and I've got 20 IBM DOS 3.3 floppies. DOS has served me well through the years, First machine in '89 was a tandy 1000, boy could that thing cruise for a machine with 512K. ;) Yeah, back then you were lucky to hvae a 25 meg Hard drive, but we had the dual floppies that were so popular at the time. To the probable panic of many in here, we didn't even have 3D games like doom, quake, hexen or wolfinstien (the earliest I saw, around 95) I still use win95 because it doesn't corrupt stuff nearly as badly as 98 or ME does, I have a few DOS games that just refuse to run on it, which probably is their reason for dumping it. Oh well, enough of this rant.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
The water is getting muddy, here, so let me explain for those who are lost in the buzzword-bingo:
First there was DOS (well, not really, but that's where my story begins). DOS was not really an OS so much as a very simple library and some interupt handlers. The command-prompt was a program that came with it, and a very important one (so were "dir", "del" and others).
When MS decided to build a graphical interface, they did so on top of DOS. DOS was still there as the core interupt handler, but Windows was how the user interacted with the system.
This posed some problems. Windows was not a multi-tasking OS because DOS was not. Windows faked it by giving applications library routines that let them manage their own time-slices in a cooperative multitasking framework. Any app that wanted to take over the system simply avoided calling those routines, but that would be considered bad form.
Eventually, MS build may kludges into Windows to allow memory protection and something resembling premptive multi-tasking. These are good things, but 95, 98 and ME are all still DOS-based.
With NT (2000 and XP are NT versions) MS wrote the whole OS from scratch and did a fairly good job at the low levels (yes, NT is a nice OS down near the hardware where you never interact with it). At the higher levels, they just took the miserable waste of system resources called Win32 (MS' port of Windows to a 32-bit environment) and pasted it on top of NT. Win32 has grown and become more NT-friendly over the years, but it's still the vestige of a DOS-based windowing environment on top of what is arguably a fine OS.
Woefully, the dream that MS engineers had of creating a flexible mircrokernel platform was also squashed. NT was supposed to have several smaller sub-systems to support many types of application access (the POSIX subsystem is a demonstration of the dismal failure of that plan). In reality, all NT, 2000 and XP apps have to go through Win32 to be useful, and Win32 is what most folks think of when they think Microsoft OS.
In the end, the recent press about DOS disapearing is actually misleading. DOS may be gone from NT, 2000 and XP, but the legacy of Windows remains, and will continue to taint MS products for a very long time.
I also work for a company that still develops on DOS.
Why use Any other win based System when we can still use Equipment that even Linux prefers not to use.
Some may say we are stuck behind the times. Yes In alot of ways But show me a commercial Software that has 9 yes 9 Known Bugs.
And yes we are Writing a new version for Win Xp. But even our sales staff does not want to sell it.
MS DOS may now have gone away, but in the land of PC-104s TinyLinux and RomDOS will continue to have practical applications. Any system that needs to continually chug along, fit into a peanut sized Flash ROM and otherwise work happily ever after will have a need. MS may be out of the market, but who cares? :)
You say you want a revolution?
In all this I'm starting to wonder if MS isn't going to eventually dump the command line too, although I don't know how they even could, since there's more than a few programs that simply spit out text and nothing else. I'm not sure I care that DOS is even gone, since I tend to use Perl for most of my scripting adventures (and I can get it to work on Unix too).
However, all this brings up the point, how am i going to rescue a computer. DOS can fit on a floppy, I can scoot things around with dos, edit things, load required drivers - basically DOS is THE rescue utility. How in the hell am I going to fix XP when DOS doesn't know what to do with NTFS? For that matter, how am I going to fix a computer at all once Intel starts pushing for the death of the floppy drive. Apperently Macs have gotten by for a long time without a CLI, but that seems a bit beyond me.
Well would that mean that the windows console app is gone ? What of them now ? Like I mean downward compatibilty. That sure would be wierd...
I can understand why they offer it -- there's probably still a few places where legacy DOS apps are in place, and IBM has a long history of never ever backing away from a technology it's made a "strategic commitment" to. Still, it's funny to click on the "System requirements" link and see "Intel 8088/8086, 512K RAM, 6-18MB hard disk space". Kinda takes ya back, doesn't it? (snif)
-- Jason Lefkowitz
Read my blog.
Wonder Why? See9 d. htm
/ 07 /schulman.html
http://www.ddj.com/articles/1993/9309/9309d/930
Novell and then Caldera sued Microsoft
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/02
Microsoft paid out to Caldera a large undisclosed amount.
But with the Window 2000 SP2 pack Microsoft pull the same stunt with SAMBA server they did with DrDos and Win3.1
http://us1.samba.org/samba/docs/FAQ/#4
Oh, and of course my first run-in with Borland's Turbo Pascal... Man, those were the times...
My solution was a set of batch files that ran when the CD was inserted. The "installation program" was interactive, including a menu with several options. The program did things like selectively copy files, changed permissions from read-only to read write (files copied from a CD were read-only by default), verify network shares and copy files to other computers, and even updated DLLs if necessary (reboot required). It took about a week to develop, but simplified the instructions a great deal (Close program on all PCs, Insert CD, Select 2, Reboot all PCs when done).
Is MS-DOS really gone, or do they have the same kind of MS-DOS emulation that WinNT has? And, if it is gone, does anyone know of a free scripting language that would perform like DOS Batch files? I'd hate to think if there was a hardware failure I'd have to buy an installation software suite, or convince the customer to install a nationwide secure network...
Im serious :) who is making games with *great storytelling* like the old dos games?
...
...
Dos games were great because the graphics SUCKED so you *HAD* to tell a good story to keep anyone interested
IMHO, 3d was the worst thing to happen to games. Kids buy games for "Awesome graphics" (tell me what that means someone)... because people are too stupid anymore to tell presentation from content! If you wrap a pile of shit in pretty box they'll pay for it
(end rant)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Back when I was a lab procter in college, we had a DOS/3.1 machine up front for inputing student's computer usage stats (and playing Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, and Gorilla.BAS of course). One day, one of the other procters wanted to wipe out a certain directory on C drive for some reason, and used deltree. Of course, running deltree *.* from c:\ probably wasn't the best idea. He wondered why it was taking so long just to delete just one directory, and called me. By the time I got there, it was halfway through c:\windows, so it was basically time for a system reload. While reloading the machine, I was told by my boss to delete deltree.exe (or was it com?) from the machine, to avoid this happening again.
Two weeks later, the machine was hosed again. We asked the same student, and he eventually confessed to using deltree again. Turns out he had noticed the deltree file wasn't there, so using the original DOS 6.2 install disks and the "expand" program, he extracted the file off the disks and back into c:\dos. And then he proceeded to run deltree *.* from c:\ again.
Lovely. The guy was smart enough to extract an individual file from the DOS install disks, yet somehow dumb enough to run deltree *.* from c:\ twice.
"Keyboard error, press F1 to resume."
"If you go to the next town, going across a desert is a shorter way." - Pu-Li-Ru-La (Taito)
It's gone! At last! Only 30 years too late; oh- wait it was only 20 years old- no I was right the first time.
;-)
What kind of insane, broken, user hostile, program hostile, PC hostile world did we live in that forced users to use that broken down 640k limited, single tasking, interrupt restricted pile of junk?
Why, when decent OSs had been around for 20 years did Microsoft see fit to impose that pile on the computing public? What unbelieveable sin meant that was what we needed?
Good riddance MSDOG! You will be remembered; but not forgiven
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"C64 -> Amiga -> Linux
Windows 2K comes with a compatibility feature with SP2:
COMPATIBILITY MODE: Service Pack 2 (SP2) includes a compatibility mode that lets programs run as if they were on a Windows NT 4.0 SP5 or Windows 95 machine. To enable this interface, perform the following steps:
Start a Run box (Start, Run).
Enter the following command: "regsvr32 %systemroot%\apppatch\slayerui.dll"
Click OK.
Click OK to the confirmation.
Now if you right-click a shortcut and select Properties, you'll see a Compatibility tab that lets you select whether the program target should run under an NT 4.0 SP5 or Win95 compatibility layer.
I don't know where you people get your information from, but XP still comes with a command prompt. If you click Start, then Run, and type in CMD, you'll still get the trusty command prompt. It works just as good as the Windows 2000 command interperater, and comes with all the new functionality (command line completion, extended batch language, etc.) introduced with Win2K.
Stop spreading the FUD. Start cutting the cheese.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
I still use msdos on my windows box and bash on my linux box to do all my file manipulation. It is much faster to type what you want to happen then to click and drag over icons and move them. This is especially true when you are interested in moving only certain types of files, it is easy to specify a mask with wildcards on the command line. Try doing any complex file selection with a GUI without having to individually go through and click each wanted file. Ugh!
You're Just Jealous Because The Voices Are Talking To Me.
And it supports *almost* bash-style command-line completion, for loops with quite a few options, unix like && and || operators etc.
And with cmd and bash *both* on my XP or NT/2000/XP PC, i for sure don't miss command.com -- that travesty with its limits on the size of the environment wasn't fitting to be called a shell.
That way you won't have the prompt to type 'y' to save you. I used this once in a batchfile for 'jumpstarting' MS-DOS/win3.11 systems.
I remember DOS, and how it worked quite clearly still, although I haven't used it in 5 years orso ;)
From the article:
"In announcing MS-DOS's demise, Microsoft founder Bill Gates typed "exit" at the MS-DOS command line during the launch of Windows XP."
And this didn't cause a Blue Screen of Death? Too bad.
Ratguy
Ever watch a Novell server boot up (well our server here in the office has been up for 516 days so I have not seen ours reboot in a LONG while). The last Novell 5.1 server I setup started it boot-up procedure by loading Caldera DOS.
Also the company I work for still active sells and supports TWO DOS applications. Both are property management programs. Both have large install bases countrywide. Our main product has finally developed a stable window's version and we are slow converting people, but most of our users are still on the DOS version.
DOS is not dead, it is just being phased out of the M$ OSes. This is something that they should have done long ago, but from the comments I have been seeing and hearing they did not remove the limitations that DOS placed on the windows products. Seems that while they may have removed the DOS code, they have not gotten rid of the bloat that it created. Once again M$ gives us a half-assed version of what Windows could be.
As a VAR we will be telling every one of our clients to avoid Windows XP like the plague, if just for the DOS issue. This is hard to do as for some reason small businesses buy computers with Windows ME and Windows XP Home Ed. We still push Windows 98 and have just now started supporting Windows 2000 and now there is a new Windows OS. I am so happy, now I will get to go to sites with Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP Home (and pro may be) and a couple Windows 2000s thrown in. All in time for M$ to come in and audit the place for valid licenses. Ridiculous.
Friendly
Beer pong, the gentleman's drinking game.
yeah! I did that too.. I used to right loaders in pascal, ansi graphics in thedraw for my bbs.. Ahhh sweet memories.
Bitch you KNOW the side.. WORLD MAFUCKIN WIDE..
With the death and destruction that is going on right now, I find it sad and pathetic that high profile people like Sting and Regis are eulogizing an operating system (that's still being used around the world, so I don't think is quite dead yet) when they should be eulogizing things like the loss of democratic freedom in the West and the continued opression and death in the rest of the world...
I can no longer read Dilbert. It's too depressing, because it is too real. -- Hyperhaplo
For example, I'd been using Norton Ghost Enterprise 6 for a while, and finally upgraded to Ghost 7. Ghost 6 used to make you use a win9x box to generate the bootable files for a multicast diskette, but now apparently they package a version of PC-DOS (or something, I'm not quite sure). I would presume that most people would go that way.
Though, it's still an interesting question: how does one with a WinXP and only a WinXP system create a bootable DOS floppy with which to upgrade his/her own bios?
This can't be happening.
I'm so dependent on Autodesk 3DStudio R4 for MS/DOG it's not funny. I've been using it for years; I know it inside-out. Sure, I use Max, too. But Max's bloat and clutter gets in my way. 3DS (DOS) is like a well-worn hammer that feels good when you pick it up.
I knew this day would come someday. I guess there's dual boot. I guess I could just keep a Win98 (or Dos 6.22) box around forever. I did it with a Mac 512K running System 2.3 (the only thing that ran a MIDI sequencer from 1985). I can do it with DOS.
I've got $4,000 invested in this one program ($3K base price plus two upgrades). Fuck Microsoft, fuck XP, fuck NT, fuck 2K.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Even at this NT-only shop, we use MS-DOS 6.22 from a bootable CD every day:
to put window boxen on the net with clients made from the NT server disk client setup program.
to boot up a machine with a forgotten admin password and copy the sam to be cracked at leisure with l0ftcrack.
to restore Disk Image Pro and Ghost images from the network or burned onto the CD.
No, the dos in dosboy does not stand for denial of service.
No gods, no masters
Dos 6.22's scan disk has saved my floppies time and again when 9x/NT/2000 would just choke on them
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
This is a classic example of how nostalgia can be stronger than history. MS-DOS was terrible, so terrible, in many ways. It has nothing to do with the 16-bitness of it, or even driver memory crunch hell, but simply that the command prompt side of it was an embarrassment from day one.
It took over ten years before there was any kind of command history (with doskey, you could finally hit the up arrow to recall previous commands). There wasn't a real alias mechanism until doskey either. And heck--and everyone forgets this--you couldn't even properly edit the command line until doskey came along. File completion was never standard. The batch file commands were braindead and severely limited.
Sure, some third parties walked in with their own top notch command processors--most notably JP Software with 4DOS, which is still better than every UNIX shell I've ever used--but even with over a decade to work on it, the largest PC software company in the world couldn't manage to write decent command processor given years to do so. And the worst part is that it was so easy it could have been a high school project. Dr. Dobb's Journal even published the source code for a bash-like shell that replaced command.com.
I think the likely answer here is that Microsoft could have written something better, but they spent a decade trying to beat down MS-DOS and replace it with something else. Remember, Windows 1.0 shipped in 1985. So for all that time, MS-DOS users were stuck with an intentionally inferior product. It's difficult to forget the pain of those days.
MS-DOS meant Microsoft's Dirty Operating System
no wonder porn took over the internet
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Come on, don't you remember all the OS/2 vs. NT 3.1 articles when NT 3.1 shipped? NT 3.1 was a flop, mostly used as a testing ground for people interested in keeping up with MS's new plans.
NT 3.51 was the first successful version of NT. NT 3.51 SP 5 was amazingly stable... it would be interesting to put an NT 3.51 SP 5 machine up against a Windows 2000 SP 2 (NT 5 SP 2) machine and compare.
Win32s was the backwards port of the core of the Win32 API to Win3.1. The two goals were:
1) Get new applications written against the Win32 API so NT (the future) would have some applications
2) Break OS/2 Windows compatibility layer... they kept changing Win32s until they broke OS/2, then they released apps for Win32s.
Windows 4.0 (Chicago AKA Windows 93 AKA Windows 95) was the version that combined DOS/Windows (to stop the DR-DOS onslaught) and introduced the Win32 API as the standard API. Win95 resulted in the Win32 apps that allowed NT to show some success on the desktop. NT 3.51 had some success as a server (very useful environment for managing Win3.1 desktops without the cost of Novell).
Win95 had some new APIs, which were mostly ported to NT 4 (except DirectX > 3 APIs). When I was at Citrix (MS Blocked WinFrame 2.0, then basically bought it to become Terminal Server), we couldn't support newer versions of IE because WinFrame 1.x was based upon NT 3.51, and IE required Win95/NT4 APIs.
Cairo was supposed to be the end of Windows with NT 4. Two years late and without a lot of functionality, NT 4 had (and still has!) some good server-side support and corporate desktop standing. When NT 4 lacked a lot of the functionality, MS declared that Cairo was a set of projects, not a release, and that some of them would be in NT 5. NT 5, two years late as Windows 2000, finally made a nearly API complete NT to match their home desktop dominance.
Windows XP appears to use a nearly identical system, focusing on a new user experience based on MacOS's improvements.
Microsoft has finaly achieved its 8 year goal of eliminating DOS support, ME was the end of the DOS based Windows, and it looks like all the old DOS games are finally dead. MS kept promissing better support for DOS apps/games in the next version of NT, but never delivered, instead stalling on their demise. Oh well.
Interestingly, NT 3.51 (I don't recall NT 3.5) was extremely portable, commercially supporting 4 processor families (this continued until NT 4, but the other platforms failled to take off).
The DOS support in NT, the NT VDM, emulated a 286, albeit much faster. This is the reason that you couldn't run fancy things in the DOS emulation, if it was a protected mode DOS API (386 DOS app), the NT VDM couldn't handle it.
Hopefully a better solution than VMWare (overkill, complexity, etc.) will exist to run old DOS games in emulation. My brother bought me the commercial version of Abuse (at one time a favorite) as a present, but I got it about 2 weeks after I migrated to NT 4 fulltime. Well, my new HTPC (home theater PC, just for gaming, I got me a progressive scan DVD player already) is going to be 98SE or ME based for gaming compatibility, so I guess I'll be able to play the old classics there.
Alex
The story is shite - but old-time developer rant still follows:
How many of you ever actually wrote anything significant for DOS? How many of you tried to get a 16bit (really 8 bit) single tasking OS to do more than one thing at a time? Do you remember using INT 33 to get the mouse position? Do you remember checking the contents of the "is in DOS" address to see if you should bail out of your TSR? Did you ever program against EMS? Did you ever use two shifts and an add instead of a multiply to do the multiply by 160 you needed so often in the direct VGA memory access? Did you ever have the nerve to try INT 13? Those were the days.
Still, some things don't change on MS - you still struggle when inadequate documentation doesn't tell you how to frig the OS into doing something useful.
Oh yeah, and I notice a few people confusing DOS with the command line. Idiots. Even MS wouldn't try to get rid of a command line. Anyone who finds it quicker to navigate through all those menus that to just type the damn command shouldn't be running with root priviledges.
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
Imagine a well written 32-bit OS, readily available, widely used, STABLE!, with none of the memory restrictions of the DOS world and Hundreds of easily installed applications.
Are you talking about NT?
This is WHY dos is dead!
"I think he was truly surprised at how little I cared about how big a market the Mac had" - Linus on Jobs
I havn't used XP yet but I'll be surprised if these DOS features have been removed:
Directory structures starting with a 'drive' letter
Text/Binary open Mode for files (the notorious ^Ms)
The inability to delete a file which is open
File types based on .xxx extension
OS compontents still using 8.3 filename format
P.S. NT is based on VMS.
"I think he was truly surprised at how little I cared about how big a market the Mac had" - Linus on Jobs
From 1990 to 1993, I had the unique opportunity to work closely with Gary Kildall.
By that time, Gary was already in the process of separating himself officially from Digital Research (did you know it was originally named "Intergalactic Digital Research"?) to pursue other interests, but was still in touch with the company on a personal level.
It was a great experience and a wonderful way to start a geek career. I originally was hired to help build and test wire-wrapped prototypes (for an internet appliance no less! in 1990!). Quickly from there Gary recognized my coding abilities and I was writing embedded code within a few weeks of starting.
Microsoft had just released Windows 3.1 and boy was Gary pissed - apparently Microsoft had intentionally modified Windows since 3.0 to specifically not work on DR-DOS (and yes, that's Digital Research DOS, not "doctor DOS"). MS claimed otherwise, but it was enough to pretty much kill DR - DR-DOS never reclaimed the lost market share (the first killer-apps were beginning to hit big in Windows at that point) and you all know the rest of that story.
Now for some ancient history - I was always cringe when I hear the oft-repeated story that IBM chose MS-DOS over CP/M for the PC because Gary was out flying his airplane when they showed up or some variation thereof. This is at best a half-truth.
Gary was already a wealthy man by that point. CP/M was licensed by a variety of manufacturers and DR was doing reasonably well. At that time, there was no reason to think that one single computer architecture would rise to completely dominate the industry - you had Osbournes, Kaypros, Apples, Commodore PETs, and a host of other machines all with loyal followings.
When IBM was designing the PC, they didn't want to merely license a DOS from another company they wanted to own a DOS. This put Gary off, he viewed CP/M as having a future and he didn't want to completely sell out to IBM. Microsoft had no such reluctance. Microsoft sold PC-DOS to IBM and continued to produce MS-DOS - hence MS-DOS vs. PC-DOS. It was a happy relationship for a while, but we all know the rest of that story. DR did go on to license CP/M-86 to IBM as an alternative, but by that time, it was too little too late.
Also, I wanted to comment on the story that during a visit with IBM, Gary typed in some code on MS-DOS and made a Digital Research copyright notice appear - I'm pretty sure this is just an industry legend. Gary never accused them of stealing actual code, just stealing ideas.
Does it bother anyone else that they had a memorial, with "Ave Marie," "Take A Closer Walk with Me," and "Here I Am Lord" being sung, all for an operating system? In NEW YORK CITY? With all the death and destruction nearby, they hold a funeral for DOS.
On a lighter note, DOS will always be alive in my apartment as long as I keep hording old computer equipment. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, DOS without end. Amen. Amen.
I sued /. over this in 1982 and won.
Isnt there still a CLI in XP? I use it all the time!!
DOS was never present in the NT kernel. That's one of the reasons it's so much more stable than any of the 9x kernels, because they don't have to support old code.
;)
Cmd.exe, Command.com, and any other variation is -not- DOS. It never was. Not even in DOS 1.0 was Command.com, "DOS". It was -always- just the commandline interface to the underlying OS which was DOS. Most linux users would understand that distinction between the OS and the UI, but for some reason Windows users don't always grasps this.
Oh, and by the way, Windows XP is mostly just Windows 2000 with a pretty interface.. don't let MS fool you.
Dos was the most stable OS that microsoft has ever produced
The BIOS can be upgraded from Windows!
For quite some time, Asus has had a free program that checks for BIOSupdates from FTP, and then automatically upgrades when needed.
It works on all windows versions.
Therefore; there is no reason for BIOS-makers to use DOS at all.
MS-DOS was written from day one for the 16-bit 8088/8086 and the 16-bit version of CP/M didn't come out for many months afterwards. CP/M was only available for the 8080/Z80 at the time, which was not only an 8-bit chip but had a pretty different instruction set.
.COM file) and some other similar program structures, such as File Control Blocks. The idea was to make it easier for CP/M programmers to adapt their programs to DOS.
.COM files) and file handles, making FCBs obsolete.
So explain to me how they were supposed to lift code from an 8-bit Z80/8080 program and drop it into a 16-bit 8088 program? Don't know? That's because you're full of crap!
The compatibility between CP/M and MS-DOS extended to similarities in the PSP (Program Segment Prefix, the first 100h bytes of a
Incidentally, the claim in the Byte piece that this had some relevance to the success of MS-DOS is exaggerated. DOS 2.0 was a complete rewrite and introduced both EXE files (pushing developers away from CP/M-compatible
It's right there on my start menu, it just says Windows XP at at the top of the command prompt menu instead of MS-DOS.
I was getting annoying of those people still making DOS apps in 2001, specialy the ones that would be a lot better under a real GUI.
In order to get the NT Boot loader on an embedded system, you can use the handy MungeBoot utility, which is provided on the MS cdroms.
The MungeBoot is a DOS 6.22 boot image, with a batch file, that uses DEBUG to write the boot loader to the C: Drive! That's their sophisticated NT tool to install the boot loader!
Munge Me, Baby
DOS will never go away. Never.
It was my first OS and when I mastered it I used it with pride to accomplish a variety of things. I have fond memories of tweaking the autoexec and config.sys files. I have vivid memories of sqeezing as much as I could into upper memory to free up that valuable 640k of lower memory. I remember writing bat files to automate scheduled tasks and most of all I remember running a T.A.G. BBS over a 14.4 modem. DOS was a good OS to cut your teeth on.
PRIME - Indivisible by anything but ME!
Just because it is now a 32 bit executable, and no longer says it's MS-DOS, doesn't mean that it isn't DOS code in there. They just use a 32 bit compiler now, and have had over 10 years to debug it.
I don't believe a WORD MICROS~1 says. Death of MS-DOS, right...
If MS-DOS is dead, why can I still run old DOS executables on my win2k machine?
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
You left out Commodore Vic-20, 16, Plus/4, 128, and the C64DX (or C65). (Obvious C= freak here, eh?)
:)
Ohwell, I still use my C128, and I'm planning on upgrading the DOS/Firmware in my SCSI HD for it...
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
I used dos for many years, ran a dialup bbs in the 619 (Metal Edge), it had it's limitations, non-multitasking except for Desqview and having to use QEMM for memory management (which crashed sometimes), but it was fun writing batch files for tossing mail, getting files and running my own message net (MetalNet). LORDNet, BRENet etc.,
<P>
Now I run my bbs under Linux, (Mystic bbs software) which runs so much better, multi-tasking it runs just like a DOS based bbs but a hell of a lot more functional. BASH scripts are more functional than batch files, I can run LORD, BRE, Clans under DOSEMU now and they're a little slow, but not too bad for a ten node board =]<P>
telnet://metaledge.darktech.org<BR>
If your curious =]
Wow. After years and years of "Windows is a buggy kludge running on top of DOS", Microsoft finally kills the beast and exorcises the 16-bit code from Windows.
So what happens?
"We miss DOS, and Microsoft was STUPID to get rid of it!"
Micro$oft can't do anything right, can they?
Let's look at this realistically. How many "ordinary users" out there are still running off the command line with computers that meet XP's installation requirements. Four (more or less). That's not enough reason to keep DOS alive.
Besides, as I understand it (disclaimer - I have no personal experience with this), XP will run DOS programs. As soon as I get XP (when Dell gives it to me) I'm going to attempt to install WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. If that works, then those four users will be satisfied, and I will too.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
I guess not a single one of the readers and posters here has actually used or seen a Windows XP system. Command line access has not gone away. Simply go to Start, Run... and type in cmd.exe, voila DOS lives. Of course you cannot access NTFS or the new encrypted file system from a DOS boot floppy... But you can make a DOS boot disk from XP. It is part of the OS.
It is so typical of this crowd at slash dot that you go on for pages and pages re-iterating material that is quite simply not accurate.
Bill Gate's point was that there is no more DOS code underlying the OS like in Windows 9x/Me. It is all the newer 32-bit OS. He never indicated that the command line was going away. In fact the Windows Script Host is the most powerful scripting runtime you could want!
You guys are too eager to be angry and you don't even understand the issues.
According to various articles on the net, MS will ship a version of XP that can run without a gfx-card.
IIRC, they have extended vt100 for that...
So, the cmd-line will be around for some time.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
On occasions I have had to explain to people which versions of Windows really run on top of MS-DOS. It is somewhat confusing because MS changed all the names around. Here is a list that might be of interest here.
The following versions of Windows run on top of MS-DOS:
Windows 1.x
Windows 2.x
Windows 3.x
Windows 95 (Bundled MS-DOS 7.00 that is no longer sold as seperate product)
Windows 95 OSR2 (Bundled MS-DOS 7.10)
Windows 98 and 98SE (Bundled MS-DOS 7.10)
Windows ME (Bundled MS-DOS 8.00, but exiting to MS-DOS is now forbidden)
The following versions of Windows do not run on top of MS-DOS:
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.5x
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 2000 (NT 5.0)
Windows XP (NT 5.1)
I can't be the only person who gets annoyed at humongous paths like:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office Too
You aren't the only person, but Win2K has filename and directory name completion. To turn it on, add the "/F:ON" flag when you run cmd.exe. Then, Ctrl-F does filename completion, and Ctrl-D does directory name completion. Don't ask me why the couldn't just use Tab like bash does, but it sure helps navigating those large directory names.
-- Will quantum computers run imaginary-time operating systems?
Can't expect old dogs like me to leap on the bandwagon just because there is one. Maybe someone will write an MS_DOS emulator for XP ;-)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't know where you get this "CP/M compatibility" thing, it was pretty much a direct copy and some even say it was a direct copy thanks to the Intel assembler translator and CP/M source access. I recall the old QDOS ads in the top right corner of some mag I was reading at the time, may have been Kilobaud or maybe something a little more techie, can't recall).
Oh, Kildall said something about the use of '$' as the sentinel in the output call (9) as being special and that only he could explain it. Anyone know something about this?
With the passing of MS/DOS, I wonder whether any code actually written by the World's Richest Man himself is still part of the operating system. I once picked up a book at a thrift store called Programmers At Work . I got it expecting a blank book, but I was amazed to discover that not only did it have interviews with several programming heavyweights circa the mid-80s (like Dan Bricklin, etc.), but it also had actual code samples from many of the authors. It even had a few pages from Gates's original implementation of MS-DOS, and you'd be amazed at how clean and well-commented the code is. I won't vouch for the algorithms and design, but the coding itself was far cleaner than anything that I've ever seen in an open-source project.
:wq
even though DOS is pretty much obsolete, i'd like to clarify to all of you that MS has ***NOT*** removed the command prompt from XP.
Start -> Other Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt.
not only that, but remember when you upgraded to winNT/2K, and couldn't run those old DOS apps that you loved so much?
XP returns that to you. when i discovered that this was supposed to be the case, i quickly installed one of my old favorites, "Stunts" (by Broderbund software), and found myself happily cruising the old tracks in my F1 racer. since then i've loaded on all my old classic *QUALITY* DOS games (like Doom, id software) and had a rollicking good time with XP.
(sure, it sounds like it should violate NT's HAL, but try it for yourself. it works, hasn't crashed my system, and by god - it's glorious to have those games back again.)
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
Who's General Failure, and how did he get access to my hard drive?
Just because Microsoft stops producing it doesn't mean it's dead. My office still uses MS Winword 1.1 on some PCs because it works and that's all they need.
-sting3r
you accidentally delete some critical GUI file? ;)
[root@42.42.42.42 /]# exit
I don't see any mention of that revolutionary MS Bob system that was going to make life worth living. Am i the only one who remembers when Egghead had stores, this was a featured software of hte week thingie in one of their fliers. I remember saying to the wife, that it was a stinker. I think the assistant was Bill himself if I remember correctly.
Ahhh the good old days....
WTF? Over?
I remember the joy when MS-DOS 4.0 came out and I was finally able to partition my entire 40 megabyte hard drive into one partition (DOS 3.x had a maximum limit of 20 Meg per partition).
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Run cmd.exe and tab works for filename completion just fine. There's a registry setting to enable this in NT3.51 and above but it escapes me at the moment.
Of course you can do wildcards with 'cd' as well (cd \pro* will usually get "Program Files"). cmd.exe is actually a lot better than the original DOS command prompt - you just have to take the time to figure out the syntax required. Naturally it is nothing near bash though...
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
I've been tempted to load DOS on a modern machine (say a cheaper 800Mhz Duron) and see how the old programs fly without Winblows holding them back. But then I think of all the hacks that were needed (the concept of 'high memory', HIMEM vs. 'expanded memory', EMM386, the horrors of setting up a CD-ROM drive, faux multitasking with Desqview, and a host of others) and I say mmmm, nope, been there done that, I like what I have now better. Ultima II in CGA graphics was cool for me back then, but I'd rather beat up on BG2 in full glorious color and sound, thanks.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
FreeDOS, gcc-dos, dosemu, among others...
The great thing about DOS was that it wasn't much of an operating system. (-:
As much as it will drive some people nuts, the fact remains that many systems contain embedded DOS PCs. Every tester in my lab has one!
Would be great to change them over to Linux, but nobodys gonna invest the NRE. And FWIW, they are quite stable with such a simple OS.
Is Bill saying he doesn't give a rat's arse about these types of customers?
Its probably way off the MS product map, too little sophistication for WINCE...
The irony is that these are relatively high margin products!
Lurking in the desert
Are you seriously suggesting that a code translator could work with operating system code? That the "display string" call, which like most of MS-DOS uses BIOS calls on the PC that don't exist for CP/M, would be a simple matter of translating 8-bit 8080 code to 16-bit 8088 code? For an application I can see a translator maybe doing half the job, for an OS what you suggest is a joke.
It was a sweet interface
and all the old folks wished it well
but you took that upgrade
and now you fell like hell.
The CLI you so loved, isnt there
It was bad for Bill Gates
and now its gone away.
It just goes to show,
you never can tell.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Is DOS dead as in gone, kaput, never to be seen again in Redmond? Or is it gone, no longer there as in a major marketing point for Windows 95?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
From memory the actual quote was
"Ask Bill why the string in function nine is terminated by a dollar sign. Ask him, because he can't answer, only I know that." - Gary Kildall
And their webpage has a little tiny WinXP logo on its ad frame...
Windoze98 is just a 32 bit extension of a 16 shell designed for an 8 bit o/s written for a 4 bit procceser by a 2 bit company that cant stand 1 bit of competition!
Sure, I can probably move My Documents and /Windows/Temp without rebooting and too much application reconfiguration but what about /Program Files? When I get low on space again and decide to move /usr/local or some such thing it will be transparent. I'd have to reinstall the applications under Windows (and thats as much an application issue as an OS issue).
Bleh!
Maybe the code is dead, but the API lives on, and will still be around for decades. Even to this very day, I am still getting paid to maintain DOS apps. Nobody actually runs them under DOS, but nobody's gonna pay to have them rewritten, either.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
One of the interesting things about most of the anti-Microsoft conspiracies is that they all involve settlements covered under Non-Disclosure agreements. This way there is no way to validate the authenticity of the story.
It makes it rather convenient.
At the time there was no secret that the new MS-DOS was very similar to CP/M-80. CP/M is what people were used to using and seeing, and so Patterson designed his new OS for 16 bit processors to behave similarly. But there were also pieces of functionality that arrived into MS-DOS that were similar to Unix.
It's also entirely possible that it included some similar code. CP/M-80 BDOS could be disassembled and carried in your briefcase. It only took up around 5-7K of RAM and wasn't that complicated at all.
Besides, if MS-DOS had really been a copy of CP/M, wouldn't it have also implemented the PIP and STAT commands?
But the real question is... does it matter?
From everything I've read of Gary Kildall and Digital Research, already at the time IBM first approached them the company was too big for Kildall's liking. He was not a manager, he hated it. But he was also a control freak and couldn't stand someone else running things for him.
One story I read indicated that he often would walk around the office building afraid to go in, and that at one point he even offered to sell the whole thing to a friend of his for $50,000.
One of the realities is that some people are willing to grab success, and others aren't. There are a lot of people in this world who purposefully miss an opportunity because they are unhappy or uncomfortable with assuming the responsibility it might entail.
Kildall was one such person. Obviously Bill Gates is not.
It's that difference in personalities that is really the secret behind Microsoft.
Personally, I know that I'm a lot like Gary Kildall in that regard. But knowing this I also try to not be resentful when I pass up an opportunity.
Amazing, but true. How do you find out the graphics card without opening the box? Using:
........D..R.RIB
..f$.....
.....STB Nitro 3
C:\>debug
-d c000:000
Gives me:
U.@..7400.......
M VGA COMPATIBLE
BIOS.
D (GX) BIOS. Ver
. 1.3..(C) 1996
STB Systems, Inc
Hey, I still use this on unknown dodgy old boxes!
Tom.
Oh arse
Try setting the read only attribute on a bunch of files in different subdirectories using the GUI...
Now try attrib +r *.* /S and tell me that DOS is redundant...
I expect to see condolences for each of these products within 4 months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
.../share/... - files that are architecture independent.
That is, the sharing is across architectures, not users. All of those directories are shared across users (read-only except for
I have share/bin, share/man, share/lib, share/include; Korn and Perl scripts go in bin, Perl libraries and modules in lib, and so on. (I'm not talking about /share, I've never seen that on systems I work with.)
The idea was, in a dataless or diskless environment, you'd have one / per client, one /usr per architecture, and one /usr/share overall. Of course, the UNIX vendors never agree on anything, so /usr/share was either empty or misused.
I've had "make install" put shared objects and binaries in the "architecture independent prefix" directory; it is clear this concept really hasn't sunk in. But it is very useful when running a big server with lots and lots of tools and apps on it.
And before anyone picks on UNIX's path, could someone examine their %Path% on a reasonably well-populated Windows NT install and tell me what you see?
Maybe Windows doesn't run on top of DOS anymore (I am tempted to say that I have my doubts ;-) ), but at least in XP they brought back the ability to create a DOS bootdisk! (a feature that I wanted to repeatedly kick Win2k for not having....)... maybe I'm being redundant, who knows?
-----------------------------------------
Remove the Greed which plagues mankind.
Because Novell uses DOS to run a very powerful, superbly reliable networking protocol.
I most certianly agree. See hier(7) for a good explanation of how the filesystem hierarchy is supposed to look.
Best Slashdot comment ever
And clearly have never used DOS. The actual error message, the bland, high-handed, and uncaring epithet of the insane god of your reality, is, and I quote:
"Bad command or file name."
(bows down in worship)
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I was doing some research this morning and came across this article in Smart Computing from November of 1994, seven years ago.The article? "Is DOS Dead?" It almost sounds just like the eulogy for DOS that this /. post is about.
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
Which would have turned it into Windows, surely?
Yes, the GUI would have turned into Windows. Microsoft should have followed through with the OS/2 plan (a powerful OS with task and memory management, support for networking, a CLI interface, and a GUI on top that could be shut off to save resources). Thus, workstations would run "Windows 2000" on top of "DOS 2000" (like the other guys run "XFree86 4.1 with KDE 2.2" on top of "Linux 2.4"), and servers could shut the Windows for more performance.
Did Sony call the PlayStation 2's operating system "OS2" by analogy with PS/2 -> OS/2 ?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Does Gates really want to get rid fo a command prompt? All sorts of tools need command prompts.
Command prompt != DOS.
Well, under Winddows 95/98/ME, yeah, the command prompt is DOS.
But Windows NT (and now 2000 and XP) has always had a DOS-like (yet non-DOS) command prompt.
Oddly enough, a default install of Windows NT 4.0 would use the "MS-DOS" icon for the command prompt shortcut. But it was a lie; the NT command prompt was a 32-bit flat-mode process, like any other Win32 executable. It looked a lot like DOS, but it didn't work the same way inside. It could launch a 16-bit compatibility sub-system to run many DOS programs, but it didn't even try to be extremely DOS compatible.
But anyhow, no, getting rid of DOS doesn't mean getting rid of the CLI.
I don't see any mention of that revolutionary MS Bob system that was going to make life worth living. Am i the only one who remembers when Egghead had stores, this was a featured software of hte week thingie in one of their fliers. I remember saying to the wife, that it was a stinker. I think the assistant was Bill himself if I remember correctly.
When a friend of mine was working at Computer City, they had the launch party for Microsoft Bob. The store had preordered something along the lines of 7 thousand copies to meet the anticipated demand. They sold four.
Not four thousand. Four.
And then they were all returned within a week.
(Adding insult to injury, the mylar balloons with the Bob logo were floating around the barnlike interior of the store and setting off the security alarms for weeks.)
Truly a stellar product, eh?
--saint
When they outlaw the DOS-Prompt, only Outlaws will have DOS-Prompts!
>> Practice Safe Hex
If it's the end of the DOS era, then how come everything in the WINDOWS\system32 still has 8.3 character filenames under WinXP?
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
The thing that looks like an MS-DOS window under NT isn't. That's a 32-bit command line interpreter that runs on top of NT, looks vaguely like DOS, but has no involvement with the 16-bit system.
subst l: "c:\documents and settings\Administrator\Desktop"
I put this in my Startup folder, then work from my L:\ drive.
...there was QDOS. This stood for "Quick and Dirty Operating system."
Then, Microsoft bought it, got rid of the "Quick" and kept the "Dirty."
That left us with MS-DOS.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
One Eulogy that closest to the real Gary Kildalla pe rs/wharton1994-kildall.pdf
http://www.ece.umd.edu/courses/enee759m.S2000/p
In comparison...
In the Jan. 8 issue of the New Yorker magazine, Judge Jackson said Mr. Gates "has a Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses."
Separately, the judge compared Microsoft to the Newton Street Gang, which the judge sentenced on charges of racketeering and murder.
Your correct of course, It's that difference in personalities that is really the secret behind Microsoft.
Don't drink and moderate.
(This message brought to you by MADM: Mothers Against Drunk Moderating.)
-Legion
In my first year of college I had to use Matlab on an i386, under dos, with almost no memory. Once Matlab was up and running there wasn't enough memory to run my editor of choice, edit. I found out that I could run edlin, and became a master at writing Matlab scripts in it. I amazed my friends. I confounded my enemies. I was an edlin god.
I now wonder why it took me so long to switch to Linux. I would have been much happier for it.
The middle mind speaks!
Oh, yeah... and remember:
XIO 33,#1,0,0,"D1:filename.ext"
No wait... that was the delete command for Atari DOS 2.5.
Those were the days... thank gods for emulators. Sometimes nostalgia hit me pretty bad (then I remember writing school papers on AtariWriter and nostalgia goes to hell...)
No sig
In a certain sense 4DOS predates MS-DOS. It's actually a relative of ZCPR, a Z80 replacement for CP/M-80's command shell. And, yes, with ZCPR, you got basic scripting, I/O redirection, command line editing, stacking and history.
It was quite a step backward to go from my Intertec Superbrain (a circa 1979 Z80 machine somebody gave me when I was at college!) to a 386-based PC with MS-DOS. 4DOS (and the Norton repackaging of it as "NDOS" helped a lot).
When I ran Windows NT at work, and now that I run W2K at home, I use a descendant of 4DOS called "Take Command/32". Set it up and alias Unix commands to the DOS ones, and it's a livable working environment. (Granted that's not much of a slogan. "Buy our product and Windows becomes livable!")
I work for a company that makes medical devices. The software used for the interface is written in compiled basic that we run on DOS 6.22. The laptops that are used for the interfaces are 486's with 20 megs of memory. Our entire division is built on creating custom data collection software--we ship about six custom software packages per month, and we generate most of the profits for the company.
Attempts to create a Windows-compatible version of our software have always failed (don't ask me why, I work on the DOS-based stuff, not the Windows-based stuff). Another attempt to go to Windows has been going on for a year and a half unsuccessfully. Meanwhile, we jsut keep plugging along at what has worked for our company for 20 years.
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
For dos, use arachne at www.arachne.cz for browsing the web. It's a very decent application, and given the choice of using either this or the monstrocity of trumpet winsock and netscape under windows 3.1, I'd use(and have) arachne in a heartbeat.
It's been a long time.
the name changed back to DR-DOS for 7.2. I was using it around that time, and it's at that point where I couldn't find it on calderas site anymore.
It's been a long time.
DOS wasn't much of an OS -- and there are those who have argued, with some fairness, that it wasn't a complete OS -- but it did what it did reliably, unlike any other MS software, and it did it with a tiny smidgen of memory. For some purposes, that makes it a much better deal than Linux, depending on what you need to do.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
So we're supposed to believe that DOS is dead just because some magazine says so?
Sorry, gang... There are STILL things you can do simpler, easier, and quicker in DOS than you can with any version of Windoze. Specialized areas such as electronic test/measurement equipment control (via GPIB or serial), some embedded devices, and simple go/no-go peripheral testing on legacy hardware are all areas where DOS will still find a good home. Outside of early minicomputer OS's, DOS is still one of the few OS's that can easily run in less than a meg of RAM.
Don't like MS-DOS? No problem. See http://www.drdos.com. And that doesn't even touch on the availability of Lord only knows how many copies of MS-DOS made it to the surplus arena, and are often available for $5 or less.
I don't care what Byte or any of the other trade journals are blabbing about. DOS still has a warm place in my lab, and I suspect those of a lot of other companies and end users as well.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I think most of these posts are missing a point... DOS and the CLI are two different things. MS programmers routinly release cli based programs for doing all sorts of things. I think what's dead is the DOS based programs. But for most basic things (copy/ren/del) the cli is still living on strong.
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
For starters, basic functions of an operating system are to multitask, provide memory protection, and provide an uncircumventable layer of abstraction between applications and hardware. DOS did none of these things. Applications had the computer all to their own, and could even remove DOS from memory if they so wished. DOS did very little; it was in a sense nothing more than a glorified interrupt handler with a shell.
And these interrupts are not even any good. The FAT filesystem used by DOS, aside from its obvious deficiencies like lack of support for long filenames, is incredibly slow and wasteful. If you browse through the FAT code in Linux you'll see it's full of pejorative comments (of the sort "I hate doing this, but FAT is brain-dead"). The drive letter system (C:, D:) is ugly and inflexible compared to the Unix system, and it's sad that we're stuck with it to this day. And the memory management ... well, to be fair, this was mostly the hardware's fault, but if you've ever done any DOS programming you know it's a royal pain.
The command prompt supports a half-assed version of piping that isn't well-supported by applications, has a limit of (I think) 256 characters per command, and does not even expand wildcards. A friend who was working with DOS batch files was telling me how most of his time was spent circumventing the limitations of the command prompt, sometimes even writing C programs for obvious, simple things (e.g. an "xargs" equivalent).
I used to be nostalgic about the good ol' DOS days but since then I've come to realize how terrible it really was. Bye DOS, and good riddance :).
DOS will never truely die. I'm a teenager and I still use DOS every day. Perhaps I'm just geeky, or maybe people are trying to kill something far too useful.
Is there an easier way to move around files without problems like accidently dragging onto the wrong folder? If so, I would like to see it.
DOS will never die out in whatever form it is in, whether Command Prompt, command.com or some floppy disk and you haven't used in a couple of years.
Maybe it's time I moved to Linux, or perhaps, one day, Microsoft will not try to completely kill a good product because of it's age.
Ah yes..I had the Atari 800XL. I happened to love it, although not as much as my commodore. Ever get Antic magazine? I still have a box of old Antic magazine from 82-84
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
well, my system gives this
\ Wbem;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Bin\WinNT;C:\Program Files\Perforce;C:\Program Files\Intel\VTune50;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\Common\Tools\WinNT;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\Common\MSDev98\Bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\Common\Tools;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\bin
/usr/local, but Linux seems to ignore that solution.
Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.
C:\>path
PATH=C:\WINNT\system32;C:\WINNT;C:\WINNT\System32
which is rather ghastly. but I do wish UNIX had something resembling Program Files. actually, FreeBSD does have it, it's called
Microprocessors are based on 1940s technology, what is your point?
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
This is kinda funny... Just as apple introduces the unix command into its products for the first time ever, Microsoft seems to think it is a good time to end it. Well more than 80,000 apple users spent $30.00 on the OS X beta but there are still Windows people who use a four year old OS because everything new that MS puts out if crap.
Does anybody else think it's a bit tasteless to hire a bunch of celebs to sing at the funeral of a shitty software program in the same week that celebs are singing for free at the funeral of thousands of victims of terrorist attacks?
The "you can fly" motto was bad enough...
No, really... trying to kill off the console is a stupid idea. I'd like to see Bill Gates try to, say, rename five thousands files from ZIP to BAK. Of course, I could just type REN *.ZIP *.BAK and be done by the time Bill was on his fifth file, heh. But I use DOS, so I'm outdated, and should be completely alienated so I have to go and buy another version of Windows. Though all they are really achieving is locking me out of ever wanting to use Windows. And SOMEONE at MICROS~1 must have realised this, because there is a 'command prompt here' powertoy. Which is insanely useful.
Just thought I might set the record straight for some of you that obviously didn't do any research on this. It is true that DOS has been removed from Windows, starting with ME and now complete with XP. However to say the XP does not have a command prompt or command line is, well, ignorant. The command prompt is still alive and well in XP and works much like it always has. Yes there are commands that used to work in DOS and 9x that are no longer there, but I can still do much of what I need to do with it. For those of you who think that MS has given up on the command prompt, you might want to check out the PowerToys for XP release with its command prompt additions. The whole point of MS removing DOS was to remove the very cause of alot of the stability problems in Windows. Windows itself was created (well actually Xerox's GUI) to make a move away from command line interfaces (CLI), not away from command prompts, which will be around for a long time to come. Of course I'm dual booting XP and Linux so I really don't have anything to worry about, got command prompts and command line interfaces and whatever else you want to call them out the...
Even thought there was an Alpha version. They actually did the development with a MIPS processor.
The city is being overrun by a herd of Lucy Liu's.
a 2-bit company
that can't stand 1-bit of competition
One thing that really irks me is that
people always refer to MS-DOS as just DOS.
There is/was a vast array of DOS like
OSs, MS-DOS was just one.
oops, my mistake. The OS was updated pst 1994 though, I downloaded the brand spanking new version of DR-Dos in 1997, and it was good(came with novel netware, not a bad deal, the price(zip) was right) :)
I thought freedos started as C dos though...
It's been a long time.
No, he isn't. He said "well written" and "stable".
What I remember best about DOS as a Mac guy is this. From 1984 through 1994, there was no comparison between the two platforms. Ordinary mortals couldn't even install a font on their DOS machines, and keeping either DOS or the almost-DOS Windows 3.x alive required daily screwing around with the autoexec.bat and windows.ini files by skilled DOS maintainers. Applications and peripherals were opaque, balky, and unstable. The Macintosh worked -- DOS and Windows 3.x did not. Every TCO study showed order-of-magnitude gaps between the platforms, all in the Mac's favor.
Yet for all that time, the majority of the people in the industry insisted that DOS and Windows 3.x were superior, and the market share gap in favor of DOS was enormous.
Finally, when Microsoft won its IP battle against Apple and the reasonably usable Windows 95 came out as a clone of the Mac, the argument shifted overnight to say that Microsoft machines were now as good as the Mac, without any admission that they had been inferior for the last ten years. As soon as the revolution could legally be embraced on Intel hardware, it was instantly admitted that the Mac/W95 way was superior. The people admitting this were the same ones who had been insisting the Mac was inferior for ten years.
This historical hypocrisy was a measure of just how absurd and partisan critical standards are in the computer industry, how little the market can be trusted to select a superior product, and how little honesty is involved in platform advocacy. It has a great deal of bearing on current platform advocacy issues.
Tim
It all depends what you mean by dead
Or should that be Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated
AFAIK, you can still buy legit, supported IBM-DOS or PC-DOS or whatever IBM call it. M$-DOS may be dead, but, M$ is committed to not supporting its products anyway. I shan't be buying it, as I own more DOS licences than PCs.
I shall continue to keep a copy installed in a partition of almost all my PCs. Its really handy for sorting out the odd hardware support problem.If I ever do run out, I bet that IBM will be happy to sell me a new copy for at least the next five years and support it too.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
There exists a hierarchy in *nix file systems. Programs and libraries placed right off the root are essential for booting. These are contained in /bin, /lib, and /sbin (system binaries or superuser binaries, your pick).
/usr has often been (and continues to be) a remote-mounted file system. Say you had a centralized network server that hosted programs that everyone on a network used. Instead of speanding hundreds of man hours installing Windows and required software at each seat, you can install it on ONE location and have everyone NFS mount the share. Simple. Only one set of programs to maintain. The paradigms for /bin, /sbin, and /lib are similar to those in /usr/*.
/opt file system on other *nix platforms that aren't GNU.
"usr" is short for "user". Meaning this is where user programs are located.
/usr/local, which means "local user files" is a mount point for a local disk that stores programs specific to a workstation. This is incase you want to install software that only you can use, located on your disk. Again, the paradigms are the same. This is very similar to the
Try doing this with Windows. Microsoft has specially designed Windows such that you *have* to buy licenses for each and every seat, instead of buying one copy that everyone can use. I guess if you have N machines, it's better to buy N copies of a program rather than just 1. Spending money is better, right, to you Windows users? It's much better to give your money to Microsoft than to your employees. Sure.
As for where Windows puts files... it sticks practically the entire system in one directory, and otherwise scatters things out across different locations. Why does \winnt have so many subdirectories? Why are some system files in \Program Files? Try figuring out how *your* hierarchy works before you start cutting down on *nix, which has been developed and refined over 30+ years.
So, the original poster is certainly being inflamatory, he's certainly right when it comes to the obvious nature and elegance of *nix. Windows is just a disaster area... much like what happens when a building collapses as a result of building without any real plans in mind.
But you most definitely have to grow up a bit and understand that computers work much better when there is some thought put into their design, rather than marketing gimmicks.
Why bother.
That eulogy is a good one, and it does reinforce my point. Gary didn't miss any chance by not providing CP/M-86 for the PC... he didn't really want that chance. As it says, he wasn't in search of fame and money.
Unfortunately you distorted this point into an insult towards Bill Gates, which is sad. The reality is that you do need people like Gates to lead the market in these directions.
Easy on the bandwidth! Please mirror if you like.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who know binary, and those who do not.
Come to that, I can still run Microsoft's 8080 assembler (bona fide 8-bit CP/M program, copyright 1980) on XP.
Write all the obituaries you like, DOS and CP/M never die!
If you can't write your own command line
processor
then what the heck are you doing in the computer
business?
Anyone who needs one can make one.
Microsoft didn't invent the ROM monitor.
DOS was crap, everyone knows it.
JUST AS AN EXCERCISE:
create your own commandline processor.
I've done it two or three times for four
or five different companies.
It is not hard.
PS: Bill Gates is a money-mongering twit.
..when they pry my cold dead computer from around it!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
In the very early DOS days, I knew the basic stuff, changing directories, running programs, using GW-Basic. I didn't experiment too much because the machine I used wasn't mine.
Then in the late 80's, my parents got me a Mac Plus. It was an interesting machine, to learn and use. I had a few games, Microsoft Word and Works, a spreadsheet program, and some disk utilities. I learned how to use hypercard, and learned all the settings in the apple menu.
After about a year's use, I found it to be less and less intersting.
My parents put a modem in their computer and got prodigy, one of the fore-runners to the internet. It was awesome. Two, they got me a programming book, I found it very enjoyable.
I'd wonder, why didn't I have this stuff for Mac, more programs, or even a Hard Drive? They were too expensive and too hard to find.
I soon was given my parents XT. It was fast, and stable. Not this constant editing of config.sys or autoexec.bat, once you set up it is done.
It is true, side by side, the XT was more stable. If it would hang up, you were probably trying out a new program. Just reset, and your back in seconds. If that happened on the Mac, it would happen all the time, with almost all the programs! It would corrupt disks, and the disks were expensive! On the XT, I used 360 KB disks, and I remember only once corrupting a disk.
The reset button for the Mac was funny, because it was removible, and had a debug window, and something else wierd with it I can't remember. The programmible menu had a commands that I knew out of a book I had, but there was never any help for it on the computer, you couldn't use it like even the debug command in DOS because I didn't know what the options were.
Well there are lots of things I can talk about the Mac, but lets finish by talking about a little of what you said.
By the time DOS and Windows 3.x rolled around, I found that they were definately superior. My brother put Win3.1 on his computer, a 386 with VGA, and later bought a sound card. It was the first time that I had seen Full Motion Video with AVI in windows. It was very cool. And it only costed him a few hundred dollars. This was 1992 technology, and I compared this with the Macs at the time. I found them unbelievibly behind. They were still selling Mac Pluses, SE's and Mac II's were way too expensive. You had to buy a Mac IIfx to get any where near what my brother could do.
And another note, Apple sued Microsoft over Windows 1.0, way back in 1985 I believe, so that has nothing to do with Win95.
Conclusion, I've learned both OS's, and I know how they work side-by-side. It is true that Mac's are technologically inferior. They have always been overpriced. And their standards have always leaned on the rest of the industry. Even today, I've admin Mac networks, and it's the same.
The people that compared Win95 to Mac are right when they said they are the same, because they looked the same, but that doesn't have any bearing on the other argument-they always have been technologically inferior. If there was hypocrisy from and DOS person, he doesn't know what he's talking about to start-he's just repeating what everyone else says-But I've have learned for the fact, Macs have always been inferior.
Sure, I also left out the Univac, Ataris, trash 80s, and the long list of other machines :) I still have my Commodore 64, and use it once in a while. I think its a great toy, and was a powerfull machine for its day.
Times have pasted, I moved to DOS, then to Windows and off to Linux. So, its all good.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Windows ME is *not* supported by this crusty old tech, and any fool who goes for XP can gracefully exit my client base (don't let the door hit you in the...) as well. You have been warned.
I waited awhile to post this; even though common sense told me not to bother posting at all: "there, I said it."
db
Cig:
ôô
The Find utility is the best feature of Windows' file management system (over Win31 or DOS). It's great to be able to search through a directory of 100 files and immediately find files you need based on the content or name of those files.
A better solution for finding all files ending in *bak is to sort your directory by file type (in Windows Explorer), then simply select all the *.bak files and del.
Well, my copy of NT 5.0 SP2 is perfectly stable - it hasn't crashed this year.
As for "well written"; without seeing the source I don't know. How do you?
"I think he was truly surprised at how little I cared about how big a market the Mac had" - Linus on Jobs
...so that "troll" is the best approximation thereof.
/, c:\ is. More precisely, a:\ & b:\ & c:\ & ... & z:\ (has windows added the ability to have more than 26 drives yet?) is the equivalent of /.
The original poster claimed that microsoft's organization of files has no valid justification. The first responder claimed that linux's organization of executables (and libraries) was similarly unreasonable. The guy that you responded to then pointed out that there is in fact a reason for the organization, it just turns out that the guy in the middle didn't know it.
You just misunderstood just about everything posted in this thread, most likely because you have below-average mental facilities. However, you could just be a clever troll. It's not really relevent.
Anyhow, c:\windows is not the equivalent of
That being said, people can mount / over a network just fine - it was often done in the days when hard drives cost substantial amounts of money and people wanted to save disk space. When I was a freshman the computer science lab was set up this way with a bunch of sun workstations nfs mounting / from a linux server.
Virtually noone does it anymore as disk space is so cheap, but it also offers easier administration and greatly diminishes the number of things that can break. Workstations of this kind, like the sun sunray, might make a comback if microsoft office can be killed. As it stands it's probably most often used in things like POS terminals if they're not actually dumb terminals.
Still, for large installations (say hundres or thousands of users), a big centralized server with X terminals is still probably the best way to go in terms of administrative efficiency as well as reliability and monetary efficiency.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Don't forget where most of Microsoft's good ideas come from: their competitors.
DOS came from their purchase of QDOS: "Quick and Dirty Operating System".
(IE came from Mosaic, Frontpage came from Vincent Technologies, Age of Empires came from that company with the strange sphere logo, Inspire?)
Windows XP (NT 4.9)
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
My 1962 Volkswagen hasn't crashed this year either -- which does NOT make it a "stable" car by any definition...
(have you ever heard of something called "statistics"? - one example proves nothing)
Seriously folks... I still have it... *sigh*, the memories... hacking all night to make that "just right" ansi.sys square menu line up right! Ooooh, and don't forget 4dos.com!! Win3.11 would never be the same... I can even remember downloading a sweet little program called NCFtp for Dos... "Why do they keep giving thanks to this think called Linux?"
Gravity!... It's not just a good idea... It's the Law!
I know exactly the feeling you're describing.
Even have a name for it. We call it....
Nerdvana
Not until I found linux did I ever again achieve nerdvana after the days of dos.
"I have great faith in fools: Self confidence my friends call it." ~Edgar Allan Poe
I remember making a dos MMORPG back in 1992, and hearing that they're porting out DOS, and that DOS gets no Winsock support, and then when there was winsock support, windows switched to 2.0 which is extra convoluted...
:)
Dos may only have a black screen, but Dos never blue screens...
Dos was solid, you could know all the commands there are to know in Dos. But when windows came out there was tons of functionality and no documentation... Almost dileberately so armchair dos programmers couldn't get in the game. I mean it took me 10 years and I only am starting to get the hang of Visual C++ vs DJGPP.
I like windows and all, but the phase out of DOS means I'll never be able to commercially release my game even if I wanted to put work into it. I remember vividly when I tried to work on my game at school, but they ported to NT so my code no longer worked, and late night warcraft sessions didn't work either.
As long as Microsoft can keep technology moving, they can keep it so obscured that no mere mortal can keep up.
Bleh, I've given up legitamate program coding, and moved on to 3rd party hackathon! By hacking some other jerkwad corporation's software, you can compete without wrestling with unsightly overhead of trade secrets.
Don't try and make something new Microsoft will just see it and crush you, but if M$ does something new, then latch on and suck all the blood you can from them. What's M$ gonna do? Sue an intelligent, out of work scientist? Maybe... But what happens if all the intelligent out of work scientists are jumping on M$'s back for a ride? Climb up on, there's money to be had in hacks
God spoke to me
cd c:\program files
It worked on mine, and I've been using it regularly to the point that I forget about it when I switch to a 95/98/ME box, in which case I would promptly (pardon the pun) get an error message. Actually, you'll have to enable the Command Extensions for this to work (it's enabled by default).
The "rd" command even removes directories recursively now, so "rd \
In any case, type "help" on that prompt and find a few niceties that may help change your mind about Win2K's CLI. I find PUSHD and POPD rather useful when moving through directories in different hierarchies.
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
Hence the /usr/local/sbin is for the latter, i.e. administratitive commands that the user typically has no business running (or even cannot run due to insufficient privileges). A typical UNIX installation includes the 'sbin' directories in root's path, but not the path of ordinary users.
Now, as for /usr/local itself, the origins if I'm not mistaken is for files that are "local" to the installation (not necessarily the workstation, I've seen /usr/locals long before workstations were in vogue). In a Redhat Linux system this is often translated to /usr etc is for files handled by RPM, i.e. prepacked binaries, that are part of distributions. More informally managed packages, or applications that you've developed yourself goes into /usr/local. You untar into /usr/local/src, configure, make and make install from there, and the files end up in /usr/local/{bin, lib} etc.
You know, these standards often make sense, and were developed in a time where you could actually OAM a machine, apart from the three 'R's of MS sys admin (reboot, reboot, reinstall). With UNIX you still can.
Stefan Axelsson
How the hell can you compare a car-crash to a computer crash?
unless you meant that crashes are only caused by bad drivers...
one example proves nothing
No windows 2000 machine I have come in contact with have ever crashed. I can crash a windows 98 machine by looking at it, or a Linux box by a little playing.
"I think he was truly surprised at how little I cared about how big a market the Mac had" - Linus on Jobs
Actually..it was load "*", 8, 1 which executed the program on cd...the load "$" was a directory listing :)
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.