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Dr. DOS Still 'Doing It' At 8.0
An anonymous reader writes "Believe it or not, DOS -- DR-DOS, no less -- is still alive and kicking after all these years! Devicelogics, a company founded by former executives of Caldera and Lineo in Utah, says it has begun shipping version 8.0 of DR-DOS today. The company says the most significant enhancement in the latest version of this long-lived (and 'stable') operating system is support for FAT32 large partitions, enabling DR-DOS 'to keep up with market demand for DOS-based embedded solutions built on FAT32 platforms.'"
I know DOS is archaic but I still use it. It's useful for apps when you want limited stuff in memory. Linux and windows can't compete with 100k kernal. Plus I use it whenever I want a new os. I just format in DOS mode then install from there. PC-DOS released version 8, yeah I know different, along time ago. I wonder what the actual differences are between PC 8 and DR 8. Does anyone call DR-DOS "doctor-dos?" I always do. Of course I don't call MS-DOS, "missz. dos," like a possibly-married female.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
I downloaded some utilities for a Western Digital HD. It make a boodisk with - to my surprize - DrDOS as the base. First thing I thought was "Hey wow, haven't see that in awhile!"
It makes sense, though. DOS will run on just about any x86 based machine out there, insuring a very wide compatability, it's something most people are used to (ie: DOS, as opposed to a linux based bootloader, which fewer people are accustomed to) and I'm sure the licensing is a mere fraction of MSDOS - or at least it would be if MS still supported it.
Makes you wonder about things like FreeDOS... maybe it's still a bit unrefined for these uses? Maybe buyers actually do want a "real company" behind the products they use?
=Smidge=
Interesting, the buy icon at the bottom has only a 5-licence pack for $200. The previous version is $29 for a single user licence.
(I must say the site isn't very professional. It lists DPMI/DPMS in two bullet points and multi-tasking in three.)
Wouldn't they have to pay a royalty to Microsoft due to the patents on Fat32 in embedded devices?
FYI, when you buy an ASUS motherboard, its utility cdrom boots FreeDOS.
Nope, they shipped version 4.0 twice. The second version of 4.0 didn't really offer anything over 3.3 (and was really buggy), so most people just skipped from 3.3 to 5.0 (I still have the manuals :-)
You can see the timeline at the bottom of http://www.maxframe.com/HISZMSD.HTM. There is also a timeline at http://www.nukesoft.co.uk/msdos/dosversions.htm
Since we are playing nostalgia, I should also mention that I used MS-Windows 1.0 once. I was really impressed that it had a Paint program, and went to save my work of art. In those days, standard file dialogs didn't exist (you had to wait till Windows 3.1 for them). It brought up a dialog with a textfield asking for the filename. I started typing, and then wondered how long a name it would let me enter. The answer is that it let me enter a really really long name - I mashed the keyboard until I got bored. I click OK, and the screen froze and the hard disk light blinked every 5 seconds or so. I eventually rebooted the machine to discover most of the root directory entries had gone. Ah, the joys of buffer overflows! A quick session with Norton Disk Doctor got them back. I didn't touch Windows 1 again, but was an avid user of Windows 286, and then 3.0 and onwards once Windows became more mainstream.
I remember supporting Novell DOS 7 circa 1993
~ multitasking (stable)
~ DPMS memory management
~ peer to peer networking w/ snmp, security
~ disk & file compression
~ antivirus & backup
Oddly enough, Windows 3.10 was the only unstable app on those systems.
Words to men, as air to birds.
I've been using DrDOS (Caldera OpenDOS) 7.03 for many years now; it came with Caldera 1.3 Linux' DosEMU package and a free for individual use license, so I have installed it on all my boxes (it uses Lilo to dual/triple boot) as I still use several DOS programs, and it runs under DosEMU in my Knoppix 3.2 hard disk install as well.
And, yeah, I would call version 7.03 stable (although 7.0 and 7.02 definitely were NOT stable when using DPMS.) I have never had an issue with it, uptimes rivaled Linux.
Some DOS programs are irreplaceable (Dragmax and Pipemax for auto racers, several truly great astrology programs, and my favorite scientific encyclopedia -- Compton's original CD. The Windows versions of it do not have as much content unless you count "movie clips" as content.)
So it's time to upgrade so I can read/write FAT32 partitions, as well, I guess. I just hate to see a "free" (as in beer) license go commercial, though.