Microsoft 'Re-Open Sources' MS-DOS on GitHub (microsoft.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Microsoft's Developer blog:
In March 2014, Microsoft released the source code to MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 via the Computer History Museum. The announcement also contains a brief history of how MS-DOS came to be for those new to the subject, and ends with many links to related articles and resources for those interested in learning more.
Today, we're re-open-sourcing MS-DOS on GitHub. Why? Because it's much easier to find, read, and refer to MS-DOS source files if they're in a GitHub repo than in the original downloadable compressed archive file.... Enjoy exploring the initial foundations of a family of operating systems that helped fuel the explosion of computer technology that we all rely upon for so much of our modern lives!
While non-source modifications are welcome, "The source will be kept static," reads a note on the GitHub repo, "so please don't send Pull Requests suggesting any modifications to the source files."
"But feel free to fork this repo and experiment!"
While non-source modifications are welcome, "The source will be kept static," reads a note on the GitHub repo, "so please don't send Pull Requests suggesting any modifications to the source files."
"But feel free to fork this repo and experiment!"
LUDDITE Microsoft pretends to be modern appy app appers by pretending to app apps with Appdows 10, but then they release this LUDDITE software, which proves that they're really LUDDITES who are too stupid to app apps while apping other apps!
Apps!
And, naturally, the first Pull Request with the description "just cleaning up some old cruft" (https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS/pull/1) just deletes everything :)
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
It’s only the source for the two ancient versions mentioned - 1.25 and 2.0. It’s been a while (obviously), but I don’t think MS-DOS got interesting until 3.x... and the final release was 8.0.
Don’t think this will replace your FreeDOS, in other words.
#DeleteChrome
To software reliability (and good design) that has taken decades to dig out of.
The chip architecture and machine language was overcomplicated (non orthogonal instruction set, segmented memory architecture) and the OS was by far the least elegant available at the time, with bizarre irregular commands and options, and horrible limitations making programming much harder than it ought to have been, due to the chip and memory architecture.
There were much better alternatives, from a technical perspective, at a similar low price point, like Z80, M68000, CPM, AmigaOS, etc.
And far far technically superior things like Sun/RISC/Solaris were soon available, albeit much too pricey for common use.
It's one of my lesser disappointments in humanity that Wintel stuff managed to dominate despite its inner hideousness.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I'm gonna re-hang my balls on your chin.
It reduces the chances of tainting freedos since freedos already reverse engineered dos 1.x/2.x era functionality decades ago.
Are there legal problems with open sourcing 3.3? Is there any third party code? Maybe that could be removed prior to open sourcing.
How about microsoft release the source code to something useful like NTFS instead of something NGAF about when FREEDOS outdoes msdos in every single way.
From 80 to 85-86 I was doing 8086 assembly full time before we moved to C. Reading those source files, especially dealing with segment registers, brings back lots of (painful) memories.
I think my favorite chip to write assembly for was the 68360. A 68000 with 4 serial controllers, or you could gang 2 of them together to make an ethernet controller. Nice, simple ISA, the controllers were easy to work with, it was nice to code for.
Like the subject says. 2.1 and 3.3 were the dual peaks of that product.
These sources (in assembler) are barely interesting to anyone aside from computer history aficionados.
for open source windows 98.
or Clippy.
"Oh, look everybody. We've mouthed the words 'open source' and we didn't call it a cancer! We've changed, gosh darn it! Why won't anybody believe us? We've changed, I tell ya, we've changed."
Said the crocodile as it smiled when it opened its mouth to invite its dinner guests in.
Didn't most of DOS 6.0 'problems' come down to not understanding the now default installation of SmartDrive with write-caching (same as it had been since Win3.1), and the effects of disk compression tangling with buggy TSRs, bad disk blocks, or bad memory?
Hence 6.2 added scandisk for block testing, turned off write caching by default, plus made it flush cache before showing DOS prompt when caching was on, and added memory checking to look for anything that was disturbing disk compression data structures?
Dear Microsoft, Thanks for releasing version 2.0 of MS-DOS. But COME ON. Just release the sources for ALL of the versions of MS-DOS. I can't imagine that the last version of MS-DOS is making THAT much money for you that you couldn't release that as well!
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so they will believe the lie.
https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipns/QmRjnvwZFj8bWba3HHKo7pnLm5kep4nvQepMcM1eejzgsn
Why on earth are the two versions of sources in different subdirectories?
They should be branches/tags.
DOS 2.0 was the first one to support directories, pipes, redirection, and most of the useful DOS stuff. It was limited to FAT12 and 5.25 inch floppies, though. It is useful to retro enthusiasts and hardware collectors, but it is limited to the XT era of computers, as anything including at least a 286 would come with 3.0, which you'd need for FAT16 or 3.5 inch floppies.
It may still be useful. Arguably, later versions didn't change much of the internals, and focused on the included utilities and stuff instead.
"Most of these are
due to last minute changes to achieve a greater degree of compatibility
with IBM's implementation of MS-DOS (PC DOS). This includes the use
of "\" instead of "/" as the path separator, and "/" instead of "-"
as the switch character."
And so decades of annoying compatiblity problems begun.
Because versioning systems back then consisted of printing out the source code and putting it in a binder?
Says the guy who has a penis that is put to shame in both width and girth by a thumbtack.
both width and girth? BOTH?
Perhaps it's not too late for you. Here's a link that might help.
https://home-school.lovetoknow.com/online-homeschool-geometry
U ben trolled m8.
Quote: "Enjoy exploring the initial foundations of a family of operating systems that helped fuel the explosion of computer technology"
Well... that would be BSD not MS-DOS...
To be precise, Windows 1-3.1 didn't come with networking. The "real" computers of the era ran network operating systems such as Unix. A DISK Operating System (DOS) , as opposed to a network operating system, for a PERSONAL computer (PC) was the oddball. Toys people played with at home ran Windows. It turned out to be a brilliant strategy as personal home computers developed into useful machines.
It worked really well for them from about 1988-1995. Then in 1995 the world wide web happened and an OS centered around the idea of only working locally eschewing the network-based model that preceded it suddenly was a big problem. Networking was back bigger than ever, and Microsoft had bet on DISK OS, rejecting the idea of the network. Microsoft execs were freaked out.
Worse, Microsoft had just spent years developing the next big thing, an extension of Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) called COM. In any document, you could embed or link to some other file type. A Word document could link to a spreadsheet, or embed an image. It was amazing. It better be amazing - they had bet big on it.
Then they saw "a href" and "img src". Everything Microsoft had spent the last four years doing was suddenly replaced by a friggin tag.
Forshort time tried to stop the WWW from growing, but there was no way to stop it. Microsoft renamed COM (aka OLE) to "ActiveX" and tried to market it as an internet technology. We all know how well that went.
They could have easily done it before pushing the repo to git, while they were importing the source into their local repo.
This stuff is all just assembly, is this really any different than running the MS-DOS commands though the debug command to get readable machine code? Probably the only thing of interest would be any comments in the ASM files since that would be lost when it is converted to machine code.
I just asked the team and the response was: We were going to do that, but we heard that it would really piss off nyet if we did not.
I mean I guess someone at MS might be nostalgic but what is the point here? DOS 6.22+Win3.11 is also obsolete but might at least provide something useful to the freedos people or someone else who wants to revitalize some old software or something. DOS sucked compared to everything else out, I know MS pretended otherwise when they were selling it over superior alternatives but nothing in their system is built off DOS except a partial compatability layer now so why pretend? Hell Minix is just a simple OS made to teach you how to write a minimal OS and it blows DOS away.
The only killer function of DOS was coming on the systems you had at work and being able to run on their clones.
Every other PC is just a pale imitation!