29 Jul
2024
29 Jul
'24
9:19 a.m.
I had not realized that 43 yrs. ago Microsoft purchased 86-DOS for $50,000
– US not Cdn. money. With this purchase the PC industry, IBM’s version
thereof, began. I remember using it to do amazing things, moreso than what
8-bit machines could do!
Happy computing.
Murray🙂
29 Jul
29 Jul
8:21 p.m.
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
I had not realized that 43 yrs. ago Microsoft
purchased 86-DOS for $50,000
– US not Cdn. money. With this purchase the PC industry, IBM’s version
thereof, began. I remember using it to do amazing things, moreso than what
8-bit machines could do!
Ah, but there is so much more to the story, which deserves an entire
chapter in the history.
More than you wanted to know? : (but even more details available if you really want
them)
Tim Paterson, of Seattle Computer Products was developing 8086 hardware,
but CP/M-86 was delayed. So, he wrote a temporary place-holder to use
instead of CP/M-86 until CP/M-86 became available. That was called
"QDOS", "Quick and Dirty Operating System". Later it became known as
"SCP-DOS" and/or "86-DOS"
Then came the "culture clash" between IBM and Digital Research
(previously known as "Intergalctic digital Research"). That has been
documented elsewhere; some claim that there was not a culture clash, nor
an error.
So, Microsoft (possibly Bill Gates personally) went down the street to
Seattle Computer Products, and bought an unlimited license for 86-DOS
"that we can sell to our [un-named] client"
Tim Paterson, who later opened "Falcon Technologies" and Seattle Computer
Products both also retained licenes to be able to sell "the
operating system". Note that the version was not specified, as to whether
such license would include rights to sell updated versions; that error
(failure to specify whether future/derivative products were included) has
been repeated elsewhere (cf. Apple/Microsoft)
Microsoft also hired Tim Paterson to maintain and update "MS-DOS".
Microsoft sold a license to IBM, where it became PC-DOS.
And, it was available through Lifeboat as "86-DOS"
In August 1981, when the PC (5150) was released, IBM started selling
PC-DOS. But digital Research was not happy with IBM selling a copy of
their operating system.
In those days, selling a copy was legal, if the internal code was not
copied. (hence the development of "clean-room reverse engineering")
It wasn't until the Lotus/Paperback Software (Adam Osborne)
lawsuit that "look and feel" became copyrightable.
So, IBM agreed to also sell CP/M-86 IN ADDITION to selling PC-DOS.
. . . and sold UCSD P-System.
But CP/M-86 was STILL not ready, so everybody bought PC-DOS, many of whom
planned to switch to CP/M-86 when it became available.
But, when CP/M-86 was finally ready, the price was $240 vs $40 for PC-DOS.
There are arguments about whether IBM or Digital Research set that price.
Although, if that price was IBM's idea, then why did Digital Research
charge $240 for copies sold through other sources (such as Lifeboat)?
Initially MS-DOS and PC-DOS differed only in name and trivial items, such
as "IO.SYS" and "MSDOS.SYS" being renamed "IBMBIO.COM" and
"IBMDOS.COM"
When changes were made, Microsoft's and IBM's version numbers were
separated.
Thus 1.00 was the same for both
IBM released PC-DOS 1.10, and Microsoft released MS-DOS 1.25
2.00 was the same for both
2.10 VS 2.11 (IBM needed trivial changes to 2.00 to deal with the
excessively slow Qumetrak 142 disk drives in the PC-Junior and "portable"
3.00 was the same
3.10, adding network support and the "network redirector for CD-ROMs
3.20 VS 3.21, adding "720K" 3.5" drive support
3.30 VS 3.31, BUT 3.31 was the first to support larger than 32Mebibyte drives!
4.00 and 4.01 IBM/Microsoft did not provide third party vendors enough
advanced warning, so Norton Utilities, etc. did not work on 4.00 (NOT
4.00 did not work with Norton Utilities!)
5.00
In 6.00 each company bundled a whole bunch of third party stuff (such as
disk compression) and each got them from different sources.
When Microsoft's disk compression was blamed for serious problems caused
by SMARTDRV, Microsoft released 6.20 (repaired and reliability improved
from 6.00).
Then 6.21 and 6.22 as a result of Microsoft's legal case with Stac
Electronics.
Please note that MS-DOS/PC-DOS ALWAYS had a version number, a period, and
then a TWO DIGIT DECIMAL sub-version number. THAT is what is stored
internally. Thus, 1.10 is stored as ONE.TEN (01h.0Ah), 3.31 is actually
THREE.Thirty-ONE (03h.1Fh), etc.
If there had ever actually been a "1.1" or "3.2", those would have
been
01h.01h (1.01) and 03h.02h (3.02), etc.
"1.1" was NOT the same as "1.10", nor "3.2" the same as
"3.20", otherwise
VERY minor changes would be confused with serious changes, as happened
when some people called 4.01 "four point one".
Later still, Seattle Computer Products was on the rocks. There was some
speculation that AT&T might buy it, to get the DOS license (and not have
to pay royalties per copy!). After some legal animosity, Microsoft did
the right and smart thing, and bought Seattle Computer Products, thus
closing that vulnerability.
Windows originally started as an add-on command processor and user
interface on top of DOS. Windows95 made that invisibly seamless, so the
user never saw a DOS prompt without explicitly asking for it. Windows 95
still contained DOS (7.00), but the user never saw it.
Gordon Letwin at Microsoft developed OS/2. But Microsoft sold it off to
IBM, and it became known as an IBM product.
Microsoft used some key technology from it in developing WindowsNT.
Within Microsoft's offerings, NT competed with non-NT windows, such as
Windows95, Windows98, and Windows2000.
Windows[NT] Vista, XP, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 continued, and the old Windows was
"deprecated'.
Naming a version after the year it is released is great for sales in the
first year, and a serious liability in subsequent years, unless there is
actually going to be a new version every year (as automobiles do)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
9:01 p.m.
I think Windows 2000 is NT-based.
Dave Wise
________________________________
From: Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2024 5:21 PM
To: Murray McCullough via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: Fred Cisin <cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: MS-DOS
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
I had not realized that 43 yrs. ago Microsoft
purchased 86-DOS for $50,000
– US not Cdn. money. With this purchase the PC industry, IBM’s version
thereof, began. I remember using it to do amazing things, moreso than what
8-bit machines could do!
Ah, but there is so much more to the story, which deserves an entire
chapter in the history.
More than you wanted to know? : (but even more details available if you really want
them)
Tim Paterson, of Seattle Computer Products was developing 8086 hardware,
but CP/M-86 was delayed. So, he wrote a temporary place-holder to use
instead of CP/M-86 until CP/M-86 became available. That was called
"QDOS", "Quick and Dirty Operating System". Later it became known as
"SCP-DOS" and/or "86-DOS"
Then came the "culture clash" between IBM and Digital Research
(previously known as "Intergalctic digital Research"). That has been
documented elsewhere; some claim that there was not a culture clash, nor
an error.
So, Microsoft (possibly Bill Gates personally) went down the street to
Seattle Computer Products, and bought an unlimited license for 86-DOS
"that we can sell to our [un-named] client"
Tim Paterson, who later opened "Falcon Technologies" and Seattle Computer
Products both also retained licenes to be able to sell "the
operating system". Note that the version was not specified, as to whether
such license would include rights to sell updated versions; that error
(failure to specify whether future/derivative products were included) has
been repeated elsewhere (cf. Apple/Microsoft)
Microsoft also hired Tim Paterson to maintain and update "MS-DOS".
Microsoft sold a license to IBM, where it became PC-DOS.
And, it was available through Lifeboat as "86-DOS"
In August 1981, when the PC (5150) was released, IBM started selling
PC-DOS. But digital Research was not happy with IBM selling a copy of
their operating system.
In those days, selling a copy was legal, if the internal code was not
copied. (hence the development of "clean-room reverse engineering")
It wasn't until the Lotus/Paperback Software (Adam Osborne)
lawsuit that "look and feel" became copyrightable.
So, IBM agreed to also sell CP/M-86 IN ADDITION to selling PC-DOS.
. . . and sold UCSD P-System.
But CP/M-86 was STILL not ready, so everybody bought PC-DOS, many of whom
planned to switch to CP/M-86 when it became available.
But, when CP/M-86 was finally ready, the price was $240 vs $40 for PC-DOS.
There are arguments about whether IBM or Digital Research set that price.
Although, if that price was IBM's idea, then why did Digital Research
charge $240 for copies sold through other sources (such as Lifeboat)?
Initially MS-DOS and PC-DOS differed only in name and trivial items, such
as "IO.SYS" and "MSDOS.SYS" being renamed "IBMBIO.COM" and
"IBMDOS.COM"
When changes were made, Microsoft's and IBM's version numbers were
separated.
Thus 1.00 was the same for both
IBM released PC-DOS 1.10, and Microsoft released MS-DOS 1.25
2.00 was the same for both
2.10 VS 2.11 (IBM needed trivial changes to 2.00 to deal with the
excessively slow Qumetrak 142 disk drives in the PC-Junior and "portable"
3.00 was the same
3.10, adding network support and the "network redirector for CD-ROMs
3.20 VS 3.21, adding "720K" 3.5" drive support
3.30 VS 3.31, BUT 3.31 was the first to support larger than 32Mebibyte drives!
4.00 and 4.01 IBM/Microsoft did not provide third party vendors enough
advanced warning, so Norton Utilities, etc. did not work on 4.00 (NOT
4.00 did not work with Norton Utilities!)
5.00
In 6.00 each company bundled a whole bunch of third party stuff (such as
disk compression) and each got them from different sources.
When Microsoft's disk compression was blamed for serious problems caused
by SMARTDRV, Microsoft released 6.20 (repaired and reliability improved
from 6.00).
Then 6.21 and 6.22 as a result of Microsoft's legal case with Stac
Electronics.
Please note that MS-DOS/PC-DOS ALWAYS had a version number, a period, and
then a TWO DIGIT DECIMAL sub-version number. THAT is what is stored
internally. Thus, 1.10 is stored as ONE.TEN (01h.0Ah), 3.31 is actually
THREE.Thirty-ONE (03h.1Fh), etc.
If there had ever actually been a "1.1" or "3.2", those would have
been
01h.01h (1.01) and 03h.02h (3.02), etc.
"1.1" was NOT the same as "1.10", nor "3.2" the same as
"3.20", otherwise
VERY minor changes would be confused with serious changes, as happened
when some people called 4.01 "four point one".
Later still, Seattle Computer Products was on the rocks. There was some
speculation that AT&T might buy it, to get the DOS license (and not have
to pay royalties per copy!). After some legal animosity, Microsoft did
the right and smart thing, and bought Seattle Computer Products, thus
closing that vulnerability.
Windows originally started as an add-on command processor and user
interface on top of DOS. Windows95 made that invisibly seamless, so the
user never saw a DOS prompt without explicitly asking for it. Windows 95
still contained DOS (7.00), but the user never saw it.
Gordon Letwin at Microsoft developed OS/2. But Microsoft sold it off to
IBM, and it became known as an IBM product.
Microsoft used some key technology from it in developing WindowsNT.
Within Microsoft's offerings, NT competed with non-NT windows, such as
Windows95, Windows98, and Windows2000.
Windows[NT] Vista, XP, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 continued, and the old Windows was
"deprecated'.
Naming a version after the year it is released is great for sales in the
first year, and a serious liability in subsequent years, unless there is
actually going to be a new version every year (as automobiles do)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
30 Jul
30 Jul
4:42 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Wise via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2024 2:01 AM
To: Murray McCullough via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: David Wise <d44617665(a)hotmail.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: MS-DOS
I think Windows 2000 is NT-based.
Yes it started life as NT5 but at some point in got renamed to 2000 and DEC
Alpha support was dropped. I may have some NT5 Beta CDs in the loft.
Dave
Dave Wise
________________________________
From: Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2024 5:21 PM
To: Murray McCullough via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: Fred Cisin <cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: MS-DOS
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
chapter in
I had not realized that 43 yrs. ago Microsoft
purchased 86-DOS for
$50,000 - US not Cdn. money. With this purchase the PC industry, IBM's
version thereof, began. I remember using it to do amazing things,
moreso than what 8-bit machines could do!
Ah, but there is so much more to the story, which deserves an entire the history.
More than you wanted to know? : (but even more details available if you
really
want them)
Tim Paterson, of Seattle Computer Products was developing 8086 hardware,
but
CP/M-86 was delayed. So, he wrote a temporary
place-holder to use instead
of
CP/M-86 until CP/M-86 became available. That was
called "QDOS", "Quick
and
Dirty Operating System". Later it became known
as "SCP-DOS" and/or
"86-DOS"
Then came the "culture clash" between IBM and Digital Research (previously
known as "Intergalctic digital Research"). That has been documented
elsewhere; some claim that there was not a culture clash, nor an error.
So, Microsoft (possibly Bill Gates personally) went down the street to
Seattle
Computer Products, and bought an unlimited license for
86-DOS "that we can
sell to our [un-named] client"
Tim Paterson, who later opened "Falcon Technologies" and Seattle Computer
Products both also retained licenes to be able to sell "the operating
system".
Note that the version was not specified, as to whether
such license would
include rights to sell updated versions; that error (failure to specify
whether
future/derivative products were included) has been
repeated elsewhere (cf.
Apple/Microsoft)
Microsoft also hired Tim Paterson to maintain and update "MS-DOS".
Microsoft sold a license to IBM, where it became PC-DOS.
And, it was available through Lifeboat as "86-DOS"
In August 1981, when the PC (5150) was released, IBM started selling
PC-DOS.
But digital Research was not happy with IBM selling a
copy of their
operating
system.
In those days, selling a copy was legal, if the internal code was not
copied.
(hence the development of "clean-room reverse
engineering") It wasn't
until the
Lotus/Paperback Software (Adam Osborne) lawsuit that
"look and feel"
became
copyrightable.
So, IBM agreed to also sell CP/M-86 IN ADDITION to selling PC-DOS.
. . . and sold UCSD P-System.
But CP/M-86 was STILL not ready, so everybody bought PC-DOS, many of whom
planned to switch to CP/M-86 when it became available.
But, when CP/M-86 was finally ready, the price was $240 vs $40 for PC-DOS.
There are arguments about whether IBM or Digital Research set that price.
Although, if that price was IBM's idea, then why did Digital Research
charge
$240 for copies sold through other sources (such as
Lifeboat)?
Initially MS-DOS and PC-DOS differed only in name and trivial items, such
as
"IO.SYS" and "MSDOS.SYS" being
renamed "IBMBIO.COM" and "IBMDOS.COM"
When changes were made, Microsoft's and IBM's version numbers were
separated.
Thus 1.00 was the same for both
IBM released PC-DOS 1.10, and Microsoft released MS-DOS 1.25
2.00 was the same for both
2.10 VS 2.11 (IBM needed trivial changes to 2.00 to deal with the
excessively
slow Qumetrak 142 disk drives in the PC-Junior and
"portable"
3.00 was the same
3.10, adding network support and the "network redirector for CD-ROMs
3.20 VS 3.21, adding "720K" 3.5" drive support
3.30 VS 3.31, BUT 3.31 was the first to support larger than 32Mebibyte
drives!
4.00 and 4.01 IBM/Microsoft did not provide third
party vendors enough
advanced warning, so Norton Utilities, etc. did not work on 4.00 (NOT
4.00 did not work with Norton Utilities!)
5.00
In 6.00 each company bundled a whole bunch of third party stuff (such as
disk
compression) and each got them from different
sources.
When Microsoft's disk compression was blamed for serious problems caused
by
SMARTDRV, Microsoft released 6.20 (repaired and
reliability improved from
6.00).
Then 6.21 and 6.22 as a result of Microsoft's legal case with Stac
Electronics.
Please note that MS-DOS/PC-DOS ALWAYS had a version number, a period, and
then a TWO DIGIT DECIMAL sub-version number. THAT is what is stored
internally. Thus, 1.10 is stored as ONE.TEN (01h.0Ah), 3.31 is actually
THREE.Thirty-ONE (03h.1Fh), etc.
If there had ever actually been a "1.1" or "3.2", those would have
been
01h.01h
(1.01) and 03h.02h (3.02), etc.
"1.1" was NOT the same as "1.10", nor "3.2" the same as
"3.20", otherwise
VERY
minor changes would be confused with serious changes,
as happened when
some people called 4.01 "four point one".
Later still, Seattle Computer Products was on the rocks. There was some
speculation that AT&T might buy it, to get the DOS license (and not have
to
pay
royalties per copy!). After some legal animosity,
Microsoft did the right
and
smart thing, and bought Seattle Computer Products,
thus closing that
vulnerability.
Windows originally started as an add-on command processor and user
interface
on top of DOS. Windows95 made that invisibly
seamless, so the user never
saw
a DOS prompt without explicitly asking for it.
Windows 95 still contained
DOS
(7.00), but the user never saw it.
Gordon Letwin at Microsoft developed OS/2. But Microsoft sold it off to
IBM,
and it became known as an IBM product.
Microsoft used some key technology from it in developing WindowsNT.
Within Microsoft's offerings, NT competed with non-NT windows, such as
Windows95, Windows98, and Windows2000.
Windows[NT] Vista, XP, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 continued, and the old Windows was
"deprecated'.
Naming a version after the year it is released is great for sales in the
first
year,
and a serious liability in subsequent years, unless
there is actually
going to be a
new version every year (as automobiles do)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
7:58 a.m.
Pretty much, though Windows2000 was a significant redesign over NT4.
I was one of the first users of NT4 at the IEEE Computer Society in the
early 90's. We ran it on TALOS, the 8 CPU NCR 3550 system and it was one
of the first truly SMP systems out there (with dual Microchannel busses
as well). We needed the power because it ran the Computer Society's
Digital Library, a neat set of hacks running on Netscape commerce
server, a SGML-HTML converter called DynaWeb and a custom little program
that I wrote to convert TEK math into gifs to embed into the HTML
documents so the math looked perfect.
For this kind of highly distributed process (call the server to get the
page, Dynaweb to render the text and fonts, and TEK to convert all the
formula to embedded graphics) we really needed all the CPU power we
could get and frequently had the system running 8 CPUs at 70%-80%.
Ultimately we upgraded it to 16 Pentium Pro/200 CPUs and finally to 16
Pentium Pro Overdrives running at 333mhz*
The big problem with NT was that the TCP/IP stack kept crashing. Ran out
of memory even though we had 512mb of memory in this beast. I then
remembered my RSX11M days and how M systems would crash with out of
memory errors with plenty of free memory in RMD. In that case
unterminated RS232 connections were picking up interference and were
sending streams of text to the TT: driver. This would run the system out
of pool and since the pool partition was a fixed region size it would
sink the server.
Worked with Microsoft and sure enough: The issue was system controlled
partitions with the TCP/IP driver being loaded into a partition that had
limited memory. For NT they patched it, but for Windows 2000 they
flattened the former various partitions into what was essentially GEN.
Yes, they were stunned that we figured this out. Yes, there are boot
options in 2000 to fix all this. But Windows 2000 was a re-architected
version of NT that people hated because of the GUI. So they dusted up
the GUI with Windows 98's stuff and released it as XP. Rest was history....
CZ
* Yes, you could run 16 Pentium overdrive chips even though their design
limited SMP to two CPUs. The trick was the NCR 3550's Pentium Pro board
had 4 chips on it but they ran in pairs of two. In other words two
PPro's communicated to a L3 cache controller which then used its' own
glue logic to connect to one side of the dual 256 bit wide memory buses.
So to the CPUs they just saw their neighbor. The other pair of two CPUs
was connected its own level 3 cache that hooked into the second 256 bit
memory bus which went to the 4 memory cards (dual ported cards).
The two MCA channels also attached to the big bus, one per side. Thus it
was possible to have both MCA channels doing DMA at full blast speed to
memory and the system would just take it. We duplexed the drives and got
amazing performance with RAID5 on each bus.
The only trick to this was that processes would rip like hell in cache
if they stayed on their own PPro CPU (running out of L1/L2 cache) and
would run fast if they were within their pair of processors (dump L1/L2,
but L3 was super quick). What slowed you down was if the process was
moved to another board which meant you had to reload L1, L2, AND L3
cache which was a serious time sink. 256 bit memory fetch ahead helped,
but it would cause cache storms on the system as processes started
leaping around on a full system.
The solution was to use process affinity to essentially "carve" the
system up into 8 regions of two processors and have affinity prefer to
keep certain processes (Dynaweb got 8 of the CPUs, TEK got 4, and
Netscape/OS got the last 4) close to their CPUs when possible. But if a
CPU was totally idle and a neighboring cluster was asking for more TEK
math converters the system would start up new processes on the unused
processor (no real cache hit) but not move it off there till it
terminated (most were short lived)
Fascinating times. We really had a lot of fun with that box. In a way,
it was the SMP RSX11M+ I always wanted to play with.
On 7/30/2024 4:42 AM, Dave Wade G4UGM via cctalk wrote:
-----Original
Message-----
From: David Wise via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2024 2:01 AM
To: Murray McCullough via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: David Wise <d44617665(a)hotmail.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: MS-DOS
I think Windows 2000 is NT-based.
Yes it started life as NT5 but at some point in got renamed to 2000 and DEC
Alpha support was dropped. I may have some NT5 Beta CDs in the loft.
Dave
Dave Wise
________________________________
From: Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2024 5:21 PM
To: Murray McCullough via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: Fred Cisin <cisin(a)xenosoft.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: MS-DOS
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
chapter in
I had not realized that 43 yrs. ago Microsoft
purchased 86-DOS for
$50,000 - US not Cdn. money. With this purchase the PC industry, IBM's
version thereof, began. I remember using it to do amazing things,
moreso than what 8-bit machines could do!
Ah, but there is so much more to the story, which deserves an entire the history.
More than you wanted to know? : (but even more details available if you
really
want them)
Tim Paterson, of Seattle Computer Products was developing 8086 hardware,
but
CP/M-86 was delayed. So, he wrote a temporary
place-holder to use instead
of
CP/M-86 until CP/M-86 became available. That was
called "QDOS", "Quick
and
Dirty Operating System". Later it became
known as "SCP-DOS" and/or
"86-DOS"
Then came the "culture clash" between IBM and Digital Research (previously
known as "Intergalctic digital Research"). That has been documented
elsewhere; some claim that there was not a culture clash, nor an error.
So, Microsoft (possibly Bill Gates personally) went down the street to
Seattle
Computer Products, and bought an unlimited
license for 86-DOS "that we can
sell to our [un-named] client"
Tim Paterson, who later opened "Falcon Technologies" and Seattle Computer
Products both also retained licenes to be able to sell "the operating
system".
Note that the version was not specified, as to
whether such license would
include rights to sell updated versions; that error (failure to specify
whether
future/derivative products were included) has
been repeated elsewhere (cf.
Apple/Microsoft)
Microsoft also hired Tim Paterson to maintain and update "MS-DOS".
Microsoft sold a license to IBM, where it became PC-DOS.
And, it was available through Lifeboat as "86-DOS"
In August 1981, when the PC (5150) was released, IBM started selling
PC-DOS.
But digital Research was not happy with IBM
selling a copy of their
operating
system.
In those days, selling a copy was legal, if the internal code was not
copied.
(hence the development of "clean-room
reverse engineering") It wasn't
until the
Lotus/Paperback Software (Adam Osborne) lawsuit
that "look and feel"
became
copyrightable.
So, IBM agreed to also sell CP/M-86 IN ADDITION to selling PC-DOS.
. . . and sold UCSD P-System.
But CP/M-86 was STILL not ready, so everybody bought PC-DOS, many of whom
planned to switch to CP/M-86 when it became available.
But, when CP/M-86 was finally ready, the price was $240 vs $40 for PC-DOS.
There are arguments about whether IBM or Digital Research set that price.
Although, if that price was IBM's idea, then why did Digital Research
charge
$240 for copies sold through other sources (such
as Lifeboat)?
Initially MS-DOS and PC-DOS differed only in name and trivial items, such
as
"IO.SYS" and "MSDOS.SYS"
being renamed "IBMBIO.COM" and "IBMDOS.COM"
When changes were made, Microsoft's and IBM's version numbers were
separated.
Thus 1.00 was the same for both
IBM released PC-DOS 1.10, and Microsoft released MS-DOS 1.25
2.00 was the same for both
2.10 VS 2.11 (IBM needed trivial changes to 2.00 to deal with the
excessively
slow Qumetrak 142 disk drives in the PC-Junior
and "portable"
3.00 was the same
3.10, adding network support and the "network redirector for CD-ROMs
3.20 VS 3.21, adding "720K" 3.5" drive support
3.30 VS 3.31, BUT 3.31 was the first to support larger than 32Mebibyte
drives!
4.00 and 4.01 IBM/Microsoft did not provide
third party vendors enough
advanced warning, so Norton Utilities, etc. did not work on 4.00 (NOT
4.00 did not work with Norton Utilities!)
5.00
In 6.00 each company bundled a whole bunch of third party stuff (such as
disk
compression) and each got them from different
sources.
When Microsoft's disk compression was blamed for serious problems caused
by
SMARTDRV, Microsoft released 6.20 (repaired and
reliability improved from
6.00).
Then 6.21 and 6.22 as a result of Microsoft's legal case with Stac
Electronics.
Please note that MS-DOS/PC-DOS ALWAYS had a version number, a period, and
then a TWO DIGIT DECIMAL sub-version number. THAT is what is stored
internally. Thus, 1.10 is stored as ONE.TEN (01h.0Ah), 3.31 is actually
THREE.Thirty-ONE (03h.1Fh), etc.
If there had ever actually been a "1.1" or "3.2", those would have
been
01h.01h
(1.01) and 03h.02h (3.02), etc.
"1.1" was NOT the same as "1.10", nor "3.2" the same as
"3.20", otherwise
VERY
minor changes would be confused with serious
changes, as happened when
some people called 4.01 "four point one".
Later still, Seattle Computer Products was on the rocks. There was some
speculation that AT&T might buy it, to get the DOS license (and not have
to
pay
royalties per copy!). After some legal
animosity, Microsoft did the right
and
smart thing, and bought Seattle Computer
Products, thus closing that
vulnerability.
Windows originally started as an add-on command processor and user
interface
on top of DOS. Windows95 made that invisibly
seamless, so the user never
saw
a DOS prompt without explicitly asking for it.
Windows 95 still contained
DOS
(7.00), but the user never saw it.
Gordon Letwin at Microsoft developed OS/2. But Microsoft sold it off to
IBM,
and it became known as an IBM product.
Microsoft used some key technology from it in developing WindowsNT.
Within Microsoft's offerings, NT competed with non-NT windows, such as
Windows95, Windows98, and Windows2000.
Windows[NT] Vista, XP, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 continued, and the old Windows was
"deprecated'.
Naming a version after the year it is released is great for sales in the
first
year,
and a serious liability in subsequent years,
unless there is actually
going to be a
new version every year (as automobiles do)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
31 Jul
31 Jul
1:14 a.m.
On 7/30/2024 6:58 AM, cz via cctalk wrote:
But Windows 2000 was a re-architected version of NT
that people hated
because of the GUI. So they dusted up the GUI with Windows 98's stuff
and released it as XP. Rest was history....
In the interest of facts, I don't think this is correct.
Windows NT 3.1 utilized the Windows 3.1 UI look and feel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1
Windows NT 3.5 continued the 3.1 look and feel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.5
Windows NT 4.0 utilized the Windows 95 look and feel, as did 2000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_4.0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000
Thus, I believe the UI hate evaporated before Windows XP.
I remember using 3.1, 4.0, and 2000. As I recall, I loved the stability
of 3.1, but the UI was old and outdated, especially when 95 came out.
4.0 offered the nicer UI, but the driver situation was still a problem,
compared to the better driver support for Windows 95/98. Windows 2000
was supposed to unify the OS variants, but it didn't quite make it
(though I think W2K moved the graphics subsystem into the kernel for
better performance), and Windows XP was the first unified OS and the
first with a 64 bit variant.
Jim
1:25 a.m.
On Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 10:14 PM Jim Brain via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
I remember using 3.1, 4.0, and 2000. As I recall, I loved the stability
of 3.1, but the UI was old and outdated, especially when 95 came out.
4.0 offered the nicer UI, but the driver situation was still a problem,
I forget at which NT release you could do advanced things like changing the
IP address without needing to reboot :-).
3:40 a.m.
On Wed, Jul 31, 2024 at 6:26 AM Tony Jones via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
I forget at which NT release you could do advanced things like changing the
IP address without needing to reboot :-).
I've been playing with some HP 16700 logic analysers recently - HPUX 10
from the late 90s. Setting the date and changing from static address to
DHCP each required their own reboot (though it's possibly the
application-specific GUI forcing that rather than HPUX itself). Brought
back memories of 'You have moved the mouse, do you want to reboot? '.
5 Aug
5 Aug
9:28 a.m.
As I recall, it was W2K which allowed you to change the IP without reboot - one of my
favorite features of that OS (and beyond).
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Jones via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, 31 July, 2024 01:26
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: Tony Jones <tony(a)tonyjones.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: MS-DOS
On Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 10:14 PM Jim Brain via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
I remember using 3.1, 4.0, and 2000. As I recall, I loved the
stability of 3.1, but the UI was old and outdated, especially when 95 came out.
4.0 offered the nicer UI, but the driver situation was still a
problem,
I forget at which NT release you could do advanced things like changing the IP address
without needing to reboot :-).
31 Jul
31 Jul
7:32 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Brain via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2024 6:14 AM
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Cc: Jim Brain <brain(a)jbrain.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: MS-DOS
On 7/30/2024 6:58 AM, cz via cctalk wrote:
> But Windows 2000 was a re-architected version of NT that people hated
> because of the GUI. So they dusted up the GUI with Windows 98's stuff
> and released it as XP. Rest was history....
The GUI in Windows/2000 is very similar to 9X. The issue with Windows/2000 that put people
off was applications compatibility. Because it does not sit on top of DOS like 95,98 and
ME.
So it broke many applications that worked in the DOS world.
From a corporate, enterprise view it was a game changer. The scalability of Activity
Directory as opposed to the NT SAM just opened the door to wide scale deployments.
The controls that Group Policy provided allowed you much more control over the end user
machine.
Proper roaming profiles and multi master replication..
Really it delivered something approaching the manageability of a Mainframe in a PC based
distributed network.....
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/active-directory-second/0596004664/ch0…
... for those on Windows 2000, initially XP offered very little, except for a
"TeleTubbie" user interface, so the start of the dumbing down of Windows...
.. in fact I would say Windows/2000 is probably my favourite OS ....
In the interest of facts, I don't think this is correct.
Windows NT 3.1 utilized the Windows 3.1 UI look and feel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1
Windows NT 3.5 continued the 3.1 look and feel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.5
Windows NT 4.0 utilized the Windows 95 look and feel, as did 2000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_4.0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000
Thus, I believe the UI hate evaporated before Windows XP.
I remember using 3.1, 4.0, and 2000. As I recall, I loved the stability of 3.1, but
the UI was old and outdated, especially when 95 came out.
4.0 offered the nicer UI, but the driver situation was still a problem, compared
to the better driver support for Windows 95/98. Windows 2000 was supposed
to unify the OS variants, but it didn't quite make it (though I think W2K moved
the graphics subsystem into the kernel for better performance), and Windows XP
was the first unified OS and the first with a 64 bit variant.
Jim
Dave
p.s. I once went to talk to some MS techies about an Exchange/IBM mail gateway we were
supporting, but which Microsoft had bought. I had things set up to run on a couple of
machines and had tested everything worked in an isolated environment. What I hadn't
noticed, in the pressure of making sure there were no glitches was that my XP desktop had
the normal background replaced with one the BBC provided for fans of the TeleTubbies
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/teletubbies
got a big cheer from the Techies at Microsoft......
Dave
10:15 a.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
Am i the ONLY person who preferred the win 3.1 user interface? Probably, since I have
never seen one like it on linux, and everybody else complains about it.
1. I don't like "active anything" that pops up when I move the mouse one
pixel further than I intended, or hides itself just as I am clicking on it so the click
goes through to something behind, unintended. and don't get me started on when I am
resizing and go one pixel past the edge, so it maximizes...across all my displays.
sometimes takes me 3-5 attempts to resize one window to almost fill one physical display.
i think the maximizing across multiple displays is only a winblows problem.
2. I could customize groupings in program manager:
--this group is all things related to the newsletter I prepare monthly, including the
actual document, background info, program to print it, browser with related information,
etc. for the 3 days per month I work on it, and keeps out of my way the rest of the
time.
--or this group is only brought up in the spring, with items for planning my garden. but
I might also bring it up briefly in the autumn when I see some special seeds I never heard
about before.
--the groupings helped for seldom used files/programs whose name I have trouble
remembering...just bring up the group and it is there
--program manager was always there when I wanted it, or got hidden when I didn't
3. file manager had features I maybe could find now but have not, such as
--tiling *or* cascading several directories, and dragging files from one to another,
harder to set up with tabs or multiple instances of file manager.
--(maybe its fond memories, but I think I could) select several files and sort ONLY THEM,
leaving the others unmoved,
--sort on file extension,
--sort with wildcards (probably can, just my ignorance?)
--show date and time even for not the last 24 hour files (I think I did find such a file
manager, but it lacked some other critical functions, or crashed all the time.
two really big plusses afaik only in linux:
--I can expand a subdirectory now without jumping completely to it, which win 3.1 could
not do
--also like that when attaching to an email, or opening, I can select from "recently
used"
another wish (for winblows or linux) if it was like Dos/win3.1, where you boot do a dos
prompt, it would be nice if I could bring up the graphical interface with &, and then
bring up a second one....maybe a different, one or with different options...especially now
that I have multiple display adapters, a win 3.1 like UI on one monitor, and a current UI
on on the other monitor, then from either drag application windows to a third monitor.
10:43 a.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
I don't recall anything I liked about 3.1, but certainly all those
gesture-based actions that came later are a plague.
On Wed, Jul 31, 2024 at 3:15 PM CAREY SCHUG via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Am i the ONLY person who preferred the win 3.1 user
interface? Probably,
since I have never seen one like it on linux, and everybody else complains
about it.
1. I don't like "active anything" that pops up when I move the mouse one
pixel further than I intended, or hides itself just as I am clicking on it
so the click goes through to something behind, unintended. and don't get
me started on when I am resizing and go one pixel past the edge, so it
maximizes...across all my displays. sometimes takes me 3-5 attempts to
resize one window to almost fill one physical display. i think the
maximizing across multiple displays is only a winblows problem.
2. I could customize groupings in program manager:
--this group is all things related to the newsletter I prepare monthly,
including the actual document, background info, program to print it,
browser with related information, etc. for the 3 days per month I work on
it, and keeps out of my way the rest of the time.
--or this group is only brought up in the spring, with items for planning
my garden. but I might also bring it up briefly in the autumn when I see
some special seeds I never heard about before.
--the groupings helped for seldom used files/programs whose name I have
trouble remembering...just bring up the group and it is there
--program manager was always there when I wanted it, or got hidden when I
didn't
3. file manager had features I maybe could find now but have not, such as
--tiling *or* cascading several directories, and dragging files from one
to another, harder to set up with tabs or multiple instances of file
manager.
--(maybe its fond memories, but I think I could) select several files and
sort ONLY THEM, leaving the others unmoved,
--sort on file extension,
--sort with wildcards (probably can, just my ignorance?)
--show date and time even for not the last 24 hour files (I think I did
find such a file manager, but it lacked some other critical functions, or
crashed all the time.
two really big plusses afaik only in linux:
--I can expand a subdirectory now without jumping completely to it, which
win 3.1 could not do
--also like that when attaching to an email, or opening, I can select from
"recently used"
another wish (for winblows or linux) if it was like Dos/win3.1, where you
boot do a dos prompt, it would be nice if I could bring up the graphical
interface with &, and then bring up a second one....maybe a different, one
or with different options...especially now that I have multiple display
adapters, a win 3.1 like UI on one monitor, and a current UI on on the
other monitor, then from either drag application windows to a third monitor.
11:39 a.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
-----Original Message-----
From: CAREY SCHUG via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2024 3:15 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: CAREY SCHUG <sqrfolkdnc(a)comcast.net>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
Am i the ONLY person who preferred the win 3.1 user interface? Probably, since
I have never seen one like it on linux, and everybody else complains about it.
1. I don't like "active anything" that pops up when I move the mouse one
pixel
further than I intended, or hides itself just as I am clicking on it so the click goes
through to something behind, unintended. and don't get me started on when I
am resizing and go one pixel past the edge, so it maximizes...across all my
displays. sometimes takes me 3-5 attempts to resize one window to almost fill
one physical display. i think the maximizing across multiple displays is only a
winblows problem.
Not sure about this...
2. I could customize groupings in program manager:
--this group is all things related to the newsletter I prepare monthly, including
the actual document, background info, program to print it, browser with related
information, etc. for the 3 days per month I work on it, and keeps out of my
way the rest of the time.
--or this group is only brought up in the spring, with items for planning my
garden. but I might also bring it up briefly in the autumn when I see some
special seeds I never heard about before.
--the groupings helped for seldom used files/programs whose name I have
trouble remembering...just bring up the group and it is there --program manager
was always there when I wanted it, or got hidden when I didn't
3. file manager had features I maybe could find now
but have not, such as --
tiling *or* cascading several directories, and dragging files from one to another,
harder to set up with tabs or multiple instances of file manager.
--(maybe its fond memories, but I think I could) select several files and sort ONLY
THEM, leaving the others unmoved, --sort on file extension, --sort with
wildcards (probably can, just my ignorance?) --show date and time even for not
the last 24 hour files (I think I did find such a file manager, but it lacked some
other critical functions, or crashed all the time.
You can still install the old File Manager
https://github.com/Microsoft/winfile/releases
You can use the corner dock to get four explorer windows
two really big plusses afaik only in linux:
--I can expand a subdirectory now without jumping completely to it, which win
3.1 could not do --also like that when attaching to an email, or opening, I can
select from "recently used"
Not sure about this
another wish (for winblows or linux) if it was like
Dos/win3.1, where you boot do
a dos prompt, it would be nice if I could bring up the graphical interface with &,
and then bring up a second one....maybe a different, one or with different
options...especially now that I have multiple display adapters, a win 3.1 like UI
on one monitor, and a current UI on on the other monitor, then from either drag
application windows to a third monitor.
You can have Multiple Desktops ...
Dave
12:41 p.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
Sorry, should have specified...I don't use winblows that much, I would Like those
features on Linux.
think i installed something old on some operating system and it blew up when I exceed some
max for the old system. long filenames, or special characters in filenames, or something.
maybe that would be fixed now.
3. file manager had features I maybe could find
now but have not, such as --
tiling *or* cascading several directories, and dragging files from one to another,
harder to set up with tabs or multiple instances of file manager.
--(maybe its fond memories, but I think I could) select several files and sort ONLY
THEM, leaving the others unmoved, --sort on file extension, --sort with
wildcards (probably can, just my ignorance?) --show date and time even for not
the last 24 hour files (I think I did find such a file manager, but it lacked some
other critical functions, or crashed all the time.
You can still install the old File Manager
https://github.com/Microsoft/winfile/releases
You can use the corner dock to get four explorer windows
two really big plusses afaik only in linux:
--I can expand a subdirectory now without jumping completely to it, which win
3.1 could not do --also like that when attaching to an email, or opening, I can
select from "recently used"
You can have Multiple Desktops ...
I have multiple desktops, but they are all the same UI. my "wish" was to have
different UIs on different desktops, a big order, I realize, it requires some underlying
shared tool kit and being friendly with each other.
12:57 p.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
On 2024-07-31 18:41, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk wrote:
I have multiple desktops, but they are all the same
UI. my "wish" was
to have different UIs on different desktops, a big order, I realize, it
requires some underlying shared tool kit and being friendly with each
other.
If you press CONTROL+ALT+Fx (F1, F2, ...), you go to the virtual
consoles, where you can launch new graphical sessions (this is what I
believe you call different UIs) by typing "startx -- :1" (then 2, 3,
etc...).
Have fun!
Ángel
3:35 p.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
this is linux, right? so I could have one be kde, one gnome and maybe a third xfce?
might try playing with it someday, or good if I want to transition gradually to a
different UI, but unless
one of them could be like the win 3.1 UI, not being unable to join them together and drag
individual app windows from one physical screen to another probably makes better to all be
the same UI with joined screens.
<pre>--Carey</pre>
On 07/31/2024 11:57 AM CDT Angel M Alganza via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 2024-07-31 18:41, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk wrote:
I have multiple desktops, but they are all the
same UI. my "wish" was
to have different UIs on different desktops, a big order, I realize, it
requires some underlying shared tool kit and being friendly with each
other.
If you press CONTROL+ALT+Fx (F1, F2, ...), you go to the virtual
consoles, where you can launch new graphical sessions (this is what I
believe you call different UIs) by typing "startx -- :1" (then 2, 3,
etc...).
Have fun!
Ángel 
5:41 p.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
On Wed, 31 Jul 2024, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk wrote:
this is linux, right? so I could have one be kde, one
gnome and maybe a third xfce? might try playing with it someday, or good if I want to
transition gradually to a different UI, but unless
one of them could be like the win 3.1 UI, not being unable to join them together and drag
individual app windows from one physical screen to another probably makes better to all be
the same UI with joined screens.
With Linux you can definitely have different window managers on different
X11 instances running on different screens within the same machine. I did
this before (running two instances of Gnome on :0 and :1 respectively, and
olvwm on :2) and it's only down to the individual window managers whether
they are happy about it or not. You can have some remote screens such as
via XDMCP as well, each using its own window manager.
Maciej
5:49 p.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
On Wed, Jul 31, 2024 at 2:41 PM Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Wed, 31 Jul 2024, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk wrote:
I'm pretty sure you can't move windows between two window managers however
(above "drag individual app windows" comment).
this is linux, right? so I could have one be
kde, one gnome and maybe a
third xfce? might try playing with it someday, or good if I want to
transition gradually to a different UI, but unless
one of them could be like the win 3.1 UI, not
being unable to join them
together and drag individual app windows from one physical screen to
another probably makes better to all be the same UI with joined screens.
With Linux you can definitely have different window managers on different
X11 instances running on different screens within the same machine.
6:50 p.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
On Jul 31, 2024, at 4:50 PM, Tony Jones via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Wed, Jul 31, 2024 at 2:41 PM Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I'm pretty sure you can't move windows between two window managers however
(above "drag individual app windows" comment).
xpra (https://www.xpra.org) might accomplish the task. It is like an X11 reimagining of
the Linux ‘screen’ program. It lets you open a window in one X session, disconnect from
it, and reattach it to another X session.
Frank
On Wed,
31 Jul 2024, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk wrote:
this is linux, right? so I could have one be kde, one gnome and maybe a
third
xfce? might try playing with it someday, or good if I want to
transition gradually to a different UI, but unless
one of them could be like the win 3.1 UI, not
being unable to join them
together and drag individual app windows from one
physical screen to
another probably makes better to all be the same UI with joined screens.
With Linux you can definitely have different window managers on different
X11 instances running on different screens within the same machine.
5 Aug
5 Aug
9:20 a.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
On Wed, 31 Jul 2024 22:41:20 +0100 (BST)
"Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have mixed experiences with this with applications or environments
interfering with each other. E.g. it'd be impossible to launch the same
application in two sessions.
It would be nice if applications were a bit more supportive of such
scenarios and the virtual terminal thing a bit more flexible. I'd like
to be able to remote into a machine and choose to either start a new
graphical session (like SSH) or attach to an existing one (like what
'tmux a' does). It's probably possible to hack something together with
a VNC X server and then also connecting to it locally, but solutions
like that come with compromises like performance.
Sijmen
this is linux,
right? so I could have one be kde, one gnome and maybe a third xfce? might try playing
with it someday, or good if I want to transition gradually to a different UI, but unless
one of them could be like the win 3.1 UI, not being unable to join them together and drag
individual app windows from one physical screen to another probably makes better to all be
the same UI with joined screens.
With Linux you can definitely have different window managers on different
X11 instances running on different screens within the same machine. I did
this before (running two instances of Gnome on :0 and :1 respectively, and
olvwm on :2) and it's only down to the individual window managers whether
they are happy about it or not. You can have some remote screens such as
via XDMCP as well, each using its own window manager. 
1 Aug
1 Aug
4:57 a.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
On Wed, 31 Jul 2024 at 15:33, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Am i the ONLY person who preferred the win 3.1 user interface? Probably, since I have
never seen one like it on linux, and everybody else complains about it.
Pretty close. I customised it heavily with shortcuts for all my apps
and things and I missed that. NT 4's 95-a-like Explorer was slower.
But it did so much more and needed so much less customisation to be
usable.
another wish (for winblows or linux) if it was like
Dos/win3.1
This is the closest thing I know:
https://github.com/jcs/progman
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
8:15 a.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
For awhile I would simply run PROGMAN.EXE on Windows NT, it would bring
up the traditional window interface. Eventually I got used to the
Windows 95/98 model.
C
On 8/1/2024 4:57 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
On Wed, 31 Jul 2024 at 15:33, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Am i the ONLY person who preferred the win 3.1 user interface? Probably, since I have
never seen one like it on linux, and everybody else complains about it.
Pretty close. I customised it heavily with shortcuts for all my apps
and things and I missed that. NT 4's 95-a-like Explorer was slower.
But it did so much more and needed so much less customisation to be
usable.
another wish (for winblows or linux) if it was
like Dos/win3.1
This is the closest thing I know:
https://github.com/jcs/progman
11:51 a.m.
New subject: MS-DOS am I the only person who liked the win 3.1 UI?
Don't forget about CMD and the Power Shell...
On Wed, Jul 31, 2024 at 10:33 AM CAREY SCHUG via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Am i the ONLY person who preferred the win 3.1 user interface? Probably, since I have
never seen one like it on linux, and everybody else complains about it.
1. I don't like "active anything" that pops up when I move the mouse one
pixel further than I intended, or hides itself just as I am clicking on it so the click
goes through to something behind, unintended. and don't get me started on when I am
resizing and go one pixel past the edge, so it maximizes...across all my displays.
sometimes takes me 3-5 attempts to resize one window to almost fill one physical display.
i think the maximizing across multiple displays is only a winblows problem.
2. I could customize groupings in program manager:
--this group is all things related to the newsletter I prepare monthly, including the
actual document, background info, program to print it, browser with related information,
etc. for the 3 days per month I work on it, and keeps out of my way the rest of the
time.
--or this group is only brought up in the spring, with items for planning my garden. but
I might also bring it up briefly in the autumn when I see some special seeds I never heard
about before.
--the groupings helped for seldom used files/programs whose name I have trouble
remembering...just bring up the group and it is there
--program manager was always there when I wanted it, or got hidden when I didn't
3. file manager had features I maybe could find now but have not, such as
--tiling *or* cascading several directories, and dragging files from one to another,
harder to set up with tabs or multiple instances of file manager.
--(maybe its fond memories, but I think I could) select several files and sort ONLY THEM,
leaving the others unmoved,
--sort on file extension,
--sort with wildcards (probably can, just my ignorance?)
--show date and time even for not the last 24 hour files (I think I did find such a file
manager, but it lacked some other critical functions, or crashed all the time.
two really big plusses afaik only in linux:
--I can expand a subdirectory now without jumping completely to it, which win 3.1 could
not do
--also like that when attaching to an email, or opening, I can select from "recently
used"
another wish (for winblows or linux) if it was like Dos/win3.1, where you boot do a dos
prompt, it would be nice if I could bring up the graphical interface with &, and then
bring up a second one....maybe a different, one or with different options...especially now
that I have multiple display adapters, a win 3.1 like UI on one monitor, and a current UI
on on the other monitor, then from either drag application windows to a third monitor.
31 Jul
31 Jul
10:31 a.m.
We were given an expensive device (X-ray fluorescence
analyzer) that had a dying computer. The instrument had an
ISA bus card to interface to it. I cloned the hard drive,
and tried to get it to boot properly on a new "industrial"
computer that had ISA slots. The original OS was DOS 3.1
That didn't work well, so we got a DOS 7.1 install disk, and
had to do a bunch of magic to get the ANSI graphics support
loaded properly, but then the whole thing worked!
I have a Samsung-built pick and place machine at home that
runs Windows 95, because the user-mode control program talks
directly to the hardware (a Motorola 68040 VME board
connected through a dual-port memory).
So, both of these systems require ANCIENT OS versions.
Jon
8:25 a.m.
On Wed, 31 Jul 2024 at 06:14, Jim Brain via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
In the interest of facts, I don't think this is correct.
Windows NT 3.1 utilized the Windows 3.1 UI look and feel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1
Windows NT 3.5 continued the 3.1 look and feel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.5
OK, true but misses out a major release, the best one of NT 3.x.
I think it would be simpler to say:
NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 used the Windows 3.1 UI.
NT 4 used the Windows 95 UI.
Windows 2000 used the same UI as Windows ME: it's a modified updated
version of the "Active Desktop" from Windows 98.
Thus, I believe the UI hate evaporated before Windows
XP.
Agreed.
I remember using 3.1, 4.0, and 2000.
I deployed all of them in production.
As I recall, I loved the stability
of 3.1, but the UI was old and outdated, especially when 95 came out.
Agreed.
4.0 offered the nicer UI, but the driver situation was
still a problem,
compared to the better driver support for Windows 95/98.
True. Also, no Plug'n'Play, no ACPI, no USB, no FAT32.
Windows 2000
was supposed to unify the OS variants, but it didn't quite make it
(though I think W2K moved the graphics subsystem into the kernel for
better performance),
No, that was NT4.
and Windows XP was the first unified OS
It wasn't really "unified" in any way. That was marketing spiel.
and the
first with a 64 bit variant.
Kinda sorta yes, but it was not 64-bit at release.
First an Itanium version came out a year or so later, then a year or
so after that, an AMD64 version followed.
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
9:57 a.m.
On 7/31/2024 7:25 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
I think you're referring to the GFX subsystem move, and I stand
corrected. If you're referring to NT 4 being the unified OS, I would
disagree.
A poor choice of words. I did not mean to imply the code was merged,
but that they had tried to offer feature parity in the WinNT tech.
Jim
--
Jim Brain
brain(a)jbrain.com
www.jbrain.com
On Wed, 31 Jul 2024 at 06:14, Jim Brain via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I was trying to be a bit pedantic, since I was correcting information in
the previous posting. I honestly did not remember 3.51, and I was not
sure if 4 used the WIn95 UI or a facsimile of it built from some of the
same source.
In the interest of facts, I don't think this
is correct.
Windows NT 3.1 utilized the Windows 3.1 UI look and feel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1
Windows NT 3.5 continued the 3.1 look and feel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.5
OK, true but misses out a major release, the best one of NT 3.x.
I think it would be simpler to say:
NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 used the Windows 3.1 UI.
NT 4 used the Windows 95 UI.
Windows 2000 used the same UI as Windows ME: it's a modified updated
version of the "Active Desktop" from Windows 98.
I was not aware (or, maybe I was, but it's been long enough I forgot)
Windows 2000
was supposed to unify the OS variants, but it didn't quite make it
(though I think W2K moved the graphics subsystem into the kernel for
better performance),
No, that was NT4.
and Windows XP
was the first unified OS
It wasn't really "unified" in any way. That was marketing spiel.
10:06 a.m.
Windows NT and 2000 did not have the "cut through" ability for apps to
talk to video without going through security proxies, thus games were
always terrible on them.
Windows XP was the first OS (well aside from Windows 95/ME/whatever)
that allowed fast access. This made it a security sinkhole, but everyone
loved it and that's why it was adopted as the standard for so long.
C
On 7/31/2024 9:57 AM, Jim Brain via cctalk wrote:
On 7/31/2024 7:25 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
I think you're referring to the GFX subsystem move, and I stand
corrected. If you're referring to NT 4 being the unified OS, I would
disagree.
A poor choice of words. I did not mean to imply the
code was merged,
but that they had tried to offer feature parity in the WinNT tech.
Jim
On Wed, 31 Jul 2024 at 06:14, Jim Brain via
cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I was trying to be a bit pedantic, since I was
correcting information in
the previous posting. I honestly did not remember 3.51, and I was not
sure if 4 used the WIn95 UI or a facsimile of it built from some of the
same source.
In the interest of facts, I don't think this
is correct.
Windows NT 3.1 utilized the Windows 3.1 UI look and feel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1
Windows NT 3.5 continued the 3.1 look and feel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.5
OK, true but misses out a major
release, the best one of NT 3.x.
I think it would be simpler to say:
NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 used the Windows 3.1 UI.
NT 4 used the Windows 95 UI.
Windows 2000 used the same UI as Windows ME: it's a modified updated
version of the "Active Desktop" from Windows 98.
I was not aware (or,
maybe I was, but it's been long enough I forgot)
Windows 2000
was supposed to unify the OS variants, but it didn't quite make it
(though I think W2K moved the graphics subsystem into the kernel for
better performance),
No, that was NT4. and
Windows XP was the first unified OS
It wasn't really "unified" in any
way. That was marketing spiel. 
10:58 a.m.
Windows 2000 certainly had all the same support for fast graphics graphics
as Windows XP. Plenty of gamers actually preferred Win2k over XP because it
was lighter weight and could deliver better frame rates under some
circumstances.
Mike
On Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 10:06 AM cz via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Windows NT and 2000 did not have the "cut
through" ability for apps to
talk to video without going through security proxies, thus games were
always terrible on them.
Windows XP was the first OS (well aside from Windows 95/ME/whatever)
that allowed fast access. This made it a security sinkhole, but everyone
loved it and that's why it was adopted as the standard for so long.
C
On 7/31/2024 9:57 AM, Jim Brain via cctalk wrote:
On 7/31/2024 7:25 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk
wrote:
I think you're referring to the GFX subsystem move, and I stand
corrected. If you're referring to NT 4 being the unified OS, I would
disagree.
A poor choice of words. I did not mean to imply the code was merged,
but that they had tried to offer feature parity in the WinNT tech.
Jim
On Wed, 31 Jul 2024 at 06:14, Jim Brain via
cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I was trying to be a bit pedantic, since I was correcting information in
the previous posting. I honestly did not remember 3.51, and I was not
sure if 4 used the WIn95 UI or a facsimile of it built from some of the
same source.
In the interest of facts, I don't think this
is correct.
Windows NT 3.1 utilized the Windows 3.1 UI look and feel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1
Windows NT 3.5 continued the 3.1 look and feel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.5
OK, true but misses out a major release, the best one of NT 3.x.
I think it would be simpler to say:
NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 used the Windows 3.1 UI.
NT 4 used the Windows 95 UI.
Windows 2000 used the same UI as Windows ME: it's a modified updated
version of the "Active Desktop" from Windows 98.
I was not aware (or, maybe I was, but it's been long enough I forgot)
Windows 2000
was supposed to unify the OS variants, but it didn't quite make it
(though I think W2K moved the graphics subsystem into the kernel for
better performance),
No, that was NT4.
and
Windows XP was the first unified OS
It wasn't really "unified" in any way. That was marketing spiel.
1 Aug
1 Aug
12:11 p.m.
On Thu, 1 Aug 2024 at 13:23, cz via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Windows NT and 2000 did not have the "cut through" ability for apps to
talk to video without going through security proxies, thus games were
always terrible on them.
Windows XP was the first OS (well aside from Windows 95/ME/whatever)
that allowed fast access. This made it a security sinkhole, but everyone
loved it and that's why it was adopted as the standard for so long.
I'm not specifically agreeing or disagreeing here, but I did read back
at the time that something like what you describe applied to NT4,
although I do not remember details. I think you could install DirectX
but it didn't actually connect to the graphics card: it always did
software rendering and performance was poor. Only actual OpenGL was
hardware-accelerated, as it had been on NT 3.x as well.
I'm not a gamer and wasn't then, and I never investigated it much at
the time. On the magazine I wrote for then, Windows 98 was known as
dismissively as "GameOS" and nobody seriously wanted to play games on
NT4.
I thought, but am not sure, that Win2K fixed this.
The main visible "improvements" in XP were themes, faster
boot/shutdown, compression of memory images so that hibernation and
resume were much quicker, and some bundled tools (Movie Maker, File
and Settings Transfer Wizard, etc.)
The real change was external, in the PC hardware market and ecosystem:
by the time XP shipped, most hardware vendors offered NT drivers for
their hardware, firmware was more NT-compatible, games had been
cleaned of code that hit the metal and worked via legal Windows APIs,
and so on.
So a new PC in 2002 worked much better with XP than a late-1990s PC
did, and games worked on XP, etc... but that wasn't due to any
particular change in the OS, it was that the hardware and software
market had caught up and stopped making unsafe DOS calls, shipping
direct-hardware-bashing VxD drivers, etc.
MS knew this but spun it as "XP merges Windows 98 and 2000 to give you
the best of both worlds, rich media and gaming with NT stability" --
but in actual fact no convergence had happened.
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
12:22 p.m.
I believe the biggest selling factor from Microsoft was that all drivers had been
converted to 32-bit in xp. Prior to that, there were still some 16 bitters around.
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 1, 2024, at 09:12, Liam Proven via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Thu, 1 Aug 2024 at 13:23, cz via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Windows NT and 2000 did not have the "cut through" ability for apps to
talk to video without going through security proxies, thus games were
always terrible on them.
Windows XP was the first OS (well aside from Windows 95/ME/whatever)
that allowed fast access. This made it a security sinkhole, but everyone
loved it and that's why it was adopted as the standard for so long.
I'm not specifically agreeing or disagreeing here, but I did read back
at the time that something like what you describe applied to NT4,
although I do not remember details. I think you could install DirectX
but it didn't actually connect to the graphics card: it always did
software rendering and performance was poor. Only actual OpenGL was
hardware-accelerated, as it had been on NT 3.x as well.
I'm not a gamer and wasn't then, and I never investigated it much at
the time. On the magazine I wrote for then, Windows 98 was known as
dismissively as "GameOS" and nobody seriously wanted to play games on
NT4.
I thought, but am not sure, that Win2K fixed this.
The main visible "improvements" in XP were themes, faster
boot/shutdown, compression of memory images so that hibernation and
resume were much quicker, and some bundled tools (Movie Maker, File
and Settings Transfer Wizard, etc.)
The real change was external, in the PC hardware market and ecosystem:
by the time XP shipped, most hardware vendors offered NT drivers for
their hardware, firmware was more NT-compatible, games had been
cleaned of code that hit the metal and worked via legal Windows APIs,
and so on.
So a new PC in 2002 worked much better with XP than a late-1990s PC
did, and games worked on XP, etc... but that wasn't due to any
particular change in the OS, it was that the hardware and software
market had caught up and stopped making unsafe DOS calls, shipping
direct-hardware-bashing VxD drivers, etc.
MS knew this but spun it as "XP merges Windows 98 and 2000 to give you
the best of both worlds, rich media and gaming with NT stability" --
but in actual fact no convergence had happened.
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
4:28 p.m.
Amazing detail and story (feel bad snipping out).
I remember some rumor about either NT or 2000 and a claim that Microsoft
lost the source code, hence no more versions (maybe it was win 2000 since
only 2 service packs?). Does anyone know if that was just Internet rumor of
the times or was that factual?
I felt that was part of the change of the OS going forward and being more
of a hybrid of 98/NT which as others said, was a win for gaming and
graphics support.
A friend used to try to play games on NT 4.0, mostly either Warcraft and I
think panzer general but I recall getting sound drivers to work was a
chore. My friend base and i stuck with 98se for a long time but eventually
migrated to either 2000 or XP but I honestly can't remember which we used
longer. I know (before windows 2000), we all uninstalled windows ME and
went back to 98se but that was due to performance issues with ME.
On Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 8:53 AM cz via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Pretty much, though Windows2000 was a significant
redesign over NT4.
4:31 p.m.
Was 2000 called “Longhorn” internally? If so, the source code for it escaped out onto the
internet. You can still find it out there.
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 1, 2024, at 13:28, John Herron via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Amazing detail and story (feel bad snipping out).
I remember some rumor about either NT or 2000 and a claim that Microsoft
lost the source code, hence no more versions (maybe it was win 2000 since
only 2 service packs?). Does anyone know if that was just Internet rumor of
the times or was that factual?
I felt that was part of the change of the OS going forward and being more
of a hybrid of 98/NT which as others said, was a win for gaming and
graphics support.
A friend used to try to play games on NT 4.0, mostly either Warcraft and I
think panzer general but I recall getting sound drivers to work was a
chore. My friend base and i stuck with 98se for a long time but eventually
migrated to either 2000 or XP but I honestly can't remember which we used
longer. I know (before windows 2000), we all uninstalled windows ME and
went back to 98se but that was due to performance issues with ME.
> On Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 8:53 AM cz via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> Pretty much, though Windows2000 was a significant redesign over NT4.
>
>
>
7:06 p.m.
I'm pretty sure it was Vista that was codenamed 'Longhorn', wasn't it?
4chan leaked a bunch of code to 2000/XP with a spattering of NT 3.5 (rumour
goes)[1]. Then Microsoft apparently painted themselves into a corner making
Vista and reset the whole thing based on 2003's code base.
[1]
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/working-windows-xp-source-code-posted-to-…
[2]
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/testers-dig-up-an-early-2003-era-ve…
On Thu, Aug 1, 2024 at 12:32 PM Wayne S via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Was 2000 called “Longhorn” internally? If so, the
source code for it
escaped out onto the internet. You can still find it out there.
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 1, 2024, at 13:28, John Herron via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Amazing detail and story (feel bad snipping out).
I remember some rumor about either NT or 2000 and a claim that Microsoft
lost the source code, hence no more versions (maybe it was win 2000 since
only 2 service packs?). Does anyone know if that was just Internet rumor
of
the times or was that factual?
I felt that was part of the change of the OS going forward and being more
of a hybrid of 98/NT which as others said, was a win for gaming and
graphics support.
A friend used to try to play games on NT 4.0, mostly either Warcraft and
I
think panzer general but I recall getting sound
drivers to work was a
chore. My friend base and i stuck with 98se for a long time but
eventually
migrated to either 2000 or XP but I honestly
can't remember which we used
longer. I know (before windows 2000), we all uninstalled windows ME and
went back to 98se but that was due to performance issues with ME.
> On Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 8:53 AM cz via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
>
> Pretty much, though Windows2000 was a significant redesign over NT4.
>
>
>
7:15 p.m.
On Thu, 2024-08-01 at 15:06 -0800, Michael Huff via cctalk wrote:
I'm pretty sure it was Vista that was codenamed
'Longhorn', wasn't
it?
4chan leaked a bunch of code to 2000/XP with a spattering of NT 3.5
(rumour
goes)[1]. Then Microsoft apparently painted themselves into a corner
making
Vista and reset the whole thing based on 2003's code base.
[1]
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/working-windows-xp-source-code-posted-to-…
I remember a columnist in Computerworld or PC Week or some other 1990's
trade rag (Spencer Katt?) remarking that "Using Windows NT is like
having a child help you."
7:28 p.m.
Wasn’t Vista “Mojave”?
On Aug 1, 2024, at 16:07, Michael Huff via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I'm pretty sure it was Vista that was codenamed 'Longhorn', wasn't it?
4chan leaked a bunch of code to 2000/XP with a spattering of NT 3.5 (rumour
goes)[1]. Then Microsoft apparently painted themselves into a corner making
Vista and reset the whole thing based on 2003's code base.
[1]
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/working-windows-xp-source-code-posted-to-…
[2]
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/testers-dig-up-an-early-2003-era-ve…
> On Thu, Aug 1, 2024 at 12:32 PM Wayne S via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>
> Was 2000 called “Longhorn” internally? If so, the source code for it
> escaped out onto the internet. You can still find it out there.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Aug 1, 2024, at 13:28, John Herron via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> Amazing detail and story (feel bad snipping out).
>>
>> I remember some rumor about either NT or 2000 and a claim that Microsoft
>> lost the source code, hence no more versions (maybe it was win 2000 since
>> only 2 service packs?). Does anyone know if that was just Internet rumor
> of
>> the times or was that factual?
>>
>> I felt that was part of the change of the OS going forward and being more
>> of a hybrid of 98/NT which as others said, was a win for gaming and
>> graphics support.
>>
>> A friend used to try to play games on NT 4.0, mostly either Warcraft and
> I
>> think panzer general but I recall getting sound drivers to work was a
>> chore. My friend base and i stuck with 98se for a long time but
> eventually
>> migrated to either 2000 or XP but I honestly can't remember which we used
>> longer. I know (before windows 2000), we all uninstalled windows ME and
>> went back to 98se but that was due to performance issues with ME.
>>
>>
>>> On Tue, Jul 30, 2024, 8:53 AM cz via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>>>
>>> Pretty much, though Windows2000 was a significant redesign over NT4.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
2 Aug
2 Aug
5:53 a.m.
On Fri, 2 Aug 2024 at 00:29, Royce Taft via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Wasn’t Vista “Mojave”?
No. That is Mac OS X 10.14.
Apple used big cats for a decade or more:
Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion.
Then it ran out of cats. It switched to iconic places in North America.
Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave,
Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia.
That's from memory. I may have missed some or got the wrong order.
After it started using codenames in marketing, there were different
_internal_ codenames as well.
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
3 Aug
3 Aug
10:16 a.m.
On Fri, Aug 2, 2024, 10:03 AM Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Then it ran out of cats. It switched to iconic places in North America.
Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave,
Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia.
Specifically, place names of California.
Sellam
1:08 p.m.
On Sat, 3 Aug 2024 at 15:17, Sellam Abraham via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Yes, that's what I remembered, but I wasn't sure. Never been there,
not remotely familiar with the geography.
TBH I thought El Cap was in Yosemite and Yosemite was in Wyoming, but
on Googling, I think I was mixing up Yosemite and Yellowstone. TBH I
never consciously realised before that they were 2 different places.
Not my country, not my continent. I've lived in Africa, 3 different
countries in Europe, spent a lot of time and speak the languages of 4
more, but America is far off and largely unknown to me -- a
frightening semi-theocracy with guns and no healthcare.
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave,
Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia.
Specifically, place names of California. 
4 Aug
4 Aug
10:13 p.m.
Sent from my iPad
Not my country, not my continent. I've lived in Africa, 3 different
countries in Europe, spent a lot of time and speak the languages of 4
more, but America is far off and largely unknown to me -- a
frightening semi-theocracy with guns and no healthcare.
And in some cases, armed heathcare.
11:47 p.m.
> Specifically, place names of California.
On Sat, 3 Aug 2024, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
Yes, that's what I remembered, but I wasn't
sure. Never been there,
not remotely familiar with the geography.
TBH I thought El Cap was in Yosemite and Yosemite was in Wyoming, but
on Googling, I think I was mixing up Yosemite and Yellowstone. TBH I
never consciously realised before that they were 2 different places.
Not my country, not my continent. I've lived in Africa, 3 different
countries in Europe, spent a lot of time and speak the languages of 4
more, but America is far off and largely unknown to me -- a
frightening semi-theocracy with guns and no healthcare.
Well, you should come visit, some time.
There's a lot to see.
16 Aug
16 Aug
12:56 p.m.
On Sun, Aug 04, 2024 at 08:47:44PM -0700, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
There is a lot to see in rather less unstable parts of the world too. Life
is short even with healthcare and no guns, so one has to prioritise.
There is even loads to see within a 5km radius of my home. The next town
across is a minor settlement called Amsterdam which I have heard might also
contain a museum or two.
Europe is not a howling wasteland with a forlorn C64 in the corner.
On Sat, 3 Aug 2024, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
[...]
Not my
country, not my continent. I've lived in Africa, 3 different
countries in Europe, spent a lot of time and speak the languages of 4
more, but America is far off and largely unknown to me -- a frightening
semi-theocracy with guns and no healthcare.
Well, you should come visit, some
time.
There's a lot to see.
5 Aug
5 Aug
9:55 a.m.
Well, my friend, the guns are the only thing that keep us free from tyranny!
-----Original Message-----
From: Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, 3 August, 2024 13:09
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: Liam Proven <lproven(a)gmail.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: MS-DOS
Yes, that's what I remembered, but I wasn't sure. Never been there, not remotely
familiar with the geography.
TBH I thought El Cap was in Yosemite and Yosemite was in Wyoming, but on Googling, I think
I was mixing up Yosemite and Yellowstone. TBH I never consciously realised before that
they were 2 different places.
Not my country, not my continent. I've lived in Africa, 3 different countries in
Europe, spent a lot of time and speak the languages of 4 more, but America is far off and
largely unknown to me -- a frightening semi-theocracy with guns and no healthcare.
--
Liam Proven
3:26 p.m.
Could we please keep politics off this list? I could argue at length about this topic but
I'm not going to, this list is not the forum for that.
paul
On Aug 5, 2024, at 3:22 PM, Johan Helsingius via
cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 05/08/2024 15:55, John Maxwell via cctalk wrote:
Well, my friend, the guns are the only thing that
keep us free from tyranny!
Voting and proper checks and balances (broken by the current US Supreme
Court) is what keeps us free from tyranny, not guns.
Julf 
6 Aug
6 Aug
10:14 a.m.
Good then please keep your opinions to yourself on this and stop
trying to start issues.
On Sat, Aug 3, 2024 at 1:18 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Not my country, not my continent. I've lived in Africa, 3 different
countries in Europe, spent a lot of time and speak the languages of 4
more, but America is far off and largely unknown to me -- a
frightening semi-theocracy with guns and no healthcare.
2:31 p.m.
On 01.08.2024 16:28, Royce Taft via cctalk wrote:
Wasn’t Vista “Mojave”?
As others noted, "Mojave" was the name of a MacOS release. There was,
however, an ad campaign that Microsoft ran in an attempt to counter the
bad press that Windows Vista was getting at the time of its launch. In
it, they showed folks who had been invited to try out a new future
version of Windows in development called "Windows Mojave". After they
had seen a demo and made positive comments about it, it was then
revealed that "Windows Mojave" was actually Vista.
--Bill
7 Aug
7 Aug
8:55 a.m.
On 8/6/2024 2:31 PM, maddox--- via cctalk wrote:
On 01.08.2024 16:28, Royce Taft via cctalk wrote:
I keep seeing all these bad comments about Vista. Just what was
supposed to be wrong with it? I ran it for more than a decade
and only stopped when MS deliberately broke it with the final
update. It was a hell of a lot better than the crap that followed
it.
bill
Wasn’t Vista “Mojave”?
As others noted, "Mojave" was the name of a MacOS release. There was,
however, an ad campaign that Microsoft ran in an attempt to counter the
bad press that Windows Vista was getting at the time of its launch. In
it, they showed folks who had been invited to try out a new future
version of Windows in development called "Windows Mojave". After they
had seen a demo and made positive comments about it, it was then
revealed that "Windows Mojave" was actually Vista.
9:38 a.m.
Slow, code bloat, ate resources.
There is no measurable or even reasonably-arguable way that Vista was superior to 10.
Actually, I can’t think of any way that it was superior to 7, or to 8 once you turned the
touch-enabled Start Menu off.
11 a.m.
i think it was strongly disliked by many non-technical users because it was
the first one where MS tried to lock down some admin functions, forcing the
users to confirm or enter an admin password to continue. This isn't
necessarily bad but it was rather hamfisted and disliked.
Technical reasons for disliking it may have been different. It appeared
after I had abandoned their products and I never had to deal with it.
On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 2:48 PM mark audacity romberg via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Slow, code bloat, ate resources.
There is no measurable or even reasonably-arguable way that Vista was
superior to 10.
Actually, I can’t think of any way that it was superior to 7, or to 8 once
you turned the touch-enabled Start Menu off.
2:55 p.m.
Microsoft changed the way drivers worked and so you needed new drivers. Many people had
hardware that didn’t work after upgrading to Vista so that and eveything said by others in
this list contributed to the hatred. It was a botched rollout that Microsoft continues to
do to this day.
Nadella really needs to get a handle on testing.
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 7, 2024, at 08:00, Adrian Godwin via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
i think it was strongly disliked by many non-technical users because it was
the first one where MS tried to lock down some admin functions, forcing the
users to confirm or enter an admin password to continue. This isn't
necessarily bad but it was rather hamfisted and disliked.
Technical reasons for disliking it may have been different. It appeared
after I had abandoned their products and I never had to deal with it.
> On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 2:48 PM mark audacity romberg via cctalk <
> cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> Slow, code bloat, ate resources.
>
> There is no measurable or even reasonably-arguable way that Vista was
> superior to 10.
>
> Actually, I can’t think of any way that it was superior to 7, or to 8 once
> you turned the touch-enabled Start Menu off.
>
>
>
4:47 p.m.
On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 4:55 AM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 8/6/2024 2:31 PM, maddox--- via cctalk wrote:
As others said; it was slower, bloated -Windows 7 felt like a vast
improvement performance wise.
That said, if you had it on a new (at the time) computer with appropriate
drivers it was a pretty alright OS. In my opinion I like the look of it
better than I liked 7 -even though I ran 7 for a lot longer.
On 01.08.2024 16:28, Royce Taft via cctalk
wrote:
I keep seeing all these bad comments about Vista. Just what was
supposed to be wrong with it? I ran it for more than a decade
and only stopped when MS deliberately broke it with the final
update. It was a hell of a lot better than the crap that followed
it.
bill
Wasn’t Vista “Mojave”?
As others noted, "Mojave" was the name of a MacOS release. There was,
however, an ad campaign that Microsoft ran in an attempt to counter the
bad press that Windows Vista was getting at the time of its launch. In
it, they showed folks who had been invited to try out a new future
version of Windows in development called "Windows Mojave". After they
had seen a demo and made positive comments about it, it was then
revealed that "Windows Mojave" was actually Vista.
6:37 p.m.
On 07.08.2024 05:55, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
I keep seeing all these bad comments about Vista.
Just what was
supposed to be wrong with it? I ran it for more than a decade
and only stopped when MS deliberately broke it with the final
update. It was a hell of a lot better than the crap that followed
it.
One issue I have not seen others mention is that Vista moved to a
compositing window manager, in which the window manager composed the
display from multiple off-screen buffers rather than having the apps
paint directly into the framebuffer. This required decent a decent
3D-capable GPU while XP could get along fine without one. In a sop to
OEMs that were shipping the then-crappy Intel integrated graphics,
Microsoft allowed very underspec'd hardware to make the official
compatibility list. Much of the later success of Windows 7 (which added
even more compositing eye candy) was simply due to the HW market having
moved on to accommodate the new requirements.
--Bill
10 Aug
10 Aug
1:28 a.m.
I've always been pro MS-DOS - the earliest version I started with was about
3.20, IIRC.
I don't ever recall seeing 86-DOS on shelves, or ever really hearing about
it. But CP/M remained fairly popular to mid 1980s (I just mean I knew
various friends who daily used CP/M then). A couple issues with CP/M: it
never really "broke the 64K barrier", so I've wondered who
"pioneered" the
segment management needed to make the 1MB conventional RAM seem more
contiguous than it really is? (I understand the 640K barrier was just
arbitrarily picking 10 segments for end user, and 6 for essentially system
reserve - and yes there is more details to that). Maybe it related to
the difference between .COM (a 64KB binary sequence, but I think the first
100 bytes reserved for passing from the command line?), and .EXEs that
could have enough code to span multiple segments (but does the credit for
that go to the operating system, or the compiler writers? or a
collaboration between both?). CP/M, as far as I can tell, never tackled
"the 64KB barrier" (i.e. was a C compiler for CP/M available that could do
x = malloc(100000) and use that as a contiguous allocation from a
programmer perspective?). And, what about software interrupts? I recall
those huge books detailing the MS-DOS interrupts, so I think one does have
to give Microsoft credit towards providing developers with technical
details (being somewhat reminiscent of IBM's SHARE groups, in a way-- in
terms of advocating/training end users, and constant collaboration in
developer conferences).
In short, I've proposed QDOS may have truly been the better product at
those pivotal months of 1980/1981. DR's 86-DOS was "in the works" and
just too late (but years later, I did come to love DR DOS 3.40 over MS-DOS
4.xx, and stuck with DR-DOS up until MS-DOS 6.22).
On Thu, Aug 8, 2024 at 12:31 AM maddox--- via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 07.08.2024 05:55, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
wrote:
I keep seeing all these bad comments about Vista.
Just what was
supposed to be wrong with it? I ran it for more than a decade
and only stopped when MS deliberately broke it with the final
update. It was a hell of a lot better than the crap that followed
it.
One issue I have not seen others mention is that Vista moved to a
compositing window manager, in which the window manager composed the
display from multiple off-screen buffers rather than having the apps
paint directly into the framebuffer. This required decent a decent
3D-capable GPU while XP could get along fine without one. In a sop to
OEMs that were shipping the then-crappy Intel integrated graphics,
Microsoft allowed very underspec'd hardware to make the official
compatibility list. Much of the later success of Windows 7 (which added
even more compositing eye candy) was simply due to the HW market having
moved on to accommodate the new requirements.
--Bill
16 Aug
16 Aug
2:11 p.m.
On Sat, Aug 10, 2024 at 12:28:23AM -0500, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
[...]
I don't ever recall seeing 86-DOS on shelves, or
ever really hearing about
it. But CP/M remained fairly popular to mid 1980s (I just mean I knew
various friends who daily used CP/M then). A couple issues with CP/M: it
never really "broke the 64K barrier", so I've wondered who
"pioneered" the
segment management needed to make the 1MB conventional RAM seem more
contiguous than it really is? (I understand the 640K barrier was just
arbitrarily picking 10 segments for end user, and 6 for essentially system
reserve - and yes there is more details to that).
Your question (well, more of a musing but I'm taking it as something which
can be answered) seems a bit muddled, so I'll have a crack at several
possible interpretations.
CP/M was effectively limited to 64KiB because it had no traction outside of
the 8080/Z80 which had a 64KiB address space. To go beyond that limit on
those CPUs involves paging, and some platforms did indeed use paging for RAM
disks and to move some OS out of the way to leave more RAM for programs. But
as far as programs are concerned, 64KiB is the limit unless they happen to
be platform-specific and know how to handle the paging.
From what I can tell of a casual peruse of the documentation of CP/M-68K and
CP/M-86, they support the full address space of 4GiB and 1MiB respectively.
This is kind of obvious on the m68k since why would they artificially limit
it, but on x86 it's less obvious because they could have restricted changing
the segment registers. CP/M-86 *also* supports an "8080 model" with CS == DS
== ES, presumably to ease quick ports of 8080 code through source-to-source
translation.
86-DOS is the same 1MiB. Applications are free to change the segment
registers.
As to the 8086, it really does have a 1MiB linear address space. The gotcha
is that 20-bit linear addresses are too wide to fit in a 16-bit register, so
use a pair of registers. This much is no different to splitting a 16-bit
register across the 8-bit H and L registes on the Z80. The problem is that
there are just too few segment registers and so they need reloading all the
time, which is expensive, and pointer arithmetic is much more difficult due
to the shift-by-four, so for performance one tries to write code such that
they don't get changed so often, and one way to do that is to introduce an
artificial 64KiB limit.
It's also worth noting that the PC memory space is very much *not* divided
into fixed 64KiB segments (and ISTR it was originally a 512/512 split).
Segment registers have 16-byte granularity and a segment can straddle a
64kiB boundary just fine. This is used to some effect on the 286 to gain an
extra 65520 bytes beyond the 1MiB boundary in real mode.
2:42 p.m.
On Fri, 16 Aug 2024, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
It's also worth noting that the PC memory space is
very much *not* divided
into fixed 64KiB segments (and ISTR it was originally a 512/512 split).
Segment registers have 16-byte granularity and a segment can straddle a
64kiB boundary just fine. This is used to some effect on the 286 to gain an
extra 65520 bytes beyond the 1MiB boundary in real mode.
A segment can, indeed, straddle a physical 64KiB boundary.
5150 disk IO had problems if the DMA buffer straddled a
physical 64KiB boundary (Int13h return code 9)
Not hard to work around; just move the buffer
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58564895/problem-with-bios-int-13h-read…
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
2 Aug
2 Aug
5:41 a.m.
On Thu, 1 Aug 2024 at 21:32, Wayne S via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Was 2000 called “Longhorn” internally? If so, the source code for it escaped out onto the
internet. You can still find it out there.
No.
The planned successor to "Whistler" (NT 5.1, sold as WinXP) was
"Blackcomb", the planned NT 6.
After over-running several years, MS started planning an intermediary
release, based on the Windows 2003 Server kernel, codenamed
"Longhorn".
In the end "Longhorn" became Windows Vista and "Blackcomb" was
cancelled and never became a product.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
30 Jul
30 Jul
8:34 a.m.
On Tue, 30 Jul 2024 at 09:42, Dave Wade G4UGM via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Yes it started life as NT5 but at some point in got
renamed to 2000 and DEC
Alpha support was dropped. I may have some NT5 Beta CDs in the loft.
I think *all* the non-Intel versions were dropped, weren't they?
There was an unreleased 64-bit Alpha built. It was rediscovered and
shared last year. I wrote about it.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/19/first_64bit_windows/
More recently someone has written a bootloader and firmware to run NT
PowerPC on G3 PowerMacs. You can install NT 4 on a "Bondi Blue" iMac
now!
https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/windows_nt_on_powermac_g3/
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
29 Jul
29 Jul
10:28 p.m.
I found Tim Peterson's old blog a while back which contained some interesting tidbits
about the history of DOS from the original author.
http://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/
- Rod
On Jul 29, 2024, at 8:21 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
I had not realized that 43 yrs. ago Microsoft
purchased 86-DOS for $50,000
– US not Cdn. money. With this purchase the PC industry, IBM’s version
thereof, began. I remember using it to do amazing things, moreso than what
8-bit machines could do!
Ah, but there is so much more to the story, which deserves an entire chapter in the
history.
More than you wanted to know? : (but even more details available if you really want
them)
Tim Paterson, of Seattle Computer Products was developing 8086 hardware, but CP/M-86 was
delayed. So, he wrote a temporary place-holder to use instead of CP/M-86 until CP/M-86
became available. That was called "QDOS", "Quick and Dirty Operating
System". Later it became known as "SCP-DOS" and/or "86-DOS"
Then came the "culture clash" between IBM and Digital Research (previously
known as "Intergalctic digital Research"). That has been documented elsewhere;
some claim that there was not a culture clash, nor an error.
So, Microsoft (possibly Bill Gates personally) went down the street to Seattle Computer
Products, and bought an unlimited license for 86-DOS "that we can sell to our
[un-named] client"
Tim Paterson, who later opened "Falcon Technologies" and Seattle Computer
Products both also retained licenes to be able to sell "the operating system".
Note that the version was not specified, as to whether such license would include rights
to sell updated versions; that error (failure to specify whether future/derivative
products were included) has been repeated elsewhere (cf. Apple/Microsoft)
Microsoft also hired Tim Paterson to maintain and update "MS-DOS".
Microsoft sold a license to IBM, where it became PC-DOS.
And, it was available through Lifeboat as "86-DOS"
In August 1981, when the PC (5150) was released, IBM started selling PC-DOS. But digital
Research was not happy with IBM selling a copy of their operating system. In those days,
selling a copy was legal, if the internal code was not copied. (hence the development of
"clean-room reverse engineering")
It wasn't until the Lotus/Paperback Software (Adam Osborne) lawsuit that "look
and feel" became copyrightable.
So, IBM agreed to also sell CP/M-86 IN ADDITION to selling PC-DOS.
. . . and sold UCSD P-System.
But CP/M-86 was STILL not ready, so everybody bought PC-DOS, many of whom planned to
switch to CP/M-86 when it became available.
But, when CP/M-86 was finally ready, the price was $240 vs $40 for PC-DOS.
There are arguments about whether IBM or Digital Research set that price.
Although, if that price was IBM's idea, then why did Digital Research charge $240 for
copies sold through other sources (such as Lifeboat)?
Initially MS-DOS and PC-DOS differed only in name and trivial items, such as
"IO.SYS" and "MSDOS.SYS" being renamed "IBMBIO.COM" and
"IBMDOS.COM"
When changes were made, Microsoft's and IBM's version numbers were separated.
Thus 1.00 was the same for both
IBM released PC-DOS 1.10, and Microsoft released MS-DOS 1.25
2.00 was the same for both
2.10 VS 2.11 (IBM needed trivial changes to 2.00 to deal with the excessively slow
Qumetrak 142 disk drives in the PC-Junior and "portable"
3.00 was the same
3.10, adding network support and the "network redirector for CD-ROMs
3.20 VS 3.21, adding "720K" 3.5" drive support
3.30 VS 3.31, BUT 3.31 was the first to support larger than 32Mebibyte drives!
4.00 and 4.01 IBM/Microsoft did not provide third party vendors enough advanced warning,
so Norton Utilities, etc. did not work on 4.00 (NOT 4.00 did not work with Norton
Utilities!)
5.00
In 6.00 each company bundled a whole bunch of third party stuff (such as disk
compression) and each got them from different sources. When Microsoft's disk
compression was blamed for serious problems caused by SMARTDRV, Microsoft released 6.20
(repaired and reliability improved from 6.00).
Then 6.21 and 6.22 as a result of Microsoft's legal case with Stac Electronics.
Please note that MS-DOS/PC-DOS ALWAYS had a version number, a period, and then a TWO
DIGIT DECIMAL sub-version number. THAT is what is stored internally. Thus, 1.10 is
stored as ONE.TEN (01h.0Ah), 3.31 is actually THREE.Thirty-ONE (03h.1Fh), etc.
If there had ever actually been a "1.1" or "3.2", those would have
been 01h.01h (1.01) and 03h.02h (3.02), etc.
"1.1" was NOT the same as "1.10", nor "3.2" the same as
"3.20", otherwise VERY minor changes would be confused with serious changes, as
happened when some people called 4.01 "four point one".
Later still, Seattle Computer Products was on the rocks. There was some speculation that
AT&T might buy it, to get the DOS license (and not have to pay royalties per copy!).
After some legal animosity, Microsoft did the right and smart thing, and bought Seattle
Computer Products, thus closing that vulnerability.
Windows originally started as an add-on command processor and user interface on top of
DOS. Windows95 made that invisibly seamless, so the user never saw a DOS prompt without
explicitly asking for it. Windows 95 still contained DOS (7.00), but the user never saw
it.
Gordon Letwin at Microsoft developed OS/2. But Microsoft sold it off to IBM, and it
became known as an IBM product.
Microsoft used some key technology from it in developing WindowsNT.
Within Microsoft's offerings, NT competed with non-NT windows, such as Windows95,
Windows98, and Windows2000.
Windows[NT] Vista, XP, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 continued, and the old Windows was
"deprecated'.
Naming a version after the year it is released is great for sales in the first year, and
a serious liability in subsequent years, unless there is actually going to be a new
version every year (as automobiles do)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
11:14 p.m.
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Rod Bartlett wrote:
I found Tim Peterson's old blog a while back which
contained some interesting tidbits about the history of DOS from the original author.
http://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/
thank you,
that is a very useful reference, although it is only part of the
"elephant"
30 Jul
30 Jul
12:09 a.m.
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Rod Bartlett wrote:
I found Tim Peterson's old blog a while back which
contained some interesting tidbits about the history of DOS from the original author.
http://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/
I did find one unimportant error,
He said that DOS 1.10 supported both double sided, and 9 sectors per
track.
That may have been what he wished for, but I'm pretty sure that what
Microsoft actually released was DOS 1.10/1.25 supported double sided 8
sectors per track (up from single sided in DOS 1.00),
(SOME OEM versions of 1.25 support 8" disks!)
and DOS 2.00 supported 9 sectors per track (Plus enormous other major
changes, such as the "file handle" API, added to the existing "FCB"
API.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
1:24 a.m.
On 2024-07-29 10:09 p.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Rod Bartlett wrote:
2.0 was better but not quite a finished product.
Xenix...
It planned over time to improve MS-DOS so it would be almost
indistinguishable from single-user Xenix, or XEDOS, which would also run
on the 68000, Z8000, and LSI-11; they would be upwardly compatible with
Xenix, which Byte in 1983 described as "the multi-user MS-DOS of the
future". Microsoft's Chris Larson described MS-DOS 2.0's Xenix
compatibility as "the second most important feature".] His company
advertised DOS and Xenix together, describing MS-DOS 2.0 (its
"single-user OS") as sharing features and system calls with Xenix ("the
multi-user, multi-tasking, Unix-derived operating system"), and
promising easy porting between them.
I found Tim Peterson's old blog a while back
which contained some
interesting tidbits about the history of DOS from the original author.
http://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/
I did find one unimportant error,
He said that DOS 1.10 supported both double sided, and 9 sectors per track.
That may have been what he wished for, but I'm pretty sure that what
Microsoft actually released was DOS 1.10/1.25 supported double sided 8
sectors per track (up from single sided in DOS 1.00),
(SOME OEM versions of 1.25 support 8" disks!)
and DOS 2.00 supported 9 sectors per track (Plus enormous other major
changes, such as the "file handle" API, added to the existing "FCB"
API.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com 
29 Jul
29 Jul
11:47 p.m.
On Mon, Jul 29, 2024 at 6:21 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk
wrote:
The DEC Rainbow had initially a 2.01 and later 2.05 version.
I had not realized that 43 yrs. ago Microsoft
purchased 86-DOS for
$50,000
– US not Cdn. money. With this purchase the PC
industry, IBM’s version
thereof, began. I remember using it to do amazing things, moreso than
what
8-bit machines could do!
Ah, but there is so much more to the story, which deserves an entire
chapter in the history.
More than you wanted to know? : (but even more details available if you
really want them)
...
Initially MS-DOS and PC-DOS differed only in name and trivial items, such
as "IO.SYS" and "MSDOS.SYS" being renamed "IBMBIO.COM" and
"IBMDOS.COM"
When changes were made, Microsoft's and IBM's version numbers were
separated.
Thus 1.00 was the same for both
IBM released PC-DOS 1.10, and Microsoft released MS-DOS 1.25
2.00 was the same for both
2.10 VS 2.11 (IBM needed trivial changes to 2.00 to
deal with the
excessively slow Qumetrak 142 disk drives in the PC-Junior and "portable"
And then upgraded to 2.11 quickly when it was available...
3.00 was the same
3.10, adding network support and the "network redirector for CD-ROMs
Later, there was 3.10 (from Ford, semi-bootleg) and then 3.10a and 3.10b
(from suitable
solutions).... and not 3.11 and 3.12 like I'd half expected...
3.20 VS 3.21, adding "720K" 3.5" drive
support
Yea, I had to write IMPDRIVE because I could get 3.5" drives for no money,
but
not SS iDrive at the time to get this...
3.30 VS 3.31, BUT 3.31 was the first to support
larger than 32Mebibyte
drives!
I'd wished that there would have been a 3.30 Rainbow port for bigger disks,
but no
joy... But the native controllers maxed out at 67MB and the 'modded'
controllers with
one more bit for I think heads (using the next version of the WD chip)
could do 134MB....
But it was all too little too late (I've seen 2 Rainbows with this mod, not
my own alas)...
This side trip down memory lane brought to you by one motor, two disks
RX-50...
Warner
30 Jul
30 Jul
12:08 a.m.
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Warner Losh wrote:
The DEC Rainbow had initially a 2.01 and later 2.05
version.
Yes, some OEM licensers made significant changes, particularly when
PC-DOS and "vanilla" MS-DOS didn't handle their disk formats.
And many companies started to use 3.5" drives or 80 track DD 5.25"
drives before DOS 3.30, which was the first official support. So, you
may see various version 2.11 with "720K" drive support.
Including the IBM PC-JX
Later, there was 3.10 (from Ford, semi-bootleg) and
then 3.10a and 3.10b
(from suitable
Letters appended were often modifications made by the OEM.
For example, Gavilan used MS-DOS version 2.11, but had their own format.
It wasn't until revision J, K, or L that they supported the "ordinary"
"720K" format.
Note that although the Gavilan came with either a 3.0" drive, or a 3.5"
single sided drive, it supported 3.5" double sided. so, you could replace
the drive with a double sided 3.5". Their drive bezel was proprietary, but
some brands would fit without bezel, and the bezel form Gavilan's Shugart
SA300 drive would fit Shugart SA350.
12:38 a.m.
On 7/29/24 17:21, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk
wrote:
Gordon Letwin at Microsoft developed OS/2. But Microsoft sold it off
to IBM, and it became known as an IBM product.
Umm, no. OS/2 was a joint development effort between IBM and
Microsoft. IBM had actually started work on it first and enlisted
Microsoft early on mainly because they wanted an OS that wasn't viewed
as something just by IBM (e.g. they wanted broad industry support).
That all went away when Bill decided to take Microsoft their own way.
I was not a fan of OS/2 while at IBM but it was a decent OS. I was on
the "mode switch task force" which argued against using that crazy
feature of the 286/386 and argued that the "new" OS should move directly
to the 386 but we were overridden by management due to schedule
constraints. As it turned out OS/2 was very late and the the 386 was
(more or less) on time which was the main argument from management (OS/2
would *only* take 9 months...it was more like 18 and the 386 would be
late just like the 286 and it wasn't).
--
TTFN - Guy
8:30 a.m.
On Tue, 30 Jul 2024 at 01:28, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Gordon Letwin at Microsoft developed OS/2. But
Microsoft sold it off to
IBM, and it became known as an IBM product.
That is not quite how I remember it...
Microsoft used some key technology from it in
developing WindowsNT.
Within Microsoft's offerings, NT competed with non-NT windows, such as
Windows95, Windows98, and Windows2000.
One small slip here:
The DOS-based versions were 95 (& (& 95A, 95B, & 95C), 98 (& 98SE) and
ME.
Windows 2000 is NT 5.0.
Naming a version after the year it is released is
great for sales in the
first year, and a serious liability in subsequent years, unless there is
actually going to be a new version every year (as automobiles do)
Agreed.
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
4:20 p.m.
On 7/29/24 19:21, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
On Mon, 29 Jul 2024, Murray McCullough via cctalk
wrote:
I had not realized that 43 yrs. ago Microsoft
purchased 86-DOS for
$50,000
– US not Cdn. money. With this purchase the PC industry, IBM’s version
thereof, began. I remember using it to do amazing things, moreso than
what
8-bit machines could do!
Initially MS-DOS and PC-DOS differed only in name and
trivial items,
such as "IO.SYS" and "MSDOS.SYS" being renamed "IBMBIO.COM"
and
"IBMDOS.COM"
When changes were made, Microsoft's and IBM's version numbers were
separated.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
And I learned last week that DOS is still alive, and well, and damned
expensive.
Tuxera Systems acquired Datalight in 2019 and now sells ROM-DOS. They
claim it's still fully compatible with MS-DOS.
Single User ROM-DOS costs $55 USD, and the SDK for building it embedded
is "Call for a Quote".
They're apparently pretty active with the Cease & Desist action - none
of their products are "out there" in the usual places.
Long Live DOS!
Doc
5:43 p.m.
On 2024-07-30 22:20, Doc Shipley via cctalk wrote:
And I learned last week that DOS is still alive, and
well, and damned
expensive.
[...]
Long Live DOS!
FreeDOS is cheaper :-)
Long Live FreeDOS!
https://freedos.org/
6:09 p.m.
FreeDOS is cheaper :-)
Long Live FreeDOS!
https://freedos.org/
Unfortunately FreeDOS (as expected given the nature of the project)
progresses very slowly. I would love to see FreeDOS become a full fledged
MS-DOS 7.0, would have/could have/should have been, replacement. I still run
DOS 6.22 for almost all of my DOS needs. Not sure what others like to do
though.
-Ali
31 Jul
31 Jul
8:21 a.m.
On Tue, 30 Jul 2024 at 23:10, Ali via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Unfortunately FreeDOS (as expected given the nature of the project)
progresses very slowly.
Fair.
There are quarterly updates but they keep very quiet about them.
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/test/
I would love to see FreeDOS become a full fledged
MS-DOS 7.0, would have/could have/should have been, replacement.
Agreed.
I still run
DOS 6.22 for almost all of my DOS needs. Not sure what others like to do
though.
IBM made the kernel and core files of PC DOS 7.1 a free download as
part of the Serverguide Scripting Toolkit. I consider that as a public
release.
I combined that with the free PC-DOS 7.01 VM distributed for free with
Microsoft VirtualPC.
https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/59703.html
You get Y2K compliance, FAT32 and LBA support, and also IBM E and Rexx
if you want them. It works very well.
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
30 Jul
30 Jul
6:09 p.m.
Tuxera Systems acquired Datalight in 2019 and now
sells ROM-DOS. They
claim it's still fully compatible with MS-DOS.
Single User ROM-DOS costs $55 USD, and the SDK for building it embedded
is "Call for a Quote".
$55 isn't that bad. If it was a real commercial product with printed manuals, disks,
etc. I would say that is pretty fair. However, I think it is a download only purchase
option though. On the upside it supposedly has built in support for LFN and FAT32....
-Ali
31 Jul
31 Jul
3:12 a.m.
On 7/30/24 17:09, Ali via cctalk wrote:
That price wouldn't be bad at all if the "ROM" part were included.
I have embedded systems from a V40 8088-alike to Pentium that will run
from EPROM or EEPROM; it would be fantastic to have the DataLight/Tuxera
run-from-ROM tools.
And sadly, even the SDK delivers on CD - no paper for you!
Doc
Tuxera Systems
acquired Datalight in 2019 and now sells ROM-DOS. They
claim it's still fully compatible with MS-DOS.
Single User ROM-DOS costs $55 USD, and the SDK for building it embedded
is "Call for a Quote".
$55 isn't that bad. If it was a real commercial product with printed manuals, disks,
etc. I would say that is pretty fair. However, I think it is a download only purchase
option though. On the upside it supposedly has built in support for LFN and FAT32....
1
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