22 Jun
2001
22 Jun
'01
5:27 a.m.
DOS5 == DOS6 differences:
SmartDrive disk cache
Boot menus
"Large disk" support in FDISK
Drive compression
That's what I can come up with without looking. How far off am I?
==========================
Richard A. Cini, Jr.
Congress Financial Corporation
1133 Avenue of the Americas
30th Floor
New York, NY 10036
(212) 545-4402
(212) 840-6259 (facsimile)
-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) [mailto:cisin@xenosoft.com]
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 12:40 PM
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: MS-DOS version (was: What's best to do?? classically speaking
On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote:
Yes, Compaq was the source of v3.31. That was, as you
point out, an early
"large"-disk-volume-capable version. I swiped a version from one of the
Compaq's with which I had frequent contact, and happily used it with ESDI
drives
for years.
NO, Compaq was NOT "the source of v3.31". They were one of many.
ALL OEMs were offered 3.31. Many did not want to pay the asking price.
Compaq and Zenith were the most notable ones who did.
There are minor differences in MODE.COM, IO.SYS, FORMAT.COM, and a few
other files from one OEM's version to the next. 1.25?, 2.11, and 3.31 are
the OEM versions that were most commonly customized, with changes such as
support for 720K 5.25", 720K 3.5" (same, but a few messages altered),
internal/external video, ... Whenever using 1.25, 2.11, or 3.31, ALWAYS
keep track, AND IDENTIFY, which OEM it was. The customizations were
different from one OEM to the next.
Prior to 5.00, MS-DOS was, IN THEORY, available only from OEMs. Yes,
there was such a giant gray market that nobody noticed the restriction.
There appears to have been a 10 year non-competition contract between
MICROS~1 and IBM, wherein MICROS~1 could sell to OEMs, but could not sell
DOS as a retail product. 5.00 was the first version where DOS was
available legitimately as a retail product. It was "NEW and IMPROVED!"
The "NEW and IMPROVED" consisted mostly of bug fixes to 4.00, plus
availability from MICROS~1.
NOTE: 5.00 has met the 10 year rule for over a month now. Windoze 3.10
has 2 more months to go, even for BETA.
OB_OT: NOT COUNTING bundling of additonal [third party] programs, who can
name what the differences are between 5.00 and 6.00?
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com