1 Feb
2008
1 Feb
'08
10:19 a.m.
On Jan 30, 2008, at 7:21 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Is this stuff available anywhere? I'd love to get my hands on it.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
Was there ever
a *vanilla* MS-DOS?
Short answer--yes. It was called an "OEM Kit". Basically, you got
the binaries and instructions on how and what I/O drivers to write
and you linked the whole mess together to form two files, IO.SYS and
MSDOS.SYS, though you weren't confined to those names. Many
utilities, such as MODE and FORMAT were provided in skeleton form
with the vendor filling out the details. This lead to a some
interesting variations on MODE. For example, the Grid MS-DOS version
of MODE allows one to control the power status of the peripherals and
a whole bunch of other things.
I may even still have the OEM documentation wandering around
somewhere, printed up on fading tractor-feed paper.