On 3/29/2006 at 1:56 PM Doc Shipley wrote:
I run MS-DOS 6.22 on a Pentium-133 Compaq and
occasionally on a
1200MHz Athlon, depending on whether I'm reading/writing floppy or tape.
Since I own several "legitimate" copies of v6.22, and it supports all
the programs I need very well, I haven't really looked at the free
alternatives.
My mostly-DOS machines all have Win95 installed, but boot into real-mode
DOS. I've also installed the long file name driver (I think it's available
from
SourceForge.net), so I don't get too boxed in
by the 8.3 naming
limitation. If I need a GUI, I just type 'win".
I've never had a heck of a lot of luck with FreeDOS past simple
installation (e.g. never could get the networking going reliably).
Not to bash NetBSD or Linux (I have and use both), but they're lousy
platforms for driver development. Implementing a new device or driver
usually involves wrestling with the kernel. On DOS, I can write a
real-mode program, TSR or .sys driver and load it on the fly. On Win 9x,
it's mostly a matter of a VxD (again, loading on the fly). For NT/2K/XP,
the boilerplate is a bit more involved (handle ACPI, PnP, Power Management,
etc.), but once done, it's a matter of making the necessary registry
entries and maybe restarting.
Cheers,
Chuck