PDP 11/73 on the Internet

Actually, MSDOS is alive and well. It is commonly used as the "boot loader" for many, many systems. It's no longer under development by Microsoft, but they still make money from sales to people who need something on top of the bare hardware before their custom software starts up. -- Ian ________________________________________ From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Kirn Gill [segin2005 at gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, June 06, 2009 11:10 AM To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: PDP 11/73 on the Internet -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [snip] I've messed with Minix on a 286; I used to keep a copy of i86 Minix with the DOSMINIX laucher on a flash drive because it would run on NTVDM (Windows NT's DOS VM). I've also messed with DOS programming. It's a pain and a half and I avoided it like the plague; DOS is dead and not of any intristic value unless you enjoy playing corny-looking games or running horrid multitasking GUIs made by Microsoft. I know enough C to make compilers shut up when porting code; I have tried writing software on my own and I can show you some failed attempts I just left behind (also due to lack of motivation, I get tired of doing all the work myself) If the /pointers/ on a PDP-11 are 16-bit as well, then I know what I am up against. I've done a bit of coding with ELKS and (aforementioned) Minix for pre-386 chips. I wouldn't write any software on the machine, there's nothing useful I can think of writing that I would actually deal with using. The fact that the local 'vi' doesn't respond to ANSI/VT100 directional keys, and only responds to h, j, k, l instead is enough to make me hate it. And no, that's not going to motivate me to write a better editor. I don't know how. If I did, I would have already done it and the holy Emacs vs. Vi war would have been over, both sides having both lost.