28 Jul
2016
28 Jul
'16
11:57 a.m.
I'm experimenting with some old DOS versions, notably PC DOS, in VirtualBox.
I have a PC-DOS 2000 system with DesqView and DesqView/X working
fairly well -- no networking yet but I'm working on it.
I am also trying to get a DR-DOS 8 VM up and running. DR-DOS 7.03 is
no problem, but I've had no joy getting DR-DOS 8.1 to install to hard
disk. It's reluctant to SYS a hard disk, and when it did, it
mis-diagnosed it as FAT-12 and wouldn't boot. Using Norton DiskTools,
I've managed to transfer the system files, but they display the
message
DR-DOS 8.1
... and then it freezes.
Can this late version, mainly used for utility floppies, actually boot
from HD & be used like a normal DOS?
And although I've not tried it yet, the same question applies to PC
DOS 7.1, the early-noughties version that can understand FAT32 and
long filenames.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
31 Jul
31 Jul
9:23 a.m.
On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 08:57:08PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
I'm experimenting with some old DOS versions,
notably PC DOS, in VirtualBox.
I have a PC-DOS 2000 system with DesqView and DesqView/X working
fairly well -- no networking yet but I'm working on it.
Out of curiosity, because I am from time to time wet dreaming about
having some kind of graphical frontend to the DOS, but with ability to
run multiple DOS programs in parallel. Like one could run them in
Windows 3.x (and this sucked a bit, but otherwise made it possible to
run editor and something else and switch between them without quitting
and starting like mad).
So, could DesqView give me something like this? From all descriptions
I have read so far, it could not. But I am not sure. Yes, I should
have tried to check it by myself, but there is no time to follow every
dream.
I am also trying to get a DR-DOS 8 VM up and running.
DR-DOS 7.03 is
no problem, but I've had no joy getting DR-DOS 8.1 to install to hard
disk. It's reluctant to SYS a hard disk, and when it did, it
mis-diagnosed it as FAT-12 and wouldn't boot. Using Norton DiskTools,
I've managed to transfer the system files, but they display the
message
DR-DOS 8.1
... and then it freezes.
Can this late version, mainly used for utility floppies, actually boot
from HD & be used like a normal DOS?
I would not be surprised if they decided to cut every extra byte and
maximise space available on the floppy. Or, given it recognises HD in
some way, could you try with different HD size? Even very small one,
like 20-32MB? Perhaps they were ok with running it from a pendrive,
but decided it was not worth it to make it hd-installable, because
nobody would want it anyway?
Other possibility is, can it work better in some other virtual
machine? Qemu/KVM, VMWare?
Those are just my wild guesses. I answer mostly because nobody else
did. I do not really have that much to say about DOS, other than it
was not as bad as some of its graphical cousins.
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
10:05 a.m.
On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 06:23:57PM +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote:
On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 08:57:08PM +0200, Liam Proven
wrote:
Uh. Never mind. I looked up again and now it says "multitasking for
DOS". Funny.
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
I'm experimenting with some old DOS versions,
notably PC DOS, in VirtualBox.
I have a PC-DOS 2000 system with DesqView and DesqView/X working
fairly well -- no networking yet but I'm working on it.
Out of curiosity, because I am from time to time wet dreaming about
having some kind of graphical frontend to the DOS, but with ability to
run multiple DOS programs in parallel. Like one could run them in
Windows 3.x (and this sucked a bit, but otherwise made it possible to
run editor and something else and switch between them without quitting
and starting like mad).
So, could DesqView give me something like this? From all descriptions
I have read so far, it could not. But I am not sure. Yes, I should
have tried to check it by myself, but there is no time to follow every
dream.
10:18 a.m.
On 31 July 2016 at 18:23, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
I suppose it's possible but it would be a bit odd.
I'll try with PC-DOS and report back.
On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 08:57:08PM +0200, Liam Proven
wrote:
DesqView: yes to multitasking, no to graphics.
The only snag is that it is itself DOS based, so you don't get a lot
of free RAM in your sessions. But it works, and it's much lighter and
faster than even v3 of Windows.
If you want an actual graphical GUI, DV/X can do that.
I'm experimenting with some old DOS versions,
notably PC DOS, in VirtualBox.
I have a PC-DOS 2000 system with DesqView and DesqView/X working
fairly well -- no networking yet but I'm working on it.
Out of curiosity, because I am from time to time wet dreaming about
having some kind of graphical frontend to the DOS, but with ability to
run multiple DOS programs in parallel. Like one could run them in
Windows 3.x (and this sucked a bit, but otherwise made it possible to
run editor and something else and switch between them without quitting
and starting like mad).
So, could DesqView give me something like this? From all descriptions
I have read so far, it could not. But I am not sure. Yes, I should
have tried to check it by myself, but there is no time to follow every
dream. I am also trying to get a DR-DOS 8 VM up and
running. DR-DOS 7.03 is
no problem, but I've had no joy getting DR-DOS 8.1 to install to hard
disk. It's reluctant to SYS a hard disk, and when it did, it
mis-diagnosed it as FAT-12 and wouldn't boot. Using Norton DiskTools,
I've managed to transfer the system files, but they display the
message
DR-DOS 8.1
... and then it freezes.
Can this late version, mainly used for utility floppies, actually boot
from HD & be used like a normal DOS?
I would not be surprised if they decided to cut every extra byte and
maximise space available on the floppy. Or, given it recognises HD in
some way, could you try with different HD size? Even very small one,
like 20-32MB? Perhaps they were ok with running it from a pendrive,
but decided it was not worth it to make it hd-installable, because
nobody would want it anyway? Other possibility is, can it work better in some other
virtual
machine? Qemu/KVM, VMWare?
I am running on OS X here, and I prefer VBox to VMware, but I could try...
Those are just my wild guesses. I answer mostly
because nobody else
did. I do not really have that much to say about DOS, other than it
was not as bad as some of its graphical cousins.
:-) Thank you!
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
11:21 a.m.
On 7/31/2016 10:18 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
DesqView: yes to multitasking, no to graphics.
The only snag is that it is itself DOS based, so you don't get a lot
of free RAM in your sessions. But it works, and it's much lighter and
faster than even v3 of Windows.
If you want an actual graphical GUI, DV/X can do that.
I used Windows 95 for dos
multitasking. Windows 95 booted the
processors into real mode dos, then ran the windows system out of that
base dos much like Windows 3.1 had. As such, the dos boxes all shared
actual access to the real mode assets of the processor.
Windows 98 switched to protected mode almost immediately on boot, and
all the dos boxes were synthesized in virtual 8086 mapped mode, and had
no underlying booted dos environment.
I never used any of the dos extender products because none were open
source and what I considered to be long term sustainable, though most
have survived. Just waited around till the windows protected mode tools
did what I wanted, then later linux.
I'm not a fan of the mess that has been made of windows programming from
the outset, just used basic c environment and some windows things such
as dialog boxes.
As an example of what we were able to pull off, we had a product which
was memory mapped, a SCSI development board. In the original way it was
deployed, we had a pc for one unit, and supporting software written in
doc C running in a dos box. It also could be run on dos w/o windows on
dos 6 if you configured the system correctly. One of these PC's would
run the board set configured to be an initiator, and another system with
a board set would run as device.
We used a commercial debugger which connected via a com port to debug
the thing, so a second PC ran that with a serial line between the two.
With Windows 95 coming out with it booting more or less like Windows 3.1
/ dos, it occurred to me that if we had some way of faking a com port,
we could run a second dos box with the debugger on a box.
So I stole a 16 byte chunk of our mapped memory (which was in the are
where the disk controllers mapped their shared memory), and wrote a com
port driver which used that space as a mailbox to emulate a com port on
each dos machine. So one could now run the debugger on the same machine
as the hosted adapter.
By reconfiguring the shared memory (which was 1k) window, one could run
a second adapter set on a single machine as well. By loading up a
second shared com port, we could then run our setup with both adapters
on one machine, with the scsi bus looped between both, and debug both
software sets at once, with one machine.
Also for trade shows and demos the traveling setup went to one Toshiba
3100sx and an external backplane box with two of our adapters.
Windows 98 would run one board, but not two because only one dos box got
the "real" space, and that was the first one opened. The subsequent
ones couldn't map the I/O memory real space and our shared memory would
not be visible, only synthesized space pointing at adapters with
drivers, etc.
Since we never had or used device drivers, but directly addressed the
space with our support programs, our adapters couldn't share access on
one machine, sad to say, so we were limited to a single instance with
windows 98.
I don't think NT supported us at all, but the product petered out around
when NT came out, and we never wrote a driver for that environment either.
thanks
Jim
11:49 a.m.
On 07/31/2016 11:21 AM, jim stephens wrote:
Windows 98 switched to protected mode almost
immediately on boot,
and all the dos boxes were synthesized in virtual 8086 mapped mode,
and had no underlying booted dos environment.
I'm not sure that I follow here. I routinely use Win98SE for my DOS
tasks--it boots into DOS quite nicely if you edit the MSDOS.SYS file to
say BootGUI=0. You get MS-DOS 7.1 at boot. Add DOSLFN to your
CONFIG.SYS and you even get long filename support.
That's DOS in its unvarnished form, isn't it?
What am I missing?
--Chuck
12:59 p.m.
On 7/31/2016 11:49 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 07/31/2016 11:21 AM, jim stephens wrote:
The booted system on Windows 95 is real mode dos, and that
allows all of
the dos boxes you spawn to share the same virtual to physical address space.
Windows 98 still did the same trick, but would only map a single
physical address space to the physical space. There was a collision
because of the fact that they never booted and ran a base dos box, but
actually booted to PE big real and ran from there.
Of course you can get a real physical dos if you specify it, but windows
didn't launch on top of that in windows 98.
Windows 98 switched to protected mode almost
immediately on boot,
and all the dos boxes were synthesized in virtual 8086 mapped mode,
and had no underlying booted dos environment.
I'm not sure that I follow here.
I routinely use Win98SE for my DOS
tasks--it boots into DOS quite nicely if you edit the MSDOS.SYS file to
say BootGUI=0. You get MS-DOS 7.1 at boot. Add DOSLFN to your
CONFIG.SYS and you even get long filename support.
That's DOS in its unvarnished form, isn't it?
What am I missing? --Chuck
3:05 p.m.
On 07/31/2016 12:59 PM, jim stephens wrote:
> The booted system on Windows 95 is real mode dos, and that allows all
> of the dos boxes you spawn to share the same virtual to physical
> address space.
> Windows 98 still did the same trick, but
would only map a single
> physical address space to the physical space. There was a collision
> because of the fact that they never booted and ran a base dos box,
> but actually booted to PE big real and ran from there.
That's why Redmond gave us VxDs ;)
Seriously, I think that this was inevitable. MS was starting to get the
hint that there was a demand for security and isolating applications was
a good start.
The DOS that boots Win98 is still a fine version of MS-DOS. The GUI,
not so much.
--Chuck
4:48 p.m.
On 31 July 2016 at 20:21, jim stephens <jwsmail at jwsss.com> wrote:
I used Windows 95 for dos multitasking. Windows 95
booted the processors
into real mode dos, then ran the windows system out of that base dos much
like Windows 3.1 had. As such, the dos boxes all shared actual access to
the real mode assets of the processor.
Windows 98 switched to protected mode almost immediately on boot, and all
the dos boxes were synthesized in virtual 8086 mapped mode, and had no
underlying booted dos environment.
Are you sure about this? Got any references?
Because I did a _lot_ of support and research work with 95, 95A, 95B,
98, 98SE & ME, and also of course with NT 3, 4, 2000, XP etc.
I am not aware of any differences such as you describe between 95 and
98. Both boot from actual MS-DOS; the GUI can be totally disabled. In
both, you can load drivers into DOS before the GUI boots and have all
the OS & apps access them.
Or, using an undocumented batch file called WINSTART.BAT, in
everything from WfWg 3.11 up to 98SE, you could load some things into
the Windows "system VM" and it would be accessible to Windows, but not
to DOS boxes started under Windows. I did this occasionally for
memory-management reasons.
But both 95 & 98 are DOS based and function near-identically.
WinME removed the ability to boot to a command prompt, it didn't
execute AUTOEXEC.BAT any more, nor much of CONFIG.SYS -- the DOS
"kernel" loaded Windows directly.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
9:30 p.m.
On 7/31/2016 4:48 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
On 31 July 2016 at 20:21, jim stephens <jwsmail at
jwsss.com> wrote:
The configuring of the system to boot differently
does precisely that.
I have only what I found with 95 vs. 98, plus a description in antiquity
that I'm sure I'll never find now that suggested this behavior. I did
verify it when I had a machine with our controller. Only one of the dos
boxes (windowed) could get there.
None of the alternate boot modes, no gui, or anything else has anything
to do with what I'm describing.
And the flip of the boot as far as the processor mode is something that
was objected to as it was a move off of the original similarity of 3.1
and 95. 95 was sold as being just a bit different from the 3.1 since it
booted a real mode dos mode system then launched the windows stuff.
Win 98 had different drivers (had to run in protected mode more IIRC),
etc, and though it was not hostile initially to old dos drivers it had a
lot of caveats related to the boot difference I'm talking about at the
core of the differences.
Again, of course you could boot to dos, and do all that. This is just
related to what type of behavior you had with the windows dos sessions
under windows. I essentially had 5 separate dos machines with my mashup
on Win 95.
I'll try to find more info, but not promising anything, since its been
20+ years since I had any reference to it.
If anyone on the list has it, I think there was a very detailed walkthru
about how this worked published as well, again I think it was in a book,
and may be hard to find. One of the "inside" or "beneath" type books.
Maybe someone has such with the info.
I also went on to work on ICE for the intel processors, and saw this
I used Windows 95 for dos multitasking. Windows
95 booted the processors
into real mode dos, then ran the windows system out of that base dos much
like Windows 3.1 had. As such, the dos boxes all shared actual access to
the real mode assets of the processor.
Windows 98 switched to protected mode almost immediately on boot, and all
the dos boxes were synthesized in virtual 8086 mapped mode, and had no
underlying booted dos environment.
Are you sure about this? Got any references?
Because I did a _lot_ of support and research work with 95, 95A, 95B,
98, 98SE & ME, and also of course with NT 3, 4, 2000, XP etc.
I am not aware of any differences such as you describe between 95 and
98. Both boot from actual MS-DOS; the GUI can be totally disabled. In
both, you can load drivers into DOS before the GUI boots and have all
the OS & apps access them. from that angle as well.
Or, using an undocumented batch file called WINSTART.BAT, in
everything from WfWg 3.11 up to 98SE, you could load some things into
the Windows "system VM" and it would be accessible to Windows, but not
to DOS boxes started under Windows. I did this occasionally for
memory-management reasons.
But both 95 & 98 are DOS based and function near-identically.
WinME removed the ability to boot to a command prompt, it didn't
execute AUTOEXEC.BAT any more, nor much of CONFIG.SYS -- the DOS
"kernel" loaded Windows directly.
11:05 p.m.
On 07/31/2016 09:30 PM, jim stephens wrote:
If anyone on the list has it, I think there was a very
detailed
walkthru about how this worked published as well, again I think it
was in a book, and may be hard to find. One of the "inside" or
"beneath" type books. Maybe someone has such with the info.
I've probably got it on one of the MSDN "white papers", but it'd take
me
a while to plod through all those CD's.
--Chuck
11:39 p.m.
On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 12:21 PM, jim stephens <jwsmail at jwsss.com> wrote:
I used Windows 95 for dos multitasking. Windows 95
booted the processors
into real mode dos, then ran the windows system out of that base dos much
like Windows 3.1 had. As such, the dos boxes all shared actual access to
the real mode assets of the processor.
Windows 98 switched to protected mode almost immediately on boot, and all
the dos boxes were synthesized in virtual 8086 mapped mode, and had no
underlying booted dos environment.
Both Windows 95 and Windows 98 do what you describe for Windows 98.
Both 95 and 98 can boot to DOS only, in real mode, but then you don't
get any GUI. In both 95 and 98, when you run the GUI, any DOS programs
you run are in virtual 8086 mode.
I know more than I really want to about this, because at one job I had
the misfortune of having to write VxDs to provide services to those
DOS windows, specifically because they couldn't run normal real mode
drivers to talk to hardware.
1 Aug
1 Aug
12:47 a.m.
On 1 August 2016 at 08:39, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote:
Both Windows 95 and Windows 98 do what you describe
for Windows 98.
Both 95 and 98 can boot to DOS only, in real mode, but then you don't
get any GUI. In both 95 and 98, when you run the GUI, any DOS programs
you run are in virtual 8086 mode.
I know more than I really want to about this, because at one job I had
the misfortune of having to write VxDs to provide services to those
DOS windows, specifically because they couldn't run normal real mode
drivers to talk to hardware.
Exactly! This!
All versions of W9x run in 386 protected mode, with DOS sessions in
the 386's Virtual 8086 mode.
There was no difference that I'm aware of between them.
Between WfWg 3.11 and 9x, yes. Between 9x and NT, yes. But 95/98/ME, no, TTBOMK.
If there _was_ some difference, [a] it was lept _very_ quiet, and [b],
I want to know!
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
2 Aug
2 Aug
7:17 a.m.
Exactly! This!
All versions of W9x run in 386 protected mode, with DOS sessions in
the 386's Virtual 8086 mode.
There was no difference that I'm aware of between them.
Between WfWg 3.11 and 9x, yes. Between 9x and NT, yes. But 95/98/ME, no,
TTBOMK.
If there _was_ some difference, [a] it was lept _very_ quiet, and [b],
I want to know!
I wrote at some length about these differences at:
https://youngmumpster.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/windows-multitasking-a-histo…
a few years ago.
4 Aug
4 Aug
11:44 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Liam Proven" <lproven at gmail.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, August 01, 2016 3:47 AM
Subject: Re: Is MS-DOS, PC DOS and DR-DOS vintage enough to count?
On 1 August 2016 at 08:39, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote:
Both Windows 95 and Windows 98 do what you describe
for Windows 98.
Both 95 and 98 can boot to DOS only, in real mode, but then you don't
get any GUI. In both 95 and 98, when you run the GUI, any DOS programs
you run are in virtual 8086 mode.
I know more than I really want to about this, because at one job I had
the misfortune of having to write VxDs to provide services to those
DOS windows, specifically because they couldn't run normal real mode
drivers to talk to hardware.
Exactly! This!
All versions of W9x run in 386 protected mode, with DOS sessions in
the 386's Virtual 8086 mode.
There was no difference that I'm aware of between them.
Between WfWg 3.11 and 9x, yes. Between 9x and NT, yes. But 95/98/ME, no, TTBOMK.
If there _was_ some difference, [a] it was lept _very_ quiet, and [b],
I want to know!
-----Reply-----
Should be simple enough for Jim S. to describe a test setup/configuration that would let
us try it for ourselves and see the difference.
m
4:15 p.m.
If it's any help, . . .
Among the stuff that I'm taking to the consignment table at VCF are a
bunch of Windows Resource Kit, and some Windows programming books.
(Half a dozen boxes, NOT including anything already in FPUIB.)
But, with this structure, and being more "premium", they ain't free.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
6:33 p.m.
New subject: VCF books (Was: Is MS-DOS, PC DOS and DR-DOS vintage enough
Can anybody advise me how much I should charge for PC Technical Reference
Manuals (IBM binders in slipcases) and
Windows Resource Kits (big book - only real documentation for Windoze)
I've got a lot of different ones, and no longer feel the need for them.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
7:55 p.m.
New subject: VCF books (Was: Is MS-DOS, PC DOS and DR-DOS vintage enough
If it?s what the market will bear eBay provides the answer :-)
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=ibm%20pc%20t…
<http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=ibm%20pc%20technical%20reference&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2045573.m1684>
Looks like $25 to $35 although a ?First addition 1981? one appeared to go for $85..
Kirk
On Aug 4, 2016, at 6:33 PM, Fred Cisin <cisin at
xenosoft.com> wrote:
Can anybody advise me how much I should charge for PC Technical Reference Manuals (IBM
binders in slipcases) and
Windows Resource Kits (big book - only real documentation for Windoze)
I've got a lot of different ones, and no longer feel the need for them.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
31 Jul
31 Jul
12:41 p.m.
On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 07:18:19PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
Ah, ok then. I have just recalled that some of those programs have a
debugger built in:
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/doc/docbook/user/internal-debugger.html
http://wiki.osdev.org/Bochs#Bochs_debugging_facilities
http://wiki.osdev.org/QEMU#The_QEMU_monitor
Caveat: I have no idea how useful it might be in you situation and I
guess you would need a good command of x86 assembly (and perhaps DOS
interrupts, too). Alas, twenty years ago was last time I could claim
to know anything about it... On OSX you should be able to get both
programs using... fink?
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **
On 31 July 2016 at 18:23, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at
ceti.pl> wrote:
[...]
Other possibility is, can it work better in some
other virtual
machine? Qemu/KVM, VMWare?
I am running on OS X here, and I prefer VBox to VMware, but I could try...
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