29 Jan
2008
29 Jan
'08
4:07 a.m.
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:40:04 -0600
From: Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org>
- Manipulate the speaker to produce arbitrary tones
- Update the screen in arbitrary locations (text mode; multiple screen
pages if available) - Get single-key input from the user, including
sensing keypresses from "inert" keys like shift and capslock (by
themselves as well as in conjunction with other keypresses)
It depends on what you want to call "MS-DOS ompatible". NEC 9801
series machines have a completely different I/O port and memory
layout; the CRT controller is a world unto itself and the BIOS
interface is different. But the things run MS-DOS, albeit with 1,024
byte sector diskettes, and have an x86 CPU in them--some with Intel;
others with NEC V-series CPUs. I think the family went as far as a
486 equivalent.
For that matter, I believe a number of configurations of the S-100
Compupro boxes could run MS-DOS.
I know of other MS-DOS compatible machines that do not have memory-
mapped displays but rather interface to a serial terminal (no
graphics capabilities). There are others with non-PC memory layouts
that will give you most of a megabyte of contiguous RAM to work with.
My point is, that "MS-DOS compatible" covers a huge amount of
territory. On the other hand, "something that will boot from a PC-
DOS 3.31 diskette" is quite a bit more restrictive.
FWIW,
Chuck
29 Jan
29 Jan
6:36 a.m.
On Mon, 28 Jan 2008, Chuck Guzis wrote:
My point is, that "MS-DOS compatible" covers
a huge amount of
territory. On the other hand, "something that will boot from a PC-
DOS 3.31 diskette" is quite a bit more restrictive.
I agree completely.
But, I would substitute "PC-DOS 3.30 diskette", since I can only find
3.31 in MS-DOS (usually with machine specific MODE.COM, etc.)
5:03 p.m.
any computer that can boot vanilla MS-DOS can boot
PC-DOS. AFAICT...
--- Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
On Mon, 28 Jan 2008, Chuck Guzis wrote:
____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
My point is, that "MS-DOS compatible"
covers a
huge amount of
territory. On the other hand, "something
that
will boot from a PC-
DOS 3.31 diskette" is quite a bit more
restrictive.
I agree completely.
But, I would substitute "PC-DOS 3.30 diskette",
since I can only find
3.31 in MS-DOS (usually with machine specific
MODE.COM, etc.)
30 Jan
30 Jan
7:07 p.m.
Chris M wrote:
any computer that can boot vanilla MS-DOS can boot
PC-DOS. AFAICT...
Was there ever a *vanilla* MS-DOS? I've owned an AT&T PC 6300, an Epson
8088 clone, and various Tandy 1000s, and they all came with a customized
MS-DOS for their platform. The Epson MS-DOS was probably as generic as
possible; the Tandy one had one or two things modified for the keyboard
and something else I don't remember; the AT&T one had extra handling of
720K 5.25" disks (the drives were capable of 80 tracks if you set a DIP
switch) and the date/time command knew how to talk to the AT&T's clock chip.
My friend had a Sperry clone. That had a special MS-DOS that my 6300
could boot, but his Sperry could not boot my 6300's DOS.
IIRC, MS-DOS versions 5 and later were mostly sold retail as Microsoft
had mostly gotten out of the specialized MS-DOS business (due to lack of
demand) by 1990.
--- Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
On Mon, 28 Jan 2008, Chuck Guzis wrote:
____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
My point is, that "MS-DOS compatible"
covers a
huge amount of
territory. On the other hand, "something
that
will boot from a PC-
DOS 3.31 diskette" is quite a bit more
restrictive.
I agree completely.
But, I would substitute "PC-DOS 3.30 diskette",
since I can only find
3.31 in MS-DOS (usually with machine specific
MODE.COM, etc.)
8:55 p.m.
>> since I can only find
>> 3.31 in MS-DOS (usually with machine specific
>> MODE.COM, etc.)
> any computer that can boot vanilla MS-DOS can
boot
> PC-DOS. AFAICT...
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, Jim Leonard wrote:
Was there ever a *vanilla* MS-DOS?
and they all came with a customized
MS-DOS for their platform.
MS-DOS was NEVER sold retail until 5.00.
Any copies that you bought before that were either developer support,
through a computer OEM, or gray market. (grey market outside of USA)
Yes, they were readily available. MICROS~1 did nothing to thwart the gray
market.
IIRC, MS-DOS versions 5 and later were mostly sold
retail as Microsoft
had mostly gotten out of the specialized MS-DOS business (due to lack of
demand) by 1990.
Starting with 5.00, MICROS~1 began selling retail.
Mostly unconfirmed rumor: ("I can not publicly confirm that")
MICROS~1's contract with IBM had non-competition clauses, and although
MICROS~1 could sell to other manufacturers (Compaq, Morrow, ... ... ),
they could not sell retail. Those clauses expired in 10 years. It is
possible that the release date and time (to the nearest 18.2 of a second)
synchronize with the expiration of those clauses.
The MS-DOS sold to other OEMs was often customized for alternate hardware.
MODE.COM was often specific to a given manufacturer, to include switching
between internal and external monitor, etc. Compaq renamed GWBASIC
("Gee Wiz BASIC") to "BASICA", in order to permit PC batch files and
documentation to apply better, etc. But many/most of the clone
manufacturers made little or NO changes, resulting in gray market MS-DOS
being virtually identical to PC-DOS. The most common customized MS-DOS
versions were 1.25, 2.11, and 3.31. MS-DOS 1.twenty-five corresponded to
IBM's 1.ten, MS-DOS 2.eleven corresponded to IBM's 2.ten, MS-DOS
3.thirty-one was the first version to handle drives larger than 32M; there
was no corresponding version of PC-DOS - IBM decided that it was time to
increment the major version number. There were some bugs in 4.00, but
MOST of the "bugs" were simply that programs that went below the DOS call
level (such as Norton fUtilities) weren't prepared for the changes.
("I know that it is buggy! Norton won't run on it, but ran fine on 3.3!")
- Infoworld
Some variants of MS-DOS 1.00 support 8" drives;
PC-DOS didn't until 3.00 (1.2M)
PC-DOS first supported 720K drives with V3.20;
many MS-DOS 2.11 variants supported them.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
10:22 p.m.
On Jan 30, 2008 12:55 PM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
MS-DOS was NEVER sold retail until 5.00.
Any copies that you bought before that were either
developer support,
through a computer OEM, or gray market. (grey market outside of USA)
I think you meant to say "NEVER sold retail under the Microsoft brand
name". You could certainly find "branded" MS-DOS on store shelves
well before MS-DOS 5. I've got a copy of "Phoenix MS-DOS 3.31" in
retail packaging, complete with way to hang it from a pegboard hook.
I don't know if Phoenix (the BIOS makers) were violating an agreement
in packaging it this way, or if the store I bought it from was doing
something shady. No computer purchase was necessary to buy a copy.
Just grab it and bring it to the register. I think that counts as
retail.
Eric
10:51 p.m.
MS-DOS was
NEVER sold retail until 5.00.
> Any copies that you bought before that were either developer support,
> through a computer OEM, or gray market. (grey market outside of USA) I think you meant to say "NEVER sold retail under
the Microsoft brand
name". You could certainly find "branded" MS-DOS on store shelves
well before MS-DOS 5. I've got a copy of "Phoenix MS-DOS 3.31" in
retail packaging, complete with way to hang it from a pegboard hook.
I don't know if Phoenix (the BIOS makers) were violating an agreement
in packaging it this way, or if the store I bought it from was doing
something shady. No computer purchase was necessary to buy a copy.
Just grab it and bring it to the register. I think that counts as
retail.
Gray market IS often retail.
Valid, legitimate copies from a user perspective, but NOT explicitly
authorized as retail.
Those "branded" copies were not sold under the MICROS~1 brand.
7 Feb
7 Feb
10:38 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
Starting with 5.00, MICROS~1 began selling retail.
Mostly unconfirmed rumor: ("I can not publicly confirm that")
MICROS~1's contract with IBM had non-competition clauses, and although
MICROS~1 could sell to other manufacturers (Compaq, Morrow, ... ... ),
they could not sell retail. Those clauses expired in 10 years. It is
possible that the release date and time (to the nearest 18.2 of a second)
synchronize with the expiration of those clauses.
I just about busted a gut laughing when I read "to the nearest 18.2 of a
second"! So true. Although one hopes their 5150 wasn't too warm (I
have measured timing variance on my most marginal 5150 when the
operating temperature reaches uncomfortable levels for humans; I guess
it has to do with temp. affecting the crystal or something)
My summer job between college terms was working at Egghead software, and
there was a massive, MASSIVE push from Egghead to sell MS-DOS 5.0. We
(lowly sales floor associates) were bussed to a convention center and
shown various presentations on why MS-DOS 5.0 was dA b0mB and why it was
the perfect add-on to any and all sales already in progress at the
register. Many cheezy sales guides and videos followed. While I liked
the built-in memory management and disk compression (because I'm a
compression geek) of 5.0, I was extremely turned off by the push.
Part of the promo was to point out other products in the store that
would immediately benefit from 5.0, but I couldn't bring myself to do
that as I felt it was somewhat dishonest. I *DID* have fun pointing out
the products that REQUIRED it, though, like the flight sim Falcon 3.0.
Falcon 3.0 was supposed to go on sale the same day MS-DOS 5.0 was
released, but we had gotten our copies early and had mistakenly sold a
few. The look on the customer's face when they brought it back was
priceless: "You mean this game requires software that isn't currently
for sale? Well, when will it be out? Next week? Okay, I'll come back
next week-- what was that? It's not just software, I have to upgrade my
operating system?!?" If you were particularly unlucky that day, the
next question would be "What's an operating system?"
MS-DOS 2.eleven corresponded to IBM's 2.ten,
Which is interesting because IBM's 2.eleven was a special release for
the PCjr. No MS-DOS 2.12 then? Nope, because no machine other than the
PCjr needed the PCjr changes.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
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