Is MS-DOS, PC DOS and DR-DOS vintage enough to count?

[Mike Stein]

----- 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