DOS ain't dead

This software:

https://github.com/bluewaysw/pcgeos

appears to be written in 8086 assembler.

But since we have the source, it is presumably possible to recompile it.

So nominally I would be interested in running it under PDOS/86, but PDOS/86 was never meant to be used seriously, so it is unlikely to work due to insufficient memory.

I haven't yet written a PDOS/286, but I am still interested in doing so. My plan was to support NE executables and PDOS-generic apps, and also switch PDOS/86 to use those exact binaries with no separate code path. Again, just as a demo.

But I can also support the OS/2 1.x doscalls (limited subset).

And I don't see any reason as to why I can't support the INT 21H interface either.

This would all be running in PM16. But like with PDOS/386, I still internally switch to RM16 in order to make BIOS calls - but apps are unaware of that, and it is subject to change one day.

The PM16 would not be limited to the 80286 - I would initially have that working on an 80386+. I may support a real 80286 with triple-faulting or the appropriate BIOS call to switch modes.

I would be tiling the entire memory so that it is somewhat flat, and fundamentally supporting the huge memory model. I will need to create some extra INT 21H functions to allocate memory, as my huge memory model programs don't need memory to be aligned on a segment boundary.

With that in place - how likely is it that pcgeos would work in PM16 under PDOS/286? Or any idea what the scope would be to make it work?

If it was written in C90 it would be a simple recompilation to make it work. But it is in assembler.

Thanks. Paul.

PC GEOS uses a custom version of assembly with OOP called ESP. But the most of applications should've been written in C-like language called GOC (another variant of C with OOP, if I'm not wrong).

This is what the DOCS say:

> This software development kit is geared towards C programmers. The SDK is
> based around the GEOS-specific language Goc, which is based on C. Very few
> programmers will ever need to use anything else. However, a few programmers
> will want to write the most efficient code possible; for their benefit, this
> SDK lets you program in Esp, the GEOS assembly language.

It's very likely that the base GEOS was written in ESP too. For more info, you can find development docs here: https://bluewaysw.github.io/pcgeos/