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Considering MS-DOS (Users)

posted by Dennis, 03.08.2011, 19:19

> > Oh, I understand why you like it. And there are a bunch of two pane
> > file manager replacements for explorer, so you aren't the only one who
> > feels that way.
>
> Under Windows I mostly use Servant Salamander (czech product, but it's
> native english with localized langpacks) and sometiomes I run DN too. Under
> Linux is NDN port but some key shortcut doesn't works as expected.
I have Servant Salamander here. It's one of the early dual-pane Windows file managers I looked at. There are others that offer more features, but all I normally need are dual panes for comparing directories and moving/copying/deleting files.

I have NDN under Linux. Which key shortcuts do you refer to? Keyboard support is implemented differently in Linux, so differences there are no surprise.

> > that way. I just got accustomed to working at the command line because
> > the first DOS I used was MS-DOS 2.11.
>
> Ah, old ancient days, respect :)

Just because I'm an old fart? :-P

> If MS and IBM contined work on OS/2 and spread it I would probably don't know what the DOS is :)
Back when Intel released the 80286 CPU, everyone was waiting for a new OS that would take advantage of the chip's abilities. AT class machines essentially just became fast DOS platforms.

OS/2 was supposed to be that OS, but IBM and MS couldn't agree on direction. MS wanted to skip over the 286 and develop for the 386 instead. IBM said "No, we're developing for the 286." In retrospect, this was an error. While the 286 offered additional capabilities, it was essentially a transitional step, and the 386 was a far better platform.

While the 286 had features, it had limitations. Like you could only run one "real mode" application at a time, and while there was an instruction to enter Protected mode, there was none to leave it - you had to do a CPU reset. There were a couple of early attempts to port Unix to the 286 that had problems because the chip didn't offer the sort of hardware memory mapping and management something like Unix really needed.

If OS/2 had been developed for the 386 in the first place, and IBM and MS had been able to maintain their collaboration, we might all be running it now. In many respects it was technically superior to Windows.

The final nail in OS/2's coffin was IBM's decision not to provide support for 32 bit Windows applications. You still find it around. The last I knew, the ticket kiosks in the main railroad station here ran OS/2. I used to have an OS/2 server at a former employer for a specialized telephony application. It just ran. It there was a problem, reset it, and it took up where it left off.

> > A DJGPP or Win32 port of bash is nice if you spend a lot of time in the
> > *nix world and want a similar environment.
>
> Yes sometimes needed for djgpp make to build some projects...
Make doesn't necessarily require bash, but bash can be nice by itself. Under Windows, I run Cygwin, which attempts to port the Gnu toolchain to Win32. Instead of rewriting all of the Gnu utilties to use Win32 calls, the Cygwin developers wrote a POSIX compatibility layer implemented as a DLL. A lot *nix code builds "out of the box" under Cygwin because it links against the DLL and sees the *nix system calls it expects to use. Cygwin includes the Gnu Compiler Suite, Bash, and just about everything else from Linux.

There is also MinGW, an implementaion of the Gnu compiler suite that uses the Microsoft runtime instead of the Cygwin POSIX layer, and there are ports of bash ansd zsh for it.

> > You don't need something external to create a scroll buffer - Windows
> > does that for you.
>
> Oh, I meant under pure DOS. Sure windows cmd has the buffer.
Oh, sorry. A TSR command editor isn't intended to provide that buffer in any case. FreeDOS includes a TSR called Peruse installed at boot time that provides that sort of scroll-back buffer, which can be handy because it captures boot screens before DOS is loaded.

You can get Peruse here: ftp://ftp.pcmag.com/archives/1994/0412/peruse.zip
______
Dennis

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