DOS ain't dead

FreeDOS 1.1 is released | KERNEL 2041 released 2012-02-07 (Announce)

posted by mbbrutman , Washington, USA, 22.02.2012, 04:10

Don't get too excited. Hard drives are going to support 512 byte sectors for a long time, either natively or through emulation on the drive itself. You might have a performance hit if you use emulation on the drive but I don't think that most software is getting the maximum performance out of drives today anyway, so it is a minor issue.

(How many systems running DOS are submitting more than one command to the drive at a time? Answer: 0 ... there is a lot of performance being left on the table as things are.)

The discussion on the FreeDOS mailing list seems a bit hysterical. There is too much existing operating system code, controllers, and software that assumes 512 byte sectors.

(Disclaimer: I work in the industry, but this is my opinion only.)

---
mTCP - TCP/IP apps for vintage DOS machines!
http://www.brutman.com/mTCP

Complete thread:

• FreeDOS 1.1 is released! - Rugxulo, 05.01.2012, 08:42 (Announce)
  • FreeDOS 1.1 is released | KERNEL 2041 released 2012-02-07 - DOS386, 19.02.2012, 11:54
    • FreeDOS 1.1 is released | KERNEL 2041 released 2012-02-07 - RayeR, 19.02.2012, 17:39
      • FreeDOS 1.1 is released | KERNEL 2041 released 2012-02-07 - Rugxulo, 19.02.2012, 20:42
        • FreeDOS 1.1 is released | KERNEL 2041 released 2012-02-07 - RayeR, 20.02.2012, 04:56
          • FDK build 2041, >512B sector support preparations - ecm, 20.02.2012, 23:45
            • FDK build 2041, >512B sector support preparations - RayeR, 21.02.2012, 06:09
              • FDK build 2041, >512B sector support preparations - ecm, 21.02.2012, 06:15
          • FreeDOS 1.1 is released | KERNEL 2041 released 2012-02-07 - mbbrutman, 22.02.2012, 04:10
            • FreeDOS 1.1 is released | KERNEL 2041 released 2012-02-07 - ecm, 22.02.2012, 22:43
              • FreeDOS 1.1 is released | KERNEL 2041 released 2012-02-07 - mbbrutman, 23.02.2012, 05:26
        • Pete Batard Rufus(Reliable USB Formatting Utility with Src) - Arjay, 14.10.2012, 12:16
      • FDK build 2041, >512B sector support preparations - ecm, 20.02.2012, 23:37