DOS ain't dead

pcgeos (Developers)

posted by kerravon, Ligao, Free World North, 02.04.2024, 00:18

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.

Complete thread:

• pcgeos - kerravon, 02.04.2024, 00:18 (Developers)
  • pcgeos - bocke, 18.04.2024, 21:38