On Wed, 2011-09-14 at 01:00 +0000, Zbigniew wrote: > 2011/9/14, Michael C. Robinson <plu...@robinson-west.com>: > > > [..] I'd say that Freedos has it's > > uses, but without active development on a variant that can take > > advantage of multiple cores and modern hardware, there are probably a > > dwindling number of uses for it. Without hardware protection and memory > > protection, Freedos is certainly fast but probably not acceptable to > > everyone. > > I'd say, that FreeDOS with hardware protection and memory protection > no longer would be DOS-clone, and that everyone, who needs "advantages > of multiple cores and modern hardware" - and "hardware protection and > memory protection" as well - has a rich choice of other OS-es freely > available, with the requested features already included.
32/64 bit dos environments have never been defined. So in essence, a multicore DOS clone that supports modern hardware is possible without cloning anything. Albeit, if you call it DOS, the old DOS applications need to work in it. Originally, DOS provided routines for working with the video card, hard disk, etcetera, but these routines were short sighted and a series of patches from different parties got applied. MS-DOS got messy towards the end. One interesting option on say a quad core system is to have the 32 bit OS partition the memory, the monitor, the hard disk, and the cpu cores so you can have multiple concurrent 16 bit Freedos instances. Since you are running the equivalent of DOSBOX concurrently, modern hardware can emulate older hardware. Now you have a clean means of supporting modern hardware for people using old DOS applications. Want your multi function printer to appear as a standard printer, fax machine, and scanner? No problem. Microsoft never defined a 32/64 bit version of DOS, so there is a great deal of latitude available. One point I will question you on is this, where is the free equivalent of Windows for WorkGroups? There isn't one. A lot of software depends on the Win32 interface prior to Windows NT taking over. If someone could buy Windows for Workgroups from Microsoft and release the source code to it, that would be very helpful. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Using storage to extend the benefits of virtualization and iSCSI Virtualization increases hardware utilization and delivers a new level of agility. Learn what those decisions are and how to modernize your storage and backup environments for virtualization. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51434361/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
