On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 11:03 AM, Zbigniew <zbigniew2...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Switching among many startup configurations is something we can't > avoid in DOS. I was pondering one day, whether could be possible to > "reset" DOS without resetting entire machine... it would make such > switch much faster. Just some kind of "full system reload" - similar > way as LOADLIN does it - when switching from DOS to Linux without > reset.
I approximated that years back. I had Unix machine at home before I got a DOS PC, and spent some time getting the PC set up as much like Unix as possible. I found a package called the MKS Toolkit from MKS Systems in Canada. The Toolkit had DOS versions of all of the standard Unix utilities that made sense in a single user, single tasking environment like DOS. What sold me was a complete implementation of the Unix Korn shell. (It had everything save asynchronous background processes.) Running in the MKS environment, you had to dig a bit to see you *weren't* on a UNIX machine. I was able to implement a passable version of the Unix LP print spooler with the DOS PRINT command and some Korn shell aliases and functions. When you ran the Toolkit in fullest Unix compatibility mode, COMMAND.COM was replaced as the boot shell by the Toolkit's INIT.EXE. Drivers were loaded in CONFIG.SYS, then INIT. It printed a Login: prompt on the screen. Login, and the ID was passes to LOGIN, which looked in a Unix compatible /etc/passwd file. If it found a match, the PC changed to whatever was specified as that ID's home directory, and ran whatever was listed as the ID's shell. Exit from that program, and INIT was reloeaded, waiting for another login. I loaded my RAMdisk, disk cache, and mouse driver in CONFIG.SYS to be common to all environments. Userids were set to load the MKS Korn shell, 4DOS, vanilla COMMAND.COM, and DesqView. I could switch environments without rebooting - just exit the shell I was using and log in with a different ID. When I started using Windows 3.1, the Toolkit stayed in the mix. The default shell for Win 3.1 was Program Manager, but you could change it to use something else in Window's SYSTEM.INI file, and a number of freeware and shareware Program Manager rep[lacements existed. I had MKS IDs that would copy a custom version of SYSTEM.INI specifying the desired alternate Win 3.1 shell over the main one, then run Windows. (Or not run Windows at all, and load one of the CLI environments.) > Z. ______ Dennis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Infragistics Professional Build stunning WinForms apps today! Reboot your WinForms applications with our WinForms controls. Build a bridge from your legacy apps to the future. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=153845071&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
