On Tue, 28 Mar 2023 at 09:23, tom ehlert <t...@drivesnapshot.de> wrote:
> > we have DeskView386 which does exactly what you describe. Do you mean DESQview? It exists but with multiple drawbacks. • DESQview 386 means DESQview + QEMM386. Two separate products. • I have both. I have been unable to get QEMM to run on bare metal on any machine as new or newer than a Core 2 Duo. • Neither DESQview nor QEMM are FOSS or even freeware. Symantec says it lost the source. DR DOS does have some source code available, and includes TaskMaster, which can do full-screen multitasking of DOS sessions. This *does* work on bare modern hardware in my testing. Lineo/DeviceLogics president and CEO Bryan Sparks said all CP/M derivatives are free to use, modify and distribute last year. DR DOS is a derivative of CP/M-86 which is a derivative of CP/M. I think it could be used. https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/04/the_many_derivatives_of_cpm/ However saying that, are there any new DOS device drivers in the 21st century? Will there be? It seems to me that if the sources of Multiuser DOS could be obtained, and if it's covered by Mr Sparks' edict, then it would give a lot of what people want from a DOS nowadays. Multiuser DOS was the last and final descendant of CP/M. It's a native 32-bit OS, multitasking but DOS compatible, with FAT32 support. It supports up to 4GB of RAM and apps can get both EMS and XMS services. It has modest hardware support: CD, DVD, sound, mouse, a few other things. It supports a few network cards, and can talk TCP/IP and SMB. It's not a true DOS, it can't run DOS device drivers, and has functionality that's irrelevant today, such as serial terminal support. But if someone could chase down a final version of the source, it could have some obsolete stuff stripped out (NetBIOS and IPX/SPX support, RS/232 terminals, etc.) and could be useful to someone somewhere. I tried to contact 3 or 4 vendors of Multiuser DOS mentioned in my article. Most didn't reply. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
