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DeLeTeBR

New member
Don't say DOS was bad litlle Jonhy, in that time, for me, was just too fun to use and to learn ^_^

I know this post is already off topic, but who here remember of games like: Day of Tentacle, Fullthrotle, Alone in the Dark 1/2/3, Timegate, Tyrian and all this older games ?
 

Doomulation

?????????????????????????
Oh yes, I remember those old days when you still played old dos games like tank i think it was...
Heh. And I remember a computer that couldn't play red alert without lag :happy:
 
OP
L

LazerTag

Leap of Faith
DeLeTeBR said:
Don't say DOS was bad litlle Jonhy, in that time, for me, was just too fun to use and to learn ^_^

I know this post is already off topic, but who here remember of games like: Day of Tentacle, Fullthrotle, Alone in the Dark 1/2/3, Timegate, Tyrian and all this older games ?

I still play a few of those under VMWare :)
 
DeLeTeBR said:
I know this post is already off topic, but who here remember of games like: Day of Tentacle, Fullthrotle, Alone in the Dark 1/2/3, Timegate, Tyrian and all this older games ?
Yes, that games were more fun than any game now (don't forget little big adventure 2, it has awesome graphics, and toonstruck, they were both running good on my old 486 dx/2 66 mhz, 20 mb ram and 1 mb video!!!).
And don't forget Zsnes is still porting to dos!
 
Maybe someone needs to make a program which makes dos better so it can play windows-games (something like windows but which takes less resources).
 
haha for one windows 3.11 is just a graphical overlay for dos and yes dos is an OS it stands for Direct Operating System(i believe lol can't remember) its just that dos was meant to run on the older systems like you know 486 and lower lol and was only kept going cause people liked the games and windows wasn't all that much of a gaming platform at the time
 

icepir8

Moderator
thedaemon666 said:
haha for one windows 3.11 is just a graphical overlay for dos and yes dos is an OS it stands for Direct Operating System(i believe lol can't remember) its just that dos was meant to run on the older systems like you know 486 and lower lol and was only kept going cause people liked the games and windows wasn't all that much of a gaming platform at the time

DOS stands for Disk Operating System.
 

Hacktarux

Emulator Developer
Moderator
thedaemon666 said:
haha for one windows 3.11 is just a graphical overlay for dos and yes dos is an OS it stands for Direct Operating System(i believe lol can't remember) its just that dos was meant to run on the older systems like you know 486 and lower lol and was only kept going cause people liked the games and windows wasn't all that much of a gaming platform at the time

An OS is supposed to give an abstract layer to the user/programmer. DOS isn't... Now i know what is DOS, i have used it, i know it was used on old machines but it hasn't been designed like this because of the limitations of the machines... At that time there was far better OS for slow machines that deserved the OS word better. UNIX was designed during 70s, it didn't need a machine as powerful as a 8086 it was still way better designed and was making life much easier for the programmer. The only reason why DOS was so poor was because ms was in a hurry to provide something that "works"... I think a student could have designed as a student project easily...
 

karth95

Lord of the Cats
There were VERY different interpretations of what an OS was supposed to provide during the 80s. Unix users expected a multi-user environment with a lot of tools, and expected a lot of different services with that.
Dos users on the other hand, expected their OS to manage files and directorys, and provide a method to run programs. When it came time to realize that 640k wasn't enough for everybody, instead of re-tooling the OS, they used other methods to access memory. (qemm386, emm386, etc) and began the windows tradition of "don't fix it, throw a tarp over it and pretend it's not there". I like windows. Windows 2k has run on all of my systems since SP 1, and has been stable, reliable, and fast. It has it's problems, sure, but damn if I've had an os since DOS 5.0 that ran 1/2 as well.
 

Hacktarux

Emulator Developer
Moderator
AM

Sayargh said:
DOS is not a bad OS, Windows 3.11 on the other hand is.

Of course it's not a bad OS, it's not an OS at all IMO.... Seriously it doesn't contain 1/10 of the things an OS is supposed to provide... If you look at it, every basic things were provided by external tools, for example the DOS kernel doesn't allow you to use more than 640Kb of RAM, you need a tool to access more. An OS is also supposed to provide a standard way to program all your devices, nothing like this exists on DOS, that's crazy even for an OS released during the 80s.

Edit: why are post dates totally screwed ?
 
OP
L

LazerTag

Leap of Faith
Re: AM

Hacktarux said:
Of course it's not a bad OS, it's not an OS at all IMO.... Seriously it doesn't contain 1/10 of the things an OS is supposed to provide... If you look at it, every basic things were provided by external tools, for example the DOS kernel doesn't allow you to use more than 640Kb of RAM, you need a tool to access more. An OS is also supposed to provide a standard way to program all your devices, nothing like this exists on DOS, that's crazy even for an OS released during the 80s.

Edit: why are post dates totally screwed ?

If you meant Windows 3.11 (or other older versions) is not an OS, vey true. Just a program on top of the OS itself.

If you meant DOS is not an OS, I don't agree with that. If you look back at systems back then most didn't have more then 640K (heck my first IBM PC only had 64k which I promptly upgraded to a hefty 256k). Also most if not all of the hardware the was available then was supported by the OS already (serial, parallel, keyboard, video). I mean most people were not even using a mouse before Windows 3.0. Even later when systems did start coming with more then 640k most DOS versions (at least IBM releases) started included HIMEM.SYS (and later EMM386.EXE) for memory management.

If you think about it those same type of programs are still being used today only they are smarter with Plug and Play systems and also require no user intervention (for the most part) to use the memory or devices to the fullest.
 

Hacktarux

Emulator Developer
Moderator
Re: Re: AM

LazerTag said:
If you meant Windows 3.11 (or other older versions) is not an OS, vey true. Just a program on top of the OS itself.

If you meant DOS is not an OS, I don't agree with that. If you look back at systems back then most didn't have more then 640K (heck my first IBM PC only had 64k which I promptly upgraded to a hefty 256k). Also most if not all of the hardware the was available then was supported by the OS already (serial, parallel, keyboard, video). I mean most people were not even using a mouse before Windows 3.0. Even later when systems did start coming with more then 640k most DOS versions (at least IBM releases) started included HIMEM.SYS (and later EMM386.EXE) for memory management.

If you think about it those same type of programs are still being used today only they are smarter with Plug and Play systems and also require no user intervention (for the most part) to use the memory or devices to the fullest.

No what i mean, is that UNIX and generally people who were working on OS theory have established some rules to write an OS... For the user, the programmer and the hardware designed, things are supposed to always look the same whatever the hardware is... For example when most PC had 4Mb or 8Mb of RAM, you had to use external tools to access more than 640kb of memory, that's a very bad design IMO... An OS has to be designed to be extended a lot, you can't know how hardware will change so it has to be flexible.. DOS wasn't. From my point of view HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE are extenal tools and workaround to fix this problem... These tools manage the memory, not the OS, that's what i find wrong.

Now i'm not talking at all about ease of use, it doesn't need to be Plug and Play to be flexible.

The definition of an OS is that it has to provide an abstract layer to the programmer and user. DOS wasn't providing it, it's only a program that let the user launch another one.. The DOS programs have to detect which hardware is there, they have to manage the hardware at a low level themselves, there's no abstract layer at all. Again, it has nothing to do with old PC limitations, it's only design issues. You can look at what was used by Apple at the time, machines weren't better, but there was a real OS...
 

NeTo

Emu_64 HiP Coder
Re: Re: Re: AM

Hacktarux said:
No what i mean, is that UNIX and generally people who were working on OS theory have established some rules to write an OS... For the user, the programmer and the hardware designed, things are supposed to always look the same whatever the hardware is...

And that's something microsoft have taken slowly. I remember the days when usb was just appear. How do you install usb ports on the standard Windows 95?

I thing MS made its bid on the standard user (who writes some lines in word, or something in Excel or PowerPoint, reads the mail, chats a little:happy: or plays solitarie; and then turns off the pc), instead of focusing it in power users, programmers or developers.

Changuing the direction of what i said above...DOS wasn't removed of the Win9x core until the release of Windows XP (if there aren't leftovers). So Windows users were using an expanded DOS version, that grown huge, but with a weak basis. But since it is focused to mid-low level user market, i think it has won his merit as a popular decent OS (not that i agree with that but...)
 

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