From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,6192a34d0c9ffe5b X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!g12g2000yqd.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Rugxulo Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: DOS, was Re: Ada Tutor Web Site Shutting Down Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 13:32:43 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <30e8ab31-3cf6-4120-af7a-52d2d8712e85@g12g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> References: <7f53de8e-2400-4c87-a818-0b389e117c42@e21g2000yqe.googlegroups.com> <3a6f1fc2-3ae0-42d9-b483-d16cf7ab1566@x8g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <991499fb-bc24-4d7e-baf6-a9c0e16333e6@k22g2000yqh.googlegroups.com> <291504a4-ec55-45f1-bf7f-13078bf71c3e@m10g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> <4dcbf260$0$6992$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net> <3bae2d75-31b0-4a88-b655-bd657921d15c@z7g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <4dcc5c75$0$6891$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net> <4dccdce5$0$6888$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.13.115.246 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1305318763 12162 127.0.0.1 (13 May 2011 20:32:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 20:32:43 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: g12g2000yqd.googlegroups.com; posting-host=65.13.115.246; posting-account=p5rsXQoAAAB8KPnVlgg9E_vlm2dvVhfO User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/534.24 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/11.0.696.65 Safari/534.24,gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:19257 Date: 2011-05-13T13:32:43-07:00 List-Id: Hi, (I know this isn't directly Ada-related anymore, but please indulge me, I won't take this too much further. Hey, it's better than spam or flames, right?) On May 13, 2:25=A0am, Georg Bauhaus wrote: > On 5/13/11 12:40 AM, Adam Beneschan wrote: > > > On May 12, 3:17 pm, Georg Bauhaus > > wrote: > > >> For one thing, DOS effectively ruled out a number of design > >> patterns: =A0you need something on top of DOS in order to > >> operate(!) these patterns. =A0Such as programmable auxiliary > >> tasks doing background work. > > > I may respond to other parts of the post, but... you do remember that > > this was originally for an 8088 processor, right? =A0Not a Pentium.=A0 > > You can't really judge what should have happened in 1980 based on the > > technology we have available in 2011. Correct, please read these below for more technical info: http://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/ http://www.patersontech.com/dos/ BTW, Wirth (et al.) ported Modula-2 to the IBM PC way back in 1983-4 via M2M-PC. This was multi-pass and thus ran in 64 kb of RAM. Even his later ('80s) Oberon System was ridiculously low on RAM, which is anathema to todays "gigs of RAM" mentality. His "Plea for Lean Software" (1995) obviously fell on deaf ears. I've never heard him comment on AMD64 and the plethora of gigs we all have now. Now, don't get me wrong, it's impossible to complain about *having* that much RAM, only that a). we don't need it, and b). software still is never satisfied, always eating more and more. Heh, it's funny to think that even the XBox 360 or iPad 2 only have 512 MB of RAM. (What does latest iPod have, 256 MB? I think so, but I forget.) Eventually everything will have to have 20 GB or "it sucks"! Well, my point is this: if people survived 20-30 years ago with much, much less, why can't we (today)??? I don't think DOS is perfect, but I do think its software should be preserved, and compatibility to actually run it (or other OS binaries) would be nice, esp. without needing literally billions of bytes of RAM. EDIT: This is all just way off-topic, sorry! But hey, I noticed yesterday that somebody ported DOSBox (portable C/C++ x86 emulator, SDL) to pure Java, and it runs (DOS original) Doom (1993, 386 pmode, Watcom + DOS/4GW ... used self-modifying code, he says, ick) full- speed! http://jdosbox.sourceforge.net/ > Extending the set of examples of how people rolled their own, > - =A0Minix is a more elaborate OS for the IBM PC (with Intel 8088), > - =A0Coherent OS is, too. Did they exist in 1982?? I don't think Minix did, and also Minix was not free either (though admittedly cheaper than some of the other choices). Besides, last I checked, Minix 2.0.2 was the last to truly run on 8086, and that release is (I think) circa 1998. In other words, if it wasn't available at the same time, it doesn't compare. > If I understand correctly, then a TI MSP430 is not much > different in some respects. =A0You get a number of operating systems > for it, including =B5C/OS-II which can also run on a Zilog Z80. > > I'm mentioning these because, with some effort, you get > software whose qualities differ from DOS's. There was also OS/2, which was the intended successor of DOS and Windows. MS and IBM collaborated during 1987 to 1991 on the 1.x series (16-bit pmode, 286). Eventually it didn't work out, esp. since Win 3.0 was a big success and clashed with the IBM mentality. But even Win 3.x eventually became 386 only, which led the way to Win9x (which still ran atop DOS). Only with Win XP (2001) did MS really drop DOS completely for home users (though emulation still existed due to 386's V86 mode). But MS even now calls XP "old and deprecated"!! And AMD64 is the borg to assimilate everything else (sigh, no V86 mode, but VT-X helps). It's not that there is no progress, just it has good and bad qualities and takes a long time. It's just one of my pet peeves that everything old is automatically "good for nothing". For some reason, only the latest/greatest is approved ... until it becomes old hat, then it's tossed aside like garbage, even when it works!