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From: tmoran@acm.org
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: DOS, was Re: Ada Tutor Web Site Shutting Down
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 05:14:16 +0000 (UTC)
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> > 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.

It's true DOS didn't directly support multitasking.  It also didn't
include TCP/IP or touch screens or GPUs...  But you could, and did,
roll your own.  We had cooperative multi-tasking and virtual memory
for code on a Motorola 6800 (two zeros, not three) in 1977 (pre-DOS).

> I may respond to other parts of the post, but... you do remember that
> this was originally for an 8088 processor, right?  Not a Pentium.  I
> may be wrong, but my recollection was that a lot of the task/process
> functionality of the chip was added to the series later (80286?), and
> wasn't present in the 8086/8088.  It may not have been good enough to
> support virtual addressing/paging, either, I don't know.

  Yes, the 286 added a bunch of fancy stuff for secure multi-tasking,
but MS didn't use it.  Their great contribution was a piece of hardware
in every PC to turn off protection.