Mail Archives: djgpp/1999/07/31/06:28:23
Christopher Nelson wrote:
> > * A tangent about win95 (not) being an os follows. *
> >
> > I agree that an environment hosted on, and using the services
> > or, an other os is NOT an os itself.
> > Win95 by this definition is NOT an os because it runs on DOS.
> > If you don't believe me go to caldera's web sight and look at the
> > info they showed the judge in their case against MS. They showed
> > that by loading a 7k TSR to add the 'key' win95 was looking for to
> > their DRDOS your could run win95 on it. They also showed that
> > with win95a the majority or the 'system time' was spend using the
> > underlying os's routines!
>
Its been awhile sense I read it so I went looking for it again.
Here is the quote. (from the 3rd link listed below)
'Bryan Sparks claims that, whatever the documents show, Caldera is
about to settle the issue once and for all. It began the process by
demonstrating
in the courtroom that Windows 95 will run on top of DR-DOS when Caldera
adds a tiny 600-byte TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident program) to provide
the few enhancements Microsoft made to its own version of DOS. More
important, Caldera is using the TSR utility to track how Windows 95 uses DOS
after it is loaded.'
http://www.caldera.com/ Is their main page.
http://www.calderathin.com/lawsuit/index.html Is the main law suit page.
http://www.ncworldmag.com/ncw-02-1998/ncw-02-caldera.html?caldera
The last one is the page the above quote is from.
>
> This is true and is not true. The reason that Win95 spent so much time
> using DOS-based drivers is that a lot of hardware used those drivers, and
> did NOT have drivers for Win95 yet. Therefore, it had to fall back into
> 16-bit mode and call the interrupt routines that had been loaded in DOS
> mode. That does not mean that Win95 is not an operating system. What it
> means is that it was written to be able to host the DOS environment and use
> it's routines. If you attempt to switch a program into 32-bit protected
> mode without Win95's permission you will very soon find out who is boss on
> th system.
>
> -={C}=-
I didn't say win95 was not a 32 bit executive but that it was not an os.
I have done a fair share of low-level programming and was testing 'win95'
sense before it was called such, I.E. Chicago.
Oh and by the way didn't you know that MSDOS has been running in
V86 mode sense 5.0. How else do you think they freed up 640k low mem.
--
Mark & Candice White
System programming hobbyists.
http://members.home.net/mhewii/welcome.htm
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