Mail Archives: opendos/1997/02/05/13:25:13
Mark Harris wrote:
>On Mon, 3 Feb 1997, Roger Ivie wrote:
>> COMMAND.COM doesn't actually do BIOS output. It does DOS output. That is, it
>> writes to a file handle open on the console and reads from a file handle
>> also open on the console. This does two things:
>>
>> 1) Makes it possible to run on weird machines like the DEC Rainbow which
>> don't have a PC-compatible ROM BIOS.
>
>DOS is a PC operating system. Non-compatibles are just that: not
>compatible. Should we make DOS so that it can run on the VIC-20
>as well? It is not PC-compatible either.
The VIC-20 is not an x86 machine. MS-DOS was, and IMHO should still be,
generic to x86 machines. A specific OEM (such as IBM) can customize to their
particular hardware (giving rise to PC-DOS), but the OS itself should be
as generic as possible.
Again, IMHO.
Roger Ivie
ivie AT cc DOT usu DOT edu
- Raw text -