Mail Archives: opendos/2000/09/18/09:00:19
----- Original Message -----
From: "David A. Cobb" <superbiskit AT home DOT com>
To: <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2000 8:39 AM
Subject: Re: About Micro$quash DOS 7 (hiding in Win98).
> Patrick Moran wrote:
> <a great history of the development of the x86 architecture>
>
> THANKS, this is great background. Actually, I was "there" looking on
during
> most of these twists and turns, but only as a bemused onlooker - I had a
"real"
> machine to work on for a living (a VAX ;-))
Except that VAX and WINDOZE don't mix well. I was working for Intel as a
independent contractor for a comapany that makes equipment for cleanrooms.
They had two VAX systems and many workstations were using WINDOZE 3.1.
Through a program that makes the IBM PC act as a VT terminal to connect to
the VAX used WINDOZE 3.1. Since WINDOZE crashes on a regular basis, when you
had to reboot the system, you may not log on to the same VAX machine and it
would not find your previous sesssion. So the old session never gets
shutdown properly and runs around the VAX systems doing nothing. Agter this
happens many times by many users, these do nothings start to clutter up the
network and eventually crashes the VAX systems!!!! Gates strikes again!!!!
> Actually, my question was intended more as "why can't a (Other-Than-MS)
> DOS-alike run Win98 as a "client?" Are there secret services, like memory
> management, that Win still doesn't do for itself? If I had an open source
> "mini-kernel" machine manager that ran in 32-bit protected, segmented mode
then
WIN.COM is not the entire kernel. The MS IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS has to be
loaded as well as the COMMAND.COM BEFORE WIN.COM can be executed. Those
three files that are loaded are in effect the kernel. Unlike Linux, NT,
UNIX, Solaras, BSD and other OSes that have a real kernel. You can actually
start Linux from the DOS prompt by running a progran called LOADLIN. However
when loadlin runs and loads the Linux kernel, you have basically booted the
system from scratch, even though the computer does not actually reboot. It
loads everything from address 0000 up and wipes out everything DOS had on
the system. You do have to be careful and make sure you flush the hard drive
cache if it is set for delayed writes before executing. I suppose that
someone could write a loader program to run before WIN.COM is executed.
> what if it tries to start "WIN.COM?"
>
> This whole S**T of tying the core management functions in with the
graphics and
> other service functions just gets me!
Actually it's pathetic.
> One day, I too will go Linux. Of course, I'll probably need to license
Wabi and
I have checked the WINE project for quite sometime, but they were working on
it to be able to run MS OFFICE. QNX supposedly was developing a way to run
WINDOZE apps on their OS, but every time I checked with them, they were
still "Working on it", I haven't checked now in probably two years or so.
Solaris was supposed to be able to run WINDOZE apps. I haven't downloaded
their OS yet. It is now free for IBM platform for noncommercial use. You can
order their CD. As I recall it was reasonably priced. I think wabi is
included in Caldera's OpenLinux. I am not positive, but at one time they
were the distributors for wabi.
I can't wait for the day when I can once again completely erradicate my
system of all MS related crap. But everytime I turn around, some stupid
application REQUIRES IE 4 or 5 be installed to run. Some even reuire you to
use IE to use their junk. I have Star Office 5.11 installed and would like
to completely remove IE, but can't. Sun's Star Office in available for just
about evey platform and is free for noncommercial use.
> an industrial-strength XServer for the sake of my family. And I hate
paying for
> software.
Actually, if you read the video docs for Linux, you may not need one. Linux
covers almost all of the popular video cards. When I upgrade my video card,
I will first check the Linux docs and see which ones are fully supported by
one of their xservers. My card was not fully supported when I first got
Linux (fall 1995) but some diligent hackers figured out what chips were
being used by this card and when I entered that info into the X3 server, I
had no problems getting all resolutions and refresh rates and centering the
screen.
Even if you do have to buy a commercial xserver, like metroX, they are
reasonnably priced, unlike crap for WINDOZE. The full retail version of
RedHat includes one and only costs something like $39.95 and includes some
other commercial stuff and a manual. It may even include CDs with mirrors of
sunsite and mit. Open Linux also includes a commercial xserver and some
other commercial stuff. I too hate to pay for software and usually just
download the WHOLE Linux OS and packages! I don't even bother to buy the
cheap CDs! I did buy my first Linux package of 5 CDs from Infomagic, their
Linux Tool Box, which also included a manual and a few other little goodies
for $25 or $30 including shipping.
Pat
> --
> David A. Cobb, Software Engineer, Public Access Advocate. Public Key at:
> <http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=superbiskit>
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