Message-ID: <008001bed623$77d379e0$1d7336ce@sandrajo>
From: "Christopher Nelson" <neverjaden AT yahoo DOT com>
To: <djgpp AT delorie DOT com>
References: <005701bed52b$51adb080$1d7336ce AT sandrajo> <99072312322800 DOT 00951 AT dome DOT calderathin DOT com> <379939BC DOT 11DC1FDB AT home DOT com>
Subject: Re: **MAKING OS**
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1999 16:25:25 -0600
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

> * 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!


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}=-