Message-ID: <000001c29097$a25d9a60$c03dfea9@atlantis> From: "Matthias Paul" To: , Subject: DeviceLogics, Inc. takes over DR-DOS and announces DR-DOS 8.0 for next year Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 14:17:13 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Dear DOS fans, Some of you might be interesting in the following news. DeviceLogics, Inc., a new start-up founded by Bryan Sparks, Bryce Burns and Troy Tribe, have acquired DR-DOS from Lineo, Inc. last month. On 2002-11-18, they announced their plans to release a new product named DR-DOS 8.0 in 2003. Please have a look at http://www.drdos.com http://www.devicelogics.com (probably soon) for further details. I would like to take this event as an opportunity to give a little bit background on this operating system. For those who might not be aware of it, even though DR-DOS is a genuinely DOS compatible operating system now, DR-DOS has a long tradition even going back to the days before Tim Patterson wrote Q-DOS in 1980 and Seattle Computer Products 86-DOS (1980 - 1981) formed what then became the basis of Microsoft's MS-DOS and IBM's OEM version thereof, IBM PC DOS. Actually, it all started with the late Gary Kildall's CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) for Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80 CPUs (hence also known as CP/M-80) around 1976 (prototypes even a few years earlier in 1974). One of the important architectural achievements of the operating system was the division of the kernel into the lower hardware- dependent BIOS (Basic Input Output System) and the hardware- independent BDOS (Basic Disk Operating System) component, something we would now call a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). Digital Research's CP/M was portable to many different platforms, and CP/M programs only using BDOS functions ran on very different systems, hardware-wise. So, in the Seventies CP/M soon became /the/ de-facto standard operating system for micro-computers. When IBM was going to introduce their IBM PC, quite naturally they also approached Digital Research to provide an operating system for their machine, but as we all know, Microsoft's then- new and much cheaper MS-DOS became the default operating system of choice for the IBM PC as IBM PC DOS, although IBM also offered Digital Research's own adaptation of CP/M-86 for the IBM PC in 1981. At this time, MS-DOS & PC DOS represented basically a rather bad CP/M-80 clone ported to the 8086 CPU, but with Microsoft's FAT filesystem and a different buffering logic added. Although the systems were binary incompatible, one of the primary design goals for Q-DOS/86-DOS and therefore also for MS-DOS/PC DOS was that CP/M programs were easily portable to DOS, so there were soon many traditional CP/M programs available for MS-DOS/PC DOS, and since transferring programs from the 8080 to the 8086 required some porting as well even within the CP/M family, there were soon even more programs available for MS-DOS/PC DOS than for the less widely known CP/M-86 alternative. Digital Research's single-user CP/M-86 1.0 - 2.0 (BDOS 2.2, 1980 - 1983) & multi-user multi-tasking multi-processing MP/M-86 2.x (1980 - 1982) evolved into the single-user multi-tasking product CP/M-86 Plus (BDOS 3.0???) and the multi-user multi-tasking product Concurrent CP/M-86 2.0 - 3.1 (aka CCP/M-86, BDOS 3.1, 1983 - 1984), which got an optional PC DOS 1.1 emulator (PCMODE) added in 1984-09, when the BDOS 3.2 kernel was introduced. The PCMODE module could be retrofitted to BDOS 3.1 kernels, as, for example, found with one of numerous OEM versions, CompuPro Concurrent CP/M-86 3.1D. The first issue of the emulator did only support those old eight- sector media, so its usability was still very limited - Microsoft/ IBM already had their DOS 2.xx out, which was a significant rework of the kernel and introduced many of the newer concepts (dynamically loadable device drivers in CONFIG.SYS, file access by handles, subdirectories) and already prototyped many of the internal data structures which still make up DOS today. At the same time, Digital Research's product was renamed into Concurrent DOS 3.2 (aka CDOS), which was developed and distributed in several partially parallel flavors as Concurrent DOS 86 (1984 - ca. 1986), Concurrent DOS 86 XM (a bank-switched version utilizing an EEMS hardware, ca. 1986 - ca. 1988), Concurrent DOS 286 (1985 - ca. 1987), and Concurrent DOS 386 (since 1987), each of which was available for many different OEM hardware platforms. The Concurrent DOS issues for IBM PC compatible machines were named Concurrent PC DOS instead of just Concurrent DOS to reflect an IBM compatible XIOS (Extended Input Output System), although this basic naming scheme was not maintained all the time. One of the sidelines (and successor of CP/M-86 Plus) with a BDOS 3.1 - 4.1 kernel but without the DOS emulator was the single-user multi-tasking Siemens Personal CP/M-86 1.0 - 2.1 (1984 - 1987), also known as PCP/M-86. Another sideline worth mentioning was DOS Plus (1.0???) 1.2 - 2.1 (1985 - 1987), which was basically a single-user multi-tasking issue of Concurrent DOS 4.1 - 5.0 (BDOS 4.1 - 5.0), which already emulated PC DOS 2.11, so that it ran CP/M-86 as well as native DOS programs. At this time, Microsoft and IBM already issued their MS-DOS/ PC DOS 3.0 - 3.2, but DOS 2.xx issues were still in very widespread use. So, while still laying behind a bit in terms of DOS compatibility, Digital Research could offer many features of the technically advanced Concurrent DOS family - features, which would never be found in MS-DOS/PC DOS. DOS Plus was available for the Philips :Yes (in ROM), for the Amstrad/Schneider PC1512, for the Acorn BBC Master 512, and for the T.R.A.N. Yasmin Turbo - all mainly European products, as Digital Research's development center for Concurrent DOS was located in the United Kingdom. (Special cases for some Compaq and Olivetti machines could also be found in the Amstrad/Schneider XIOS and other DOS Plus components, but up to this point no DOS Plus issues for such systems seem to have shown up, so this might just as well be a left-over from the development cycle.) Finally, as far as I could research this with the help of several other people interested in the Digital Research history (see below for a few links), with the advent of the BDOS 6.0 kernel at the end of 1987, the famous single-user DR DOS family was carved out of the Concurrent DOS 6.0 PCMODE and FDOS modules starting 1988-01 by removing the [C]CP/M-86 API layer and replacing CDOS' XIOS with an IBM and DOS compatible BIOS (DRBIOS.SYS aka IBMBIO.COM). The first issue of DR DOS, DR DOS 3.31 (1988, BDOS 6.0) emulated a mixture of the then-current IBM PC DOS 3.3 and the OEM issue Compaq MS-DOS 3.31. It already supported the new 32-bit sectors- wide "BIGDOS" partition type 06h for "FAT16B", which was introduced with Compaq MS-DOS 3.31 to circumvent the nasty 33 Mb partition size limit. Thereby it was able to access much larger disks than generic MS-DOS/PC DOS issues. Also, in some sense, version 3.31 can be considered a "final" stage of evolvement of the traditional DOS architecture - afterwards most changes were merely rearrangements of data structures for loadhigh capabilities with DOS 5.0+, Windows related stuff, or changes for an improved usability, security, or compatibility with newer hardware, nothing as fundamental like the redirector interface or such. So, with the advent of DR DOS, Digital Research had finally caught up in terms of the DOS compatibility level (although not everything worked smooth in the early issues, admitted). DR DOS 3.31 was soon followed by DR DOS 3.32, 3.33, 3.34, and 3.35 (1988, BDOS 6.0), then DR DOS 3.40 (1989) and it really took off (in particular in Europe and even more so in Germany with huge OEMs such as Vobis) with the very widespread DR DOS 3.41 (1989, BDOS 6.3) release. It is still unclear to me, if the rumored DR DOS 3.42 ever actually existed - it could well be that what was named 3.42 by some was nothing but an early Beta version of "Leopard", that is, DR DOS 5.0 (1990, BDOS 6.5), the first DOS on the market to introduce loadhigh capabilities - a full year before MS-DOS and PC DOS 5.0 incorporated very similar features in 1991 (with impressively creative play on words like DOS=HIGH instead of HIDOS=ON, DEVICEHIGH instead of HIDEVICE, INSTALLHIGH instead of HIINSTALL, or LOADHIGH/LH instead of HILOAD). ;-) Digital Research immediately answered with "Buxton" aka DR DOS 6.0 (1991, BDOS 6.7), which built on the DR DOS 5.0 success and added improved DOS compatibility, even more advanced memory management, disk compression, task switching, deletion tracking, and the ViewMAX/2 GUI, a cut down GEM (Graphical Environment Manager, Digital Research's GUI) derivative. It took Microsoft and IBM almost two years to respond with their MS-DOS 6.0 (1993) and PC DOS 6.1 (1993) products. The original DR DOS 6.0 (with BDOS 6.7 kernel) received a large string of public updates until 1992. Up to this point, the single-user DR DOS and the multi-user multi-tasking Concurrent DOS products - although evolving into very different directions and markets - were co-developed, partially even from the same source trees. Meanwhile, the successor of Concurrent DOS 6.2 (BDOS 6.2) had become Multiuser DOS 5.0 (BDOS 6.5) aka MDOS, and when Novell discontinued Multiuser DOS 5.1 (BDOS 6.6) in 1992, the development of MDOS split up into three independent development lines brought forward by Concurrent Controls, Inc. (http://www.conctrls.com - their last version was CCI Multiuser DOS 7.22 Gold in 1997), Datapac Australasia, which developed their Datapac Multiuser DOS 5.0 - 5.1 (BDOS 6.6) into Datapac System Manager 5.0 - 7.0 (1996), which reportedly is now owned by Citrix, and Intelligent Micro Software (http://www.imsltd.com), which developed IMS Multiuser DOS 5.0 - 7.0 into the 32-bit Real-Time OS IMS REAL/32 7.50 - 7.93 (2002). Just recently they released ITERA IMS REAL NG (http://www.realng.com), which still supports [C]CP/M-86 and DOS applications, but now has a Linux kernel underneath. Novell continued to develop the less powerful, but much more commercially successful single-user DR DOS product line and introduced the completely revised BDOS 7.0 kernel with "Merlin" alias NetWare PalmDOS 1.0 in 1992. PalmDOS was tailored for early DOS palmtop devices with ROM/Flash file systems, XIP (Execute in Place), a specialized version of TASKMAX for immediate access to PIM applications, PCMCIA cards support, and only minimal memory requirements. It also utilized the patented dynamic idle detection and automatic active power management. The development of the PCMCIA stack was inspired by experiences made with the first two devices of its class, the Atari Portfolio and Poquet Computer Corporation's Poquet PC, in which's development one of the engineers, who also participated in the original standardization process of the PCMCIA initiative, had been involved previously. Anyway, BDOS 7.0 was for the first time no longer a heavily modified CP/M-86 kernel in disguise and coated with a DOS API emulation, but a natively DOS kernel with genuine DOS compatible data structures, not only emulations thereof. This gave a smaller memory footprint and much more compatibility with many of the dirty DOS applications out there, but some former features such as no inherent limitation of the path length for filenames and practically unlimited directory depths (up to theoretically several ten-thousands levels deep - only limited by the amount of clusters on the disk and the 64 Kb segment limit to specify the path), as well as a few neat API extensions for so called "floating drives" (an implicit way to assign SUBST drives by just doing a "CHDIR f:=d:\path") had to be given up in favor to the introduction of a DOS-like CDS (Current Directory Structure) array. Two only historically relevant projects utilizing the new BDOS 7.0 were never actually released. DR DOS "Panther" (1992) was an issue of DR DOS with an optional multi-user security module. It also introduced the unique DPMS (DOS Protected Mode Services) technology to relocate slightly modified but still perfectly backward compatible DOS drivers and TSRs into Extended Memory and run them in 16-bit or 32-bit Protected Mode, and KRNL386.SYS (which later became part of EMM386.EXE 3.00) providing the 32-bit Protected Mode core OS with memory manager, multithreading, and preemptive multitasking in virtual machines, and which contained an early implementation of "true" Windows-like DPMI 0.9/1.0 (DOS Protected Mode Interface). ViewMAX/3 with moveable and resizable windows was also part of the Beta distribution. The other project, DR DOS "StarTrek" in 1992 - 1993, was a team-up with Apple to let their Intel port of MacOS 7.1 run on top of DR DOS, store Macintosh resources in the FAT filesystem, and interface with the new DR DOS 386 multitasker. A bit later, Novell released the DR DOS 6.0 "business update 1993" utilizing the new BDOS 7.1 kernel, the very last update to DR DOS 6.0. To put all these intermediate developings into the global timeline, it was only now that Microsoft released MS-DOS 6.0, soon followed by IBM PC DOS 6.1, then MS-DOS 6.20. So far, all the DR DOS issues still reported themselves as being PC DOS 3.31 (the real nature of the OS could be retrieved only using INT 21h/AX=4452h and INT 21h/AX=4451h). This changed when Novell released Novell DOS 7 in early 1994. Since this issue had the DOS 5.0+ DOSMGR API implemented, it could report a more realistic DOS version such as "IBM PC DOS 6.0" without risking any further compatibility problems with Windows 3.xx. Since no PC DOS 6.0 actually existed, but IBM PC DOS 6.1 itself reported as DOS 6.0 internally, Novell DOS 7 (BDOS 7.2) was sometimes reported as "PC DOS 6.1" by some system-info tools. Soon later Microsoft released MS-DOS 6.22, followed by IBM PC DOS 6.3. Novell DOS 7 publically introduced many of the technologies developed for DR DOS "Panther" and "StarTrek", including the preemptive multitasking, DPMI, and DPMS. Instead of the multi-user security module, however, it shipped with Personal NetWare and network security. It also introduced code to circumvent the odd but non- fatal error message created by the famous "AARD" code (in some issues of Windows 3.1 and other components), which was originally discovered by Geoff Chappell in 1992 and discussed at lengths in some of Andrew Schulman's articles and books in fall 1993. The encrypted "AARD" code was artificially created by Microsoft for the simple purpose of defending DR DOS by destroying its good reputation through bad magazine reports by uninformed journalists and creating rumors among its user base, who were worried about compatibility and stability with and under Windows. This strategy was called FUD - Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. After Microsoft's announcement and - much later - introduction of Windows 95 in late 1995 - which only in their news-speak no longer ran on, nor had any need for DOS -, and after a long string of updates (up to update 15.2 in 1996-01), Novell finally abandoned supporting the product and sold off Novell DOS 7 and all other remaining Digital Research assets (excluding FlexOS and X/GEM, which were sold off much earlier) to Caldera in fall 1996, when they approached Novell to license a good DOS issue to run under DOSEMU for their Linux distribution. Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 (BDOS 7.2) was released in spring 1997, but unfortunately it was only based on Novell DOS 7 update 10 or so. Like much of the older Digital Research stuff, the remaining updates were lost at that time. Fortunately, after some odyseey at least most of the NWDOS patches could be revealed again before the release of the OpenDOS 7.02 Betas in late 1997 and Caldera DR-DOS 7.02 (BDOS 7.3) in early 1998. (Now for the first time the product name was written with a hyphen, which caused quite some debates among users and developers. ;-) DR-DOS 7.02 introduced many new things, like a special Year 2000 fix for buggy system BIOSes, support for the international date format according to ISO 8601/DIN EN 28601, an improved INT 13h handler for non-standard system BIOSes, or a LFN-enabled COMMAND.COM. Our team also developed the LONGNAME driver to support VFAT long-filenames under plain DOS and was busy with DR-WebSpyder, the graphically DOS web browser and corresponding enhancements to the network driver stack, including a modem dialer. The 7.02 BIOS and kernel also incorporated the re-engineered Novell DOS 7 updates and an endless list of other enhancements (like new relocation and loadhigh options, a much improved [D]CONFIG.SYS configuration language, an optimized memory foot- print, and increased speed), of which I am grateful to have had the opportunity to implement a substantial portion. So, while the open sourced 7.01 issue was a step back compared to a well maintained Novell DOS 7 system, DR-DOS 7.02 was again a huge step forward compared to Novell DOS 7. Caldera DR-DOS 7.03 was released in fall 1998 with significant improvements to the memory manager and, again, many other usability enhancements, Euro currency support, a FAT32-enabled FDISK, also some fixes for minor problems introduced with DR-DOS 7.02 (but also a number of new problems - sigh)... The last desktop issue was released in 1999-01. At this time the company was already called Caldera Thin Clients, Inc. to distinguish it from Caldera Systems, Inc., which did the Linux business, and the shell company Caldera, Inc., which carried out the private antitrust lawsuit Caldera vs. Microsoft. Then, somewhat unexpected to most who were enthusiastically involved in the undertaking, the Caldera UK, Ltd. operation in Andover, UK, where the core DR-DOS and DR-WebSpyder research & development had taken place, was closed in 1999-02. The US-based Caldera Thin Clients, Inc. became Lineo, Inc. in summer 1999 and continued to make cosmetical updates to some of the docs, but up to present the current desktop issue is still DR-DOS 7.03 - and AFAIK without any binary changes compared to the original 1999-01 issue. Several other DR-DOS issues existed, but they were either internal technology studies (like DR-DOS "WinGlue"/"WinBolt", which supported the Windows 4.xx GUI of Windows 95/98/SE, and of which I have been one of the principal authors in a small R & D team) or were OEM-only issues like the FAT32/LBA-enabled issues DR-DOS 7.04/7.05 (still with a BDOS 7.3, system files dated 1999-08-19 & 1999-11-30, now reporting themselves as "IBM PC DOS 7.10"). Reportedly, even a DR-DOS 7.05/7.06 version (distributed with the most recent issues of IBM's OEM issue of Ontrack's DiskManager 2000) exists (which I have yet to see myself, though). As one of the guys involved in the development of this operating system, I have to admit, I have somewhat romantic feelings, whenever it comes to Digital Research and DR-DOS. I guess, it's the same as with other developers having had an opportunity to do such an overly creative and satisfactory work in their lifes. It was a great time and I still have very fond memories of the calm, smart, and most inspiring people I met. And I think, I could inspire a few people as well... ;-) Needless to say, I am very happy to see that DR-DOS is - apparently again - alive. Actually, I think, DeviceLogics, Inc. should be headquartered in Phoenix, not Lindon, or so to speak. ;-> It is not clear yet what they actually plan to do, but as an advocat for the open source idea, I really hope they will finally make the /right/ decisions for the benefit of DR-DOS as a high- performance small-footprint operating system and as a continual technology demonstration, how DOS should have looked like right from the start, and, of course, to never forget to serve the still large and astonishingly loyal user community, who helped with unbroken optimism and many personal resources to keep the DR-DOS end-user and even much of the supposed-to-be professional support up and running over all those years when Lineo no longer did, and without whom DR-DOS would not have undergone such extensive testing and would probably have been long forgotten and without much commercial value any more now. In my opinion, it is very reasonable to target the embedded systems market (even though more and more companies are migrating from DOS to Linux for very obvious and good reasons - but DOS is really "light-weight" compared to Linux and takes much less resources - in fact, it still runs on an 8088 in 128 Kb of RAM and could be trimmed down to 64 Kb with some tweaking), so this is approaching areas, where microcontrollers have their domain today. Depending on what you want to achieve, one or the other approach may have unique advantages. But as a by-product of enhancing DR-DOS for the embedded systems market, I still hope, DeviceLogics will also bring forward a version for desktops as well as for Linux and possibly also for Windows DOS boxes. Or alternatively, that they will at least release all the sources of those components not needed in embedded environments under a license like (or very similar to) the GPL, so that the community could eventually ramp up and organize the development of these components on their own behalfs (ideally in cooperation with DeviceLogics and the FreeDOS project, of course), instead of what has happened in the past years, when potential open source developers were condemned to stay idle and bloodly-needed progress on the DOS front was effectively blocked, unfortunately. At least, FreeDOS has made some good progress in the meantime. In the spirit of Digital Research, I would, under reasonable environmental circumstances, certainly love to put my little bit into it once again in order to enhance and improve DR-DOS to become the "ideal" DOS for any purpose, where DOS makes sense... This way, we could soon have a very mature & flexible DOS platform, enhanced to cope with many (realistically not all) of the latest achievements on the hardware front. Personally, I would also like to see Linux, DR-DOS, FreeDOS, and PC/GEOS in small 386+ based PDAs similar to the famous, but long outdated HP 200LX - in a highly rigid housing, with a "feel-good" mini-keyboard, a crisp high-res gray-scale LCD screen, very low-power consumption for an extra long battery life, powerful and convenient PIM applications with mobile e-mail and internet access, and an open architecture for easy user customarization and enhancement. For those interested in further info on DR-DOS and some other Digital Research related stuff, don't forget to also have a look at: http://www.drdos.org - Florian Xaver's DR-DOS fan club http://www.drdos.net - Christoph Fuchs' DR-DOS info http://www.delorie.com - DJ Delorie's OpenDOS mailing list http://mpaul.drdos.org - my currently somewhat outdated DR-DOS pages, but still much stuff on undocumented features http://www.yahoogroups.com - "DigitalResearch" forum http://www.deltasoft.com - Ben Jemmett's GEM site http://gem.shaneland.co.uk - Shane Couphlan's FreeGEM distribution http://www.owenrudge.co.uk - Owen Rudge's GEM site http://www.simpits.org - GEM development list "gem-dev" http://www.gaby.de - Gaby Chaudry's CP/M stuff & the late Tim Olmstead's unofficial CP/M library http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/index.html - John Elliott's CP/M insights Not directly DR-DOS related, but possible still interesting for advanced DOS users and developers: http://www.freedos.org - The FreeDOS project http://www.pobox.com/~ralf/files.html - Ralf Brown's Interrupt List http://www.breadbox.com - PC/GEOS, Ensemble office suite http://www.tvakatter.org - PC/GEOS, New Deal Office http://www.arachne.cz - Arachne DOS Webbrowser http://www.jpsoft.com - 4DOS enhanced command shell http://www.semware.com - TSE Pro, a powerful DOS editor http://www.ritlabs.com - Rit Labs' DOS Navigator, a NC clone http://dn.id.ru/ - Necromancer's DOS Navigator http://www.nsk.su/~dnosp/ - Open DOS Navigator Please note, that all this raving is nothing but my immediate and independent opinion in regard to the latest string of events. It seems, things are finally moving again - that's fine... Let's hope, the move will be in the right direction. Good luck, DR-DOS! Greetings, Matthias PS. If you spot any inaccuracies or omissions, please correct me - I definitely don't want to spread any rumors. -- ; http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html; http://mpaul.drdos.org "Programs are poems for computers."