What kind of Dos is the best ?

[Matthias Kuhn]

Hello,

I´m using MS-Dos 6.22. It works not with PII PIII computers very
well. My Progs are big over 300kb to execute.

Is Dr.Dos 7.01 or FreeDos much better ?

Thanks for ideas and responses ?

Regards

Matthias Kuhn

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[Georg Potthast]

You could try to use Dos 7/Win98:
http://www.ctyme.com/msdos7.htm

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[David J Walker]

DOS 7 is excellent, it is possible to get 620+ KB of free RAM with
careful attention to HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE, plus getting the drivers
and stuff loaded high.

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[Michael Mattias]

The only good DOS is a dead DOS?

[Matthias Kuhn]

Hello,

thanks Georg and David.

Michael I agree with You and I´m programming in PB8.01 Win too.

But it needs so many time to translate the old Pb3.5dos Programms
to working PB 8.01 code. Plenty changes in commands e.g. INCR a%,10
open had an new syntax - the old is not supported
- don´t work any more.

And to use a bit of the new opportiunities takes much time more.

The next is that is difficult to get working old computers like
an 486DX. And MS-Dos 6.22 is not realy made for an PIII or higher
processor.

Any suggestions to make the job quicker :< ???

Best Regards

Matthias Kuhn



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[David J Walker]

VMWare? I know one or two who reckon it's magic.

As for old computers, P800s and above are now to easy to find in skips,
I get problems with them building up in heaps, and I find it really hard
to chuck them out!

I've got a beautiful dual 486/33 Compaq server with 8x500MB RAID drives
giving a humongous 3GB. Beautiful thing, cost a fortune. Doesent even
make a decent coffee table.......

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[Chris Boss]

DR DOS still lives !

http://www.drdos.com/



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Chris Boss
Computer Workshop
Developer of "EZGUI"
http://ezgui.com

[Johan Klassen]

yesterday I found out about WDOSX DOS extender, quite impressive.

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as the salmon fish is compelled to go back to it's birthplace to spawn, so comes a day when man is compelled to go back to it's source.. GOD

[This message has been edited by Johan Klassen (edited November 02, 2005).]

[Davide Vecchi]

DR DOS still lives

I used DR-DOS (7.03) a lot with PB/DOS programs and it always worked perfectly.

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Davide Vecchi
[email protected]

[Joe Byrne]

The only good DOS is a dead DOS?

Hum, I guess I missed somehting... I thought DOS was dead Can't believe there is any real use for it anymore

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* Americans: Fight for Right. Join the push for the Fair Tax!

[Roger Garstang]

PC DOS 6.3 may be a good find too. They were MS-DOS's major competitor
and had many improvements over them except two...long file names
and Windows, so they faded away.

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If you aim at nothing...you will hit it.

[Davide Vecchi]

Can't believe there is any real use for it anymore

I don't know why does this make you sad. However, believe it. Not only there are still applications where DOS is the best choice, there still will be for long.

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Davide Vecchi
[email protected]

[Joe Byrne]

there are still applications where DOS is the best choice

Still?

Hummmm. Even though I programmed in DOS for over a decade, I can't say that I ever found it to be the best choice.


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* Americans: Fight for Right. Join the push for the Fair Tax!

[Michael Mattias]

For a long time MS-DOS was the best choice because it was the only choice.

[Roger Garstang]

Billy would like us to think that about Windows too...and if CEO's
ruled the world we would.

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If you aim at nothing...you will hit it.

[Paul Breen]

I've got DR Dos running on a fat32 drive. I think it is the only
one that will. I only use it to run old pb code though.

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Text consoles are good. If you want graphics, rent a movie.

[Michael Torrie]

FreeDOS (http://www.freedos.org) can also handle fat32 drives.

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[Davide Vecchi]

Even though I programmed in DOS for over a decade, I can't say that I ever found it to be the best choice.

Then you never wrote programs for industrial automation, or number crunching, or apps that have to run unattended, and these are only examples i directly know of .
BTW, why were you using it in fields where it wasn't the best choice ?

For a long time MS-DOS was the best choice because it was the only choice.

But i obviously wasn't referring to that, otherwise i wouldn't have called it a "choice".

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Davide Vecchi
[email protected]

[Bob Zale]

Davide--

I think that, if you compare "Number Cruching" applications carefully, you'll find that PowerBASIC Windows Compilers easily outperform DOS applications. Check it out...

Best regards,

Bob Zale
PowerBASIC Inc.


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[Davide Vecchi]

Check it out...

No Bob, i'll just trust you. While my personal experience would suggest otherwise, i realize that i made a wrong statement (about number crunching).

The mentioned situation was this: a financial advisor company which had number-crunching Windows apps (Windows 98); i don't know the language these apps were written in, however they were compiled, not TradeStation scripts or such. The apps were trading systems and were crunching some tenths of MB of numeric data in one time. They were taking forever in doing the job.

I set them up one of those boxes with just DR-DOS and a PB/DOS 3.5 program implementing the very same trading systems and reading the same data. This app used EMS (PB/DOS VIRTUAL arrays).

The PB/DOS app took at least 5 times less to do the same job. It's possible that those Windows apps were compiled with a slow compiler (it certainly wasn't PB) and it's possible that they weren't as well written as mine (of course ) was , however i just do know that one of the reasons was that my implementation allowed the app to use all the 32 MB of EMS for the job, while the other apps were swapping memory to disk for sure because much memory was used by Windows for its own things.

However i realize that i gave too much importance to that observation and this led me to a wrong conclusion.

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Davide Vecchi
[email protected]



[This message has been edited by Davide Vecchi (edited December 01, 2005).]