What kind of Dos is the best ?

[Donald Darden]

FreeDOS seems to work just fine - in fact, several recovery CDs or
applications that require you to reboot use it rather than one of
the other DOS choices. I tried some Win98 command line utilities
under FreeDOS with no complaints and no surprises.

In the works is EreeDOS64, but it is stickly Alpha code - not very
stable, and without much in the way of features.

PB/DOS works fine with MSDOS, including the flavors found under all
versions of Windows. You can edit and compile there, and you can
run finished code there.

Windows permit you to mark some additional memory as extended or
expanded memory, or both. If you can take advantage of it (and
PB/DOS IDE permits you to designate memory use), that eliminates
some of your memory crunch.

You can install a version of Windows9x/Me and tailor the
Autoexec.bat file so that it remains in command mode rather than
starting up windows. Unfortunately, you cannot avail yourself of
some of the enhanced features provided by windows if you do that.
Such as the ability to recognize and use more memory, or to use
Long File Names.

However, you can make it so that windows engages the MSDOS mode
and starts either PB/DOS or your developed app when it boots.

You also have the ability to suppress the opening windows icon so
that the box looks like it is running pure DOS, when in fact it
is going into windows then shelling out again to the command
prompt.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with DOS when it comes to
dedicated applications, except that the screen modes are somewhat
limited, it may not be able to work with newer devices, and it
may be limited by accessable memory. Though FreeDOS claims that
you can work with more than 32MB of RAM if properly configured,
it seems that the system cannot report more than 32MB of RAM. I
had no time in my experiments to sort that all out. It's just
a clue to what you may be dealing with.

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Old Navy Chief, Systems Engineer, Systems Analyst, now semi-retired

[Paul Dixon]

DOS isn't dead and won't die until something better comes along.

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[Davide Vecchi]

Yes, it's dead, that's why so many people do highlight since years that it's dead .

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Davide Vecchi
[email protected]

[Fred Harris]

DOS Dead??? In the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry it isn't
dead, although its no spring chicken either! We use it
exclusively on handheld data recorders to collect timber
information. I had originally written all the programs in QB45,
but eventually converted most of them to PB DOS 3.5. Last year
we sold 44 million dollars worth of timber, almost all of it
logged with our data recorders running DOS.

The major issue for our people is simplicity and not losing
any data. Most of the world's furniture grade Black cherry comes
from our forests, and one tree can be worth several thousand
dollars. No loss of data is acceptable. In the programming I
especially like PB's Flush buffer command, so that I don't have
to resort to assembler or other subtrafuges to thwart Dos's
propensity to stash data in buffers.

We can still get DOS data collectors, but I believe the end
is in sight. In the course of the next year I'm hoping to do all
the reprogramming in Windows CE, and I'd give quite a lot if
PowerBasic would work with that platform but it doesn't.

The outfit we get data recorders from is Juniper Systems, a
subsidery of Harvest Master. At that company they are not
completely enthralled with Windows CE and losing DOS, and have
even considered use of command line Linux on their machines. The
other day a UPS man made a delivery at our office and I noted
he had a command line data recorder that he told me UPS
manufactures itself. In my mind there is still a use for operating
systems such as this. In fact, if Windows CE supported the
Console subsystem that desktop systems have (and on which PB's Console
Compiler is based), I'd use that instead of GUI apps.





------------------
Fred

[Hans Ruegg]

Same experience - with one little exception: I could not get to work PB TSRs on FreeDOS; the line "POPUP SLEEP" always generated an error 5 (?) "Invalid Function Call".

Regards,

Hans Ruegg

[Michael Torrie]

Originally posted by Frank Thomas:
Has anyone used powerbasic with freedos? Is it compatible?

Thanks!

Frank.

Of course! I've done it on many occasions. The compiler and IDE seem to function fine.

Had freedos been around 20 years ago, it would have totally killed MS-DOS. It's command interpreter is so far ahead of command.com that it's not even funny. FreeDOS is about as compatible with MS-DOS as you can get without running MS-DOS. Any incompatibilities are bugs and should be reported to the freedos folks who will fix them.


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[This message has been edited by Michael Torrie (edited January 11, 2006).]

[Shawn Anderson]

the CPU-Time of a DOS-APP is a problem too, my Notebook accu
is down in very shorter as possible time.

TameDos fixes this: www.tamedos.com


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When you're riding in a time machine way far into the future, don't stick your elbow out the window, or it'll turn into a fossil.
- Jack Handy

[Frank Thomas]

Has anyone used powerbasic with freedos? Is it compatible?

Thanks!

Frank.

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[Mike Luther]

Yes Shawn ..

I can't vouch for it, but I think IBM still sells PC DOS.
The new version is PC DOS 2000.

I can't recall the source in the OS/2 discussion forums, but the
noted total licenses in use for IBM's operation with it were as
I recall, some six million registered users. Of course, one would
think that has to include all the OS/2 operations as well in that
the product is incorporated into OS/2. Which though IBM is now
refusing to 'sell' additional copies of OS/2 as of December 23, 2005,
is still Passport Advantage supported until December 31, 2006, for
whatever that means. And .. per several folks' comments at
WarpStock .. still bound up in "TCO" support until 2019, whatever
that means and to whom.

IBM, as widely noted, is hard pushing those users to move to LINUX
with their operations. The, what was it, 600+ million settlement
from Microsoft to IBM over the damages to the PC Division of IBM
and of which I think some 70+ million was also involved in the
internal damages to IBM over internal hardware issues is significant.
Although I don't know the details, obviously, there would have to
be, one would think, something of an issue here over DOS and so on
that must have been a part of that.

As well, the case, as best I understand, is still open as to damages
to the server outfit side of IBM, as well as operating system issues
which, as best I can tell, have yet to be resolved. But whomever holds
claim to whatever of DOS, either by itself as distributed by IBM and
the DOS 'client object', if we can call it that, in OS/2, the work sure
delivered a WONDERFUL way to work with PowerBasic 3.5 and so on in
that world. The best DOS ever, in my view.

I can tell you from personal experience, that even with the R40 and R51
series of IBM Thinkpads, you can still get, as far as I've found out,
a very stable DOS environment in DOS-VDM's for OS/2. That with the
most recent MCP2 product and fixes. I'm told the same holds true for
the T series Thinkpads as well.

And .. I've been able, with IBM's help here, as well as that of Jan
Van Wijk of DFSEE fame, to get the whole service operation from
floppy diskette boot runs to an OS/2 command line, to be able to
completely clone the R40 and R51 Thinkpads, booted from a USB floppy
diskette, into USB 2.0 IDE hard disk external operations for total
backup and security. That includes even WIN XP parts of the operation,
whatever. I can then go and move that back in reverse clone operations
to any other similar Thinkpad. Including the whole DOS operations
for PowerBasic development work.

That includes running as many as five separat DOS-VDM PB 3.5 operations
on the same box totally synced and controlled by the op system, including
full comm port work as well there on the common box.

Thus, as long as hardware exists with which to work with the IBM
platform, I view the best possible solution as that one for DOS for
PowerBasic work, from my personal experience. Again, that's just
my view folks. But PB releated templates on OS/2 networked operations
in my world now exceed over 60,000 total hour uptime operations with
less than two hours of failure .. and *NO* data loss at all.

That's significant. Yes, in DOS work too.

Now .. that said. It seems realistic to view that one reason IBM is
trying so hard to move this to LINUX is to clean up all this mess over
who and what, legally, relative to DOS, WIN and particularly network
operations which were DOS and OS/2 and WIN related as part of the IBM
distribution.

Which so said, brings us ever more back to the VERY much needed part
of the future of PowerBasic and where we all have to go, one way or
another. I fully understand Bob Zale's reluctance to set any date when
this or that LINUX operation will be around. But moving the whole shift
of mission critical work that PowerBasic is so blessedly reliable for,
absolutely means DOS in LINUX, as far as I can see, and then the ability
to move that direct, in common (reasonably common) source to native
LINUX. It and the licensing and all for the whole show are really
needed for PB's future and that of all of us in my humble opinion.

I guarantee you I'm waiting patiently for Bob's contribution to all
of us here in relation to that. DOS for the shift, as well as native
for the, in humor here, 'shiftless', grin?

The instability and woe, as I see it, of what is needed for embedded
systems and mission critcal work in DOS .. has no future in the
normal stance which PB must, truthfully, take as to a WIN product.
What we need is the stability and multi-tasking operations of OS/2's
DOS .. so wonderfully done .. in LINUX so we can all go forward.

So to that end .. may the Lights of the Season shine on all of us
and PowerBasic for all of next year as we go forward with this wonderful
world we have.

Omain ..


------------------
Mike Luther
[email protected]

[Shawn Anderson]

I can't vouch for it, but I think IBM still sells PC DOS.
The new version is PC DOS 2000. http://www.superwarehouse.com/IBM_PC...4L5596/p/45999

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I think they should continue the policy of
not giving a Nobel Prize for paneling.

- Jack Handy

[Augustus Meyer]

I want to say,
there might be no need to re-write PB-DOS app in case you
use MS Virtual PC to run it in a virtual DOS machine.

Actually we are considering to port several old PB-DOS programs,
used for data acquisition on different DOS-PCs, to run in
several Virtual Dos machines under Virtual PC on one
Windows XP host.
Simply to get rid of the old HW we can not replace in case it
breaks.
However, this will work only in case you do not use
specialized HW, like special interface cards etc.
Serial comms works like a charm under Virtual DOS, though.

Regards

(oder Freundliche Grüße ?)



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[Matthias Kuhn]

Augustus,

the CPU-Time of a DOS-APP is a problem too, my Notebook accu
is down in very shorter as possible time.

I´m changing to PB8 Win too but. It´s a lot of work . So I need
time using the old prog´s so long.

Regards

Matthias Kuhn

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[Augustus Meyer]

I am running DOS 6.22 with an old PowerBasic app using MS Virtual PC
on a Windows XP host machine (P4, 3GHz).
No problem.
Only one side effect: Because DOS programmers did not
think about multi-programming on same machine,
Windows XP assigns 50% CPU to the Power Basic Dos App because
it is simply waiting, oooops, not correct:
Simply looping to wait for keyboard input etc.
However, I also solved this problem using some good old
ASM to program interrupt-driven WAIT for PB.

------------------

[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.

------------------
Davide Vecchi
[email protected]



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

[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]

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".

------------------
Davide Vecchi
[email protected]

[Michael Torrie]

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

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[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.

[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.

[Michael Mattias]

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