[HN Gopher] The History of DR DOS
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The History of DR DOS
Author : klelatti
Score : 76 points
Date : 2024-06-16 09:32 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abortretry.fail)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abortretry.fail)
| stuaxo wrote:
| The era of it having a port of Mac System 7 is so interesting,
| somewhere there must be disks with that on it (project Star
| Trek).
|
| Who is still alive that might have it?
| bbarn wrote:
| Sounds like that never made it to market. Would have been great
| for me at the time, I was stuck having to trade my Outbound
| notebook in for a PC one because I couldn't get system 7 on it,
| and 7 was a game changer compared to 6 (Multi-tasking!!). Would
| likely have never left mac if it weren't for that.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| DR-DOS was great but it could not run Windows.
| pjmlp wrote:
| As DR-DOS 5.0 owner, it run Windows 3.1 just fine.
|
| You are referring to Windows 95 trick from Microsoft, regarding
| DR-DOS 6.
| rnd0 wrote:
| I don't think Windows 95 could run on any other dos without a
| lot of hacking and highly specific expertise?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Second part of my comment.
|
| This book has the background history about it, if I
| remember correctly.
|
| https://archive.org/details/unauthorizedwind00schu_1
|
| And there was the whole court case.
|
| https://www.wired.com/1999/06/more-legal-trouble-for-
| microso...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| I see. I ran a version of DR-DOS that wasn't compatible then.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I think you are probably referring to a beta of Windows 3.1
| which deliberately barfed if run on any version of DOS that
| wasn't MS-DOS. That code was never included in any final non-
| beta product.
|
| Windows 95 doesn't care what version of DOS you have because
| it replaces it with its own - MS-DOS "7.0".
| ghaff wrote:
| Basically MS/PC-DOS was there and it was "free." And its (many)
| shortcomings could be overcome by a ton of cheap or free add-on
| utilities for power users who were so inclined.
|
| It's also amazing how many Caldera tentacles snaked into so many
| things.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Ehhh it's a stretch to say all of MS-DOS's shortcomings could
| be over come by add ons. Many were intrinsic to the OS and
| fixes could only be simulated so long as programs and users
| agreed to abide by the band aids. It's also why so many things
| even in Windows 11 today are inelegant kludges to maintain
| backwards compatibility.
| ghaff wrote:
| Fair enough. There was definitely a step function to even
| "real" 16-bit OSs of the minicomputer world (and ultimately
| *nix) that was just hard to make because of path dependency.
| 9front wrote:
| When IBM released the Personal PC it offered MS-DOS for $40 and
| DR-DOS for $240, thus neutering DR-DOS. Back then $200 was a lot
| of money for something that looked and worked very much like MS-
| DOS.
| pavlov wrote:
| That would be CP/M-86. It also missed the launch window for the
| IBM PC and wasn't available until six months later, so PC-DOS
| had every opportunity to establish itself.
|
| As the article notes, DR-DOS didn't become a product until many
| years later.
| k__ wrote:
| I remember installing Windows on new PCs that came with DR DOS in
| th early 2000s.
|
| Always wondered why they didn't come with Linux.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Because early-2000s Linux was made by techies and geeks for
| techies and geeks. Windows and Mac succeeded because they had a
| GUI for nontechnical users and didn't require an inordinate
| amount of futzing in the terminal to use.
|
| Even discounting Android, Linux is much better nowadays, but in
| the early 21st Century, it was temperamental and finicky enough
| to install and use that it scared away nontechnical users.
| arp242 wrote:
| Yeah, Linux was horrible compared to the brilliant
| n00b-friendly user experience DR-DOS. Tons of non-tec and
| non-geek people just loved the DR-DOS experience.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| ...did you use early 2000's Linux? Drivers barely worked.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| You must be young! I did run graphical Linux 1997 as my main
| driver. The distribution was a black hat something, you used
| a rewrite tool to create a boot floppy which would boot the
| CD ROM later.
|
| It came with at least three DEs, olvwm and xfce and whatnot.
|
| Driver were never of an issue for me maybe just luck.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I used it in the late 90s as well.
|
| It was definitely luck.
| ashleyn wrote:
| I seem to recall Microsoft being a bit scared of Linux in the
| early 00s. I'd guess installing DR-DOS on Windows-less PCs
| seemed less likely to piss off Microsoft and losing their
| contracts/licenses than installing Linux would have.
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