Talk:DR-DOS

Legality

"In the fall of 1991 Microsoft announced Windows 3.1 and made it clear that it would not run on DR-DOS. They also refused to give copies of the beta of 3.1 to Novell, who now owned DR-DOS. At the same time they changed their licensing on DOS to charge for it on every machine companies sold, whether or not it was installed."

Quite right, JulianD The above (which I have struck out) is nonsense. Tannin 07:25, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'd have to check this, but I am pretty sure that the every-machine licencing scheme came a long time earlier than this, in fact I think it was there right from the start. Anyone have confirmation handy?

see eg http://www.kegel.com/remedy/archive/fullstory/ca_sues_ms.html (caldera vs MS) The arrangements were per-processor licencing at a lesser rate (which meant that a licence was paid for every installed processor, whether or not the system shipped with MS-DOS, and selling Windows alone at a higher or equal rate to the MS-DOS + Windows arrangement. --Wendy.krieger (talk) 09:29, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

In 2002, DR-DOS was sold to a little company called DeviceLogics... DR-DOS was eventually sold to Lineo...

So which is it... I looked at drdos.com and it's a DeviceLogics page. -- JulianD 2004-06-17 1:09 am

In what ways was QDOS "legally questionable"? 213.84.239.37 17:46, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

RE: QDOS - I think the article is a little misleading here. From what I have been able to gather, SCP had a license from DRI for QDOS, which meant that QDOS itself was legal. What was NOT legal was that Bill Gates bought QDOS from SCP. Having entered into a contract with IBM, with no disk operating system at all, Microsoft had to do something very quickly. They bought QDOS, spent a hectic few days rewriting the code, and renamed it MS-DOS. I have heard it said that if one digs deep enough into the original MS-DOS code, there are still Digital Research copyright messages that Microsoft missed.

The fact is that there is very little difference between CP/M and MS-DOS 1. Microsoft basically stole the disk operating system that made them the world leader. Gary Kildall refused to sue MS for this, but reportedly was devastated over it and carried the bitterness the rest of his life.

As for the article being non neutral, I am quite familiar with the subject, and I didn't see anything in it that is incorrect or biased toward DRI. The only thing giving this impression is the author's usage of terms like "very," ie: "very advanced memory management," et al. However, the author is also frank about the later failure of DRI products. Elaich 16:40, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

What was illegal about Microsoft's actions wrt buying QDOS? You may call it "dodgey" that they didn't tell SCP they were going to license it to IBM, I call it good business. Sophistifunk

Years ago I had access to the early MS-DOS code and certainly do not recall ever seeing any DR copyright messages in there.Chenab 11:10, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

...often pronounced "Doctor DOS" by its users...

I do not think that the DR-DOS users themselves ever used the name "Doctor DOS" for DR-DOS since they know that it means Digital Research Disk Operating System. AFAIK the name "Doctor DOS" was used derisively by Microsoft, perhaps later also by users of MS-DOS.

I'm a DR-DOS user and I've always called it that, basically because it's less cumbersome that spelling it out. 130.101.100.104 (talk) 15:51, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

GEMDOS

A paragraph on GEMDOS (which appears to be the M86K port for DR-DOS, used for the Atari ST) might be of use. (I wouldn't know what to write, though.) --StuartBrady (Talk) 01:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Confusing statement.

I really can't understand the next statement:

"So much, in fact, that some programs would fail to load as they started "impossibly" low in memory – inside the first 64KB."

Anyone have a clue ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Muttley.meen (talk • contribs) 13:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC).

I'm having to think back now as it is years since I wrote code in that kind of environment. It is to do with memory addressing and the way you could do it with a 8086 and related processors. You could use a short address which could access 64k or a longer form which went across page boundaries (e.g. multiples of 64k). So either a program is finding itself split across a page boundary and so can't access half of its data or, for some reason someone had assumed they would never be loaded below 64k and did something wrong but can't think why or what. The 64k situation also impacted on program extensions. COM files were executables less than 64k if bigger then they had to be EXEs.

There was at least one way in which DRDOS was not totally compatible with MSDOS and that was in memory allocation. DRDOS returned the memory block as was rather than clearing the contents to zeroes as it should have done to be totally correct. Chenab 11:08, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Loadfix is the MS-DOS fix for this same problem. The problem is caused by the A20 handler, and that some old progs did not expect that FFFF:0010 and 0000:0000 point to the same addy. --Wendy.krieger (talk) 08:28, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Couple of benifical links related to dr dos

[1] and [2] Mathmo ^Talk 23:51, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

DR Dobbs Article and Windows 3.1 and 3.11 warning

I remember reading the linked article in Dr. Dobbs magazine, and re-read it. MS did NOT remove the warning in Windows 3.1 "The message first appeared in build 61, a late-stage beta, and seemed to disappear in the final retail release of Windows 3.1. However, the code that generates the message is present in the retail release, albeit in quiescent form, and executes every time you run Windows 3.1." http://www.ddj.com/windows/184409070;jsessionid=XIJBFL244QGY0QSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN?pgno=4 Page 4 is actual article text, previous pages are screenshots.

I believe the warning was back fully in Windows 3.11 and was the only detectable difference I ever found between versions 3.1 and 3.11 Cuvtixo 18:15, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

The code is present, but it does not run, that's what the article means. Only the beta testers have ever seen this message.--24.37.141.122 01:19, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The article says that the code does indeed run every time that Windows 3.x runs. What doesn't run is that an error-message and response screen is created. The AARD code is still in Windows 3.11, but i don't know about Wfw. The main difference between 3.10 and 3.11 is that the former was aimed at OS/2 as the server while the latter was based at Windows NT. One should note that at the release of 3.11, there was some cry among the "OS/2 for windows", which used MS-Windows for Win-OS/2. You could undo the fix by WWW0981.EXE, with an obscure patch. --Wendy.krieger (talk) 10:26, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

???

Why after very long time this DR DOS page isn't in Wikipedia?

http://treasure.reset00.com/

Read the One Page Scroll (184kb) and enjoy! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.31.112.67 (talk) 08:21, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Merge

OpenDOS appears to be a fork or re-branding of questionable notability. I wonder if someone would care to merge it to DR-DOS. Ham Pastrami (talk) 06:50, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

That would make good sense; both articles contain the same information (and it doesn't look like OpenDOS has the citations). JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 18:25, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, it took nearly a year, but they've been merged.oknazevad (talk) 19:29, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

When Caldera bought DR-DOS from Novell, they released the source for it. This is what OpenDOS is based on. The latest owners have discontinued the open source, but can not annul OpenDOS's licence.--Wendy.krieger (talk) 08:59, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Official Link

The official link appears to be broken. 75.142.145.54 (talk) 15:22, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, their site is down, and has been for a couple of days. (The PDF command reference link doesn't work either.) Not sure what happened. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 02:12, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Split to Novell DOS

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Novell DOS#Split from DR-DOS. -- Trevj (talk) 06:58, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Wing Commander 2

I very distinctly remember Wing Commander 2 crawling on DR DOS, running much slower than on MS DOS on the same machine. I always attributed this to a deliberate brake inserted to hamper DR DOS. Looking around the web, I find mentions of people having hard times installing Wing Commander 2 on DR DOS, but I couldn't find any source verifying this. If we can find a source for this, I think it belongs either here or in the Wing Commander 2 article. 85.181.18.183 (talk) 11:56, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Coordinate error

{{geodata-check}}

The following coordinate fixes are needed for

—95.97.85.228 (talk) 09:39, 26 April 2013 (UTC) grf

Hi, can you please be more specific? Which coordidates are wrong? It is sometimes difficult to extract the exact coordinates, if you can't give the correct ones, please describe the location (street names, house numbers, specific signs) as detailed as possible, and I may be able to help. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:04, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Removing this tag. The article subject has no geographical coordinates to be fixed. I suspect the tag was used in error. —me_and 12:51, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Tagged Since 2007?

And is still tagged. This is so typical of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a joke. An arrogant child constantly attempting to be an adult, but unlike a child, it will never grow up. Shall never reach the level it erroneously attempts to attain. Purely pathetic. The whole of Wikipedia should be deleted. Arrogance and pedantry are only justified when the overall quality is high enough to warrant it. Wikipedia falls WAY WAY short of that quality and has no chance of ever attaining it. LOL.86.139.2.156 (talk) 23:42, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

That's a bit melodramatic. But the "After Novell" section is a wall of text, huge chunks of the article are basically unreadable. 80.229.124.3 (talk) 21:06, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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Checked and fixed the mess created by this bot. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 15:20, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Official Link

The official link points to a half-dead Wordpress website full of spam. I suppose that site has been abandoned.

Should it still be linked to? SopaXorzTaker (talk) 15:04, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

"D70F01.EXE" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect D70F01.EXE. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 19:57, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Date format

I have (again) restored the original "dmy" format, and firmly ask to stop changing it per WP:DATERET. The "dmy" format was established in this article on 2004-03-30 ([3]) and more firmly established in 2011 when I provided many additional references. The first time a user used the "mdy" format at all was in 2012, but such usage was always changed to "dmy" after some while. Also, the "mdy" format does not make any sense in this article, as DR-DOS has no strong ties to the US: It was a product for an international market developed in Europe, so if there is a "natural" date format associated with it, it is "dmy" as well. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:30, 2 August 2020 (UTC)