Talk:DOS

Redirect to Dos

I would like to change this page to a redirect to Dos (not all uppercase). I believe I have added all the extra info from this page to either Dos or one of the pages it references. If no-one objects within the week I will perform the change.- Steven jones 10:37, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Move to disk operating system?

This article should be moved to disk operating system? And the current disambiguation page should be moved here. - Centrx 03:14, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree, this should be a disambig page —User:Mulad (talk) 00:49, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)

I agree as well, it creates a mess with interwikies otherwise. --Yurik 06:35, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

MSX-DOS

It would be interesting to also mention MSX-DOS which is compatible with CPM and made for the MSX system. Later an extension cardridge was made called "MSX-DOS2" with among things support for subdirectories and harddisks. Andete 13:25, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

I think that the article disk operating system would be a bettter place to mention MSX-DOS Ae-a 13:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

reserved device names

some anons have been edit warring over this section. I've reverted back to before this started but i'm still not convinced its right. Just how many com and lpt port names are really reserved, does it vary depending on the dos version in question and does it also apply to dos derived systems like windows? Plugwash 16:36, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Looking at the binaries IO.SYS from MS-DOS 7.1, IBMBIO.COM from PC DOS 7.0, and IBMBIO.COM from DR-DOS 7.03, I see that all three contain the hardcoded strings COM1 COM2 COM3 COM4 LPT1 LPT2 and LPT3. (But not e.g. COM0 or COM5.) This accords with RBIL for the BIOS functions INT 14h, which supports up to four serial ports, and INT 17h, which supports up to three printer ports. Older versions of DOS may have supported fewer -- I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that if you have more than COM1 ... COM4 or LPT1 ... LPT3, then the extras must be provided by an add-in device driver loaded via CONFIG.SYS. Charles dye 22:22, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

other DOSes

CP/M and MP/M were also DOSes - and at a programmatic level were much better in their time (for example, on segmented processors, DOS insisted that the code, data and extended segments pointed to the same 64K block (so if there were two copies of an application running concurrently, they had to consume a whole 64K each, whereas under MP/M they could share a code segment and save on memory use.

Maybe an entry on those?

AndyHolyer

Heck, DOS/360 was a DOS, although it wasn't a DOS for processors in families whose names began with "80". There were other DOS's also unrelated to any personal computer DOSes. The Dos disambiguation page points both to DOS, which is mainly for MS-DOS/PC-DOS and relatives, and Disk operating system, for the general concept of an OS using disk for secondary storage.

Perhaps "DOS" and "Dos" and "DoS" should go to the disambiguation page, with that page referring to a "DOS (MS-DOS compatible)", or something such as that, which would be this page, and "Disk operating system", which would be for the general concept of a disk operating system, with all the stuff in "Disk operating system" giving details about MS-DOS and derivatives/compatibles being moved to this page. Guy Harris 10:16, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it should be moved to disk operating system. Maybe if you searched DOS it would redirect you to that page? Just a though -Smandrus

Merge with disk operating system?

So, what do people think about the proposed merge? --Gary King 03:56, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I think the general concept of a disk operating system, and the notion of MS-DOS, PC-DOS, and compatible OSes, are sufficiently different that they deserve to be on different pages.

The "DOS for other computers" stuff from the "DOS" page, and everything except for the "PC-DOS/MS-DOS" information from the "disk operating system" page, should be on a "disk operating system" page. The "disk operating system" page should mention PC-DOS/MS-DOS and compatibles, as they were/are significant disk operating systems, but it needn't give as much detail - it should leave that up to a page or pages for those OSes.

I'm not sure what to do about MS-DOS, PC-DOS, and compatibles. Perhaps there should be a "summary page" that covers all of them, with the "DOS for IBM PC Compatibles" information from the "DOS" page, and the "PC-DOS/MS-DOS" information from the "disk operating system" page, with links to the MS-DOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS, etc. pages for details. There's also the X86 DOS Comparison page, which contains MS-DOS history and a table comparing various OSes in that group; perhaps that should be referred to by the "summary page", or perhaps it should be part of the summary page.

I might put at least some of the MS-DOS-related technical information from the "DOS" page on the "summary page", if it's generic to all OSes in that group. I'd be inclined to have the MS-DOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS, etc. pages mainly discuss history, technical issues, etc. specific to the OS in question. Guy Harris 08:19, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to get into fundamentals at a time when there appears to be some kind of concensus, but what exactly is a 'Disk Operating System'? How does it differ from the concept of operating systems in general? Are they characterised by their lack of ambition (eg memory management? too difficult) or are they characterised by the platforms they were offered on (8-bit micros, leading into early 16-bit PCs?). In some of the extremely rom-based 6502 offerings, it was often difficult to distinguish the operating system from the ROM-Basic. Should the (now) laughably awful disk management facilities on things like the Pet and Acorn machines be dignified with the title of DOSes? John Hollingum

I'd say it's an operating system that either 1) supports the use of disk for secondary storage or 2) supports that and supports a file system on the disk. (I draw that distinction because, when I had a summer job at Interdata in 1972, Interdata had an OS for its minicomputers that could use the disk as a peripheral, but had no file system code for it; one of the things I did in my summer job was to build a simple "userland" file system library for applications to use. Other people there were working on an operating system for the Interdata minis, called DOS, which would include a file system, with files that could be read and written through the standard OS APIs.)

That differs from the general concept only in that it requires support for disks. At this point, I think all general-purpose OSes (as opposed to OSes used in embedded systems) are disk operating systems, but that wasn't the case in the past.

A disk operating system can support memory management - at this point, I think all general-purpose OSes are not only disk operating systems (in the second sense I list), but support demand-paged virtual memory.

Whether that's a sufficiently interesting concept is another matter; I was assuming it was, based on the fact that somebody'd created a disk operating system page. Perhaps that's not actually interesting enough to deserve a Wikipedia page. Guy Harris 18:26, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

A disk operating system is an extension to an operating system (usually loaded separately) which deals with high-level disk-IO (such as file-systems). Usually on the early home computers, memory space was limited, so the disk operating system was only loaded if it was needed. Otherwise, disk-access is imited to low-level operations such as reading and writing disks at sector-level. Ae-a 13:58, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I think if they are not merged, there definitly needs to be some differentiation to make them appear to be more like two separate articles. -- Natalya 13:47, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the merge. A disk operating system is an extension of an operating system (see my definition above), whereas DOS is a family of disk operating systems (or operating systems) for the PC compatible family of computers who'se members include MS-DOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS, Open-DOS, etc. Examples of disk operating systems not in the DOS family are Apple DOS, Atari DOS and Commodore DOS. Ae-a 13:58, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

A "disk operating system" in the early days of computing wasn't always an extension of an existing operating system; DOS/360 wasn't. "The early days of computing" and "the early days of home computers" were about 25 years apart; should the disk operating system page claim that a "disk operating system" was an extension of an OS in "the early days of computing" if that was the case in the early days of home/personal computers rather than, say, the 1950's and early-to-mid 1960's?

On the disk operating system page, I have changed "The early days of computing" to "The early days of microcomputing" (question: Should I use "home computing" instead of "microcomputing"). Also, I have mentioned on that page that some complete operating-systems that were loaded from a disk were called "Disk Operating System" as well, including DOS/360, and reformatted it a bit.

Also, should the DOS (disambiguation) page include entries for non-MS-DOS-family OSes with "DOS" in their name? Guy Harris 21:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and have changed it accordingly. I have listed all the articles on operating systems called "DOS" that I could find for non-DOS variants. Should I also list the DOS variants under "DOS" (such as MS-DOS, PC-DOS, etc.)? Ae-a 16:11, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Update

In response to the merge (which I oppose), I have made several changes to both articles to make them appear to be about distinct topics.

• Swapped some information around between DOS and disk operating system so that the two articles are clearly about two separate topics.
• Updated Category:DOS on IBM PC compatibles accordingly
• Nominated the renaming of Category:DOS to Category:Disk operating systems ( see Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 January 25#Category:DOS to Category:Disk operating systems for the entry on the Categories for Deletion where you can vote)
• Modified some Interwiki links on this Wikipedia and other language Wikipedias for the following articles: DOS, DOS (disambiguation), Disk operating system and Category:DOS on IBM PC compatibles. Hopefully, each article (on both the English Wikipedia and other-language Wikipedias) should link to all the correct articles in the other languages (AFAIK, the English Wikipedia is the only Wikipedia to have a different article for "the DOS family of operating systems from microsoft" (this article) and "disk operating system").
• Briefly scanned over the whatlinkshere for both pages, and changed a few articles to link to the correct article. This was just a brief scan, so there may be some that still link to the wrong article.

As a lot of material has been cut-and-pasted backwards and forwards between the two artickes, there are still a few rough edges. Some text may be repeated, and some may not fit in smoothly. Maybe a few things could be moved here from the MS-DOS article.

Also, some of the equivalents for the DOS article on other language Wikipedias are called "Disk Operating System" when they should be called DOS. I have so far found no articles on other language Wikipedias that should link to "Disk operating system", although the German article de:Disk Operating System is ripe for splitting into two.

Also, I propose we get rid of the merge-tag at the top of both articles, as now, they are clearly about two entirely different topics.

Ae-a 17:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Good work! I'd say "get rid of the merge tag", as I oppose the merge as well. Guy Harris 20:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Yep - English may be the only one to have two different articles, but that doesn't mean it's wrong :) Lovingboth 12:47, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I have now removed the merge tags from both articles, as nobody has come forward to oppose the removal of the merge notice. Ae-a 10:30, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Dos in spanish? Coincindence?

The trivia is both dull and useless! Great

Merge with X86 DOS Comparison?

Just my own two cents' worth, but I originated the x86 DOS Comparison page since I saw that there wasn't a page that performed a feature analysis/comparison between the varios x86 dos versions. If it's merged, just don't lose the info I worked so hard to scrape together. I personally think that info would just clutter up the DOS page.--MARQUIS111 20:47, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The two articles should be kept separate. x86 DOS Comparison is informative, but would clutter up the DOS article if it were to be merged. Ae-a 13:36, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

My opinion it to keep it seperate as well, so I'll remove the tags... RN 20:22, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

The name DOS

(as in MS-DOS, PC-DOS ...) Is it an acronym ? Or not ? A I miss a definitive answer.

xerces8,

--213.253.102.145 09:49, 7 September 2006 (UTC)