Talk:DOS

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Contents

[edit] 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)

It's all capitals because it's an acronym. 69.221.137.254 02:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect

it says:

"or until about 2000, if one includes DOS-based Windows 95 and Windows 98 systems)"

ME was dos based too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.16.160.17 (talk) 16:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

Disk operating system is something entirely different. See the subsection #Merge with disk operating system? for more details. Ae-a 00:05, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.

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)

[edit] Dos in spanish? Coincindence?

The trivia is both dull and useless! Great

[edit] 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)

DOS as "disk operating system" first was applied to an entirely different product, the "Disk Operating System" supplied with the IBM 360 and 370 mainframes. Search for DOS/360, DOS/370.
In any case, the current DOS thing not only refers to an Operating system, but to the user paradigms that it produced, eg drive-letters, assorted "expected" commands, case-insensitive file names, file extentions, etc, in much the same way that UNIX has POSIX and case-sensitivity. --Wendy.krieger (talk) 11:25, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

MS-DOS: MicroSoft Disk Operating System PC-DOS: IBM's variant, Personal Computer Disk Operating System --SolarisBigot 17:55, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup Desperately Needed

This article is a disconnected redundant collection of factoids, much like the following will be: Linux emulation is discussed twice. DOS 1-6 history and DOS7+ history come in two distinct section which are interrupted by blather about hardware access. The timeline should probably *be* a timeline (i.e., a table or a list). The operation of scandisk is (mis)clarified by reference to fsck, which is probably *less* familiar to 90% of the wikipedia's audience than scandisk itself. (And, while both are disk-checking programs, the similarities of scandisk and fsck end there.) The first paragraph purports to discuss generic DOS but the rest of the article is about two names for the same specific DOS, MS- and PC-. Etc, etc. I've been reading DOS/IBM/PC articles all day and you couldn't have a more essential bit of history combined with a frustratingly poorly written collection of articles. The average Wikipedia article is so much better than these. 216.77.225.52 00:35, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] OS/2

"It is also possible to run DOS programs under OS/2... using virtual-machine emulators."

WRONG. OS/2 runs DOS programs natively. OS/2 has FULLY PC-DOS running everytime in background.
DOS in OS/2 is based on PC-DOS 3.3 (for 1.x) and PC-DOS 5.0 (for 2.x and later). These DOS versions have a lot of things removed from native dos, but allow OS/2 control of the process higher up in the API chain. This allows OS/2 to control things like custom config.sys settings in different VM machines, externally stored drivers etc.
However, PC-DOS is not running all of the time in OS/2 as it is not in Windows NT. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wendy.krieger (talk • contribs) 07:19, August 28, 2007 (UTC) is mine! Wendy.krieger 07:22, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Content should merge with MS-DOS because of other meanings

I came not for an explanation of MS-DOS, PC-DOS, AppleDOS, NovellDOS, or any other operating system for that matter. I wanted to know more about a denial-of-service attack, which is more accurately "DOS" than MS-DOS, PC-DOS, etc as those have distinguishing prefixes. -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.212.235.90 (talk • contribs) 23:54, 13 November 2007

[edit] Split_section_out_proposal

Common disussion on talk:MS-DOS#Split_section_out_proposal
fixing up links// FrankB 04:03, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

There are separate timelines on this page, MS-DOS, and PC-DOS. Wouldn't it make more sense to combine these? 130.101.20.153 16:25, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, continue discussion on talk:MS-DOS#Split_section_out_proposal. // FrankB 05:26, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Errors in the DOS entry

The entire opening sequence in this entry appears to have been written via tribal knowledge by a post-generational individual with a poor command of grammar and writing. I will add the the following corrections and comments to the DOS entry (1st page, up to "History") and assume that an interested party will review and make the necessary corrections. The portion from "History" onward is accurate (to the best of my knowledge) and better written (IMHO), or, at least, edited more carefully.

Desirable Edits:

1) (...meaning Disk (or Diskette) Operating System)

2) The DEC-10 and "successor VMX/VAX) series..." are specific to the Digital Equipment Corporation. Competing lines (such as Data General) also had versions (my company at the time used the DG Nova systems, with RDOS (Realtime Disk(ette)OS). I also believe (but can't verify) that VMS was the OS for the VAX, not the series of computers.

3) The VAX was not generally considered a mini-computer -- the VAX720/750 were goodly-sized, and a 780 was downright large. I'd pay more attention (DOS-wise) to the DEC PDP-8 and PDP-11, the latter being the benchmark minicomputer of the era.

4) "main frame computers" -- "mainframe" is, generally, one word.

5) "IBM PC compatible" should be "PC-compatible".

6) Following "between 1981 and 1998" is an open-parentheses which is never closed (unless it's the one preceding "GUI" that's never closed...). That begins an incredibly run-on sentence that is nearly impossible to parse and should be broken up into two or three.

7) At the end of that very long sentence, there should be no apostrophe in "its architecture", and immediately following, the word is "embedded", not "imbedded".

8) In the middle of that sentence, "Microsoft" requires a capital M.

9) Next paragraph, "same eras common IBM/AT" needs an apostrophe: era's.

10) The dismissal of DOS 6.xx (in favor of Win 95) is a bit simplistic -- DOS 6.22 would still run Win 3.1, and Windows 95 had memory and system requirements that the earlier PCs would not keep up with -- as well as issues running the catalog of DOS-based applications. DOS and Win 3.1 lasted a lot longer than you give them credit for.

Lisztman (talk) 04:26, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move January 2008

This page was moved, then moved back; see the discussion here: (old version of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#DOS and MS-DOS Compatible Operating Systems). If you are concerned that DOS isn't real, but should be part of the MS-DOS article, see the arguments posted at the merge request and vote for deletion, as this was the main issue of these proposals. Thanks, 69.221.152.25 (talk) 18:44, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

those are either stupid arguments or made in stupid ways. DOS means Disc Operating System which is NOTHING specific to MS-DOS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.125.110.223 (talk) 21:27, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DOS in Vista

I think Vista is the first NT system to exclude any kind of DOS functioning, but I want to make sure before i say so in the article. Llama (talk) 07:04, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

At least as I read what Microsoft are saying in this FAQ entry, no, that's not the case:
Will my MS-DOS applications continue to run under Windows Vista without modification?
Yes, they will.
Not all DOS programs run on Windows Vista... SF007 (talk) 13:08, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Vista isn't "DOS-based" in the sense that some might consider Windows 95/98/Me "DOS-based", but older versions of Windows NT (3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 5.0 a/k/a Windows 2000, 5.1 a/k/a Windows XP) weren't "DOS-based" in that sense, either. Guy Harris (talk) 09:02, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

They use something called NTVDM.EXE (NT Virtual DOS Machine). In my own experience it works pretty badly. Example- Start -> Run, and tell it to run COMMAND. It will open the MS-DOS command interpreter in NTVDM; see how slowly the letters appear when you type. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 18:48, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Remove Path Name using prompt command

[edit] DOS was never called DOS

In spite of the title of this article, there has never been a microcomputer operating system called "DOS"; the only OS with this name was for the IBM 360 mainframe. It just became habitual to speak of DOS to group MS-DOS and PC-DOS, and later others. And the early versions of MS-DOS didn't only run on IBM-PC-compatible hardware but also on some significantly different x86 architectures (e.g., Sirius, Apricot) without the 640kB memory limit and with incompatible expansion cards.Pol098 (talk) 15:15, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Non-x86

A number of microcomputers had Disk Operating Systems, and it was habitual to refer to them as DOS. For example, if you read old Apple II literature, the use of DOS is often mentioned. This needs to be in an encylopaedia entry. Pol098 (talk) 15:34, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citations needed

I tagged this as needing citations. Specifically, it needs sources for these sections:

  • DOS and Microsoft Windows
  • Accessing hardware under DOS
  • Reserved device names under DOS
  • The DOS boot sequence
  • Drive naming scheme (some of this is covered by citations in the main article)

I know from my own OR that much of this is correct, but it still needs citations, and I can't find any online. Does anybody have books about DOS where this is brought up? Maybe even "DOS for Dummies" would work. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 19:43, 27 May 2008 (UTC)