The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project has released v7.01.07 of Enhanced DR-DOS, an Open Source OS based on DR-DOS 7.01 alias OpenDOS.Major improvements over v7.01.06 include:
– the ability to boot from FAT32 and all primary partitions
– support for the FAT32 disk API
– support for FAT filesystems with 128K cluster size
– enhanced memory management resulting in more free base memory
– enhanced version control
– improved compatibility with MS-DOS and DR-DOS 7.03
It can be downloaded from the project’s website.
I remember the good old days.. DOS.. Then 4DOS, whoah – the power!
Running PCBoard under DesqView – desperately trying to get some kind of multitasking environment on my 486sx50.
Sigh. Those were the days 🙂
why reimplement FAT32 partition reading and memory manager when DR-DOS 8 has all those? the DR_DOS 8 source code is avalible (isn’t it?) so I am corious why use the 7 code base? Device Logics currently owns DR-DOS right? are they still developing it or has it settled at 8? sorry for all the questions
screenshots?
oh wait.
😀 LOL
Out of curiousity, does this project collaborate with the freedos project?
Freedos:
http://www.freedos.org/
What about networking? Is it actually possible to run TCP/IP on this and have some memory left over to do something?
what is the license of this?
From the about on that site. It says that after caldera open sourced the 7.x version. They went back to a close source license on version 8.x.
I am still afraid to use anything owned or released by caldera (now SCO). You never know what crap lawsuit they will try to slap on you later on..
read the about page on his site. dr dos 8 was closed source, so even though it has some cool features the source isn’t available so the dude wanted to continue development with the open source version.
dunno if he’s collaborating with the freedos guys, but it would seem to be a good idea (though their design strategies may differ)…
Just curious, some people are obviously putting a lot of work into this. What’s the real world application to DR-DOS in a gui driven world??
http://drdos.com/products/sourcecode.htm?rnd=1079633470941
@Stu
DOS now is used primarily in the embeded market. though it is also used a lot in system recovery and other various aplications
I use free, caldera, and MS dos every day for data recovery. It’s hard to beat.
I seem to recall some of those ‘of the shelf’ robotic parts still use dos and understand BASIC (with line numbers and everything).
Didn’t think your twenty year old experience with an apple ][ would pan out for something anymore did ya? (I know I sure didn’t
For those not aware, 4DOS has been released by JP Software as freeware.
I used to use DOS for recovery as well. I now use PEBuilder. Far superier to DOS. http://nu2.nu/pebuilder/
DOS can connect to the internet. I connected on a 286. There are DOS programs that can check email, IRC, browse html documents. Arachne is a GUI web browser for DOS. Lynx is great too. I use to use my old 286 as a backup to dialup & connect when my main PC had problems. It was fun. I like DOS for it’s simplicity & speed. I wish ID & google would get together & create the best gaming OS ever.
I get a constant laugh out of comments like “What’s the real world application to DR-DOS in a gui driven world??” as they usually come from the sort of people who want to put XP or a full linux distro (with X) into things like Cash Registers, ATM’s and Lottery Machines… Tasks which to be honest a VT-100 dumb terminal would be overkill at P.O.S. (That’s Point of Sale, not Piece of …)
It’s refreshing in this age of Overcomputing (my pet term for using a sledgehammer on a fly) that at least SOME people continue to update and maintain software like DOS… At least indicating some people realize that using a 3ghz P4 on a job a 4mhz Z-80 would be overkill on is very special… in the same way some olympics are special.
You realized that you can contact DL-Sales fromt his page and you can’t download the source?
Whatever, i use FreeDOS.
@deathshadow: I agree. There are also a lot of legacy applications still being used in the business world that run in DOS. I work in these on a daily basis, and have since April of 2001. There has been talk several times about rewriting them into a Windows-based or Web-based set of applications, but the truth is, nobody wants to foot the bill to convert over a million lines of Nantucket Clipper and C for DOS into something else!
To be honest, I really enjoy working in DOS. To me it is just simpler to type a few commands at the console then to go through the point-and-click routine of Windows.
BTW, that is also one of the reasons I use and love Linux and FreeBSD so much. 🙂
Real-World-Example: In your local DTS powered cinema for example, there is a good change the DTS decoders run on DOS.
So without DOS you might only have boring analog stereo sound.
“DTS” wow! I didn’t know that!
Any other examples of DOS useage in the modern day?
I once read about “QubeOS” it was a desktop/GUI for Dos based and I think even Linux based system. It had a nice look and feel to it. Then it just disappeared. Anyone know what happened to it?
Dave
I still have Qube installed – it runs as an app within Windows; I never tried it in DOS or Linux. As far as I know only one Qube application was ever released, a small calculator program. “Qube. It wants to be better.”
Interactive Studios is the company that released Qube, but they’ve removed all mention of it from their website.
http://www.interactivestudio.sk/index_en.htm
If you like I can e-mail you the Qube file and the calculator program.
Best Wishes,
Bob
At least, US Army still uses some DOS-based helicopter pilot management program…
http://www.undercoverdesign.com/dosghost/dos/dosw31.asp
http://www.rahul.net/dkaufman/index.html
http://www.dosgames.com
http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~dcastle/bookmarks/linkpages/DOSlinks.htm
http://mpxplay.cjb.net
http://www.geocities.com/disk_operative_system/index2.htm
http://sealsystem.sourceforge.net
http://fishnet.no-ip.org:81/winworld/forum/index.php
http://gem.shaneland.co.uk
This site still hosts QuebeOS.
http://sf.gds.tuwien.ac.at/q/qu/qubeos/
I use DOS in my car computer/stereo using the nice mpxplay.
http://mpxplay.tx.hu/
DR-DOS 7.03 has always been my absolute favorite DOS. It is packs the most features and amazingly is also the most compact in size. This makes it perfect for, say, boot disks where every kilobyte counts. In my unscientific tests I found that it even boots faster.
DR-DOS has a more advanced batch language than MS-DOS (like GOSUB as well as GOTO). If I remember correctly, DR-DOS even allows you to do multitasking or task switching. Oh, and its documentation – DOSBOOK – is absolutely amazing.
What DR-DOS 7.03 always lacked, however, was FAT32 support. I think there were some drivers to do it, but I never could get them working. Because of this, I had to keep MS-DOS and FreeDOS diskettes around as well. I am thrilled that this guy added support FAT32 support to the OS. I would like to shake his hand.
To the people that think DOS is obsolete – this isn’t entirely true. Although I have found things like WinPE very useful in data recovery, DOS will always be better to use in some scenarios – especially on legacy hardware.
Also, as some other people mentioned, DOS is usually perfect for embedded devices. Just think about the boot-times of DOS versus embedded Linux or Windows CE – I want my car MP3 player to boot up within 3 seconds, not 30.
to bad about QubeOS. It had some interesting ideas.
DOS even makes a decent desktop os with the righ gui. oZone looked like it was gona be the best….but I think its dead. http://ozonegui.sourceforge.net/
WinTix was also good, but jsut vanashed overnight a while back. and then there is/was Seal…..so muhc potential but it seems jsut as dead. OpenGEM though is really nice, I cant wait till the 4.0 release….though it looks sooo old. mabey if it were themeable
(hint hint)
Ya, found that OzoneGUI yesterday and gave try of the win version. It was a lot like QubeOS but seemed to be farther along. But, alas it appears to be dead. It looks like it might be Open Source, but it doesn’t seem to be really avaliable.
It is a shame really. Gem seems to be the only one left being worked on it and it just plain UGLY. QubeOS and OzoneGUI both look and respond very, very nicely. But aren’t anywhere near useable. Then they just get dropped. A lot of OOS software goes this way. But I really wish they would at least continue with OZoneGUI. So much potential and it looks to have stoped just when it was really starting….
It is under developement at the moment…and you can write word files (*.doc) 🙂
DrDOS 7.01.07 is OK
Congratulations