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Subject: Re: MCP7 and DOS obstinacy

Author: Amir Ban

Date: 07:49:21 12/04/97

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On December 04, 1997 at 05:43:47, Peter Herttrich wrote:

>On December 03, 1997 at 18:42:04, Chris Whittington wrote:
>
>

>Then, from what you are talking? WIN95 is no OS! It's a GUI!
>You don't believe it? Ever made the 'mode co80 test'?
>If you drive down your WIN95, wait for the 'You can now switch off the
>computer'. Now type blind 'mode co80'. Voila, DOS7! Clean and pure.
>
>This combination of software (DOS7 and the WIN95GUI) is  the biggest
>pile of software-shit, i've ever seen.
>And this makes the trouble with installing and running.
>
>I will never understand why Mickey-Soft has not build a real 32Bit-
>DOS and then a usable GUI.
>

This is a very wrong description of Windows.

Windows is a true O/S, and has been since version 3.0. Its real kernel
is the VMM and the VxD's, which are 32-bit protected mode code, and have
nothing to do with DOS. Windows 3.x had to be started from DOS, so there
was a misconception that Windows runs on top of DOS. In reality the DOS
support that exists in Windows runs on top of Windows. Microsoft of
course always wanted DOS programs to run on Windows, so Windows has a
DOS emulator through int 21 hex. In the past large parts of this DOS
emulator were taken from the original DOS code itself, especially the
FAT file-system. In Windows 95, almost the entire DOS emulator is 32-bit
protected-mode code.

Windows still briefly goes through DOS 7.0 for bootstrapping, but once
the system is up, DOS 7.0 is not in charge.

Regarding plug-n-play, you can argue about its success, but you have to
give due credit to Microsoft for making a serious effort to solve a
problem that they correctly see as making systems not to work and
keeping ordinary users away from computers. DOS never even thought of
this, and the highly-praised Unix is still in the stone age in that
regard.

Amir


>Peter



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