Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!cg-atla!fredex
From: fredex@cg-atla.UUCP (Fred Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: distinguishing between MS and IBM(PC) DOS
Message-ID: <8288@cg-atla.UUCP>
Date: 23 Jan 90 17:33:56 GMT
References: <5134@solo6.cs.vu.nl> <261@utrcu1.UUCP> <2638@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <1354@maytag.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: fredex@cg-atla.UUCP (Fred Smith)
Organization: Agfa Compugraphic Division
Lines: 25

In article <1354@maytag.waterloo.edu> dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch) writes:
>In article <2638@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> kaleb@mars.UUCP (Kaleb Keithley) writes:
>>Which means that Olivetti licensed it's DOS from IBM rather than Microsoft,
>>therefore, it's really PC-DOS instead of MS-DOS.
>
>This raises the question:  is there any systematic difference between
>MS-DOS and PC-DOS, other than who collected the royalties and what "ver"
>prints?  
>
>In other words, a question to the original poster:  why would
>anyone want to distinguish between them?
>
>Duncan Murdoch


For example: the versionof MS-DOS 3.30 which comes with the Nec Powermate 386/20
supports three (3) different types of hard disk formats. One of them is a standard
MS-DOS layout with 32mb max per disk partition, one is a "standard" NEC layout
with 32mb max per partition, and one is a "new standard" NEC layout with
unlimited partition sizes.

If you were doing things that needed to access the hard disk directly (bypassing
DOS) you would need to know whose DOS you were using!

Fred