Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!pilchuck!amc-gw!thebes!polari!georgf
From: georgf@polari.UUCP (George Forsman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Need input for future DOS release
Message-ID: <1471@polari.UUCP>
Date: 29 Mar 90 07:00:27 GMT
References: <53686@microsoft.UUCP> <25100009@adaptex>
Reply-To: georgf@.UUCP (George Forsman)
Organization: PolarServ, Seattle WA
Lines: 61

In article <25100009@adaptex> neese@adaptex.UUCP writes:
>
>>Microsoft is working on a major upgrade to DOS and I'd like to solicit
>>input from the "power user" communitiy.  I've never met a programmer who
>>didn't think that they could have "done it better" with regards to someone
>>else's product, so here's an opportunity to enlighten us.
>
>1) A more flexible way to allow removeable media support?
>2) Bourne shell like features in COMMAND.COM (i.e. wild-cards, meta-char..)

Yes, this would be nice.

>3) No more 1024 cylinder restrictions.  I know this would be more difficult
>   to do and keep backward compatiblity, but look hard at this.  A
>   resonable restriction would be 4096 cylinders, 64 heads, 64 sectors/trk.

The restriction exists in the IBM PC bios and has been propogated to new BIOSs
(DOS also inherits the problem).  Removing the 1024 cylinder restriction in DOS
will not help most machines, and may even cause serious problems.  (To see the
problem, look at a Partition table description, only 10 bits are allowed for
the cylinder.  Since the partition table is interpreted by the BIOS, a change
in BIOS operation is needed for it to work.)

The typical solution to this problem is to get a controller card that does
it's own virtual track mapping so that the BIOS and DOS see the drive as 
having less than 1024 cylinders.

>4) Support for more than 2 mass storage devices.

As far as I know, MS-DOS will support as many drives as the ROM BIOS will
support.  I have not had any personal experience with more than two
physical drives, but I have been told that DOS already does this.

>5) A complete MS-DOS development system that would include the tools that makes
>   UNIX so nice to develope on (i.e. grep, sed, awk, vi, cut, paste...).

This could be part of a "developer package" offered as an option. Remember that
MS-DOS is used by lots of "end-users" who would not have need for these tools
Unix systems are a little different in that users and administrators share the
same system.

This is not to say the Microsoft should go as far as IBM and remove things
like EXE2BIN, LINK, etc. from the DOS disks and only offer them with the
programmer's reference.

>6) A better file system, that would allow unlimited partition sizes.  I know
>   this would break some things, but make how about the option anyway.

Better file system, yes!  HPFS for DOS would be really neat, even thought
there might not be any memory left after it was activated.

"Unlimited partition size?"  how about 2gig?  DOS version 4.0 has this 
already.  (And yes, it does break things, but not as many as you might expect)

>
>			Roy Neese
>			Adaptec Central Field Applications Engineer

      George Forsman
      ...uw-beaver!sumax!polari!georgf
"Only 15 miles from Microsoft!"