Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!milton!dali.cs.montana.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!lll-winken!xanth!xanth.cs.odu.edu!bianco From: bianco@cs.odu.edu (David J. Bianco) Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc Subject: Re: DR-DOS Message-ID: Date: 20 Jul 90 20:11:04 GMT References: <1121@fang.dsto.oz> <8502@ur-cc.UUCP> Sender: news@cs.odu.edu Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA Lines: 23 In-reply-to: ttak@uhura.cc.rochester.edu's message of 20 Jul 90 13:56:56 GMT In article <8502@ur-cc.UUCP> ttak@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Timothy Takahashi) writes: I've heard of Dr-DOS, but never actually seen anybody run it. What are the "few differences?" Is it better/faster/smaller than MS-DOS? I've never attempted to find any difference from a programmer's POV for DR-DOS 4.0, but I was pleased with it both as a programmer and as a user. The command interpreter lies somewhere between COMMAND.COM and 4DOS. I much prefer 4DOS, though. The only problem I ever had with it concerned disk swapping with Turbo C++ which I why I switched to MSDOS. Since DR-DOS allows 512MB partitions if you have the space, it's disk structure is inherently non-standard (or at least, not what 3.x uses. I dont know about DOS 4.x, since I dont have it). This gave TC++ some problems which caused it to lock up when trying to shell to disk. However, many programs could function quite well with it. PC Tools 5.5 did a very good job with it, even the disk optimizer. Some of its other interesting features include: password protection of files and subdirs, online DOS help, comes with the GEM environment, inludes LIM4.0 drivers, command line editing and history (up to 4K buffer), full screen editor comes standard (its not much but its better than nothing!), and, if you are a systems designer, it can operate from ROM.