Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ccicpg!mahrk
From: mahrk@ccicpg.UUCP (MHR {who?})
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: DR DOS
Keywords: dos,ibm
Message-ID: <10851@ccicpg.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jan 91 18:32:10 GMT
References: <278ab4b6-2430comp.ibmpc@point.UUCP>
Organization: ICL North America
Lines: 51

In <278ab4b6-2430comp.ibmpc@point.UUCP>, akcs.vladimer@point.UUCP writes:
> Does anybody know anything about this product? Is it really anywhere near
> as good as their ads seem to claim?
>  
> What are the drawbacks? bugs? fatal flaws?

I bought DR-DOS 3.31, which was supposedly the functional equivalent of
MS-DOS 4.00 (had support for > 32Mb hard disks, some other stuff).
Overall I found it to be a really nice product with a couple of
exceptions:

1) I found I was not using some of its advanced features, like the
command history recall/editing, because I got that and more with CED
(evaluation: not bad, but not as good as - well, keep reading), which
has aliasing as well.

2) My wife and I make extensive use of the SUBST command.  In MS-DOS,
this is an external command (actually, an EXE program).  BUT, in DR-DOS
this is an internal command, which means it is essentially inaccessible
except from the command line.  In order to do the equivalent of calling
SUBST from inside another program or a batch file, I had to substitute
calling COMMAND.COM with the /C option and specifying the subst command
that way, which takes forever and grinds the disk.  It got to be too
irritating to continue.

3) Some things (can't remember which, exactly - this was over 6 months
ago) just didn't work right or worked occasionally.  For one thing, the
formatter works completely differently and in a way which is not 100%
compatible with MS-DOS's formatter (or MS-DOS).  This was a real pain
(had to reformat one of my hard drives to convert - yecch!).  Also, the
documentation only includes a (well written but brief) user's guide (no
technical reference, but available for an extra $25 from DR).  Also, I
couldn't specify ram drives or cache in my EMS, and the limit on the
former was 256k (I have 384k EMS) anyway.

I finally got hold of an MS-DOS 3.31 (the Acer version) and have been
using that and 4DOS ever since.  Both are much nicer for my personal
use, and the 4DOS interface beats CED in many ways (like inclusion of a
fair number of handy commands that xx-DOS lacks altogether and which
replaced about 20-30 of my little PC Magazine utilities).

Ultimately I felt that there were just too many things which DR-DOS did
differently from MS-DOS in ways that made it unusable for me.  BTW,
anyone want a copy of DR-DOS 3.30?  Available (cheap) with book and
original floppies on request.

-- 
Mark A. Hull-Richter    Witty comment (identified for those who lack wit):
ICL North America       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^-----------vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
9801 Muirlands Blvd     UUCP: ccicpg!mahrk      Go ahead, flame me. I have
Irvine, CA  92713       (714)458-7282x4539      a /dev/null on my machine.