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From: ted@imsvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: New Dos from Microsoft
Message-ID: <705@imsvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 31-Mar-87 11:55:12 EST
Article-I.D.: imsvax.705
Posted: Tue Mar 31 11:55:12 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 2-Apr-87 05:23:21 EST
Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD
Lines: 49

glenn@dlcdev.UUCP: Data Language Corp.

>In late Feb at Microsoft's Systems Software Seminar the "New DOS"
>was discussed. From the description:

>-  Single-user, multi-tasking
>-  300K to 600K of code? (DOS 3.2 takes about 50K)
>-  189 function calls (DOS 3.2 has about 70)
>-  Uses protected mode so applications cannot directly access hardware

>I wonder if New DOS is not just most of XENIX in DOS clothing.  It sure
>looks like it to me.  If this is the case then I guess New DOS will
>really be SLOW DOS.  You remember that one of the main reasons 1-2-3
>was so successful was that it directly accessed hardware and so ran
>quite fast. With New DOS this apparently will not be possible?  One
>possible good consequence of this is that New DOS machines will not
>have to be "100% IBM compatible" since the New DOS will isolate
>applications from hardware thru device drivers, with actual hardware
>being "inaccessible" to applications?  What say you?

I say you seem to have noticed the same thing which I have:  that a
great deal of money and energy has been spent in a manner likely to make
very few if any people happier than they are now and many less happy.

Going to ADOS or any of the new series of protected mode OSs on 286
equipment would involve giving up two things which seem critical to me:

1.      All of the TSR software which allows us to modify the OS itself
        to our likeing.  We would then have to HOPE that we would
        forever be satisfied with ADOS exactly as it came from
        Microsoft.

2.      All of the huge body of really good software which has been
        written in 80x86 assembler.  This includes professional packages
        like WordPerfect and 123, brilliant one-offs such as LPTX and
        key-do, and all sorts of things in between, as well as things
        such as the Cibray math library, the Lahey Fortran compiler etc.
        You don't get stuff like this being written for most multi-user
        machines because the market isn't there.

        Basically, the 286 protected mode is incompatible with the the
existing body of DOS software and, while the 386 machines will be able
to handle DOS windows, I have the feeling that they will go for some
time being just slightly too expensive for most people to justify as
single user machines and users will find themselves right back where
they were in 1975, the boss simply adding a new terminal to the 386
every time a new employee is hired.

Ted Holden