«

[Rogue]

Not sure if you guys have seen this. It makes interesting read:

What was the role of MS-DOS in Windows 95?

[Eagle of Fire]

If it was true, yes...

It does sound pretty much right, but there is a few disparancies which I just can't agree with. Then, the writter goes into such details that I can't continue to follow.

The big part I have no choice to agree with is that Win95 and Win98 didn't have DOS. They had a dumbed down version of DOS. Even the so called "dos mode" wasn't the "real" DOS. This led to many problems when trying to run DOS programs, and that's probably what he's talking about in great depth.

The whole idea was, of course, to continue to get new Windows versions out until DOS wasn't a factor anymore. That's what they did with XP, and luckily they did it well for once. Unfortunatly, as everybody knows... With next to no compatibility whatsoever with old programs...

That's why VDMSound and DOSBox projects were started in the first place!

[Geezer]

Actually it was NT and not XP that first introduced the ntloader(NTLDR), which is what XP still uses to boot itself. Windows NT actually came out before Win 95.

[dosraider]

In fact W95/W98 had 'real' dos, but it wasn't dos6.22 anymore.
Several memory managers were altered, gave compability problems sometimes.

If you wanna call dos6.22 'real' dos, then yeah, W95/98 hadn't 'real' dos.
But then Freedos nor DRDos (or whatever dos) aren't real neither.

[Japo]

What I never understood is, if the only reason for Windows 4.x being so crappy was having DOS compatibiliy, why its DOS version was relatively so uncompatible --at least as far as games go-- with previous stand-alone versions. Well I guess there must be a reason.

[dosraider]

It was incompatible with dosgaming to protect itself.
The dosenvironment in NTs is only meant for system programs.
All the hardware request/adressing/memory management (IRQ-DMA...) must go via NT, no direct access allowed, and that's now precisely the greatest difference with dos and certainly dosgames!
And dosgames usually need fixed IRQ for sound, when pnp was introduced the IRQ were 'not fixed' anymore, the OS decided what gets the IRQ. Example: dosgames need a fixed SB IRQ (5 or 7 usually) and direct access ... what's refused by the NT os.

And add a ton more incompabilities, Fact is dosgames belong in Dos, not in NT, none finds it strange that you can't run dosgames directly on a Mac or in Linux, same goes for the NT ones.

That's why there is dosbox, VPC, VDMS ... etcetera.

[Rogue]

Win9X, just as he said at begging - HAS DOS and DOS is used to boot Windows environment.
So to answer EoF, if you copy rest of DOS stuff from Win9X tool foldedr >> OldMSDos folder into C:\Windows\Command folder, and if you break boot up of Windows and make proper change and install necessary drivers, you have DOS machine out of Win9X machine. No, you will not get DOS 6.22, but DOS 7.0.
Of course, you have to know a thing or two about DOS, how to utilize memory, load drivers into high memory, so that your program will have enough memoty to start.

None of the games I tested from Abandonia didn't fail to load on computer setup like that. Even if you load windows, and then switch into DOS, only program what was left running is Win, which took about 3KB. To see what's really taking your memory in DOS environment (this will not work in DOSBox) just use mem command with parameter c (type: mem /c).

dosraider, we are talking about Win9X, which has nothing to do with NT kernel.