Virtually Fun cleaned up the recently published DOS 4.0 source code and now NTDEV made this real time video of getting it compiling on a period appropriate processor (albeit several years later variant in terms of clock speed) #RetroComputing#history#msdos Compiling MS-DOS 4.0 - on a 386 in real time!
Growing up with MS-DOS, I knew its role in today's Windows' usage of \ to separate directories and / for command-line arguments (choices that sound quirk-y in an Unix-influenced world that uses / and -, respectively.)
I never understood why MSFT - a very Unix-aware shop, having released their XENIX a year before MS-DOS - went with such an odd choice, until I looked at the (recently open-sourced) MS-DOS source code.
The files include documentation for computer manufacturers (so they could write compatible BIOS code, customize distribution, etc.), and this piece on MS-DOS 2.0 (which introduced subdirectories) suggests that - as usual in those times - the party behind the odd decision was none other than IBM:
🧠💻 This isn't just a personal organizer - this little HP 200LX (1994) means business, boasting a 7.91 MHz 80186 processor and running the MS-DOS operating system 🤩
Last week, Microsoft released DOS 4.0 as open source. In this blog post, I explore why DOS 4 was the version most people avoided in the past, where to get a fork that builds without issue, and why we already have a better DOS 4 than we did in the 80s. #retrocomputing#msdos#opensourcehttps://dfarq.homeip.net/why-not-use-ms-dos-4-0/
Back in the day, game developers needed to explain and justify each and every file that came with a game. The user was respected as the local system administrator and owner of the computer.
today, some obscure sierra on-line & dynamix history that shouldn't be obscure yet is due to how gaming culture developed: Front Page Sports Baseball. this just came in the mail, and i'm so glad to finally have my own copy after playing a demo from a CD-ROM Today! magazine cover disc as a kid.
this dynamix-produced and sierra-published title is weird for a bunch of reasons.
first, it's one of the last few DOS-only games that came out in the mid-90s.
second, it runs in hi-res mode using what i suspect is a blend of software-rendered 3D and 2D sprites that were a holdover from dynamix's 3Space engine used in almost all of dynamix's titles. (pic 2) the animation is crisp, the sprites are beautifully rendered in a very compressed colour palette.
third, the Front Page Sports series were massive hits - outselling other sierra/dynamix titles of the time. but no one talks about it, because sports games often get irritated yawns from gamers.
fourth, this game is fun to play. it's not just an average EA sports-style title. the batting/pitching gameplay is addictive, and the simulation of the players and teams is deep.
and finally, there is - unbelievably - still an active FPS Baseball community still modding and developing rosters for the game. someone maintains a tool that generates websites that lets other people see the outcomes of your baseball games like a late-90s ESPN network site 🤣 https://www.silverbox.com/biorhythm/
One of the people who helped archive the MS-DOS 4.0 source code, @starfrost, started writing an extensive and interesting story about the history behind 4.0 and the archived Multitasking DOS (MT-DOS) builds: https://starfrost.net/blog/001-mdos4-part-1/index.html
(the page didn't render well on mobile for me but it can be fixed by switching to "Reader view" in Firefox)
MS-DOS sources released: Finally I can peek at what was happening below the hood when I started using a computer 30+ years ago 🤭 https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS
MS-DOS 4.x is... complicated. There was a 4.0 with multitasking ("MT-DOS") and a later one without. Both report themselves as "MS-DOS Version 4.00". The code on GiHub seems to be the non-multitasking version.
I highly recommend reading through the OS/2 Museum's posts on DOS history:
Breaking IT news: #Microsoft just open-sourced MS-DOS 4.0. Versions 1.25 and 2.0 had already been open-source (MIT License) since 2018. If you’ve ever used DOS in the 1990s, you most likely were using v5.0 or v6.x. Those later versions likely won’t be released as open-source due to third-party restrictions.
Buildings provide excellent protective cover for Combat Droids. If you're defending a base, you need to keep enemy Combat Droids out of here, as once they get in, the droids are very difficult to shift with all but the most powerful units. #barrenplanet#ibmpc#msdos#cga