[HN Gopher] PC DOS Reimagined
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       PC DOS Reimagined
        
       Author : ingve
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2020-12-23 11:08 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.pcjs.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.pcjs.org)
        
       | curlypaul924 wrote:
       | I remember when I first learned about multitasking. I think I
       | read an article in Compute! or PC Magazine about Desqview or
       | Concurrent DOS, and I remember wondering "Who would ever want to
       | run two programs at the same time? Nobody has a multitasking
       | brain!"
        
         | loloquwowndueo wrote:
         | Desqview was acceptable to run a two-line Dial-up BBS on the
         | same machine. It had stability issues beyond that so when the
         | need arose for a third line we moved to OS/2 which was
         | wonderful to multitask DOS applications in. The internet killed
         | our little BBS before we had a need for four lines and beyond
         | :)
        
           | ghaff wrote:
           | There was a cottage industry of software to get around DOS'
           | single-tasking limitations. DoubleDOS was another program
           | that let you have multiple sessions. There were terminate and
           | stay resident (TSR) program like Sidekick.
        
       | raphlinus wrote:
       | If you want to match the font of the IBM PC technical
       | documentation, it's ITC Garamond, not Times. Very characteristic
       | of the era, Apple also adopted it (in it condensed variant).
        
       | eqvinox wrote:
       | This kinda happened in the UNIX world:
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_shell
        
       | Crontab wrote:
       | As an OS nerd, I find this very interesting. Thanks for posting
       | it.
        
       | kiwidrew wrote:
       | This is very cool!
       | 
       | The IBM PC (and clone) hardware was progressing rapidly at the
       | time: from an 8-bit 8088 @ 4.77Mhz with 64-256K RAM to much much
       | faster 16-bit 80286/80386 systems @ 16Mhz+ with 2-4MB RAM in just
       | a few short years.
       | 
       | As a consequence of this rapid progress, the software of the era
       | didn't really exist for long enough to get heavily optimized and
       | [with the exception of certain games] never pushed the PC/XT
       | hardware to anywhere near its full capabilities.
        
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       (page generated 2020-12-23 23:00 UTC)