@johl MS-DOS 6.2x’s turn when?

It should be useful for retrogaming developers. DOSBox and FreeDOS’s too.

@johl Holy cow. I guess pigs do fly in this universe.

@johl I’m actually moist

@johl

Academic research needs sources to point to. This allows a lot of papers to be written now.

The power of #OpenSource enabled this. In the end, Microsoft is forced to go open-source to stay relevant. Not, that this small part is important, but still remarkable.

@johl While I'm completely happy with freedos, this is cool.

@johl Windows NT code when?

@johl bug hunting?

@johl this is awesome but I can’t wait for 3.3 or 5.0 - Dos 4 is a rough time

@johl Let me know when they actually release something from this decade.

@johl This is pretty cool, but open source XP or Windows 7 when?

@johl dug into one DOS4 file at random to find

; REV 2.15 7/13/83 ARR BECAUSE IBM IS FUNDAMENTALY BRAIN DAMAGED, AND
; BASCOM IS RUDE ABOUT THE 1CH TIMER INTERRUPT, THE TIMER
; HANDLER HAS TO GO BACK OUT!!!!! IBM SEEMS UNWILLING TO
; BELIEVE THE PROBLEM IS WITH THE BASCOM RUNTIME, NOT THE
; DOS. THEY HAVE EVEN BEEN GIVEN A PATCH FOR BASCOM!!!!!
; THE CORRECT CODE IS COMMENTED OUT

@johl They did 1.25 and 2.0 years and years ago. They still haven't released any of the more useful versions unfortunately (3.x, 5.x, 6.x)

@johl im not sure this is a good. Historically I would consider dos and windows to be the big backstep in IT history, compared to the unices availailable at the time. Same goes for office suites.

@johl @lisamelton I can’t imagine Apple releasing System 7 as open source but I’d sure love to see it.

@johl With binaries for multitasking DOS. Would be interesting to reverse them and compare with the source code.

@johl I was an Apple II owner back then, so knew 6502 assembler, not 8088. It's interesting how much better -- more sophisticated syntax and control structures -- the assembler was by v4.0 compared to v1.25.

@johl
Too late, I needed that in the 1980s. The MS-DOS Operating System Programmer's Reference Manual was okay for applications, but less helpful for what we called 'systems programming'.
#msdos #asm