DOS on a new PC.

  • Thread starter Thread starter richmarin
  • Start date Start date
R

richmarin

Newbie here.

I tried this once before. When I try to run DOS on a new PC, I had
trouble see anything with the monitor. My guess is the old device
driver could not handle the modern hardware.

What can I do to DOS in ordre to solve this problem.

...
 
Normally, every system executes either mode 3 or mode 7
video. These legacy modes are used by the BIOS when booting
and is what DOS uses. If your BIOS starts up in straight text
mode, that would be mode 3 or 7.

Might look for something in BIOS setup that enables or
disables these original legacy video modes that every VGA
video subsystem supports.

There is no device driver. Dos program writes directly to
video memory or uses standard video bios code that is inside
video controller to enter each letter - without using anything
in DOS and without using any drivers.
 
Newbie here.

I tried this once before. When I try to run DOS on a new PC, I had
trouble see anything with the monitor. My guess is the old device
driver could not handle the modern hardware.

What can I do to DOS in ordre to solve this problem.
Click to expand...

What next, a USB punch card reader?





;)
 
Newbie here.

I tried this once before. When I try to run DOS on a new PC, I had
trouble see anything with the monitor. My guess is the old device
driver could not handle the modern hardware.

What can I do to DOS in order to solve this problem.
Click to expand...
DOS, at least real DOS 6.2 and before, has some real problems with modern
hardware. It's not a matter of drivers, it's a matter of limits. DOS could
only address 1 MB of memory, of which 640K could be RAM and the rest would
be memory native to devices such as the video card and BIOS. To use more
than 1MB of RAM, it had to be "paged out" to the rest of the system memory
in much the same way virtual memory is paged to the hard drive today. As a
16-bit operating system, it could only address 512 MB per disk partition,
2GB per disk drive. On a large drive, that 512MB partition needs to be on
the first 2GB of the drive or DOS can't find it.

As I'm sure you realize, DOS 7.x and beyond is not really an operating
system. It's a program that runs under Windows to provide a command-line
interface, just as Windows 3.11 and before was a program that ran under DOS
to provide a graphic user interface (GUI).

The idea of running something as simple and clean as DOS on a modern system
is compelling, because we see all the overhead used by modern graphic
operating systems and imagine how fast and efficient it could be at 3+ GHz
with such a clean process. Alas, that clean process can only see a tiny
fraction of the resources modern computers provide.

Now here's the kicker: if you want that kind of clean, command-line
operating system that also provides 32-bit addressing and can use all the
resources of a modern computer, Linux is the obvious choice. Today's Linux
has its share of resource hogs available, but unlike Windows and Mac, you
don't have to be running them.

No, I'm not a Linux geek, not all the time, anyway. It just strikes me as
somewhat like what you were looking for.

If, on the other hand, what you want to do is run Win3.x programs, most of
them will run in Compatibility Mode under Windows XP, and most old DOS
programs will run in the Console window. I'm not actually sure Windows 3.11
itself wouldn't run in a window if you set it up right.
 
Pelysma said:
DOS, at least real DOS 6.2 and before, has some real problems with modern
hardware. It's not a matter of drivers, it's a matter of limits. DOS
could only address 1 MB of memory, of which 640K could be RAM and the rest
would
be memory native to devices such as the video card and BIOS. To use more
than 1MB of RAM, it had to be "paged out" to the rest of the system memory
in much the same way virtual memory is paged to the hard drive today. As
a 16-bit operating system, it could only address 512 MB per disk
partition,
2GB per disk drive. On a large drive, that 512MB partition needs to be on
the first 2GB of the drive or DOS can't find it.
Click to expand...

I agree that 16-bit DOS can access only the first 2gigs of the hard drive,
but there's no additional limitation on partition size within that 2 gigs.
Partitions larger than 512 mB will have larger clusters, but they're still
possible and useable.
As I'm sure you realize, DOS 7.x and beyond is not really an operating
system. It's a program that runs under Windows to provide a command-line
interface, just as Windows 3.11 and before was a program that ran under
DOS to provide a graphic user interface (GUI).
Click to expand...
DOS 7.x's are real-live operating systems. They can run without windows as
a sort of "super-DOS": the disk volume limit is 8 gigs rather than 2 gigs
with earlier versions. DOS 7.x can read/write FAT32 as well as FAT16.
The only drawback is that the defrag program needs windows to run. I
have win98 set up to boot just to the command-line, giving me DOS 7's
advantages. When I need defrag, I just enter "win" from the command prompt
and windows starts up.

(snipped linux plug)

I like linux too.
 
Roby said:
Pelysma wrote:
As

I agree that 16-bit DOS can access only the first 2gigs of the hard drive,
but there's no additional limitation on partition size within that 2 gigs.
Partitions larger than 512 mB will have larger clusters, but they're still
possible and useable.
Click to expand...

You're correct on this point. I was reading in the manual of my DOS
computer, a Packard Bell 486, which does have such a limit. Evidently, it's
not a DOS limit. It may be that this particular system could not support
larger clusters, or that the writer of the manual didn't want to explain how
to do it.
DOS 7.x's are real-live operating systems. They can run without windows
as
a sort of "super-DOS": the disk volume limit is 8 gigs rather than 2 gigs
with earlier versions. DOS 7.x can read/write FAT32 as well as FAT16.
The only drawback is that the defrag program needs windows to run. I
have win98 set up to boot just to the command-line, giving me DOS 7's
advantages. When I need defrag, I just enter "win" from the command
prompt
and windows starts up.
Click to expand...

See what happens if you type "exit" instead of "win."

When you run W98 in DOS mode, you're running a cleaner system than the full
Windows GUI (it's similar to Safe Mode), and there are some things you can
do from the command line that simply can't be done with a mouse. But you're
still looking at a 32-bit protected mode system that uses input to the VGA
video driver to graphically simulate the character-based DOS screen. In
short, Windows 98 is still running, the text you are seeing is created by
the program Command.com (or later, cmd.exe) running full-screen instead of
in a window, and it still doesn't have direct real-mode access to the video
hardware. The difference between 2 and 8 gigs is a direct consequence of
32-bit file access that arrived, not with Windows 95, but with 95OSR2.

My point remains that original DOS will run on a modern system (we did it in
a hardware class at PCC) but can't exploit very much of the potential of a
modern system. There isn't any reason pure DOS couldn't be enlarged, as it
were, for modern systems, but that's not what DOS 7.x does.
 
I tried this once before. When I try to run DOS on a new PC, I had
trouble see anything with the monitor. My guess is the old device
driver could not handle the modern hardware.
Click to expand...

All video cards should still support the older video modes, right down
to CGA, although perhaps a few have stopped doing so. Generally you
need that low-level support at least for the BIOS, but I suppose one
can write a BIOS that uses more advanced video modes exclusively.
 
Pelysma said:
DOS, at least real DOS 6.2 and before, has some real problems with modern
hardware.
Click to expand...

But all modern video hardware still supports the old text-only video
modes, so they should still work.
It's not a matter of drivers, it's a matter of limits. DOS could
only address 1 MB of memory, of which 640K could be RAM and the rest would
be memory native to devices such as the video card and BIOS. To use more
than 1MB of RAM, it had to be "paged out" to the rest of the system memory
in much the same way virtual memory is paged to the hard drive today. As a
16-bit operating system, it could only address 512 MB per disk partition,
2GB per disk drive. On a large drive, that 512MB partition needs to be on
the first 2GB of the drive or DOS can't find it.
Click to expand...

All well and good, but it has nothing to do with simple video modes,
which have been fully supported by DOS since time immemorial.
The idea of running something as simple and clean as DOS on a modern system
is compelling, because we see all the overhead used by modern graphic
operating systems and imagine how fast and efficient it could be at 3+ GHz
with such a clean process.
Click to expand...

Yes. I estimate that in many cases the GUI is consuming 80-90% of the
horsepower of the system when one runs Windows or Mac OS X (or even X
servers under UNIX).
Alas, that clean process can only see a tiny fraction of the resources
modern computers provide.
Click to expand...

Only because DOS hasn't been updated for modern hardware. But a
DOS-like OS could still make excellent use of modern hardware if it
were written for it, and it would be orders of magnitude faster than
GUI-based operating systems.

This is apparent with UNIX systems, which are much faster without a
GUI than with one.
Now here's the kicker: if you want that kind of clean, command-line
operating system that also provides 32-bit addressing and can use all the
resources of a modern computer, Linux is the obvious choice. Today's Linux
has its share of resource hogs available, but unlike Windows and Mac, you
don't have to be running them.
Click to expand...

Actually, UNIX is the obvious choice, not Linux. And if you run a
full-fledged GUI under Linux or UNIX, it will chew through the same
resources that a GUI wastes under Windows or Mac OS X.
 
Pelysma said:
You're correct on this point. I was reading in the manual of my DOS
computer, a Packard Bell 486, which does have such a limit. Evidently,
it's not a DOS limit. It may be that this particular system could not
support larger clusters, or that the writer of the manual didn't want to
explain how to do it.
Click to expand...
<snip>

The 504/528 Mb limit came from a limitation of the IDE standard, as
implemented in the PC BIOS, and in some versions of DOS. DOS 5 and above
can support drives bigger than 2Gb, and indeed larger than 8Gb, but have to
split the space into multiple partitions. Assuming the PC's BIOS supports
it, you could have letters C to Z as 2Gb partitions (using the extended
partition to hold multiple logical drives) giving a maximum theoretical size
of 48Gb. DOS 7, as bundled with Win98, could handle FAT32, as mentioned
earlier.
 
Pelysma said:
See what happens if you type "exit" instead of "win."
Click to expand...
Nothing happens (entry is ignored): there's no place to exit to! I'm
running dos 7.1 all by itself ... just like we would run dos 6.22. I
changed msdos.sys entries under [options] to

BootGUI=0
Logo=0

so it just loads dos and presents the dos prompt. $ mem/c sez

Modules using memory below 1 MB:

Name Total Conventional Upper Memory
-------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
MSDOS 20,112 (20K) 20,112 (20K) 0 (0K)
HIMEM 1,120 (1K) 1,120 (1K) 0 (0K)
DBLBUFF 2,976 (3K) 2,976 (3K) 0 (0K)
IFSHLP 2,864 (3K) 2,864 (3K) 0 (0K)
COMMAND 10,864 (11K) 10,864 (11K) 0 (0K)
Free 617,024 (603K) 617,024 (603K) 0 (0K)

See. No windows.

This machine has 1gig of memory and emm386 has issues with it. I have an
old p90 with 26megs of memory running dos 7.1 without windows installed.
$ mem/c for that machine is:

Modules using memory below 1 MB:

Name Total Conventional Upper Memory
-------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
SYSTEM 14,592 (14K) 10,736 (10K) 3,856 (4K)
HIMEM 1,168 (1K) 1,168 (1K) 0 (0K)
EMM386 4,320 (4K) 4,320 (4K) 0 (0K)
IFSHLP 3,968 (4K) 3,968 (4K) 0 (0K)
4DOS 4,352 (4K) 320 (0K) 4,032 (4K)
XMSDSK 608 (1K) 0 (0K) 608 (1K)
SMARTDRV 50,624 (49K) 0 (0K) 50,624 (49K)
Free 766,448 (748K) 634,560 (620K) 131,888 (129K)

This is not the same animal you get by shelling out of windows by calling a
second instance of command.com or by choosing the boot-to-dos-prompt from
the windows shutdown menu (which also loads a second command.com).
 
Mxsmanic said:
All well and good, but it has nothing to do with simple video modes,
which have been fully supported by DOS since time immemorial.
Click to expand...
mea culpa.

I got sidetracked, responding to a response.
 
Back
Top