It’s no joke. Microsoft and IBM have joined forces to open-source the 1988 working system MS-DOS 4.0 underneath the MIT License. Why? Well, why not?
As Scott Hanselman, Microsoft’s VP of the developer neighborhood, and Jeff Wilcox, head of Microsoft’s Open Source Programs Office, recount in Microsoft’s Open Source Blog, “a younger English researcher named Connor ‘Starfrost’ Hyde corresponded just lately with former Microsoft Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie” concerning the relationship between DOS 4, Multitasking DOS (MT-DOS), and what would turn into IBM and Microsoft’s OS/2.
Also: Ubuntu 24.04: This nice new Linux distro is not simply quick – it is a fortress
That received Hanselman and Wilcox digging into the Microsoft archives. The weblog publish continues: “While they have been unable to seek out the complete supply code for MT-DOS, they did discover MS-DOS 4.00, which we’re releasing at this time, alongside these further beta binaries, PDFs of the documentation, and disk photos.”
This is not the primary time Microsoft has launched MS-DOS supply code. Back in 2014, Microsoft open-sourced the MS-DOS supply code for variations 1.25 and a couple of.0 through the Computer History Museum.
Other DOS variations have additionally been open-sourced over time. PC-MOS/386, a multi-user MS-DOS clone by Norcross, GA-based The Software Link, was open-sourced in 2017. It ran most traditional DOS and 386’s protected mode functions.
Indeed, it was a greater DOS working system than MS-DOS 4.0. For these of you who weren’t working it in 1988 — when The Cosby Show and Roseanne have been the preferred TV reveals within the States and Joe Montanna was main the San Francisco 49ers to their third Super Bowl win — MS-DOS 4.0 was an terrible working system.
Also: If all kernel bugs are safety bugs, how do you retain your Linux secure?
How terrible? Popular applications of the day — corresponding to WordPerfect 5.1, Lotus 1-2-3, and Doom — all the time broke on it. You’d be in the course of a process, and, bang, your program would freeze fully. Long earlier than we received to know and hate Windows’ Blue Screen of Death, MS-DOS 4.0 horrified PC customers.
That was primarily as a result of MS-DOS 4.0 used an unlimited 92KB of RAM. Today, you would not discover that a lot RAM getting used in your watch. But again within the day, when 640K was what you bought on a high-end PC, it was a giant deal. It used extra reminiscence than some other model of DOS earlier than or since.
PC customers both returned to MS-DOS 3.3, which I beneficial on the time, or moved to Digital Research’s DR-DOS 3.41.
How unhealthy was MS-DOS 4? DR-DOS model numbers had began off mimicking MS-DOS model numbers to indicate that the previous would work similar to the latter. But there was no DR-DOS 4.0. Instead, Digital Research named its new 1989 model DR-DOS 5.0 to forestall anybody from pondering that it had any reference to MS-DOS 4.0.
Also: When Windows 10 assist runs out, you could have 5 choices however solely 2 are value contemplating
Indeed, maybe one purpose so many individuals have been able to strive a brand new Unix-like working system, Linux, in 1991 was that MS-DOS 4.0 had aggravated so many customers.
Today, you possibly can obtain the MS-DOS 4.0 supply code and run it for your self on an authentic IBM PC XT (absolutely somebody has one nonetheless working someplace), a more moderen Pentium, and with the open-source PCem and 86box emulators. It may also work with Oracle VirtualBox or the previous Linux MS-DOS digital machine DOSEMU, however I have not had an opportunity to test it.
