windows 98 in DR-DOS

[kdsg]

It is possible to execute win98 in DR-DOS?

it works better with DR-DOS?

DR-DOS continues having support, surely is better than MSDOS

[Ponch]

What do you mean by "execute Win98" ? If you mean "Install", then probably yes. If you mean replacing all DOS files from Win98 by a non MS version...

[kdsg]

Windows 98 is an application for ms-dos, I want to execute win.com in dr-dos and to see if it works better

dr-dos has but functions, dr-dos is multitask

[amocanu]

It won't work, M$ tied each version of Win9x to it's specific DOS versions

Edited December 11, 2007 by amocanu

[kdsg]

can be created a patch?

it is worth the trouble?

[BenoitRen]

Windows 98 is an application for ms-dos

You're thinking of Windows 3.1. Windows 98 is quite a different beast.

[os2fan2]

Windows 9x should run on versions of DOS that report at least the correct level.

Win95 will run on DOS 7.0, Win 95A, 98FE and 98SE on 7.1, and Win ME on 8,0. The essential link files (HIMEM, IFS2HLP, EMM386, etc) are version inedpendent. For example, I ran Win95 and Win31 under the MS-DOS from 98se, (even without 98se present).

You have to be careful here, though, because DOS is scattered between \WINDOWS\ and \WINDOWS\COMMAND directories, and few DOS files are multi-version. (regedit, edit, are exceptions.) For this, you need some sort of access to a real DOS. The bulk of \windows\command directory is DOS files. EDIT is version-free, and START, LFNBCK are windows programs. I am not sure about xcopy.

In the \windows\ directory, all .com and .sys files are DOS files, along with a number of .EXE files (eg emm386.exe, setver.exe) These are version specific (ie require the correct DOS). On the other hand, win.com only looks for DOS >= something.

You can, for example, extract the DOS from WinME, and superimpose it over Windows 95. Win95 apparently runs better for it.

Note that a non win9x dos does not automatically read the registry in the manner that Windows 9x does. so you may need to doggy up a msdos.sys to suit.

I don't think DR-DOS makes the required 7.10 version to run Win98 etc, but there are other DOS vendors (eg datalight) for which this is true.

[jaclaz]

Maybe you might try LZ-DOS:

http://dos.nm.ru/

It is said to be fully compatible with DOS 7.1.

About compatibility of DR-DOS, I would say NO, see this:

http://www.drdosprojects.de/cgi-bin/anyboa...;aO=1&iWz=0

Q&A #3.

jaclaz

[matthiaspaul]

It is possible to execute win98 in DR-DOS?

it works better with DR-DOS?

The answer is yes and no.

Yes, it is possible to run Windows 9x ontop of DR-DOS. And yes, it has several advantages over using MS-DOS (f.e. smaller memory footprint and much more advanced relocation methods, not only resulting in more free DOS memory, but also in more free Windows resources; better configurability and therefore higher flexibility, more advanced utilities).

No, as Microsoft has artificially tied MS-DOS 7.xx and Windows 4.xx together and it is not trivial to pry these components apart.

As one of the main developers of DR-DOS, I am the original author of a small system level device driver named "WinGlue" I wrote back in 1997/1998, when I worked with Caldera UK. The name "WinGlue" is both, a technical description of what it is, a thin layer of glue code, and a sarcastic play on words on the German word "Scheibenkleister" due to "dirty" coding methods I had to utilize in order to get it working. ;-) The interesting part was, that "WinGlue" basically just faked a number of undocumented interfaces and data structures, Windows expected to see during startup. With a resident memory footprint of just a few hundred bytes, "WinGlue" was able to convince Windows 95 to start up on either Novell DOS 7/Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 or Caldera DR-DOS 7.02. Of course, since "WinGlue" was only faking data structures, it was not free of trouble, but the very fact, that it worked at all, reproduceable and on many machines, had quite some impact on the law suit. Andrew Schulman, who at this time worked for Caldera as an external Windows consultant, came over to England to inspect my findings, and together we could research some of the remaining issues. Somewhat later Geoff Chappell was also assisting us in some questions. Demonstrating that it was possible to achieve the goal, it was decided to fork the kernel and directly add full MS-DOS 7.0 (and later 7.1) support into the DR-DOS kernel. The DOS 7 compatible fork was nicknamed DR-DOS "WinBolt" and has been worked on by a small group of developers, two original Digital Research veterans, Andy and Ian, and myself. The other fork, on which two of us participated as well heavily, became DR-DOS 7.03, which was still emulating PC DOS 6.1, but had optional dynamically loadable components such as DRFAT32 (a FAT32 redirector extension loadable on any DOS 3.31 or higher) and LONGNAME (LFN support for any plain DOS 7 and DR-DOS 7.xx - the shell COMMAND, which also works under other DOSes, would automatically enable LFN support as soon as the LFN API is present), both originally with DPMS (DOS Protected Mode Services), which was disabled in the published versions for some odd reasons. While DR-DOS 7.03 was released and sold in large numbers, DR-DOS "WinBolt" never left beta stage and remained unreleased. In hindsight, there have been lots of management failures and engineering had been hardly given the time to work on this. The most stupid decision was, when Caldera US found DR-DOS 7.03 good enough to finance their Linux business for several years to come, out of a sudden decided to close the UK office, where all the DR-DOS development took place, and lay off the OS experts, after they had done great work and brought out a successful product. Well, some of us continued to work on DR-DOS in customization projects for various DR-DOS OEMs, including variants with DOS 7 API level support, but basically the expertise was cast in the winds. Well, I continue to work on DR-DOS whenever I find the time for it (not much recently). Actually, there is a reason why I am writing this on a dual-core machine in a Windows 98 SE window... ;-)

In the meanwhile, another fork has made great progress as Enhanced DR-DOS - this, however, is based on Caldera OpenDOS 7.01, which in turn was virtual identical to Novell DOS 7 update 10 or so, thus several man years of original DR-DOS development are missing from this source tree. Even if it supports some of the DOS 7 APIs, it still shows that it is internally based on an older kernel.

Well, I'm not overly optimistic any more, but I still have not completely lost hope, that at some fine day in the future the current owner of the DR-DOS assets may decide that its commercial life is finally over and that it is due to open source the system. This would make it possible to reunificate the different code branches to create the most advanced DR-DOS ever for all its fans. Well, well... ;-)

But back to the original question, yes, technically speaking it is possible to do this, but practically it is not for the time being, unfortunately...

Greetings,

Matthias

Edited December 19, 2007 by matthiaspaul