Thread: DOS is not dead
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Old 12th March 2014
censored censored is offline
Swen Tnavelerri
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 45
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kpedersen View Post
Interested by the picture for PTS-DOS, http://www.phystechsoft.com/ptsdos.

I wonder how many nuclear power plants still use DOS. I guess it would be a much safer bet than Windows XP+ and the online activation ensuring it will die off (and thus ensuring nuclear meltdown).
I heard OS/2 was a popular option with power stations.
LOL - Yes, DOS was once pretty prolific. Recently, I needed to reflash my bios, and so (like CarpetSmoker) - I downloaded a copy of FreeDOS to do that job. When I was finished, I decided (for the shrill thrill) - to try to run a web browser on FreeDOS. I found a ported Lynx for DOS, and used it to surf around the web for awhile. That's when the 640k problem revealed itself. Even a heavily modified Lynx is in trouble in a time when a single web page can be easily in excess of what remains of a 640K system after the app footprint and the resources of the OS are taken into consideration. The Lynx had been modified to "bail" before it exhausted all its memory, and then to display only what it could successfully consume. I could surf quite a few sites this way - some better than others. Of course, a DPMI port could fix the memory problem, but would be a lot of work for a couple of nostalgia seeking old farts.

Yet - I can see that DOS had some beauty in its simplicity. And, for apps that were well debugged, the reliability was quite high (as per the nuke quote). The next time you're in a shop, take a peek around the clerk to the POS. You'll be surprised at how many shops still use good ol DOS POS software.

Last edited by censored; 12th March 2014 at 02:59 PM.
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