The DOS 10 Commandments (fwd)

From: jpero_at_sympatico.ca <(jpero_at_sympatico.ca)>
Date: Thu Mar 15 19:15:05 2001

> From: "ajp166" <ajp166_at_bellatlantic.net>
> To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
> Subject: Re: The DOS 10 Commandments (fwd)
> Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 21:24:13 -0500
> Reply-to: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org

> From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_conman.org>
>
> >It was thus said that the Great Peter Joules once stated:
> >> 3)

snip

> > That's a BIOS limitation; talk to IBM about that one---they only
> allocated
> >10 bits for sector number in the INT 13h disk IO call.
>
>
> Wrong. 1024 was a hardware limitation of the early MFM controller cards
> and the bios honored it. FYI it was CYLINDERS not sectors. 1024 sectors
> would have only been 512k!

This 1024 cyl thing is still haunting in any machines to this day,
hence the crazy #'s of heads when 63 sectors is max'ed.

The size soon will break through 100GB, We need better solution soon!
:-)
 
> >> 4)
> >> Thy application program and data shall all fit in 640K of RAM. After
> all,

snip

>
> Other non -PC hardware such as Rainbow went out to 896k and some of the
> S100
> based machines did the full meg using shadow rom.

Don't forget the >640K hack on many Zenith XT machines.

> >> 10)
> >> Learn well the Vulcan Nerve Pinch (ctrl-alt-del) for it shall be thy
> saviour
> >> on many an occasion. Believe in thy heart that everyone reboots their
> OS to
> >> solve problems that shouldn't occur in the first place.
> >
> > Isn't that more of a Windows thing than an MS-DOS thing?

Still have to do 3 finger salutes on DOS machines. I rememeber that
decade ago. Now I do that without thinking when I have to kill the
when netscape went zombie in winblows.

> DOS being unprotected could crash, usually after the application
> wiped it from memory like CP/M! Any unprotected OS would be
> vunerable to being smashed by a runaway app.

Correct. Even I can lock up that Eazy PC with one of own DOS command
found in that dos directory, remember those / by 0 error in 40
columns due to quirky V40 cpu in that thing.

> Experience with DOS 3.11 and 5.0 is that for an unprotected OS
> it was fairly solid and not inclined to kill itself. I have two systems
> that live as DOS with uptimes measured in months.

Correct again, when programs is done to quality standards, DOS is
utterly stable.

> Allison

Wizard (old dos user)
Received on Thu Mar 15 2001 - 19:15:05 GMT

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