Mail Archives: djgpp/1999/12/01/10:16:37
In article <3843ADC5 DOT 7A44FD21 AT maths DOT unine DOT ch>,
Gautier DOT deMontmollin AT maths DOT unine DOT ch wrote:
> > or will djgpp work fine with FreeDOS or OpenDos?
>
> OpenDOS: yes - but the latest version (now called DR-DOS)
> is much more stable: http://www.lineo.com/ . Many DJGPP
> programs can run concurrently under the multitasker,
> with DPMI=ON :-)
What do you mean "much more stable"? (unless you are referring
to DR DOS vs. FreeDOS). I've been using DR DOS since v5.0
and have always found it to be very stable. The only problems
occurred when Novell rushed out version 7 before it was ready
(it wasn't unstable, just not very polished). Novell DOS 7
had the multitasker but the disadvantage is that you have to
use their memory manager and it wasn't as good as QEMM at
freeing conventional memory. They appeared to be aiming at
making all protected mode drivers (so minimal conventional
memory usage) something like eg. Helix's approach. The bad
news is that if the hardware forced a switch out of protected
mode the performance was reeeeeally bad. Their CD ROM driver
(NWCDEX) being a case in point as, for my system, it was so
slow as to be unusable. I now use Novell DOS 7 + QEMM +
MSCDEX.
The bad news for DOS-only systems is that hardware
manufacturers just don't support plain DOS the way they used
to. For instance, Iomega's Zip tools need a minimum of
Win3.1 for them to work (all you get for DOS is the GUEST driver).
To their credit some manufacturers still supply DOS utilities
eg. Creative Labs. I also appreciate the video card
manufacturers that achieve speed through hardware rather than
relying on software acceleration. This is getting difficult to
determine as all the benchmarks these days are "Win"Bench etc.
How about DJGPP for GEM (or vice versa) ? :-)
Bernard
--
Bernard P. Murray, PhD
bpmurray at cgl . ucsf . edu
Department of Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology, UCSF
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