From: spam AT 127 DOT 0 DOT 0 DOT 1 (Bernard Murray, PhD) Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: MS Dos 1 Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 02:01:11 -0700 Organization: UCSF Lines: 44 Message-ID: References: <199911300051 DOT TAA04944 AT delorie DOT com> <3843ADC5 DOT 7A44FD21 AT maths DOT unine DOT ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: macmac-2.ucsf.edu To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com 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