53
votes
Why did "protected-mode MS-DOS" never happen?
16-bit protected mode DOS did sort of happen: Concurrent DOS 286 and FlexOS 286 were able to run some DOS applications in protected mode (this involved complex LOADALL shenanigans and revealed bugs in ...
- 118k
38
votes
Accepted
What's the most recent version of AmigaOS?
A simple question, with a surprisingly complex answer...
Really TL;DR
Hyperion released Hotfix 3.2.2.1 on April 23, 2023
TL;DR
The latest version of each of the main derivates of AmigaOS are:
Branch
...
- 5,271
19
votes
Why did "protected-mode MS-DOS" never happen?
And, marketing-wise, did everyone want multitasking and GUI so much that an idea of a single-tasked OS was no longer appealing by definition?
In a word, yes.
The 80386 came to market in 86/87, well ...
- 4,776
18
votes
What is the best way to set up multiple operating systems on a retro PC?
I would use partitions on a large hard drive, with something like Ranish Partition Manager to choose an operating system while booting. This supports quite a few different partitions, with the ability ...
- 118k
15
votes
What is the best way to set up multiple operating systems on a retro PC?
I use SD cards because they result in less "constant disk imaging" than other solutions. In fact, ever since being clued into the idea by an LGR video, I've been migrating all my machines ...
- 6,351
14
votes
Why did "protected-mode MS-DOS" never happen?
The programs that you already had and needed to run were not protected mode programs, they needed to be run in 16-bit real mode anyway.
DOS drivers used BIOS for I/O, which also was 16-bit real mode ...
- 28.3k
12
votes
Accepted
What 386-specific features did Linux use?
One of Linus’ other posts provides the answer:
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will ...
- 118k
7
votes
Which was the first OS having both isolated users and programs?
I would suggest CTSS (1961), which I believe isolated users/programs by swapping jobs in and out of memory rather than paging.
This built on earlier batched systems which had implicit separation since ...
- 2,279
7
votes
Why did "protected-mode MS-DOS" never happen?
There was at least one proposal for a 32-bit OS that would have been a drop-in replacement for MSDOS: Marc Perkel's NovOS, submitted to Novell in 1991. The intention was that existing MS-DOS programs ...
- 6,925
6
votes
Why did "protected-mode MS-DOS" never happen?
There were several attempts to introduce an ABI like this, including VCPI (Virtual Control Program Interface) and DPMS (DOS Protected-Mode Services), but the one that came closest to being a standard ...
- 8,549
5
votes
Need help restoring the OS of an "AST Premium Exec 386SX/20" laptop
I have not been able to find any official settings for the hard disk
geometry that this laptop expects to see on the IDE hard drive.
A few days ago I acquired a Toshiba T1800 386SX laptop with the ...
- 6,635
5
votes
Which was the first OS having both isolated users and programs?
Maybe not the first, but the Titan Supervisor (1963, Cambridge University) came close.
Timesharing.
Interactive access.
Access control system.
Most notably, the access control lists on objects allowed ...
- 33.5k
5
votes
What is the best way to set up multiple operating systems on a retro PC?
When you install Linux, it will come likely with LILO or GRUB or some other boot manager that you can use to select operating system at boot.
Often when you install Windows though, it will wipe out ...
- 151
5
votes
Why did "protected-mode MS-DOS" never happen?
In a nutshell: because at that time everybody wanted GUI and multitasking.
In the other answers to this question, clever people have listed plenty of technical reasons why it would have been very ...
- 665
3
votes
Why did "protected-mode MS-DOS" never happen?
There was multitasking DOS called Wendin DOS constructed with their Wendin Operating System Toolkit (OST.)
The toolkit internally appeared to me to be inspired by VMS.
To get around the non-rentrant ...
- 31
3
votes
What is the best way to set up multiple operating systems on a retro PC?
Another possibility, which would fit well with a "retro" feel, would be to find some kits that install 3.5" hard drives in carriers that then mount with a socket in a 5.25" drive ...
- 34.7k
2
votes
What is the best way to set up multiple operating systems on a retro PC?
One thing I used to do was to have multiple hard drives connected to an IDE selector switch. You connect several drives to it and it exposes one of them to the computer based on which button is ...
- 929
2
votes
What is the best way to set up multiple operating systems on a retro PC?
The answer depends a bit on whether you are keen to experience true 80s feeling with the constant (enjoyable?) background turbine noise of a moving hard disk.
Physical disks will need to be ...
- 33k
2
votes
What is the difference between CTSS and ITS?
One notable similarity that was not mentioned here is that the ITS file system architecture very closely resembles the CTSS file system. Both have Master File Directories (MFD) and User File ...
- 620
2
votes
Can anyone help provide more information regarding an operating system called I/OS by Infosoft in the early 1980's?
There is a brief mention of it in this list:
https://www.pski.net/definitive-list-of-trs-80-model-ii-operating-systems/
That might be referring to the brief news story on p2 here:
https://ieeexplore....
- 1,165
1
vote
What’s the most advanced os I can run on a non memory management pdp11 (ie 11/20)
CAPS-11, RT-11 and RSX-11M were all released for PDP-11 systems without memory mapped hardware i.e era of PDP-11/05, PDP-11/10 and PDP-11/20.
Listed among the other operating systems available for ...
- 581
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible