[GEM Development] Liam Proven! DOS in VirtualPC

[Steve Nickolas]

On Sat, 9 Dec 2017, Liam Proven wrote:

> On 9 December 2017 at 18:49, Steve Nickolas <usotsuki at buric.co> wrote:
>>
>> It's the overall feel, I suppose.  It just doesn't feel right to me (oddly,
>> FreeDOS, which is far more broken than DR DOS, gets the feel down a lot
>> better).
>>
> [...]
>>
>> It's hard to describe, really.  But since DR DOS introduced different
>> features, or introduced them in a different way (usually earlier) than MS,
>> it has a noticeably different feel - and I just feel more comfortable with
>> the real thing...although Datalight ROM-DOS came pretty close when it was
>> freely available.
>
> Are you talking about 5, 6 or 7 here?

DR DOS?  6, mainly, and 7.03 secondarily.  MS-DOS?  5 and 6.  PC DOS?  5, 
6 and 7.

<snip>

> But what I'm getting at is that DR DOS 6 was more akin to MS-DOS 5
> than DR DOS 5 was. Novell DOS 7 was closer still.
>
> Enhanced DR-DOS is based off the Novell DOS 7 code, so it's very
> microsoft-like. It's more MS-DOS compatible than FreeDOS, IMHO.

That's not saying much.  Anything that can run Windows 3.1 reliably in 386 
mode is "more MS-DOS compatible than FreeDOS", and that's not an opinion, 
that's a fact.  That is DR DOS's advantage over FreeDOS.

> If you're basing your opinion on DR DOS 5, that was over 25y ago and
> you need to try something newer.

6 and 7 ;)

Ironically, the oldest DR DOSes were more MS-like (DOSPLUS).

-uso.