On 2023-08-22, 51b.1055 <51b.1055@qtq9.net> wrote:

> DOS was stolen - a rip-of of DR CP/M. Gates bought it
> from the thief.

"Stolen" is perhaps too strong a word. Seattle Computer
Products had developed an S-100 processor board using Intel's
new 8086 chip, and needed some sort of operating system to
run on it. Tim Paterson basically cloned CP/M. The result
was initially called QDOS, for "Quick and Dirty Operating
System", but was offically renamed 86-DOS. Bill Gates
needed a quick and dirty operating system for the new
IBM Personal Computer... and the rest is history.

> I proposed the "closet model" to someone ... how the
> space in a closet is soon ALL used. Bigger closet,
> more junk, STILL 100% usage. Now we have 64-bits
> and giga/terabytes so .....

It's just a generalization of Parkinson's Law, which states
that work expands to fill the time and resources available.
To put it another way, abundance justifies waste.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | You can't save the earth
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | unless you're willing to
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | make other people sacrifice.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Dogbert the green consultant

On Tue, 22 Aug 2023 01:09:24 -0400, 51b.1055 wrote:
>
> On 8/21/23 8:57 PM, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>> On Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:56:30 -0400, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>>
>>> tDOS could run off a 360 KB floppy in as little as 64kb
>>> of ram (a little more WAS desirable). There was a little
>>> space left over on the floppy. CP/M could do it in a
>>> little less. You can argue they're *almost* the same OS.
>> CP/M is from 1974, MS-DOS 1980, Linux 1991. A lot happened in
>> between.
>
> DOS was stolen - a rip-of of DR CP/M. Gates bought it
> from the thief. Hmmm ... 'retro' lawsuits are all the
> rage now and SOMEBODY inherited the rights to all that
> DR stuff, so, how much money DID M$ make from DOS ??? :-)

Why deviate to "stolen"? You didn't mention that in your original
article.

My point was that between 1974/1980 and 1991 hardware evolved like
crazy. Thus any OS emerging at any given point in time is going to
reflect the hardware specs of that time.

May be one should compare UNIX (1970) to CP/M or MS-DOS, even though UNIX
was created for large companies rather than private users.

Didn't UNIX ran off of paper tapes back in the day?
<https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/notes.html> suggests so
(backups). Not sure if "material" also means the OS itself though.

| Machine-readable versions of early Unix material are hard to come by,
| even for us. "Backup" in those days (1969 through the early 70s)
| consisted of punched cards, paper tapes.

Suppose MS-DOS 1.0 was *not* available on paper tape then? Bloatware! ;-)
--
Andreas

51b.1055 <51b.1055@qtq9.net> wrote:
> Which brings me back to the primary question ... if SCO could
> run on an '86 with under 1mb and a couple of little floppies
> why is MODERN -ix so gigantic ?
>
> I suspect it's like closet space - the contents always
> expands to encompass the entire available volume :-)

Of course. Just choosing not to write it all in assembly
goes a long way towards that.

> But ... could it still be MADE to fit in the olde-tyme
> space/power ??? Could there be a distro that'd run and
> do at least the essential stuff in 640kb RAM, 2x360kb
> storage on an 8/16 chip ??? OS/9 was very unix-like and
> could run on a 6809 RS-CoCo (and is still a commercial
> product, still being developed).

They're not Linux, but you might like to read about Lunix and
GeekOS, which are 6502 hobby OSs with UNIX-like features:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LUnix
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeckOS

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

On 2023-08-22, 51b.1055 <51b.1055@qtq9.net> wrote:
> On 8/21/23 8:57 PM, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>> On Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:56:30 -0400, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>>
>>> tDOS could run off a 360 KB floppy in as little as 64kb
>>> of ram (a little more WAS desirable). There was a little
>>> space left over on the floppy. CP/M could do it in a
>>> little less. You can argue they're *almost* the same OS.
>>
>> CP/M is from 1974, MS-DOS 1980, Linux 1991. A lot happened in between.
>
> DOS was stolen - a rip-of of DR CP/M. Gates bought it
> from the thief. Hmmm ... 'retro' lawsuits are all the
> rage now and SOMEBODY inherited the rights to all that
> DR stuff, so, how much money DID M$ make from DOS ??? :-)
>
> Combining most of the PIP functions "live" on the CL
> was a good idea though.
>
> Linux was not stolen, it was an independently-coded
> Unix "work-alike".
>
> Anyway, my question was about the SIZE of modern -ix.
> You COULD run SCO Unix on an 8088 with 1mb and a couple
> of 360kb floppies. Did what you'd expect. So, what
> went wrong ? Why is todays' code so huge, so un-optimal,
> while doing basically the same core stuff ???
>
> Does a Gb-sized -ix, esp CL, do THAT much more
> vital stuff than the ones that ran on a PC-XT ???
> We want MU/MT, a file system, a certain amount of
> device abstraction, a couple good compilers. Guess
> it's all what you have in mind, but sometimes that
> vision is "simple", "compact", "low-resource".
>
> I proposed the "closet model" to someone ... how the
> space in a closet is soon ALL used. Bigger closet,
> more junk, STILL 100% usage. Now we have 64-bits
> and giga/terabytes so .....

As the saying goes: The steady state of disk storage is full.

--
Robert Riches
spamtrap42@jacob21819.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

On 2023-08-22, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 22/08/2023 08:35, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>> On 22/08/2023 06:09, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>>> Does a Gb-sized -ix, esp CL, do THAT much more
>>>>   vital stuff than the ones that ran on a PC-XT ???
>>>>   We want MU/MT, a file system, a certain amount of
>>>>   device abstraction, a couple good compilers. Guess
>>>>   it's all what you have in mind, but sometimes that
>>>>   vision is "simple", "compact", "low-resource".
>>>
>>> You cant have a thousand users all on MSDOS. You can on linux.
>>> Linux is ground up multi-user multitasking.
>>
>> I’m not sure how quantify ‘stuff’ in the OP’s post but I think the
>> answer to “Do they do 15-25 times more stuff” is a clear yes relative to
>> MSDOS considering even just kernel functionality.
>>
>> e.g. support for multiple threads, processes, users, cgroups, namespaces
>> (of at least eight kinds). Virtualization. Dozens of network protocols
>> (with built-in packet filtering, NAT, etc) and filesystems. Hundreds of
>> device drivers of all kinds built in. Virtual memory. Multiple security
>> features (device encryption, RNG, multiple kinds of mandatory access
>> control, more).
>>
>> The early x86 Unixes had some of the above but really only a fraction of
>> it.
>>
>
> Totally agree. I remember tuning up how many open sockets would be
> allowed in SCO unix as well as the number of virtual TTYS.
>
> I have an anecdote about MSDOS too - a guy I did a job for was enthusing
> about how much faster an Apricot was than a nameless clone. I was
> puzzled, and looked into its setup and increase the file buffers from 2
> to 8, like the apricot. They then ran at the same speed. He never asked
> me to work for him again.
>
> Nobody likes a smart arse...
>
> The point is if MSDOS is ALL YOU NEED,. then of course its way more
> efficient than Linux. However its a total can of worms if you try and
> put a multitasking add on in it.

Do you mean something similar to Doze? :-)

> Today, the equivalent to MSDOS is probably a bare metal boot loader for
> an arduino..

--
Robert Riches
spamtrap42@jacob21819.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

On 8/22/23 9:41 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2023-08-22 03:01, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 22/08/2023 02:52, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>> On 2023-08-21 08:00, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>> On 21/08/2023 12:33, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>>>> On 2023-08-21 07:12, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>>> On 21/08/2023 08:32, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>>>>>> Surprisingly some hardware manufacturers still publish MS-DOS
>>>>>>> drivers.
>>>>>> MSDOS is still used in many industrial computers which run customs
>>>>>> or specialised hardware, because the PC/AT back in the day was a
>>>>>> fantastic platform to design interfaces for, and if you don't need
>>>>>> multitasking, and extremely simple one to program for as well.
>>>>>
>>>>> Do they use actual MsDOS, or things like FreeDos?
>>>>>
>>>> Probably these days FreeDOS.
>>>>
>>>> Its only there to load whatever program they actually run.
>>>
>>> I worked in that sector, and indeed MsDOS was perfect for it. Only
>>> thing I missed was network. FreeDOS has it, I believe.
>>>
>> Novell netware and varous TCI/IP stacks were available.
>
> I didn't know of them back in the day.

I *may* still have the big red box containing
Novell for DOS - and all the manuals.

Yep, drive shares for early DOS !!! Coax cable.

"LanTastic" came along a little later, for about
a tenth the cost, and only needed a small manual.

> A friend of mine installed Win 95 (IIRC) with network support, then
> configured it to boot in console mode, then installed their application.

95 was already kinda TCP/IP ready and could do
shares. FUN was DOS and 3.11 :-)

On 22/08/2023 23:21, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>
>
> Of course. Just choosing not to write it all in assembly
> goes a long way towards that.
>
Actually not. Modern compiled C is usually as dense as assembler.

--
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow witted
man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest
thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly
persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid
before him."

- Leo Tolstoy

On 23/08/2023 03:21, Robert Riches wrote:
> On 2023-08-22, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> On 22/08/2023 08:35, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>>> On 22/08/2023 06:09, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>>>> Does a Gb-sized -ix, esp CL, do THAT much more
>>>>>   vital stuff than the ones that ran on a PC-XT ???
>>>>>   We want MU/MT, a file system, a certain amount of
>>>>>   device abstraction, a couple good compilers. Guess
>>>>>   it's all what you have in mind, but sometimes that
>>>>>   vision is "simple", "compact", "low-resource".
>>>>
>>>> You cant have a thousand users all on MSDOS. You can on linux.
>>>> Linux is ground up multi-user multitasking.
>>>
>>> I’m not sure how quantify ‘stuff’ in the OP’s post but I think the
>>> answer to “Do they do 15-25 times more stuff” is a clear yes relative to
>>> MSDOS considering even just kernel functionality.
>>>
>>> e.g. support for multiple threads, processes, users, cgroups, namespaces
>>> (of at least eight kinds). Virtualization. Dozens of network protocols
>>> (with built-in packet filtering, NAT, etc) and filesystems. Hundreds of
>>> device drivers of all kinds built in. Virtual memory. Multiple security
>>> features (device encryption, RNG, multiple kinds of mandatory access
>>> control, more).
>>>
>>> The early x86 Unixes had some of the above but really only a fraction of
>>> it.
>>>
>>
>> Totally agree. I remember tuning up how many open sockets would be
>> allowed in SCO unix as well as the number of virtual TTYS.
>>
>> I have an anecdote about MSDOS too - a guy I did a job for was enthusing
>> about how much faster an Apricot was than a nameless clone. I was
>> puzzled, and looked into its setup and increase the file buffers from 2
>> to 8, like the apricot. They then ran at the same speed. He never asked
>> me to work for him again.
>>
>> Nobody likes a smart arse...
>>
>> The point is if MSDOS is ALL YOU NEED,. then of course its way more
>> efficient than Linux. However its a total can of worms if you try and
>> put a multitasking add on in it.
>
> Do you mean something similar to Doze? :-)
>
I was actually thinking of a msdos multitasker I wrote fir a Belgian
company.

>> Today, the equivalent to MSDOS is probably a bare metal boot loader for
>> an arduino..
>

--
“The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that
the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

- Bertrand Russell

On 23/08/2023 06:17, 51b.1055 wrote:
> On 8/22/23 9:41 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>> On 2023-08-22 03:01, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>> On 22/08/2023 02:52, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>>> On 2023-08-21 08:00, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>> On 21/08/2023 12:33, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>>>>> On 2023-08-21 07:12, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>>>> On 21/08/2023 08:32, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>>>>>>> Surprisingly some hardware manufacturers still publish MS-DOS
>>>>>>>> drivers.
>>>>>>> MSDOS is still used in many industrial computers which run
>>>>>>> customs or specialised hardware, because the PC/AT back in the
>>>>>>> day was a fantastic platform to design interfaces for, and if you
>>>>>>> don't need multitasking, and extremely simple one to program for
>>>>>>> as well.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Do they use actual MsDOS, or things like FreeDos?
>>>>>>
>>>>> Probably these days FreeDOS.
>>>>>
>>>>> Its only there to load whatever program they actually run.
>>>>
>>>> I worked in that sector, and indeed MsDOS was perfect for it. Only
>>>> thing I missed was network. FreeDOS has it, I believe.
>>>>
>>> Novell netware and varous TCI/IP stacks were available.
>>
>> I didn't know of them back in the day.
>
>   I *may* still have the big red box containing
>   Novell for DOS - and all the manuals.
>
>   Yep, drive shares for early DOS !!! Coax cable.
>
FTP software's TCP/IP
Suns PC-NFS. And there was one other - a geek who wrote an amazing
TCP/IP stack in about 16K IIRC. Cannot remember the product name.

Then microsoft staggered into the arena and that was the end of one
business model and market.

They always had 'lan manager' and netbeui...that became netbios and
then the ghastly file sharing over windows TCP/IP

>   "LanTastic" came along a little later, for about
>   a tenth the cost, and only needed a small manual.
>
>> A friend of mine installed Win 95 (IIRC) with network support, then
>> configured it to boot in console mode, then installed their application.
>
>   95 was already kinda TCP/IP ready and could do
>   shares. FUN was DOS and 3.11  :-)

--
"An intellectual is a person knowledgeable in one field who speaks out
only in others...”

Tom Wolfe

On 8/21/23 15:56, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> And once I throw Firefox on top of that you can kiss goodbye to at least
>> 3 GB of RAM.
>>
>> In short, its not Linux that is bloated, it is the graphical
>> applications and the X windows shite.
>
> You can still display and use Firefox windows fine in one of the
> old "tiny" X11 servers that are only ~1MB in size and might only
> take up a few MB RAM (which probably depends on lot on the
> resolution and colour depth). In fact while digging around in old
> X docs a while ago I saw mention of a commercial X server for
> DOS in the 80s that advertised only requiring 640K of RAM (probably
> not Firefox friendly though, I'd guess).

Well I used Mandriva 2009.1 on a Dell Inspriron 4000 which had
a 7000 Megahertz processor of the Coppermine variety Pentium 4
or would have been 5, with 640 Megabytes of ram and 8 Megabytes
I believe for the graphics. It was made to run Windows XP which
was sort of amusing but I had been running Mandriva for a couple
years.

But the consumers and the gamers set the rules and they
want better graphic, and more secure operation. I started
with Commodore 64 and learned to use PaparClip which forced
me to learn to insert control codes in the writing I wanted
to do. I went from that level of comfort to the Amiga where
everything was much easier with graphic control and eventually
hard disks but no memory protection. It tended to give you
the old Guru Screen every so often but essentially the user
worked in root with no passwords in the versions I used.

I have used DOS and CP/M on other machines that came by in
the past but CP/M and the First Osborne Users Group were a bit
of fun. DOS I hated.

You see bloat but I see the problem with the Mega Kernel which
must come with a variety of drivers to latch onto whatever
hardware it may encounter. More sensibly it would use a scheme
that pared away at the hardware hooks once sensed. But you might
want to change something. I certain do that from time to
time. Stick in some more memory and a faster large SSD.
I have been doing that since the days of Amiga only no SSD
then.
I decided that Amiga was the way to go because it
could handle 8 Megabytes of ram. It took me a long time to
save enough to buy a couple of SIMMS. Then I added anohter
6 to that. But the were not a match set in any way and
added to instablity. At one point my income rose a bit and the
price of ram came way down and I bought 8 new simms from the
same maker and took out the old stuff. It did not help much
but the hardware may have been slightly broken by a leaky
batter before I was done with it. This was a stack of
small nicad batteries like buttons and it spoiled my appetite.

So now I can buy a used machine and wipe out Windows
to get a good install for chosen system
>
> I'm kind-of in awe at how all that code (at least the old XFree86
> era code) can compile to such modest binaries and run on an old
> 486. Unfortunately recently X.Org has been ignoring that aspect
> and allowing the bloat to grow as a result. While again, like
> Linux, the newer versions don't actually do much more except
> support new hardware.
>
Well speaking from experience hardware breaks down and
generally it better to buy newer stuff with faster processors
and advanced graphical capabilities. That is why when my
Dell Latitude 6540 desktop replacement showed signs of grapic
failure I decided to beat the reaper and bought the best used
refurbished computer I could afford for under $500.00.
Gotta stimulate the economy that builds well enough to last
a while.

bliss- Dell Precision 7730- PCLinux 2023.07- Linux 6.4.11- Plasma 5.27.7

Thought of the early morning hour.
New GNUs is Good News but not Unix - Where is HURD development wise?

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

On 8/21/23 22:09, 51b.1055 wrote:
> On 8/21/23 8:57 PM, Andreas Kohlbach wrote:
>> On Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:56:30 -0400, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>>
>>> tDOS could run off a 360 KB floppy in as little as 64kb
>>> of ram (a little more WAS desirable). There was a little
>>> space left over on the floppy. CP/M could do it in a
>>> little less. You can argue they're *almost* the same OS.
>>
>> CP/M is from 1974, MS-DOS 1980, Linux 1991. A lot happened in between.
>
>   DOS was stolen - a rip-of of DR CP/M. Gates bought it
>   from the thief. Hmmm ... 'retro' lawsuits are all the
>   rage now and SOMEBODY inherited the rights to all that
>   DR stuff, so, how much money DID M$ make from DOS ??? :-)
>
>   Combining most of the PIP functions "live" on the CL
>   was a good idea though.

Actually it was supposed to be a work-a-like not a simple
copy. MS got it for cheap but later a deal was struck and the
ultimate payment increased considerably to the mutual satisfaction
of

>
>   Linux was not stolen, it was an independently-coded
>   Unix "work-alike".
>
>   Anyway, my question was about the SIZE of modern -ix.
>   You COULD run SCO Unix on an 8088 with 1mb and a couple
>   of 360kb floppies. Did what you'd expect. So, what
>   went wrong ? Why is todays' code so huge, so un-optimal,
>   while doing basically the same core stuff ???
>
>   Does a Gb-sized -ix, esp CL, do THAT much more
>   vital stuff than the ones that ran on a PC-XT ???
>   We want MU/MT, a file system, a certain amount of
>   device abstraction, a couple good compilers. Guess
>   it's all what you have in mind, but sometimes that
>   vision is "simple", "compact", "low-resource".
>
>   I proposed the "closet model" to someone ... how the
>   space in a closet is soon ALL used. Bigger closet,
>   more junk, STILL 100% usage. Now we have 64-bits
>   and giga/terabytes so .....

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

"51b.1055" <51b.1055@qtq9.net> writes:

> Yes, modern Linux is "nicer", but at a size/performance
> COST. Not everyone is developing for the latest hottest
> i9 game box ya know. <=640kb ram and 4.77Mhz CPU are
> actually attractive to certain segments.

Do you read and post to Usenet on that? I guess you could, maybe try it
and see how you like it. Might get a little problematic if you want to
handle MIME and Unicode.

But what segments are attracted to 70s level computer in a world where a
Linux-capable microcontroller (with 32 MB RAM) is about $1.50?

On 2023-08-23, Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> wrote:

> On 2023-08-22, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> The point is if MSDOS is ALL YOU NEED,. then of course its way more
>> efficient than Linux. However its a total can of worms if you try and
>> put a multitasking add on in it.
>
> Do you mean something similar to Doze? :-)

I always thought of MS-DOS as a rickety shack whose door and windows
would stick and squeak. Windows is a towering edifice built on top
of that shack, and in the name of backward compatibility every door
and window in that shining tower also sticks and squeaks.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | You can't save the earth
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | unless you're willing to
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | make other people sacrifice.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Dogbert the green consultant

On 8/23/23 09:46, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2023-08-23, Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> wrote:
>
>> On 2023-08-22, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> The point is if MSDOS is ALL YOU NEED,. then of course its way more
>>> efficient than Linux. However its a total can of worms if you try and
>>> put a multitasking add on in it.
>>
>> Do you mean something similar to Doze? :-)
>
> I always thought of MS-DOS as a rickety shack whose door and windows
> would stick and squeak. Windows is a towering edifice built on top
> of that shack, and in the name of backward compatibility every door
> and window in that shining tower also sticks and squeaks.
>

I love your description of Windows.
bliss

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

On 8/22/23 3:00 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 22/08/2023 06:09, 51b.1055 wrote:
>> Does a Gb-sized -ix, esp CL, do THAT much more
>>    vital stuff than the ones that ran on a PC-XT ???
>>    We want MU/MT, a file system, a certain amount of
>>    device abstraction, a couple good compilers. Guess
>>    it's all what you have in mind, but sometimes that
>>    vision is "simple", "compact", "low-resource".
>
> You cant have a thousand users all on MSDOS. You can on linux.
> Linux is ground up multi-user multitasking.

Quite true. As said, it's all what you want/need. For
many devices, single-user/task IS just fine. Oh, there
ARE ways to kinda fake MU/MT on DOS and CP/M. The old
TI-9900 was fascinating in that the CPU instruction set
was designed to facilitate MU/MT (albeit in mostly 64k
universes). BLWP - Branch and Load Workspace Pointer -
would create a new 64k universe.

What I'm aiming at here is the "intermediate niche" ...
the zone between the microcontroller universe and full
complete modern "computers". This is an expanding segment,
now mostly the domain of the IOT, but also a variety of
industrial/device needs. Think machines with maybe a tenth
the memory/cpu/power-req as something like a PI that
you'd expect to run perfectly for a decade or more.

> Its a miniature mini computer operating system, and getting it on a
> miniature card for less than $20 is still a bloody miracle.

Indeed !

But what about $9.95 ? :-)

> If it takes 60MB RAM so what. We HAVE 60MB RAM.
> MSDOS ran on one archgtecture only. Linux runs on many.

But 60mb still COSTS, still USES POWER. Think "solar
cells" ............

Did an environmental multi-monitor a few years back that
had to run on a 5w solar panel. I managed that using an
Arduino Mega - it has instructions/options that let you
bring the thing down to near zero power between device/
timer interrupts. However this was a micro-controller
and didn't REALLY have an "OS" in the conventional sense.
There were 'C' libraries, but it was messy. The kinds of
things an OS would do were kinda ad-hoc, special functions
unto themselves rather than integrated into a whole even
as simple as DOS-CP/M.

I can see more uses for such "intermediate" applications,
esp with special power needs. I'd like one step beyond
the micro-controller universe without giving up most of
the fine control. Unix DID run on those old 8088 boxes
and I'm wondering if it, or Linux, can fit into the
same power/resource/complexity paradigm. Even a PI-Zero
uses a LOT of power and can NOT really be brought down
to a micro/nano-power state.

At PRESENT - Linux CANNOT. Even the 'minimal' distros
have become just TOO large and hungry. You wind up with
the ugly option of using a u-controller to start/stop
the "modern" board.

On 8/23/23 4:37 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> On 8/23/23 09:46, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> On 2023-08-23, Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2023-08-22, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The point is if MSDOS is ALL YOU NEED,. then of course its way more
>>>> efficient than Linux. However its a total can of worms if you try and
>>>> put a multitasking add on in it.
>>>
>>> Do you mean something similar to Doze?  :-)
>>
>> I always thought of MS-DOS as a rickety shack whose door and windows
>> would stick and squeak.  Windows is a towering edifice built on top
>> of that shack, and in the name of backward compatibility every door
>> and window in that shining tower also sticks and squeaks.
>>
>
>     I love your description of Windows.

Yep ! He pretty much nailed it !!! :-)

No grace in DOS/Win. It's all hacks on top of hacks
on top of hacks .......

And yet they wonder why the security is for shit.

On 8/23/23 2:49 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 23/08/2023 06:17, 51b.1055 wrote:
>> On 8/22/23 9:41 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>> On 2023-08-22 03:01, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>> On 22/08/2023 02:52, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>>>> On 2023-08-21 08:00, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>>> On 21/08/2023 12:33, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>>>>>> On 2023-08-21 07:12, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 21/08/2023 08:32, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Surprisingly some hardware manufacturers still publish MS-DOS
>>>>>>>>> drivers.
>>>>>>>> MSDOS is still used in many industrial computers which run
>>>>>>>> customs or specialised hardware, because the PC/AT back in the
>>>>>>>> day was a fantastic platform to design interfaces for, and if
>>>>>>>> you don't need multitasking, and extremely simple one to program
>>>>>>>> for as well.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Do they use actual MsDOS, or things like FreeDos?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Probably these days FreeDOS.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Its only there to load whatever program they actually run.
>>>>>
>>>>> I worked in that sector, and indeed MsDOS was perfect for it. Only
>>>>> thing I missed was network. FreeDOS has it, I believe.
>>>>>
>>>> Novell netware and varous TCI/IP stacks were available.
>>>
>>> I didn't know of them back in the day.
>>
>>    I *may* still have the big red box containing
>>    Novell for DOS - and all the manuals.
>>
>>    Yep, drive shares for early DOS !!! Coax cable.
>>
> FTP software's TCP/IP
> Suns PC-NFS. And there was one other - a geek who wrote an amazing
> TCP/IP stack in about 16K IIRC. Cannot remember the product name.
>
> Then microsoft staggered into the arena and that was the end of one
> business model and market.
>
> They always had 'lan manager' and netbeui...that became  netbios and
> then the ghastly file sharing over windows TCP/IP

DOS/Win file sharing was/is always a bit clunky - but
at least they've got it to work pretty OK at this point.

No real complaints with netbeui - it worked. Stuck with
it for as long as practical for 'legacy'/compatibility
reasons.

One, persistent, weirdness - "mapped drives" - "A","B",
"X","Y","Z" whatever. Users LOVE drives with a NAME rather
than some obscure IP address. Alas MS sharing limits you
to basically ONE mapped share from a server at a given IP
address.

Had to make an @reboot thing on an NAS that created like
a dozen alias addresses just so users could map to all
the shares it offered. Now they CAN have their "X Drive",
something they can remember, along with four or five
others without difficulty.

>
>
>
>>    "LanTastic" came along a little later, for about
>>    a tenth the cost, and only needed a small manual.
>>
>>> A friend of mine installed Win 95 (IIRC) with network support, then
>>> configured it to boot in console mode, then installed their application.
>>
>>    95 was already kinda TCP/IP ready and could do
>>    shares. FUN was DOS and 3.11  :-)
>

On 24/08/2023 05:40, 51b.1055 wrote:
> On 8/22/23 3:00 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 22/08/2023 06:09, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>> Does a Gb-sized -ix, esp CL, do THAT much more
>>>    vital stuff than the ones that ran on a PC-XT ???
>>>    We want MU/MT, a file system, a certain amount of
>>>    device abstraction, a couple good compilers. Guess
>>>    it's all what you have in mind, but sometimes that
>>>    vision is "simple", "compact", "low-resource".
>>
>> You cant have a thousand users all on MSDOS. You can on linux.
>> Linux is ground up multi-user multitasking.
>
>   Quite true. As said, it's all what you want/need. For
>   many devices, single-user/task IS just fine. Oh, there
>   ARE ways to kinda fake MU/MT on DOS and CP/M. The old
>   TI-9900 was fascinating in that the CPU instruction set
>   was designed to facilitate MU/MT (albeit in mostly 64k
>   universes). BLWP - Branch and Load Workspace Pointer -
>   would create a new 64k universe.
>
>   What I'm aiming at here is the "intermediate niche" ...
>   the zone between the microcontroller universe and full
>   complete modern "computers". This is an expanding segment,
>   now mostly the domain of the IOT, but also a variety of
>   industrial/device needs. Think machines with maybe a tenth
>   the memory/cpu/power-req as something like a PI that
>   you'd expect to run perfectly for a decade or more.
>
>> Its a miniature mini computer operating system, and getting it on a
>> miniature card for less than $20 is still a bloody miracle.
>
>   Indeed !
>
>   But what about $9.95 ?  :-)
>
>> If it takes 60MB RAM so what. We HAVE 60MB RAM.
>> MSDOS ran on one archgtecture only. Linux runs on many.
>
>   But 60mb still COSTS, still USES POWER. Think "solar
>   cells" ............
>
>   Did an environmental multi-monitor a few years back that
>   had to run on a 5w solar panel. I managed that using an
>   Arduino Mega - it has instructions/options that let you
>   bring the thing down to near zero power between device/
>   timer interrupts. However this was a micro-controller
>   and didn't REALLY have an "OS" in the conventional sense.
>   There were 'C' libraries, but it was messy. The kinds of
>   things an OS would do were kinda ad-hoc, special functions
>   unto themselves rather than integrated into a whole even
>   as simple as DOS-CP/M.
>
>   I can see more uses for such "intermediate" applications,
>   esp with special power needs. I'd like one step beyond
>   the micro-controller universe without giving up most of
>   the fine control. Unix DID run on those old 8088 boxes
>   and I'm wondering if it, or Linux, can fit into the
>   same power/resource/complexity paradigm. Even a PI-Zero
>   uses a LOT of power and can NOT really be brought down
>   to a micro/nano-power state.
>
>   At PRESENT - Linux CANNOT. Even the 'minimal' distros
>   have become just TOO large and hungry. You wind up with
>   the ugly option of using a u-controller to start/stop
>   the "modern" board.

Seriously mate, my Pi Zero W is cheap as chips, uses bugger all power,
has 512M of RAM and runs a full blown copy of Linux!

I think that *is* the intermediate.

The pi PICO or an Arduino is even less, one thinks if a single tasking
OS is good enough for you.

And ther are multitasking kernels you can use with those too.

--
Climate Change: Socialism wearing a lab coat.

.
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From: The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Why Is Linux So LARGE - Compared to DOS/CP-M ?
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2023 08:36:31 +0100
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On 24/08/2023 05:40, 51b.1055 wrote:
> On 8/22/23 3:00 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 22/08/2023 06:09, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>> Does a Gb-sized -ix, esp CL, do THAT much more
>>>    vital stuff than the ones that ran on a PC-XT ???
>>>    We want MU/MT, a file system, a certain amount of
>>>    device abstraction, a couple good compilers. Guess
>>>    it's all what you have in mind, but sometimes that
>>>    vision is "simple", "compact", "low-resource".
>>
>> You cant have a thousand users all on MSDOS. You can on linux.
>> Linux is ground up multi-user multitasking.
>
>   Quite true. As said, it's all what you want/need. For
>   many devices, single-user/task IS just fine. Oh, there
>   ARE ways to kinda fake MU/MT on DOS and CP/M. The old
>   TI-9900 was fascinating in that the CPU instruction set
>   was designed to facilitate MU/MT (albeit in mostly 64k
>   universes). BLWP - Branch and Load Workspace Pointer -
>   would create a new 64k universe.
>
>   What I'm aiming at here is the "intermediate niche" ...
>   the zone between the microcontroller universe and full
>   complete modern "computers". This is an expanding segment,
>   now mostly the domain of the IOT, but also a variety of
>   industrial/device needs. Think machines with maybe a tenth
>   the memory/cpu/power-req as something like a PI that
>   you'd expect to run perfectly for a decade or more.
>
>> Its a miniature mini computer operating system, and getting it on a
>> miniature card for less than $20 is still a bloody miracle.
>
>   Indeed !
>
>   But what about $9.95 ?  :-)
>
>> If it takes 60MB RAM so what. We HAVE 60MB RAM.
>> MSDOS ran on one archgtecture only. Linux runs on many.
>
>   But 60mb still COSTS, still USES POWER. Think "solar
>   cells" ............
>
>   Did an environmental multi-monitor a few years back that
>   had to run on a 5w solar panel. I managed that using an
>   Arduino Mega - it has instructions/options that let you
>   bring the thing down to near zero power between device/
>   timer interrupts. However this was a micro-controller
>   and didn't REALLY have an "OS" in the conventional sense.
>   There were 'C' libraries, but it was messy. The kinds of
>   things an OS would do were kinda ad-hoc, special functions
>   unto themselves rather than integrated into a whole even
>   as simple as DOS-CP/M.
>
>   I can see more uses for such "intermediate" applications,
>   esp with special power needs. I'd like one step beyond
>   the micro-controller universe without giving up most of
>   the fine control. Unix DID run on those old 8088 boxes
>   and I'm wondering if it, or Linux, can fit into the
>   same power/resource/complexity paradigm. Even a PI-Zero
>   uses a LOT of power and can NOT really be brought down
>   to a micro/nano-power state.
>
>   At PRESENT - Linux CANNOT. Even the 'minimal' distros
>   have become just TOO large and hungry. You wind up with
>   the ugly option of using a u-controller to start/stop
>   the "modern" board.

Seriously mate, my Pi Zero W is cheap as chips, uses bugger all power,
has 512M of RAM and runs a full blown copy of Linux!

I think that *is* the intermediate.

The pi PICO or an Arduino is even less, one thinks if a single tasking
OS is good enough for you.

And ther are multitasking kernels you can use with those too.

--
Climate Change: Socialism wearing a lab coat.

On 2023-08-24 01:02, 51b.1055 wrote:
> On 8/23/23 2:49 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 23/08/2023 06:17, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>> On 8/22/23 9:41 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

>>>    Yep, drive shares for early DOS !!! Coax cable.
>>>
>> FTP software's TCP/IP
>> Suns PC-NFS. And there was one other - a geek who wrote an amazing
>> TCP/IP stack in about 16K IIRC. Cannot remember the product name.
>>
>> Then microsoft staggered into the arena and that was the end of one
>> business model and market.
>>
>> They always had 'lan manager' and netbeui...that became  netbios and
>> then the ghastly file sharing over windows TCP/IP
>
>   DOS/Win file sharing was/is always a bit clunky - but
>   at least they've got it to work pretty OK at this point.

Dos share had features that Linux today doesn't have, AFAIK.

Dos could lock for write or read an area of a file, for instance. And
those are mandatory locks. This feature is needed for databases that run
without a centralized daemon, but sharing the database file itself instead.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 24/08/2023 13:44, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2023-08-24 01:02, 51b.1055 wrote:
>> On 8/23/23 2:49 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>> On 23/08/2023 06:17, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>>> On 8/22/23 9:41 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
>>>>    Yep, drive shares for early DOS !!! Coax cable.
>>>>
>>> FTP software's TCP/IP
>>> Suns PC-NFS. And there was one other - a geek who wrote an amazing
>>> TCP/IP stack in about 16K IIRC. Cannot remember the product name.
>>>
>>> Then microsoft staggered into the arena and that was the end of one
>>> business model and market.
>>>
>>> They always had 'lan manager' and netbeui...that became  netbios and
>>> then the ghastly file sharing over windows TCP/IP
>>
>>    DOS/Win file sharing was/is always a bit clunky - but
>>    at least they've got it to work pretty OK at this point.
>
> Dos share had features that Linux today doesn't have, AFAIK.

Id call those bugs, actually

>
> Dos could lock for write or read an area of a file, for instance. And
> those are mandatory locks. This feature is needed for databases that run
> without a centralized daemon, but sharing the database file itself instead.
>

And what a nightmare those actually were.
SAMBA does better file locking than winders ever did on Lan Manager

But if you want proper locking uses a database.

--
"First, find out who are the people you can not criticise. They are your
oppressors."
- George Orwell

"Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:
> Dos share had features that Linux today doesn't have, AFAIK.
>
> Dos could lock for write or read an area of a file, for instance. And
> those are mandatory locks. This feature is needed for databases that
> run without a centralized daemon, but sharing the database file itself
> instead.

Obviously not true, you can have a shared-file database with advisory
locks. SQLite is an example.

(In the past Linux did have mandatory lock support, but it was often
disabled because it was so broken; it’s been removed now.)

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

On 2023-08-24 09:39, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 24/08/2023 13:44, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>> On 2023-08-24 01:02, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>> On 8/23/23 2:49 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>> On 23/08/2023 06:17, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>>>> On 8/22/23 9:41 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>>
>>>>>    Yep, drive shares for early DOS !!! Coax cable.
>>>>>
>>>> FTP software's TCP/IP
>>>> Suns PC-NFS. And there was one other - a geek who wrote an amazing
>>>> TCP/IP stack in about 16K IIRC. Cannot remember the product name.
>>>>
>>>> Then microsoft staggered into the arena and that was the end of one
>>>> business model and market.
>>>>
>>>> They always had 'lan manager' and netbeui...that became  netbios and
>>>> then the ghastly file sharing over windows TCP/IP
>>>
>>>    DOS/Win file sharing was/is always a bit clunky - but
>>>    at least they've got it to work pretty OK at this point.
>>
>> Dos share had features that Linux today doesn't have, AFAIK.
>
> Id call those bugs, actually

Absolutely not.

The implementation may have bugs or not. The technical description and
features are sound.

>
>>
>> Dos could lock for write or read an area of a file, for instance. And
>> those are mandatory locks. This feature is needed for databases that
>> run without a centralized daemon, but sharing the database file itself
>> instead.
>>
>
> And what a nightmare those actually were.
> SAMBA does better file locking than winders ever did on Lan Manager
>
> But if you want proper locking uses a database.

Different thing. Peas to nuts.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 2023-08-24 14:14, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:
>> Dos share had features that Linux today doesn't have, AFAIK.
>>
>> Dos could lock for write or read an area of a file, for instance. And
>> those are mandatory locks. This feature is needed for databases that
>> run without a centralized daemon, but sharing the database file itself
>> instead.
>
> Obviously not true, you can have a shared-file database with advisory
> locks. SQLite is an example.

No, you can not. It is a different thing.

>
> (In the past Linux did have mandatory lock support, but it was often
> disabled because it was so broken; it’s been removed now.)

Well, precisely.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.

On 8/24/23 3:36 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 24/08/2023 05:40, 51b.1055 wrote:
>> On 8/22/23 3:00 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>> On 22/08/2023 06:09, 51b.1055 wrote:
>>>> Does a Gb-sized -ix, esp CL, do THAT much more
>>>>    vital stuff than the ones that ran on a PC-XT ???
>>>>    We want MU/MT, a file system, a certain amount of
>>>>    device abstraction, a couple good compilers. Guess
>>>>    it's all what you have in mind, but sometimes that
>>>>    vision is "simple", "compact", "low-resource".
>>>
>>> You cant have a thousand users all on MSDOS. You can on linux.
>>> Linux is ground up multi-user multitasking.
>>
>>    Quite true. As said, it's all what you want/need. For
>>    many devices, single-user/task IS just fine. Oh, there
>>    ARE ways to kinda fake MU/MT on DOS and CP/M. The old
>>    TI-9900 was fascinating in that the CPU instruction set
>>    was designed to facilitate MU/MT (albeit in mostly 64k
>>    universes). BLWP - Branch and Load Workspace Pointer -
>>    would create a new 64k universe.
>>
>>    What I'm aiming at here is the "intermediate niche" ...
>>    the zone between the microcontroller universe and full
>>    complete modern "computers". This is an expanding segment,
>>    now mostly the domain of the IOT, but also a variety of
>>    industrial/device needs. Think machines with maybe a tenth
>>    the memory/cpu/power-req as something like a PI that
>>    you'd expect to run perfectly for a decade or more.
>>
>>> Its a miniature mini computer operating system, and getting it on a
>>> miniature card for less than $20 is still a bloody miracle.
>>
>>    Indeed !
>>
>>    But what about $9.95 ?  :-)
>>
>>> If it takes 60MB RAM so what. We HAVE 60MB RAM.
>>> MSDOS ran on one archgtecture only. Linux runs on many.
>>
>>    But 60mb still COSTS, still USES POWER. Think "solar
>>    cells" ............
>>
>>    Did an environmental multi-monitor a few years back that
>>    had to run on a 5w solar panel. I managed that using an
>>    Arduino Mega - it has instructions/options that let you
>>    bring the thing down to near zero power between device/
>>    timer interrupts. However this was a micro-controller
>>    and didn't REALLY have an "OS" in the conventional sense.
>>    There were 'C' libraries, but it was messy. The kinds of
>>    things an OS would do were kinda ad-hoc, special functions
>>    unto themselves rather than integrated into a whole even
>>    as simple as DOS-CP/M.
>>
>>    I can see more uses for such "intermediate" applications,
>>    esp with special power needs. I'd like one step beyond
>>    the micro-controller universe without giving up most of
>>    the fine control. Unix DID run on those old 8088 boxes
>>    and I'm wondering if it, or Linux, can fit into the
>>    same power/resource/complexity paradigm. Even a PI-Zero
>>    uses a LOT of power and can NOT really be brought down
>>    to a micro/nano-power state.
>>
>>    At PRESENT - Linux CANNOT. Even the 'minimal' distros
>>    have become just TOO large and hungry. You wind up with
>>    the ugly option of using a u-controller to start/stop
>>    the "modern" board.
>
> Seriously mate, my Pi Zero W is  cheap as chips, uses bugger all power,
> has 512M of RAM and runs a full blown copy of Linux!
>
> I think that *is* the intermediate.

Look it up - the power used by something like an Ard
with the low-power library and a Zero. The diff is
horrific. Well, just TRY to run that Zero on a 5w
panel with a little LiPo charger ... or even just
a few 'AA' batteries.

Zero's/Pico's and such ARE good and useful, but within
a certain sphere. i9's with $1500 NVidia cards are
good within their sphere. PIC-12's within theirs
(love those things !). All I'm saying is that there
IS a niche in-between "microntroller" and "computer"
worth some effort, and that can generate some $$$.
I'm just not seeing as many options there as
I think there ought to be.

And it'd be REALLY REALLY nice if there was a Linux/Unix
that'd run on them.

> The pi PICO or an Arduino is even less, one thinks if a single tasking
> OS is good enough for you.

Single CAN serve for many applications ... hey, DOS and CP/M
got by that way for many years and we got word processors
and spreadsheets and photo-shop pgms and databases and all
those good things. Single can be tweaked to kinda fake multi
also without TOO much trouble.

> And ther are multitasking kernels you can use with those too.

Somewhere I mentioned OS/9 ... and it can do exactly that -
MU/MT/RTOS but AIMED at that lower/intermediate range of devices.
It has a considerable look/feel of Unix - hell, one of their
old ad campaigns said they were Unix, but a whole lot better.

OS/9 is still around, still sold, still developed. NOT 'free'
however. It has also kind-of abandoned its 6809 roots, now
primarily ported to modern, 'bigger', chips. Might still BE
8 & 8/16-bit versions to be had however, they just don't
advertise it straight-up. They do support the 68k/Coldfire
16/32-bit chips that run at a whopping 100Mhz ... which
is kind of the zone I'm looking for.

https://www.microsys.de/en/products/software/os-9/
https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/fact-sheet/COLDFIREIPLCFS.pdf

"Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:
> On 2023-08-24 14:14, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> writes:
>>> Dos share had features that Linux today doesn't have, AFAIK.
>>>
>>> Dos could lock for write or read an area of a file, for instance. And
>>> those are mandatory locks. This feature is needed for databases that
>>> run without a centralized daemon, but sharing the database file itself
>>> instead.
>> Obviously not true, you can have a shared-file database with advisory
>> locks. SQLite is an example.
> No, you can not. It is a different thing.

In what way?

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/