Big DOS System
Geoff Barnard
I wonder - what's the biggest DOS system you're aware of still
running/in regular use?
The reason I ask..
Coming back from a trip to Russia recently, I was waiting in a fairly
quiet Boarding area at Amsterdam Schipol airport. Someone came to open
the Boarding Gate, and was having a bit of a fight with the two pc
screens on the desk, and I'm pretty sure the system she was trying to
activate was a DOS system running from a Command Prompt window. I
could see the Autoexec/batch text as the system tried to load, and the
girl was doing a lot of fairly vigorous text typing from the command
prompt to try to get it to start OK (like she'd done it lots of times
before). Clearly, she was getting something wrong, but eventually
called someone and then it was loading correctly.
I'd guess this system may be running on a few hundred screens. Anyone
know anything about it, or of anything bigger?
Geoff Barnard - not not but net
Terence
wrote:
Why the surprise?
Evreybody I have contact with is running applications in a DOS window
from within a command prompt window.
The operating systems I see are mostly Windows 95 through Windows NP
(more 98 and NT than the extremes) but a few run DOS 6 directly (no
Vista seen). I have even seen DOS on Machintosh (by choice and some
convenience, using an emulator).
Of course, the company around them may have standarized on some
Windows systems because the data typist and secretaries and upper
echelon staff require it, but lots of real operations is done at the
DOS level.
In the big wide world, a lot of the old PCs, ATs, 386 s still have a
life in the third and fourth world countries; small capacity newish
hard discs are still available for where an axle or surface has
finally given up.
I have been selling DOS applications since about 1976 and hope to
continue.
Every computer I have at home (8) earns its keep by running DOS
programs over half the time.
And DOS emulation under Windows allows several simultaneous DOS
screens (I myself have used up to 4; I don'r know if there is a
speific limit. One of my machines has two physical screens which is
also useful. with the correct setup, with the cursor moving left to
right and back across the gap.