View Poll Results: Is it a good idea for MS to get rid of DOS support?

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25. You may not vote on this poll
  • Yes. DOS is dead. Let it go. Adios. Valde. Bye Bye.

    6 24.00%
  • No. We need it, and will need for a long time to come. Several programs still use it.

    7 28.00%
  • Microsoft should utterly DIE a HORRIBLE death for eliminating DOS support.

    11 44.00%
  • WOOHOO! DOS IS DEAD! MWAHAHAHA!

    1 4.00%

Thread: Who agrees with MS in this aspect?

  1. #1
    l'Anziano DavidP's Avatar
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    Who agrees with MS in this aspect?

    Should DOS really be weeded out and support for it totally forgotten? I don't think so. I have several old DOS games like Doom, Doom 2, Wolfenstein 3d, the original Battletech games (including Mechwarrior 1), the originaly DOS versions of Mechwarrior 2 and its expansion, Liero, and several others. These are classic games. Can they just be forgotten and never played again since DOS is losing support from MS? Now I have to play these games on a totally seperate system from my XP system because most of them either dont work or run horribly. For example, Liero doesnt run, and Doom 2 runs at about 3 fps with very choppy sounds.

    When I boot to a boot disk, I can run the games smoothly, but I lose sound blaster support, so I have to change to PC speaker sounds, which really sucks.

    Is Microsoft too stupid to be able to keep full support for DOS and yet make their OS stable? I love XP and its stability, but I need DOS support!
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  2. #2
    A Banana Yoshi's Avatar
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    autoexec.bat is still used by DOS (cannot be deleted).

    The DOS shell has its usefulness. For instance, if you wanted to do something to your directory, you can type and then enter. That's it!! and Windows? drag and drop or copy and paste! It takes a longer time than the DOS shell!!

    Hale DOS!!
    Yoshi

  3. #3
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    I love DOS, I mean the pure DOS, like in Windows 98, I have about 1GB of abandonware, and now I have to throw it to the garbage (recycle bin) because I cannot play a single game with XP, but, should I go back to 98? I don't think so, 98 is old, and I must stay ahead. MS killed DOS, I dislike that, but there's nothing I can do about it, so I have to let it go, and forget about DOS and only bring it back when telling bedtime stories to my grandchildren


    Oskilian

  4. #4
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    The DOS shell has its usefulness. For instance, if you wanted to do something to your directory, you can type and then enter. That's it!! and Windows?
    You don't know what you're talking about, you can do the exact same thing in Windows. An OS can have a non-DOS command interpreter.

    Just because it's a black backgound with grey text doesn't mean it's DOS.

    I love DOS, I mean the pure DOS, like in Windows 98
    There is no reason to love DOS just because it's simple, old, and a lot more limited than for example Windows.

    There shouldn't even a problem, Microsoft has not killed DOS, they just don't support it anymore, it's still here. Just make a multi-boot system if you want to use your primitive DOS.

  5. #5
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    Or better yet, forget about Microsofts silly toys and go over to Linux.

  6. #6
    Meow Pendragon's Avatar
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    I think progress was necessary within MicroSoft. MS Windows 98 though it fully supported DOS was fairly unreliable and prone to crash ( I have my computer on constantly and found it crashed every few days).
    The MS Windows 2000 Pro and XP and far more reliable and, though I learned write programs on DOS primarily and the internet I now have no real use for it except for on the internet. I used to play Chuckie Egg a lot though! I guess that fully supporting DOS for the purpose of games alone is not a good enough reason to keep it around.

    As for the Windows/Linux thing...

    ...there really is no contest as far as I'm concerned.

    -Pendragon
    Last edited by Pendragon; 12-19-2001 at 03:30 PM.

  7. #7
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    If you really want to play abandonware, you can do what Linux and MacOS users have to do with all Dos and Windows programs: make an emulator. None exist to my knowledge(yet), but such a project might be worthwhile for XP users.
    All generalizations are false

  8. #8
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    Originally posted by Series X4 1.0
    Or better yet, forget about Microsofts silly toys and go over to Linux.
    [ironically]Oh yeah, Linux, my games will run very smoothly under Linux, specially the ones which use VESA (like Warcraft II)[/ironically]

    I've tried DOSEMU, but only two of my games worked in there.

    Oskilian

  9. #9
    l'Anziano DavidP's Avatar
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    Okay, 2 things:

    1) Why does DOS make Windows so unstable that they have to cancel support of it? Why not dispatch of small team of programmers to revamp it and make it more stable with Windows?

    2) How do you make it so when you boot up, you can choose which OS you boot to? I used to have a thing called AutoMenu on my old 486 that let me choose either DOS or Windows, but that is long gone, and I dont know how to get it back or anything like that.
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  10. #10
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    I can't believe it!!!! I was just playing an old game I love, it's called Stronghold. I have an Intel Pentium 4/1,7GHz with 256MB RAM, and IT WAS RUNNING SLOW!!!! I can't believe it, omygod, I almos fainted when the game was running slow. So I changed ntvdm's priority to High, and the game crashed, bringing down the whole WinXP with it. AAARRGGHH, do you know where can I get semothing to play an old game faster with XP?

    Oskilian

  11. #11
    Normal vector Carlos's Avatar
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    Hey guys, you probably noticed, there are other software companies as well, not just Micro$oft!

    E.g. russian programmers (they are hell good, ever seen a russian software?) developed long ago the so-called PC-DOS, which supports protected mode, multitasking, it's safe and downwards FULLY compatible ;°)=) with M$ DOS.

    I guess it's still downloadable (maybe even for free, or you must pay 10-15 $ for the reg. code) somewhere.

    Solution: keep a 512Mb partition on your 60Gb HDD for DOS.
    That's what I've done.

    P.s.
    It's amazing how DOS works on a PIII 800 ;°)).
    I'm playing around with older sysinfo programs, made for 486's.
    The only one which did not crash on my PIII was a hungarian sysinfo called PIII.

  12. #12
    Normal vector Carlos's Avatar
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    To DavidP:

    >>Why does DOS make Windows so unstable ...
    It's just a 16bit vs 32 bit problem. Windows must separate the memory-space for such applications, take care of video-memory and other workarounds to emulate the DOS environment, which affect the whole performance and stability of the system.

    >> How do you make it so when you boot up, you can choose which OS you boot to?

    WinNT and above comes with kinda bootmanager, Win2000's is safer, but the best is LiLo (Linux's bootman) or some specialized tool, like PQMagic, which is a superb partitioner as well.

    Anyway, before installing a bootmanager, SAVE YOUR MBR with some tool (I've made it for myself, it's a tiny ASM program, which saves the master boot record found on first sector of the first track of the first partition). If something fails, you can still recover and access your previous OS.

  13. #13
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    Pendragon

    As for the Windows/Linux thing...

    ...there really is no contest as far as I'm concerned.
    Well, you're 'just' another M$ slave - that much I've figured out... Why not try another OS?

    oskilian

    [ironically]Oh yeah, Linux, my games will run very smoothly under Linux, specially the ones which use VESA (like Warcraft II)[/ironically]
    First, VESA has 'nothing' to do with it. Second, Warcraft 2 among other games *will* work under Linux with a recent WINE release (just checked). I admit though that you must sometimes configure Linux, WINE, and the games themselves a little to get them to run. So it's often not worth it.

    Personally I don't care much about games though - it's not a good reason enough to keep, nor to like a poor old worthless OS such as DOS.

  14. #14
    Meow Pendragon's Avatar
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    Well, you're 'just' another M$ slave - that much I've figured out... Why not try another OS?
    I have. Linux/Mac in college... I don't think either of these OSs can rival MicroSoft Windows. Not in my mind anyway.

    -Pendragon

  15. #15
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    For an individual, Linux can rival other OS's. For the rest of the stupid world, that's not the case.

    There is no big competition (yet), and there is only one reason: People are so used to MS Windows that as fast as something is different in another OS they think of it as something negative - what they don't realize is that there are other ways to do the same things in other OS's. It takes some time to learn and to like Linux, but when you know Linux, Windows will look like a simple boring toy for the retarded.

    Anyway, the only thing Microsoft can be proud of is DirectX.
    Last edited by Series X4 1.0; 12-21-2001 at 07:41 AM.

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