386MAX released under GPL v3 License | Hacker News Reader

386MAX released under GPL v3 License

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From what I recall of the time period, QEMM from Quarderdeck was the most well-regarded software for this—or at least the most popular:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMM

That along with their DESQview (popular for running multi-line BBSes, at least until OS/2 came along which was an actual multitasking OS on PCs that could run DOS apps):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview

I wonder if Symantec would ever be willing to release the source code to those.

It’s always a question if the source is still around now or on accessible media. Especially if said products were part of one or more acquisitions. Source control usage has only been popular the last 20-25 years. Before Linus wrote git, the Linux kernel was kind of responsible for even making the idea that source control systems should be part of the development process in popular OSS. Zip files, tarballs, directory dumps were popular in the early and mid 90s. Super hard to get sources out if it’s stuck on a special machine that wasn’t network connected, maybe exotic media like WORM drives, kangaroo drives, backpack drives, 5.25” floppies, etc.

Oomph, the weasel world "popular" makes it hard to argue with, but source code version control systems have been around for a long time and have been, at least in commercial code, used. E.g. SCCS was first released in 1973.

Linus was not necessarily wrong in refusing such for the development of Linux until he could be persuaded to use BitKeeper post-burnout, but it was an, er, contrarian stance.

I hear ya. Maybe you could argue that GNU, BSD or a few other groups were using SCCS but that’s relatively very few developers in comparison to the DOS, Windows 3.x, Amiga, BBC, Apple that we’re producing more code at the time. I’ve seen few bits of early NASA/JPL code and it wasn’t in source control, it was on NFS.

25 years ago i was huge fan of QEMM and 386MAX. I constantly tweaking system to get more and more kb in low (640k) memory.

But on that time two things happens: - Windows 3.11 was released and spread like wildfire. No more limitations. Later they make WfW 3.11 so networking was included. - Many DOS games start using DOS Extenders (like DOS/4GW) and make games to use 4, 8 or many MBs you have.

One day i wake-up and decide to not wasting time anymore with 386MAX and QEMM. Then just use HIMEM and EMM386 (both are built-in in DOS).

> But on that time two things happens: - Windows 3.11 was released and spread like wildfire. No more limitations.

That is not what I recall.

First, given that pre-95 Windows ran on top of (MS-)DOS, it had no better capabilities, except that now a bunch of resources (e.g., RAM) was used to run a GUI. And it wasn't really "multi-tasking", again because it ran on DOS, and was more (co-operative) task-switching (like MacOS 9).

Further, Windows 3.11 was garbage with regards multitasking / task-switching compared to DESQview. I knew plenty of running multi-line BBSes with DESQview, but it would have been laughable to try that with Windows. I remember (perhaps incorrectly) running Windows under DESQview just fine.

Perhaps for 'normies' Windows 3.11 was good enough, and the GUI was helpful, but from a technical point of view saying "no more limitations" did not reflect reality.

Windows/386 (enhanced mode) did preemptive multitasking for DOS applications by running them concurrently in separate virtual machines.

AFAIK - WfW 3.11 uses only this mode. They disable real mode.

Minor point: Windows ran on DOS up to Win98. If you shut down '95 or '98 you were actually at a DOS prompt, but with the screen set to black on black lettering. You could run the usual MS/DOS command to change the colours to something visible - sorry, can't remember the incantation at the moment, but it was nothing obscure.

Well - at this time i was manage some large spreadsheet like in app called Multiplan on DOS. But due size - it was split on several spreadsheets.

At this time i found Excel 4 or 5 and start to use it. I turn back spreadsheet into one single file.

Same happens with Word. As soon as i start using WinWord i couldn't hit anymore memory limitations.

Of course - only DOS for gaming.

This is great, thank you very much!

That's too bad. Sort of guaranteed not to be used now.

I'm hoping Japheth finds some useful info and adds that to JEMM.

https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel/Jemm

Yes, I'm sure this 20 year old legacy, proprietary code that was requested to be released by users of the (GPL licensed) FreeDOS project now won't ever be used again.

Anyone planning to use this software will need to run some kind of DOS (proprietary) or FreeDOS (GPL) so I don't know what license incompatibility this could possibly cause.

What could you do with this if it were MIT-licensed as opposed to GPL, other than things that nobody should ever do?

I could use it at work.

The GPLv3, like every other FOSS license, allows commercial use. Given that, what's wrong with using it at your work?

You use DOS at work? What industry are you in?

An industry where we frequently use 386s.

Okay so trainyards, got it.

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