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Comment by jan_Sate | Hacker News Reader

Uhm... excuse me? Why? Is there anyone even using DOS for anything serious these days?

Perhaps not serious, but I think people gravitate towards older systems these days because they are easier to conceptualize. It's not unrealistic for a single person to have a complete grasp of e.g. the C64 and it's programming environment. DOS is similarly constraint, but also easier for you to form a more or less complete mental model around.

Some people love computers and making them do weird stuff, older computers make certain tasks feel more manageable.

Yea, it is like looking at the insides of a mechanical clock vs looking into an electronic one.

The former is mesmerizing, intriguing, inviting and inspiring. The later? you can't wait to put the lid back on...

Most computers in Turkey come with FreeDOS preinstalled because there's a law that states all computers must be sold with an operating system. FreeDOS turns out to be the cheapest and easiest.

That's why you don't let people who have never touched a computer write tech laws. You get results like this.

The really weird case is where the computer isn't actually compatible with DOS, so they put in a locked-down Linux distro that emulates FreeDOS.

Wasn't it Dell or HP that did this? IIRC it was FreeDOS-on-QEMU-on-X11-on-Linux.

HP: https://blog.tmm.cx/2022/05/15/the-very-weird-hewlett-packar...

149 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31389893

Is there a reason they don't go with Ubuntu or something like that instead?

I guess they don't want to get support's call. DOS looks like firmware for non techies.

Linux drivers and certification is a whole lot of extra work and complexity compared to FreeDOS. Years ago, Nettops were sold with FreeDOS where the components didn't support Linux that well.

Those types of laws aren't all that bad.. they got us this: https://segaretro.org/Dottori_Kun

I wish that was the case where I live. I'm looking for a new laptop and the mainstream ones still come with the Windows Tax.

Russia has a similar law and yes computers with FreeDOS are also a thing. Alternatively, you're entitled to get a refund for the Windows license by having your hard drive wiped and license sticker removed.

The computer is not very usable without an operating system. I think it would be reasonable for the computer to have Forth or BASIC or something like that in ROM, like many older computers do, so that the computer is usable without an operating system (but that you could also install an operating system if you wanted it).

Who said anything about "serious"?

(FWIW: I suspect there are more than a few old industrial control systems and such out there that are still running DOS, just because of an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude)

My brother is in manufacturing. DOS is everywhere. Older things too (PDP-11? DG Nova? Seen both, semi-recently). Not just because "ain't broke, don't fix", but because when you have a cloth dying machine or brick forming machine you spent >US$5M for, that is often a bespoke install for your plant, you don't replace it because some guy who prolly slings Javascript all day sez "DOS is oooold, boomer".

Given the implications, I guess nobody is going to touch those setups to put an SDL-based program on them, though...

Yeah...this is "if you screw around with it enough, you void the warranty and we will no longer support it" for a potentially multimillion dollar machine.

These DOS machines for industrial control could probably be replaced by an Arduino or a far more reliable MCU, whereas running an actual legacy PC as a business-critical component in manufacturing has to be a bit of a nightmare by now. AI could probably do a good enough job of working out how the legacy DOS executables were intended to work.

This isn't hackaday or adafruit. Everything is easy when you don't have to actually do it. You are wrong on every point.

You might notice that I never once claimed that the replacement I described would be "easy" or, for that matter, even advisable given the broader real-world constraints involved; just technically feasible in the barest sense. I don't think many people would want to use DOS to design a greenfield system of that kind today, and there's a reason for that. Yes, you can buy newly made "DOS PCs" today, but can you really ensure that today's brand new DOS PC will behave in every way that matters like the actual 30 years old DOS PC that used to control the machinery? That's not a trivial question to answer.

If you design the system from the outset to work with an actual PLC/SCADA or similar (the typical solution for hooking up to big industrial machinery of that sort) that's a bit less likely to come up as an issue, and the hardware will actually be designed for that kind of environment.

Yes, if you ignore everything that was discussed, invent time travel do you can "design the system from the outset" as the prescient you are, and pretend anyone was talking about greenfield, you get to be right. Good for you...some people just need the 'win'.

The real question is "why not?" :)

I think this PR is awesome, and I can totally see myself playing around with this at some point. Being able to create DOS executables of SDL projects is just ... cool!

But I do wonder about the practicality. This would, I presume (never done DOS development, never touched a memory extender) only run on 386+ CPUs, and maybe more importantly, probably require a newer CPU than that to run anything non-trivial at acceptable performance. So I wonder how many "real DOS machines" this can practically target.

Still, it is massively cool.

> "real DOS machines" this can practically target.

Define "real DOS machine".

But I would give you my definition: something with ISA slot so you can hear that awful 2.0 stereo SB Pro-compatible with a hiss what could be almost parseltongue. Video card of choice.

So basically anything between 386sx to P3 Tualatin and some rare and weird cases even P4 and AMD Athlon.

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards?page=1&itemsPerPage=24&...

A real DOS machine is running on a 8086 (or 8088)

ISA is part of IBM-compatibility.

I did testing on a K6-2 300Mhz, and yes it has 2 ISA slot, one of which is where I put the Sound Blaster 16.

Compiling an SDL port of Quake quake gives you 90% performance at 320x200 and 97% at 640x480 compared to the original. That's about 45fps which isn't bad I think.

SDL3 should now work with any i386+ with a VGA and 4MB of RAM which is roughly the requirements of Doom.

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Because it's fun, at least for certain folks? Crazy, right?

There used to be stock exchanges running happily on DOS. Maybe there still are.

Worked at an exchange in 2007/2008 and... we had systems still running from the 80s. Mostly tape audit stuff.

Most use Linux now, and specifically RHEL. I did see some IBM z, but that was specifically for one old DB that handled oil pipeline stuff.

SDL is written in C. So it can support it without too much trouble. And some people are compiling stuff to run on DOS. So it makes sense. And your objection doesn't hold any water.

There's a lot of interesting projects and even innovation going on making new games for old PCs/consoles. James Lambert and Kaze are doing fantastic work in the N64 space as one example (watch their videos on Youtube)

It's a simple enough implementation that implicitly helps document how SDL is supposed to work (DOS being a well understood platform by now). Plenty of reasons to maintain it based on that alone.

There are several reasons. One possible reason is, if you do not need the functions of other operating systems, then DOS will be much simpler.

Uhm... excuse me? Why? Is there anyone even using DOS for anything serious these days?

Translation: "Stop liking things I don't like!"

I suppose it's an issue of ignorance; even IT veterans often don't know that DOS was, and still is, the driver of many highly specialized industry applications, or an OS running the software of individuals as well as small business owners around the world.

because you can

Because computers can be used to do things that are not...so serious?

More specifically it's part of my quest to get Diablo (DevilutionX) running on anything it can, using modern tools. Next up PS2 and PSP.

> it's part of my quest to get Diablo

Sorry, I didn't quite get what you refer to as "it" here. Nevertheless, I also have a similar quest going.

DevilutionX

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